Reflections

RESCUING "DEAD" PLANTS: A LEAP OF FAITH

My last official gardening act for the season—once the raking and cutting back was done—was to dig in seven enormous pots of sedum. I had coveted those sturdy perennials all fall flowering away like a fiery blaze on the makeshift wood racks in front of the grocery. Autumn Joy, the labels said. When the sales price hit a buck-fifty a pot, I couldn’t resist any longer.
The whole time it took to tally up the bill at the check-out counter, I realized my spontaneous purchase might well be an exercise in futility. The once beautiful crimson flower heads were dried out and a nondescript rust. At the base of the stalks, foolhardy cabbage-like new growth was beginning to establish itself. Even as I dug away at the hardening soil in the side yard, I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up. The wind was howling out of the north. Empty pots rolled down the driveway. Still, at a buck-fifty a pot, I couldn’t be too choosy about the survival rate over the winter.
I can’t totally account for my obsession with last-rose-of-summer plant rescue operations. If I’m lucky, I manage to save one in three. In graduate school, finances were an excuse as I picked through the dead and dying palms and ferns and other staples of the indoor garden. Nowadays, nursery owners glance my way in disgust and roll their eyes as I forage through the Clearance tables. I tell myself that somebody has to love the poor overstock salvia that nobody wanted.
“You’re a tough one,” a manager told me once after I spent a good half hour sorting through the rejects. A softy, actually. But I didn’t argue.
Factory-reject plants make it easier than healthy ones to do the right thing. Cut back the dried out stalks and stems , a voice in my head told me. Let all the energy go to the roots. Two or three weeks ago, I might have been tempted to leave the extravagant red blossoms finish out their blooming season. Unfortunately, short term concessions to aesthetics can reduce a plant’s chances of survival, what ever the season.
Gardening experts are right, of course, when they tell us that in the long run, insisting on the healthiest possible plant stock is a wise investment. One look at those sad-looking sedum pots and logic didn’t weigh heavily on the scale. I loaded up the cart and even the fold-down wire baby seat. By the time I got home, the cargo area was full of bristly plant residue.
In another week I couldn’t have gotten that shovel in the ground. Call it a leap of faith. How much do you want to bet, that spot in bed is the first place I head in the spring to check for tell-tale shoots? A book-maker wouldn’t touch that one with a ten-foot pole.