Despite the cold rain , Saturday April 22ndwas a outstanding clock time to be walk the streets of Washington D.C. The occasion for my jaunt was the March for Science , and there were ten of thousands of self - described nerds thronging Constitution Avenue on the approach path the Capitol . Included , besides myself and my geologist wife , was at least one other flora fanatic , as the picture below demonstrates . I hope there were more , marching incognito , as horticulture disadvantageously involve more science .
I love the traditions of horticulture . I appreciate the horse sense of being part of a craft whose roots protract back K of years . My pruning knife , for deterrent example , is unusually similar to those that archaeologists have recovered from ancient papistic website . Knowing that some ancienttopiariuspruned his Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree the same room I do take me with a fantastic common sense of continuity .
Yet I take the traditional “ wisdom ” with more than a cereal of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks . I was learn , for example , that when planting a tree one had to heavily emend the soil in the planting hole with compost . That ’s how it had always been done . Yet when in the 1980 ’s some university horticultural investigator ran scientifically - designed studies , they found that tree typically root well into a unexampled site when the soil isnotemended . I was also instruct to take extreme charge when planting not to weaken the rootballs of balled and burlapped trees and shrubs . However , as I discover of late from Linda Chalker - Scott , this is also a fallacy . Controlled studies have prove that woody plants mostly do far better if you excavate the ball and spread the roots when transplanting .
Who is Linda Chalker - Scott ? She ’s one of the founding member of the “ The Garden Professors . ” Susan Harrisshared informationabout this group just a pair of days ago , so I wo n’t do more here than to say that its fact - based skepticism is badly need . Witness , for example , the relentless affirmation that a atomizer of aerated compost tea is an good means of disease crushing in plants . Chalker - Scott actually reviewedthe scientific literatureon this subject and ground that the few scientifically designed studies of this treatment indicate that a spray of aerated compost tea leaf is no more effective as a disease - suppressant , or even less so , than one of plain water . Yet many gardeners continue to depend on ( and drop money on ) this treatment .
Why is horticulture is so often unscientific ? Why do we so commonly confuse anecdotal evidence – our untested experience — with fact ? It may have to do with the history of the field of force . Agriculture has a long history of scientific enquiry , but gardening , until late , did not . In its absence , magnetic figures proceed in to fill the data vacuum , often with unsubstantiated hypothesis and feeling . alas , this is a trend that carry on today .
participant at the March for Science emphasize through signs and speeches that we can not give to accost the many existential challenge that present society with the superstition and willful ignorance that characterizes so many of our current politicians and policy Divine . Serious problems – world warming , invasive plants and pests , dependence on contaminate pesticide and fertilizer , and many others – also present us in the garden . We need science just as badly there , too .
