You Grow Girl™

After a semester of taking horticulture classes at Cabrillo College, I can tell you that I've learned more about plants in a few months of classes than 30 years on my own. Because of my professors' enthusiam and my fellow student pals, I've sought out info on everything from California native shrubs to the largest redwood tree around.

Not only have I managed to become educated on how plants grow (as opposed to just how to grow plants) but my plant collection has doubled (probably tripled) since I've been taking classes. Instead of just sticking to my usual herbs, succulents and various houseplants, I've branched out into the world of salvias and carnivorous plants.

And of course my plant book collection has easily quadrupled. (Scary, huh). My new passion is ethnobotany -- the study of the historical, medicinal and cultural uses of various plants.

I suppose I could go on and on about all the different things I've learned in class (botany of trees, flowers, fruits, seeds, nuts, blah blah blah) but I much rather mention random notes I wrote in the margins of my notebooks during lecture. So here ya go...

RANDOM STUFF I LEARNED THIS SEMESTER:

• Coconuts: Did you know you can grow these as houseplants? Buy a tropical coconut from the grocery store. Poke a hole in the top and stick in a 5 gallon bucket with the hole side up and the coconut milk still inside it. The plant takes 3 to 4 weeks to germinate and can last one year outside and longer inside.

• Figs: The only insect that can pollinate a fig plant is a fig wasp. The wasp actually lives inside the plant. (So chances are pretty high if you're eating figs that you're also eating fig wasp eggs. Each type of fig plant has a different kind of fig wasp.

• Rye: As opposed to wheat, rye is a much hardier grain. This means that rye doesn't get diseases like wheat does. For example, some historians now believe that the Salem witch trail hysteria can be blamed on the psychotropic qualities of a grain disease called ergot that had attacked the citizen's wheat supply.

• Pyracantha 'Firehorn': It looks a lot like
  Red Clusterberry (Cotoneaster sp. ) but it's got very distinctive thorns. Also cedar wax wing birds get drunk off the berries. It's funny to watch the birds swerve away...

  
  

• Lawns: Each year we spend 30 billion dollars to maintain an artificial American quilt of grass. One acre of mowed turf generates 7 tons of green waste that is usually removed. 80 percent is water. Estimates from 20 years ago indicated 200 million gallons of gas and 3 million tons of fertilizers are used every year to "keep our lawns green." Ack.

By the way...the above photo is from the book Mother Earth's Hassle-Free Indoor Plant Book by Joel and Lynn Rapp. That's them in their living room surrounded by plants. Cute couple, huh?