Articles by Dr. Frank Gouin

Clover Is No Miracle Lawn Feeder

It makes no nitrogen to spare

A few weeks back (June 3), we talked about how to grow a clover lawn. There are advantages to clover, but feeding the grass isn’t one of them. It’s true that clover is a legume, and it fixes its own nitrogen from Earth’s atmosphere. But clover won’t fertilize the lawn where it’s growing. The nitrogen that clover fixes is totally utilized by the clover plant and is not released into the soil unless the clover plant is killed. Only after the nitrogen has...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Frank Gouin; 6/24/10

Let the Sun Shine In

How to prune your bare-bottomed hedges

A neat, completely green sheared hedge of privet can be very attractive in a landscape. But most often the bottom branches lose their leaves, and the hedge quickly loses its attractiveness. This is a common problem and one that can easily be corrected, as I showed in a recent pruning workshop that required rejuvenating an old privet hedge with nothing but naked branches on the lower half. Plants lose their bottom leaves because those leaves are being shaded out by branches and...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Frank Gouin; 7/8/10

Plants Need Clean Air, Too

The spate of Code Orange days have our plants gasping for breath

A Bay Weekly reader asked me why his Heritage birch was dropping its leaves despite the fact that it was under irrigation. The answer was simple: air pollution. The Heritage birch is a clone of river birch, and river birch trees are extremely sensitive to ozone and sulfur dioxide. Since the middle of June, we have experienced several days of Code Orange, and in early July we have also experienced Code Red. This means that air pollutants are sufficiently high to affect humans, and the...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Frank Gouin; 7/15/10

The Results Are In

Carol Allen scores with Francis R. Gouin Undergraduate Research Grant

Botanical gardens have always had difficulty keeping plant viruses out of their orchid collections. While working at the U.S. Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C., Carol Allen often noticed small indentations or notches on the aerial roots of orchids in the conservatory. One evening, she saw cockroaches crawling over the roots. Could they be the culprits spreading viruses between contaminated plants and newly arrived virus-free plants? Always before, virus transmission between plants had...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Frank Gouin; 7/22/10

What’s the Value of Organic?

Depends on how you define it

I am frequently asked if I am an organic gardener, based on my reputation for having been heavily involved in composting and compost utilization research since 1972. My answer is yes and no. The importance of organic matter in soils and the use of compost to improve and maintain soil productivity is not thoroughly appreciated. In my gardening practices, I use a combination of compost and chemical fertilizers and minimize restricted-use pesticides as much as I can. Based on my many years...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Frank Gouin; 7/29/10

Local or Organic?

That’s a choice you have to make in buying cherries, peaches, plums and nectarines

Every year, I am asked if the peaches and nectarines that I sell are grown organically. The answer is no. We cannot grow stone fruit crops such as peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries without having to use both insecticides and fungicides. All of these crops are extremely susceptible to brown rot, rusts and insect damage from beetles, curculio, aphids, mites, stink bugs, borers, etc. At present there are no organic or biological controls for the insects that attack these crops. Many...

Article - The Bay Gardener by Dr. Francis Gouin; by Dr. Frank Gouin; 8/5/10