GARDENING : LORE & MORE : Garden myths say bananas, coffee grounds help plants. Is it superstition or chemistry?

Hang your dirty shoes from fruit trees that don’t bear?

Fertilize your roses with fish heads?

Feed coffee grounds to your azaleas?

Or bananas to your fern?

These are just a few of the old wives’ tales handed down by generations of gardeners. Are they nothing more than the outdated practices of superstitious old-timers? Or are they garden myths mingled with old-fashioned good sense and still useful?

Few of the following nuggets of folklore collected from California gardeners will be found in modern garden books. Some of these tales fell out of favor as more scientific information became available, but other examples of garden folklore are practical today, even if eccentric.

Although our grandmothers may not have understood the reason for tossing coffee grounds into flower beds, old wives’ tale wisdom says it’s good for azaleas and roses.

Up-to-date gardeners know that California’s low rainfall and alkaline soil are tough on acid-loving plants. Coffee grounds act as a mulch and soil improver.

Tom Nuccio, of Nuccio’s Nursery in Altadena, camellia and azalea specialists, agreed that it can’t hurt. “It’s OK to follow grandmother’s advice on this old-time practice,” he said.

Tea leaves spread among the camellias and wisteria is folk advice many generations of gardeners have taken to heart. Tea should also add

much-needed acid to the soil.

Longtime gardener Edith Pierce of Upland has had great success with a tea bag or two on the camellias she planted 50 years ago. The plants reach to the roof line and bloom regularly every year.

Some staghorn fern owners throw banana peels on their plants. They’ve heard that the benefits for the staghorn derive from the potassium in the peel.

A few staghorn owners even advocate using the entire banana, placing it into the paper-like platycerium that supports the main plant.

Amateur gardener Roland Sui demonstrated his technique of banana feeding, dropping a well-ripened banana in the midst of the fronds of a huge staghorn fern he grows at his Altadena home. “The plant loves it,” he claimed. “In the wild, fruit drops into the middle of the plant and rots.”

Wade Roberts, director of Sherman Gardens in Corona del Mar and a lecturer on staghorn

ferns isn’t so sure. “Put all the bananas you want on your staghorn fern, feed ‘em avocados if you like,” he said. “But don’t forget to fertilize regularly with a balanced plant food.”

Even if you don’t have a staghorn fern to feed, banana peels can benefit your garden. Bury them just below the surface in your rose beds. They rot quickly and add humus to the soil, according to Maureen and Bridget Boland, authors of “Old Wives’ Lore for Gardeners.”

Another fertilizing old wives’ tale advises burying fish heads among rose bushes.

“It’s an old Norwegian custom,” claimed Elin Vanderlip, a gardener who lives in Palos Verdes. She remembers watching gardeners come to the docks in Norway to fill bags with fish heads.

She fertilizes the rose bushes in her garden with fish heads from the San Pedro commercial fishing docks.

Altadena gardener Nancy Yamauchi recalls her grandfather advising her to plant a whole fish by a non-bearing fruit tree.

Hydrangeas also respond to a seemingly eccentric treatment. The flowers turn blue if nails are buried in the soil surrounding them. Hydrangea gardener John Sadler of Pasadena remembers hearing that buried razor blades would accomplish the same purpose. Another Pasadena gardener, Jill Regal, followed her grandmother’s advice to stick old hairpins in the soil around the plants.

But if waiting for hairpins and nails to rust seems too out-of-date, the modern gardener can encourage blue flowering on hydrangeas by adding aluminum sulfate to the soil.

A plethora of old wives’ tales exist with regard to keeping unwanted fauna away from garden flora.

Those plastic jugs of water you occasionally see sitting in front yards are not there just for aesthetics. The owners believe the jugs keep dogs away from lawns.

No one who uses this unusual method of canine control can explain why it works. But lawn-lover Henrietta Dail of Pasadena swears that a container of water placed under a tree in the center of her front yard prevents dog trespassing. Thousands of homeowners use the same technique.

Some gardeners believe a rope around the garden will keep out snakes. “People will actually put a rope on the ground and encircle their property,” said Pasadena Humane Society Director Steve McNall.

Skunks foraging in freshly planted flower beds create headaches for gardeners. The old wives’ remedy calls for moth balls. Do they work? No one could verify that this remedy keeps the nighttime marauders away indefinitely, but it’s generally effective the first time.

Gardeners struggle constantly to control snails and slugs. And a considerable number of them follow the old wives’ tale that says a bowl of beer in the garden would attract snails and slugs and cause them to drink and drown.

Scientists usually allow old gardening tales to circulate without making an attempt at debunking them. But researchers at Colorado State University took on the beer advice.

They set out 16 brands of beer for a taste test and invited all the local mollusks. Non-alcoholic beer, currently a hot marketing item, attracted the greatest number of slugs and snails. It’s the fermented yeast, not alcohol, that entices them.

If you’d rather drink beer than waste it on the slimy critters in your garden, mix up a solution of 1 cup water, 1 teaspoon sugar, and one-quarter teaspoon yeast in a pie tin and set it out on a cool evening to see if this old wives’ tale works for you.

Even more frustrating than snail damage is that caused by the garden gopher. These tunneling pests drive even pacifist gardeners to violence.

Old wives’ tales say that human hair, steel wool or chewing gum stuffed down a gopher hole will frighten the critters. But gardeners with gopher problems are unanimous in agreeing that none of those old techniques works more than once.

Cactus gardener Connie Speight has suffered gopher damage regularly in her Santa Barbara garden. “I’ve tried all the folk remedies,” she said. “Science wins this round--the only thing that works is poison.”

Once fauna is under control, the insect world can be partially dealt with by the use of old wives’ lore.

Companion planting--the growing of different crops next to each other for the benefit of both--is an ancient gardening practice. Marigolds are the most widely used companion plant as it is believed their roots and flowers repel pests, especially nematodes.

While organic gardeners may disagree, studies have concluded the benefits of companion planting are imaginary.

Dennis Pittinzer of the UC Riverside Cooperative Extension advises gardeners to choose flower varieties resistant to nematodes rather than relying on companion planting. But for those gardeners who want to find out if grandmother was right, “Companion Plants” by Philbrick and Gregg lists plants with love/hate relationships.

A favorite old wives’ tale concerns planting by the moon. “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” advice is to plant flowers and vegetables with above-ground crops “between the day the moon is new to the day it is full.” That’s about two weeks a month to plant above-ground crops if you can get with the idea that the force of the moon affects the health of your plants.

Flowering bulbs and below-ground vegetables are to be planted during the dark of the moon--the other part of the month. You can also work astrology into the moon planting cycle but for that you’ll need your own copy of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. The 200th edition is available now.

Another folk tale holds that talking to your plants is beneficial. Floral designer Olive List, an Altadena gardener transplanted from New Zealand, talks to her plants regularly.

“It makes me feel better,” she said, “and I think my plants grow better.” A visit to the thriving garden behind her house would persuade you to talk to your own plants. Olive can even coax fuchsias to flourish, a formidable accomplishment in the San Gabriel Valley.

Most old wives’ tales are European in origin, but recent immigration has brought an Oriental import, Feng-shui. This Chinese belief system attempts to harness the “dragon lines” of earth’s energy. Good fortune will result from the harmonious placement of trees, house and water.

Feng-shui dictates that a house should be located facing south with no straight path leading to the front door. A most important corollary is to NOT have a large tree directly in front of the doorway. The tree interferes with the forces bringing wealth to the household.

Because large trees in some San Gabriel Valley cities were being cut down by new owners, several communities recently passed tree preservation ordinances. Becky Lei-ung, a San Marino real estate agent, said that realty agents are becoming more sensitive to Feng-shui and are trying harder to match clients with properties that won’t need modification.

Fruit trees that don’t bear are the subject of many old wives’ tales. Canadian-born Sue Baumann of Pasadena says beating trees to encourage them to bear fruit is a folk practice that comes from both European and Mexican traditions.

Another old wives’ tale regarding fruit trees comes from rural Mexico. Farmers, in the hope of “embarrassing” fruit trees into bearing, hang a pair of dirty shoes on a limb of the offending tree.

The first time UC Outreach Coordinator Rachel Mabre saw shoes hanging from lime tree branches at the Pico-Union Community Garden in Los Angeles, she thought someone had left them to dry. When the shoes remained, she learned they were placed there to remind the tree of its “duty” to bear fruit.

Mabre believes, as do most gardeners, that science doesn’t know all the answers. Tests might determine which beer university snails prefer, and why a staghorn fern would like a banana hors d’oeuvre with its fertilizer. But science can’t measure the satisfaction a gardener feels when his azaleas with the coffee-ground mulch bloom better than the ones without.

Gardening is a personal pursuit and the methods that make you more effective and give you pleasure are the ones you should continue using. While nostalgia for the practices of the past is no substitute for current gardening know-how, not everything worth knowing about gardening can be found in our modern garden books.