What’s New in Garden: Plants, Potions, Tools

Things tend to evolve slowly in the world of gardening, with little earth-shaking news.

Look at prints and paintings from several centuries ago and you’ll recognize every garden activity, every tool. After hundreds of years, a spade is still a spade.

In the last several years, however, there has been an explosion of exciting new plants, products and ideas.

Here are a few of these interesting new wrinkles in gardening:

* Yellow clivias.

Three years ago the White Flower Farm catalog caused quite a stir when it offered a new yellow clivia for an astonishing $950 each. They quipped, “The price makes us gulp too.”

Yellow-flowered clivias are beginning to appear at local nurseries, though they are still somewhat pricey, anywhere from about $35 to about $75 for a plant large enough to bloom.

The new yellow clivias were not all created equal. Frank Burkard at Burkard Nurseries in Pasadena--who has a stunning bed of them in his backyard--said the best of the hybrids have wide leaves and usually make fat, open flowers.

Others are more like the species miniata, with narrow leaves that produce smaller, more tubular flowers often hidden inside the foliage.

Like other clivias, the yellows are especially valuable because they grow and flower in complete shade (“They’ll Grow in a Cave,” said an old Sunset magazine headline, and it could have added, they’ll probably flower there too).

Gardeners are finding the yellow kinds easier to mix with other flowers because the color is not so strident. They are also fragrant, a nice new feature.

* Miracle juice for clippers.

At a garden show in Orange County, tool expert Bob Denman was sharpening people’s shears and then protecting them with “some great stuff,” a super cleaner, lubricant and protectant called Break Free CLP.

He took battered and rusted shears, coated them with the stuff, let it sit for a minute and then wiped off years of gunk with a cloth--or scraped and used fine steel wool if it was really thick.

A Santa Ana company came up with Break Free CLP for the military, which needed an all-purpose gun oil to clean, lubricate and protect everything from side arms to tank cannons.

It contains synthetic oils, Teflon, a little solvent and “a dozen other ingredients” and also works as a thin grease that will protect for up to a year, though Denman suggests applying it after every use.

“Sap is a shear’s mortal enemy,” said Denman. This product will remove and repel sap, as well as rust, and keep everything working smoothly.

You can find it at gun stores or at the Denman & Co. garden tool store in Placentia ([714] 524-0668). Or look for Corona CLP, the same formulation, at nurseries.

* Repellent for vampires and other pests.

Garlic repels a great many things, it seems. It’s been sold as a pest repellent in spray bottles, and now Canadian research suggests that growing garlic where tomatoes are to go (or have been) will discourage tomato diseases.

In California, this is worth a try, since garlic can grow in winter where tomatoes grew in summer. When the tomatoes are ready to be pulled out in the fall, that’s the time to be planting garlic; when the garlic finishes up in late spring, it’s time to plant the main crop of tomatoes.

You can also try a garlic cure right now because the same research suggested that grinding up garlic cloves and spreading them around tomato plants will also discourage disease.

* Chocolate-covered gardens.

Perhaps it’s that delightful smell, but many gardeners are raving about Cocoa Mulch--left-over cocoa bean shells. It packs down nicely in the garden, is a soft, rich cocoa color and looks very tidy.

Bags say it deters slugs, snails and “most cats.” Phil Miller at Heard’s Country Gardens in Westminster says that cats and snails do stay away from the beds that Miller has tried it on. He also points out that it has value as a fertilizer, and is labeled as a 3-1-3, so as it slowly decomposes, it adds to the soil’s fertility.

* And a chocolate plant.

A few plants have chocolate-scented flowers, quite a startling sensation in the garden. Perhaps the most powerful is the “chocolate cosmos” that has recently become available at nurseries. Cosmos atrosanguineus has flowers the color of a Hershey wrapper and a scent that is unmistakably chocolate.

From a clump of foliage come wiry stems that get to about 2 feet tall, but the whole plant dies back for the winter and often doesn’t return. One solution? Grow this perennial Mexican cosmos as if it were a delightful summer annual.

* Hanging cymbidiums.

If you’ve run out of room for cymbidium orchids on the porch, consider the new pendulous types. The flower spikes on these curve down, instead of growing up, and there are several colors, though most have flowers that are a brownish, bronze or deep red color. Most also have medium to mini-sized flower spikes, which means they’ll have many buds and may make multiple spikes.

They are usually sold in hanging pots that can be suspended from trees or patio overheads. They’ll grow for at least two years in these pots before you need to transplant them.

Like other cymbidiums, they need about half a day of sun to bloom well, but they may need a little more attention to watering because they hang suspended in the air. They generally bloom some time in winter or early spring.

* Mulching mowers.

There’s a new breed of lawn mowers that don’t spit out the clippings but grind them up and leave them on the lawn as fertilizer. It’s an idea that sounds revolutionary to say the least, but the city of Los Angeles has been “grasscycling” like this on its golf courses since 1990. Research has shown that it’s not only good for the environment but good for the lawn.

Several regional agencies are anxious to see more of these mulching mowers in home gardens, so they don’t have to haul the grass clippings away in garbage trucks. Others would love to see more electric mowers, which don’t spew out hydrocarbons along with the grass clippings.

They’ve formed the Mow Down Pollution Partnership, which is sponsoring events at which “grass-cycling” is explained and old gasoline mowers can be exchanged for corded or cordless mulching mowers at a substantial savings.

Electric mulching mowers are not cheap. Even at these events, the least expensive corded kind costs $189; cordless mulching mowers start at $229. For more information, call the Partnership’s hotline, (800) 553-2962.

* Mighty mycorrhizae.

Tiny fungi attached to the roots of many plants often do the real work of gathering nourishment from the soil. Called mycorrhizal fungi, they make vast networks of their own roots, sharing water and nutrients with the host plants so that both benefit.

A great deal of research has been done in the last decade to determine which fungi live with which plants (they are often very specific) and now various products are appearing that contain mycorrhizal fungi.

Although they are not proved to be of benefit to all plants, they definitely work on some, especially when the plants are stressed by urban growing conditions or the barren soils often found in new subdivisions.

There are a number of formulations available for trees, shrubs and flower beds. Mycor VAM Cocktail Flower Bed Inoculant comes in a handy shaker can that treats 50 square feet for about $21, available from J. Howard Mitchell Co. in San Gabriel. It also has formulations for other kinds of plants, even a special one for bonsai conifers. For more information, call (800) 675-7305.

Another new product contains mycorrhizal fungi, other beneficial organisms and a soil polymer that stores water. It’s designed for new landscape plantings and is sold as Transplant Insurance (16 ounces costs about $25, from Gardener’s Supply, [800] 955-3370).

Mycorrhizal inoculants are still somewhat pricey, but trying them puts you on the cutting edge of garden technology.