In honor of April Fools' Day, let's take a look at some foolish gardening advice gardeners. Have you read that hairy-leafed plants like African violets can be sunburned by water droplets sitting on the hairs above the leaf? Sunlight is supposed to be concentrated by the water droplets like magnifying glasses and the light is focused on the leaves, burning them. If this were true, then how did these plants ever survive in the wild? After every daytime rain, the sun coming out would burn up the plant. Sorry, this one is not true.

Have you heard that gravel is necessary in the bottom of flower pots for good drainage? They say you can add broken pots shards, gravel, marbles or any other large material to the bottom of the pot to get better drainage. This is so not true that adding gravel actually makes soil drainage worse. Water travels down through small pores in the soil. Then it reaches the large pores in the gravel, where you might think it would rush on through for better drainage. But instead, the surface tension of water holds the water in the soil, until so much water builds up in the soil that the water is forced to drip into the empty spaces in the gravel. The extra water stuck in the soil above the gravel can drown plant roots.

They say paint is necessary on the wounds left by pruning off a branch. The idea is that the paint or tar will help the wound heal or seal out diseases and insects. This is another falsehood. There is nothing in paint or any other chemical sealant that will help a plant heal. Instead of sealing problems out, it can seal them in where they do damage sight unseen until the tree wound is rotting away. Don't paint pruned trees.

You might read that used coffee grounds will acidify the soil and help garden plants. Even though coffee grounds may be acidic, they will only very slowly change the chemistry of the soil. In the meantime, they will need to decay and that will require microbes to decay them. The microbes need nitrogen to do this and they can take so much nitrogen out of the soil that the plants will suffer. If you want to recycle coffee grounds, treat them like any other organic material and add them to your compost pile.

The same reasoning is behind the idea that compost will acidify my soil and help my garden plants. That depends on what your compost is made from and its level of decomposition. Manure and fireplace ashes can make the compost alkaline or neutral, not acidic. During the decomposing process, acids may be created that wash away. So, the pile is acidic, then not acidic. Also different combinations of fungi and bacteria make the compost more or less acidic over time as their populations fluctuate depending on what is being decomposed. Compost added to garden soil may be good, but not because it acidifies the soil.

Natural or organic chemicals are safer than manmade chemicals. This myth is very dangerous. From poisonous frogs, snakes and mushrooms to common food allergies, there are many potentially harmful natural chemicals. Natural and organic pesticides must be treated as the poisons that they are. The natural insecticide Pyrethrum is a little less toxic than the synthetic insecticide Sevin and they are both much less toxic than the natural insecticide Rotenone. Organic pesticides may come from plants, such as pyrethrins, rotenone and strychnine, but that doesn't make them safe. Never become complacent that a chemical from nature is less harmful than one made in a factory.

Email questions to Jeff Rugg at info@greenerview.com. To find out more about Jeff Rugg and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.