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Helen Chesnut’s Garden Notes: Liverwort spreads with high humidity, high soil moisture

Dear Helen: Liverwort is spreading through our garden, which is mainly shaded and has clay soil along with lots of moisture. Liverwort growth has spread to areas underneath mature shrubs and other plants, making it difficult to access and remove.

Dear Helen: Liverwort is spreading through our garden, which is mainly shaded and has clay soil along with lots of moisture. Liverwort growth has spread to areas underneath mature shrubs and other plants, making it difficult to access and remove. I’ve found helpful advice nowhere. I’d appreciate any ideas you might have.

C.B.

The thin, flat, lobed sheets of liverwort grow at ground level and reproduce by spores. Once liverwort lands in a garden, it will grow and spread with vigour in high humidity, high soil moisture levels, and high nutrient levels (especially of nitrogen and phosphorus). Clay soils hold on very efficiently to moisture and nutrients.

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution except to alter as much as possible the conditions allowing the liverwort to thrive.

I’d begin by addressing congestion within and between the plants in your garden. To introduce more fresh air and light, consider removing the lower limbs of shrubs and other plants, and thin plants enough to allow air to flow through them more freely. This pruning, together with only necessary, modest watering, should reduce moisture levels and allow the soil surface to dry.

Fertilize minimally, and with care. When removing the liverworts, try to lightly cultivate the soil to introduce some air.

Dear Helen: I dry various kinds of herbs in summer by arranging the stems on clean newsprint paper on a large table. My question: When the leaves are dry and crisp, are they better left whole or crushed before storing them?

A.L.

Leaves left whole retain more fragrance and flavour, but in some situations convenient storage for large quantities of whole leaves is not always available. I happen to have a few outsized glass jars, with lids, for the dried mint I enjoy using in winter, for tea and also for crushing and “strewing” on floors before vacuuming. I keep the jars on shelves in a cool cupboard.

Where space is an issue, crush the dried leaves and store in small glass jars with their lids on.

Dear Helen: A friend has plots in a community garden where people have been encouraged to compost, including additions of fruit and vegetable waste materials from their kitchens, in the enclosed compost heaps available. Rats have taken up residence in the heaps, which are built mainly out of wood pallets. The gardeners have almost completely emptied the enclosures and now want to know how to get rid of the rats. They wish to avoid the use of traps.

F.H.

Friends who have used them tell me that battery-operated electronic traps are clean, efficient, and able to deliver an instantaneous demise.

With or without using traps, steps need to be taken to render the composting less appealing to rodents. Begin by dismantling the enclosures. Pallets come in different forms, but the most commonly seen wooden ones are airy, two-tiered arrangements that provide cozy spaces for small nesting rodents.

Open compost heaps are fine, as long as they are kept modestly moistened in dry weather, fluffed up occasionally to keep them aerated, and covered with tarps in winter to avoid nutrient leaching in the rain.

For neatness, simple enclosures can be made with plain wood boards or bricks. My series of five heaps are enclosed with large concrete bricks. Close neighbours have had problems with rats, but my enclosures remain rat-free, mainly because of what I do not add to the heaps.

Odours emitted by fruit and vegetable parings and pieces attract rodents to compost heaps. Where rats are an issue, and that’s practically everywhere on the Island, dig fruit and vegetable waste materials into holes dug in garden plots. I select spaces where the soil tends to dry quickly. The kitchen waste decomposes quickly into a spongy, moisture-retentive mass.

Some communities in the U.S. ban adding food waste to open composting sites. Instead, the waste must be buried, ideally in holes dug at least 30 cm deep. I dig the hole, empty my kitchen compost container into it, add soil and then slice down into the mass with a sharp-bladed shovel, add more soil and tamp it down firmly with my foot. Only once have I had buried compost materials disturbed, when the mass was not covered with enough soil. A temporary board or wire cover can eliminate that problem.

hchesnut@bcsupernet.com