Let's Improve Technology in the Garden
In this world of ever accelerating technological change, I regard my garden as an oasis where the latest gizmo or trend isn't important and I can relax and enjoy myself there - just me and the flowers, the bird song, sunshine and summer breeze - what could be farther from the technical world? Yet some of the garden care and maintenance I do is touched by the technical world in the form of the tools, supplies and chemicals I use. As I work, the shortcomings of some of these become obvious. Just as we often continue to use a tool because we already have it, though another would make the job much easier, we also put up with technical nuisances because they have been there for so long.
I just finished fertilizing all my containers and the annuals in the ground where the trees steal the nutrition. I seldom use water soluble fertilizer since I prefer compost and granular organic ones. However, this week I decided to provide these plants with a quick snack, especially since we have now had a lot of rain and they are beginning to act a little hungry (blooming has slowed, though it hasn't been hot, and many plants' leaves are beginning to look pale). I gathered my dusty collection of trial size containers of three different formulae from different sources and set to work. There was an "acid greening" formula (30-10-10) that I planned to use on the foliage containers, a "bloom booster formula (10-54-10) for the blooming annuals and an all purpose formula (20-20-20) for everything else. I was using a two gallon watering can. I found that the instructions called for 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of one, 1 teaspoon per gallon of another and 1 tablespoon per gallon of the third. This was a very irritating situation considering that I had only a tablespoon with which to measure the stuff! They had probably each come with a proper plastic measuring device but, like many things that stay around too long, they were missing. As I struggled with the situation, I had lots of time to think about standardization in gardening products.
Gardeners are an individualistic lot, for the most part, and would likely not consider standardization a good thing. But, if manufacturers of these fertilizers wanted to, they could formulate them so that they all required the same amount per gallon. Then we would all be able to measure them with whichever of the plastic spoons survived. One would be all we needed and, if they used a common measure, say 1 tablespoon per gallon, a household measuring spoon could be used if all the supplied measures were lost. I know this can be done. Ortho has introduced a line of garden products that use a common hose-end fitting which dilutes them all at the same rate.
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