There was a time, not long ago, when there was an abundance of live garden radio shows. Listener call-in questions were a feature for those ready to dig in. Radio has given up ground to podcasts in recent years (Our own Marianne Willburn co-hosts The Garden Mixer.) Proper radio etiquette, in years past, was taken for granted. There was no need for a seven-second broadcast delay to filter out anything unsuitable. Not until Spanish moss changed the way Louisville’s WHAS radio station defended an admired show. 

Spanish moss in a bald cypress swamp in late fall. Shiva-Shenoy photo. Wikimedia Commons.

Fred Wiche was host of  Kentuckiana’s Weekend Gardener

Everyone loved Fred. He was a broadcast legend who combined hard work, expertise and humility during a distinguished 40-year career that covered news, politics, weather, even the 6:00 AM morning farm report. You don’t hear much about the market price of barrows and gilts anymore.

 

Fred Wiche reporting live in the mid–late 1980s. The ball cap says, “Farming is everybody’s bread and butter.” Wiche family photo.

Fred and his wife Jenny visited my Holbrook Farm and Nursery near Asheville, NC in the early 1990s. I was honored to meet the Wiches. Garden royalty didn’t show up often. When I returned to Louisville in 1994, Fred invited me to come out one hot August Saturday morning to be a guest on mighty “50,000 clear watts WHAS, 840 on your AM radio dial.”

WHAS could reach listeners one hundred miles away in the daytime and as much as a thousand miles at night.

Fred and I wandered around beautiful Swallow Rail Farm

There was an abundant mix of perennials, annuals, ornamental trees, shrubs, fruit and nut trees.

Jeneen Wiche and Andy Smart moved to Swallow Rail Farm in 2003. Jeneen emailed, “We live in a place that I have known since 1979 when the family moved here. I was ten years old. We are not caretakers. We are just people who live in a place we love and engage with.” Jeneen, following in her father’s footsteps, co-hosted Homegrown on Louisville NPR affiliate WFPL from 2001-2011 with Garden Rant Emeritus Bob Hill.

We settled on the back deck at a round table across from one another. Fred gave me little preparation. There would be a casual conversation, followed by a few commercial breaks, and a Q & A.

Fred put on a radio headset connected to a radio transmission uplink to the station in downtown Louisville. He gave me a Walkman. The show began.

At the first break I told Fred I was stuck in a feedback loop

I cannot recall a single question or response. I could hear Fred across the table, but then  hear the conversation again, seven seconds later, on the Walkman. My tongue was tripping over my brain. Fred assured me I was doing okay. He would explain the problem after the show.  

The seven-second broadcast delay was triggered by moss.

“I’ve come to see the world through moss-colored glasses… The city mosses have much in common with their urban counterparts; they are diverse, adaptable, stress-tolerant, resistant to pollution, and thrive on crowded conditions. They are also well traveled…The most ubiquitous of mosses, urban or otherwise, is Byrum argenteum, the Silvery Bryum. I have never traveled without encountering Bryum on my journey…the quintessential moss of sidewalk cracks…There’s a certain civic pride among folks who label themselves mossbacks.” RWK

My memory bank was once loaded with plants

Brain neuron activation has slowed, but there were always limits. My background in bryology (mosses) matched a zero understanding of helminthology (worms). I cannot name a single green moss that grows in Salvisa. I’ve grown curious this past month. There are close to twenty-two thousand species. Surely, I could learn one.

My friend, the talented and tireless Nashville gardener, Robyn Brown, told me, “Paul Moore nerds out on anything about moss.” I called J. Paul Moore last week.

J. Paul Moore

Moore, a free-lance photographer and retired garden center owner,  lives at Saddle Ridge Sanctuary in Nashville where he nurtures a well-known moss lawn and garden of native plants of the Southeast.

Paul Moore’s Saddle Ridge Sanctuary

Paul schooled me for forty-five minutes. He told me his favorite three mosses are: Fern moss (Thuidium delicatulum), tree moss (Climacium americanum), seductive moss (Entodon seductrix). He recommends three books: Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer; Moss Gardening, Annie Martin; and Common Mosses of the Northeast, Dr. Joseph Rohrer et al. Common Mosses of the Southeast is scheduled for publication in 2026.

Let’s get it straight

True mosses are among the earliest land plants on earth, found across the globe on rocks, logs, trees, rooftops, statues and sidewalks.  

“The moss evangelist.” Rachel Price photo.

Spanish moss cascades down tree branches of live oaks, bald cypress and other trees across the Deep South, but is not a moss. It’s an epiphytic bromeliad related to pineapple that uses trees for support and gathers moisture and nutrients from the air. Spanish moss grows elsewhere in Central and South America.

Club moss, a moss wannabe doesn’t count.

Paul Moore thinks our limestone wall, in Salvisa, Kentucky, is primarily covered with either Anomodon attenuatus or the common tree moss, Anomodon rostratus. I need to buy a hand lens for a closer look.

Neither does Irish moss (Sagina subulata). The herbaceous perennial creeper is moss-like in appearance with preference for a mild Irish climate. This won’work in our stifling summer heat and humidity in Central Kentucky.

Fred Wiche was as clueless about mosses as I was.

During the call-in segment, one Saturday, a woman complained she was having blossom-end rot on her tomatoes. Fred told her to apply Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) around the base of the tomatoes. The caller was relieved.

He asked if she had any more problems.

 “Yeah, I’ve got some moss growing between my legs.”

The radio show producers, sitting in the station’s studio over twenty miles away, turned apoplectic. Fred couldn’t decipher the caller’s dripping drawl.

“Are you talking about Spanish moss or Irish moss?”