You are so right. We ignore climate and soil because they're so complex and most gardening books don't go into them much - botanists generally don't know much about soil science it seems. But after moving from one extreme soil type to another (heavy adobe clay to glacial gravelly till), I learned the hard way just how critical soil type is to gardening!

Jim, it's easy to figure out generally what kind of soil you have. The USDA has done soil surveys for most counties nationwide and you should be able to find your county's Soil Survey at the library or at an Ag Extension office. Those things are loaded with more information than you can shake a stick at.

You can also do a mason jar test yourself. I did a presentation for our local rose society on soil hydrology and how to do a mason jar test so you can figure out how often and how long to water your roses. Take a quart mason jar with tight lid, and fill it about half way with soil from the garden. Then fill it the rest of the way with water. SHAKE it up well to break up and suspend the soil in the water and then put it down. Have a ruler and paper and pencil ready. After one minute, the sand will have settled out, measure that. After 2 hours, the silt has settled out, measure that. Clay can take days to settle out - you can either let it sit for a couple days, or you can measure the total height of soil before adding water and figure the clay is what's left after measuring the sand and silt.

Now you take your measurements and calculate the percentages of sand, silt and clay. Then you look at a soil triangle and find the intersection of the three lines - percent clay, percent silt, percent sand, and it will tell you if you have sandy loam, or clay loam, or loamy sand, or whatever.

The link below takes you to an online triangle with calculator, pretty neat! and there's a separate one for the Canadian soil classification system too.

Soil makes all the difference in how plants grow! it determines how water and nutrients are or are not available to plants, and the environment in which the roots are living. It's complex and opaque but we need to do our best to understand it!

Here is a link that might be useful: USDA Soil Triangle

Before I started growing roses other than hybrid teas, when I thought of roses I always thought of a thorny half-dead or all-dead plant and the reek of herbicides. So that still acts as a curb. Now that I've had some success, thought, I'm tempted to branch out. But not too much. I actually have a folder full of plants (perennials and roses both) that I have ordered and the number of them that are dead now is just, well, dead depressing. Most of them date from before we brought our horses home and had to deal with compacted clay subsoil, but I've still lost plants of course. There's always the problem of too much nitrogen leading to too much growth in fall leading to canker and death (which has been a problem with my teas and chinas). My easiest and hardiest roses have been species, climbers and rugosas, so I've been thinking of getting more of those. I have about 40 roses already, not counting all of the rugosa seedlings I put in the ground this year. The other thing I think about when I think about getting more roses is how much the deer love to eat them in winter.

climate and soil. Do you mean before or after we amend the soil to beyond recognition or water to flood stages?

I've been reading Graham Stuart Thomas' "CUTTINGS FROM MY GARDEN NOTEBOOKS" and I have noticed in particular two things:

1. Many of us may tend to ignore it, but Thomas was VERY aware of the effects of pH, with regard to what you can grow and what you can not grow.

2. Someone who lives in dry, alkaline, Southern California, with little rain and no winter chill would simply not recognize a huge proportion of the plants Thomas considers to be the essential bones of a good garden.

The bottom line is -- if you DON'T pay attention to your local conditions, you're going to spend a lot of money, and frustrate yourself.

Jeri

One of the first really good pieces of advise I got about ornamental gardening was to look at the "weeds" that grow wild around you. Then try and find a more "cultured/cultivated" version of that plant or just "go native". We have heavy clay soil and it really is pretty amazing to see the wild plants that grow in it unassisted by a human gardener. When I looked up some of these wild plants in gardening books I got the usual blurb about them needing "moist but well drained soil". Clay is neither. Yet plants such as Coreopsis, Indian Paint Brush and species roses grow without a problem. I've found that our heat plus humidity have been more of a reliable predicter of what will usually fail(and there's only one plant book that addresses that deadly combination). No Delphiniums for us for instance. Roses (thank goodness) have been pretty tolerant of our soil/climate, but like everything else, it takes experimentation to find out which variety does better then others. Other rosarians can help, but since their soil or microclimate may vary from yours, their recommendations are not always foolproof.

There was a study done on wine grapes and growing conditions. Vines that are grown next to rivers and streams have a higher yield and almost no fertilizers are needed.
The reason is the soil has fish that decompose and add nutrition to the soil. Natures fertilizer. I can tell you the best roses I have are grown over our beloved buried pets.

Reg

I have couple of soil books. I tried the jar thing and got what looked like one layer of soil types! No gradations. Then I tried to hole and drainge test thinking that my problem with soil most likely had something to do with drainage. I filled the hole and went off thinking it would take hours. It drained in record time.

So I sent off a soil sample to Cornell. The result's indicated tha there wasn't much wrong except slightly too low pH, 6.2. Well I posted the results here and Berndoodle questioned the iron level. As I remember 7 #' per acre. Well I added some iron chelate and several of my roses that were not growing perked up.

Pretty tedious as you have to dilute with water and go around with a watering can. So now I'm looking for a source of iron sulfate as it can, I think be applied broadcast. Some what worried that it will lower my pH. Does anyone no of another iron compound that would not produce acidic results?

Then another question, does anyone no what the climate and soil are in Holstein, the home of Kordes and Tantau.

Cupshaped are you there!

Jim this sounds nuts but I had potted up some bands for a month and just recently planted. The fertilizer had mostly washed out and some of my bands were showing chlorosis but not the bands where i had the iron landscape pins holding up the drippers. The ones where the pins were closer to the roots and rusted had no chlorosis. I would suggest putting either landscape pins or iron nails or whatever around your root zones.

Len

I have a lot of nails having once did a lot of work on my house. Why not use them! Or for that matter anything made of iron. However, having once been a chemist, so long ago I've forgotten everything, I wonder how that iron oxide gets in a form that plants use?

Reg

I meant to thank you for the mention of the USDA soil surveys.

Then I wonder if there is something equivalent, a sort of ranking about climates. And how they differ from each other. Like marine with little change in temp and a lot of overcast skies. You see I know little about this subject but someone out there does.

Holstein is in northern Germany right on the coast-there are a lot of marshlands, "moors" and bogs. Considering the proximity to the North Sea, anything growing there would have to be pretty hardy. I didn't care for it myself.

Jim, Holstein is the northern tip of Germany, near Denmark and bordering the North Sea. With the gulf stream flowing nearby, the climate is mild and winters are probably the equivalent of our Zone 7, or even Zone 8. I have shared this with you before--most of northern continental Europe is at least a zone 7, so if you're looking for Kordes to be especially hardy, there is no reason for them to be.

I did have my soil tested once, and fortunately it came out fine as far as nutrient content, ph, and structure. I don't worry about testing it again, as I am always adding compost and organic matter, which keeps the nutrient level up and ph where it should be.

First off, I've never been able to find this stuff on the web. It lives in books.

In the 1930's, a German named Koppen devised a system of identifying climates. The first division was between arid and humid climates, Then there were winter wet, winter dry, maritime, continental, etc. It was modified in the early 70's by an American named Trewartha. It has been tinkered with since then, The Forest Service is currently using an ecosystem model that I haven't really been able to crack the key to yet. It may simply be that, while useful for forest managment, the climate range of most important tree species is just too great to serve as a useful indicator for other, pickier species.

Anyway, to simplify things, on the east coast, there is a sliver of coastal Maine that is officially maritime. The lower tip of Florida is officially subtropical. Everything else is humid continental. Depending on how the information is to be used, this can be subdivided east to west according to rainfall, or divided north to south according to temperature. The 100th meridian is the traditional dividing line between the humid east and the arid west. The ecosystem maps put in another dividing line between the eastern forests and the midwestern prairie. The temperature maps are usually quite arbitrary. The important thing to remember is that within a climate, most of the data we considered temperature based are all related. So that I currently have a colder, longer winter, a cooler shorter summer, including lower average highs, than when I lived outside Philadelphia. However, my numbers don't relate well to say, Minneapolis, because the midwest is a different climate.

Jim, here on the Pacific Coast we use the Sunset Magazine's garden zone system, which divides the western states into something like 24 zones, and then AK and HI each get 3 zones I think - never plan on gardening in either so haven't paid much attention!

Anyway they use much more information than just average winter lows. They include summer highs, duration of summers, duration of winters, marine influence, banana belts, cold pockets, seasonal winds, latitude, elevation ...

And, not just to brag about this, but I know I've seen them branch out to a gardening encyclopedia for the eastern half of the country, and I recall seeing zones numbered well into the 40s. Way more than the USDA's 11 zone system for the whole country. Once again, I don't plan on ever living east of the Rockies so didn't pay much attention. But I know it's out there. How accurate and how precise it is I could not tell you. But look around for it and see if it tells you anything useful about your area that you don't already know.

It is nice to have the more detail. For instance the USDA system, which is fine as far as it goes, no complaints from me, puts Seattle WA, San Antonio TX, and Charleston SC in the same zone, but gardening in those same areas is not the same at all!

Now when I'm talking about testing your soil to find out what type it is I am not looking at nutrient status. I am looking at particle composition, which determines water holding and drainage, and will also determine nutrient status in turn. If you could not see any gradations in your mason jar test, you may be my age!!!! and need extra light and magnification to see these things. Getting old sucks.

Try using a bigger jar, and taking a larger sample, so everything's bigger; and make sure you check it in STRONG light at exactly 1 minute and at 2 hours. Keep in mind you may have layers that are only 1/4" deep. I've also found that when I let the whole thing sit for at least 2 days, completely still, the layers become thinner but easier to see. It was enlightening to me to see exactly how much sand, and how little clay (as in no measurable amount), my current garden soil has. It's like gardening in aquarium gravel. So even though we have a very short dry season in summer, in gravelly soil, it's long enough to kill plants by drought where they'd be fine in clay soil.

+ I have a lot of nails having once did a lot of work
+ on my house. Why not use them! Or for that matter
+ anything made of iron.

*** In fact, I remember my grandmother doing just that -- burying nails under a hydrangea.
I have NO recollection of how it worked -- but she was a canny gardener.
But I've always thought -- what a nightmare that would be, if or when you needed to dig that plant up.

Jeri

Reg

Before the ground freezes I'll try a bigger jar and more soil.

And look for that climate info.

Hey how old are you, I'm 80 last 4th of July! (I can't forget my birthday.)

Nails aren't as helpful as chelated iron since rust isn't a form that plants can readily assimilate. And treating with chelated iron only has to be done once or twice a season to be effective - preferably in spring and then maybe July. Things green up almost instantly though in my garden only one or two plants have the problem (Madame Hardy constantly).
When it came to weeds on my original garden area, the soil was so poor (bank run gravel mixed with clay) that there weren't any weeds. Years of working in compost have turned it into a fairly good garden loam but I'm still using about a half of a 3 cu foot bag of composted cow manure each time I plant a bush. I also use a two inch mulch of wood shavings, bark chips or whatever. Just put in a row of garlic yesterday and used a whole bag of compost on that.
Have been rereading a book by Beverly Nichols in which he says that after gardening for many years, it suddenly dawned on him that he hadn't paid any attention to his soil type. And, when he did, he leveled an area, put down a concrete paving as a barrier and then piled a mountain of acid soil on it so he could grow rhodies in an area of mostly "chalk." What we would call alkaline soil. I don't recommend that approach but surely soil amendments are extremely important.
It was Dean Hole who said (around 1880) that after three years, a gardener should stop complaining about his soil because that's enough time to do something about it. He was also the one who told about having been caught by a parishioner as, with a shovel and coal scuttle, he was cleaning up after a horse and triumphantly carrying the results over to the rose garden. Unfortunately, cars don't offer the same opportunities.