the right fungus active in their soil (the mycorrhizal fungus must penetrate the cells of the orchid seeds before they can germinate). So the question naturally arises: Would more, perhaps even most, of our garden plants benefit from having mycorrhizal fungi around their roots? And, if so, what changes in gardening technique would we have to implement?
For an unequivocal opinion on these questions, we need look no farther than Washington state, where mycologist Paul Stamets has evolved into something of a mycelial shaman, promoting the benefits of fungi for everything from personal health to toxic-waste remediation. An intriguing combination of scientist, prophet and entrepreneur, Stamets passionately advances the rationale of gardening in cooperation with fungal allies. He believes some 90 percent of plants benefit from reciprocal relationships with fungi, a relationship that protects the plant from disease and enhances its ability to absorb water and nutrients. By clearing and constantly ploughing up land, he maintains, we destroy these vital fungi, thereby short-circuiting the plant’s natural growth mechanisms and requiring that we promote plant growth through fertilizers and other artificial means. Reintroducing mycorrhizal fungi to the soil, he says, will promote faster growth, speed transplant recovery and reduce the need for fertilizers and other additives. Several companies, including Stamets’s mail-order operation, Fungi Perfect, now market a number of specialized mycorrhizal-fungus products for the home gardener, ranging from mixtures for use in potting soil to products used directly on seeds.
If visionary mycologists like Stamets are correct in their assertions—and my forest-sharpened instincts incline me to believe that they are—the implications for our gardening are enormous. The first activity we’d want to curtail is this endless digging and rototilling of soil which, no matter how soul-soothing, plays havoc with any mycelial threads in the ground—not to mention greatly inconveniencing earthworms, beneficial predators like ground beetles and centipedes and innumerable micro-organisms. Personally, I have a deep metaphysical attachment to the rituals of spading (something I’ll expound upon later in this volume) so going cold turkey is a drastic measure I’m disinclined to entertain, at least for the moment, but I see it advancing upon me.
We’d move instead toward a no-till system, constantly applying to the surface fresh organic matter that cooperative fungi and other organisms would transform into soluble food for our plants. Who knows, we might also incorporate edible mushrooms into our plantings—maybe the garden oyster mushroom, Hypsizygus ulmarius, which can unlock nutrients from straw, sawdust and organic debris, feeding the roots of underlying plants and producing gourmet mushrooms at the same time. Talk about a win-win.
So, yes, notwithstanding all the gloom prevalent in this imperfect world, it’s possible to imagine bright days ahead, lazy days when we may set aside our spades, relax our aching bods and dance together merrily among the fairy rings of magical mushrooms.
Those Who Live in Glass Houses
For years we’d realized that many’s the day in our broody coastal climate when by far the nicest place to be is inside the greenhouse. You don’t really fancy being cooped up indoors when the thrilling fingers of spring are running through the earth and animating the twigs of every tree and shrub. But a chill wind or damp clamminess may make the outdoors desirable only for vigorous activity. No, it’s in the greenhouse, where the temperature’s up and so are the seedlings, that the gardener is most satisfactorily ensconced in spring, as in fall too, or on any inclement day in between.
For the longest time we had a modest little greenhouse at our place, about three by almost four metres, attached to the house. Fashioned from stout 4×4 red cedar pieces supporting large sheets of tempered glass, like everything else around here it was constructed under the watchful eye of Parsimony. The structural members were milled from cedar logs on the property and the water-stained glass sheets cost five bucks apiece. The floor was composed of thick chunks of concrete-and-aggregate paving that used to be a neighbour’s front path and made a dandy heat sink in the glass house. Total cost: about two hundred dollars—less than what we subsequently paid for a made-in-China flimsy tubular metal and plastic greenhouse that we move around the veggie patch.
That old greenhouse had served us faithfully for three decades, but its time was done. After thirty winters of exposure to moisture, the cedar sills were rotting badly and the glass panes tending to rattle ominously in the wind. As well, certain design flaws were no longer tolerable. For instance, in our budget-driven construction phase, I had decided to “make do” with a primitive ventilation system on the roof, fashioned from a pair of old wooden frame windows that could be raised or lowered from inside via an attached pole. As with democracy, the price for this system was constant vigilance. Any rapid change in temperature in either direction involved being on hand to open or close the vents.
Finally tiring of this constant flirtation with disaster, I actually went so far as to purchase one of those automatic ventilator control thingamabobs about fifteen years ago, but never quite got around to installing it. The inadequate roof vents required leaving doors and windows open during extremely hot weather. Notwithstanding preventative measures, hummingbirds, butterflies, dragonflies, robins and other fauna insisted upon entering the greenhouse and then fluttering hopelessly against the south-facing glass in which there were no openings for escape. The ongoing catch-and-release program necessitated by these intruders went hand in hand with the regimes of manual vent opening and closing, the two gobbling up absurd amounts of my time.
But, most pressingly, the glass house was always a tad too small for our purposes, a fact that my old dad had pointed out shortly after we’d constructed it. “Needs to be twice that size,” he’d said, without being asked. (What’s particularly aggravating about unsolicited advice from old dads is that it so frequently turns out to be correct.) In fact, the greenhouse, for all its shortcomings, was more or less adequate for horticultural purposes—germinating seeds, growing tomatoes and basil, and overwintering half-hardy ornamentals. What it lacked—and this would never have occurred to my old-school workaholic dad—was sufficient room for a pair of comfortable chairs, a reading light and perhaps a little bistro-style table at which one could take tea while keeping an eye on the garden.
Thus, one bright autumn day—when I was mere months beyond major surgery and should by rights have been lolling in delicious indolence—we set about knocking down the old greenhouse in order to replace it with one twice as large. Not finding anything in the marketplace that fit our needs and budget, we decided to once again build our own, with construction help from an accomplished carpenter and friend. I won’t belabour the chores involved—sledgehammering the old concrete apart, designing a building to suit our purposes, crawling around sawmill yards for lumber and demolition yards for patio doors, figuring out where waterlines and electrical lines should run, and all the rest.
For walls, we reused all the tempered glass sheets from the old house, along with three sets of single-pane patio doors, leaving enough cash on hand to afford twin-layer polycarbonate roofing, which both moderates the interior temperature and does away with the condensation drips of glass roofing.
In for a penny, in for a pound, we elected to also tear out the adjacent sunken Mediterranean garden, fill the space with twenty-five cubic yards of pit run, every cubic inch of which had to be barrowed in, and lay pavers across the whole expanse. The rationale for this retrofit involved advancing age and the requirement to begin eliminating unnecessary steps and providing flatter, safer surfaces than the sandstone pavers and steps had done. Gardeners generally, and compulsive makeover people particularly, have a remarkable facility for justifying why a perfectly settled piece of landscape needs to be torn apart and put back together differently.
Anyway, out came some lovely old lavender and sage plants; out came two beautifully globular variegated boxwoods, planted long ago. Out came small carpets of creeping thymes. Most impressively of all, out came the several dozen sandstone pieces that we’d hauled in by hand thirty years ago and now were hauling back out again, amazed at how much weight the stones, like certain acquaintances, had put on during the interim. Partway through the greenhouse
