2018 – Lee Reich

Dry, Wet, Bad, Good?

December 26, 2018/10 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Some Bad

Wow! What a gardening year this has been. Looking back on 2018, it’s been the oddest year ever in terms of weather, insects, and disease.

After starting off the season parched, seemingly ready to go into drought, the weather in July did an about face. The rains began. Average precipitation here in the Northeast is about 4 inches per month. July ended up with about 6 inches, August saw 5 inches, September 8 inches(!), October 5 inches, and November 8 inches(!!).

All that rainfall brought humidity, which might have been responsible for my celeriac plants hardly growing, then rotting.

Celeriac, early in the growing season, before the rains

(Perhaps not, because this was my third growing season of failure with celeriac.) I’m taking this as a celeriac challenge. Perhaps next year I’ll try them in a large tub where I can have more control over soil composition and moisture.

The humidity also had too many figs morph into fuzzy, gray balls as they softened and sweetened.

Tomatoes this year tasted very good, as usual, but yield was way down and too many showed some rotting areas. (In my experience, growing tomatoes under variable soil and weather at various locations around the country, their flavor is mostly a matter of genetics; a good variety tastes good everywhere.) Particularly irking was anthracnose disease, which often isn’t noticeable when fruits are harvested, but quickly shows up as round, sunken areas.

Onions suffered this season. Mostly they were stunted, and I’m not sure why.

Zucchini was a bust because the plants petered out from powdery mildew and vine borers just after midsummer. I usually circumvent these common problems with multiple plantings, starting new zucchini plants in early summer to replace the decrepit ones. I forgot to replant this summer (probably because I don’t like zucchini all that much anyway).

Medlar is an uncommon, very old-fashioned fruit that I’ve grown for many years. Although it’s gotten a bad rap for it’s ugly — to some people — appearance, the flavor is delicious, the soft flesh creamy smooth like apple butter with a similar flavor livened with vinous overtones. Medlar fruit in hand Usually the plant is pest-free but a few years ago something, perhaps a fungus, perhaps an insect, started attacking it, leaving the flesh dry and crumbly. I have yet to identify the culprit so that appropriate action can be taken. Medlar pest damage

Some Good

Not that this past growing season was bad. I won the battle against soft scale insects (mealybugs) on my greenhouse figs, although their ecological niche was filled by just-as-bad armored scale insects. A close eye and an occasional spray of Neem oil kept flea beetles at bay from eggplants.

A couple of the same Neem sprays beginning in mid-September may have kept a new pest in the area, Allium leafminer (ALM, Phytomyza gymnostoma) at bay. Last year each of my near perfect-looking leeks revealed a rotted stalk as I lifted them out of the ground.

Allium leafminer

Then again, I did plant this past season’s leeks far from where the previous season’s leeks grew. Then again, the ALM flies can fly. Then again, maybe they weren’t here this year; perhaps the weather was not to their liking.

This past season’s leeks

There was also no sign this past season of the white flies that decimated my kale the previous season.

Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), a species of fruit fly that has invaded the country relatively recently, did mostly ruin autumn ripening yellow and black raspberries. But little damage was suffered by my favorite (and perennially most successful) fruit, blueberries, probably thanks to some experimental traps developed by Peter Jentsch of Cornell University.

SWD trap

Peppers were even more of a success than usual, mostly due to my staking the plants. The only fault of Sweet Italia, my favorite variety for its early ripening, for its flavor, and for its good yields, is that the fruit-laden plants flop over under their own weight. Eventually, the small bamboo stakes I used proved only partially adequate; next year they’ll get the stakes they deserve.

I treated a few beds in spring to a relatively new method for weed control: tarping. Laying a sunlight-blocking tarp down on the ground for a couple of weeks or more in spring warms the soil beneath, stimulating germination of any weed seeds lurking there. The sprouting seeds are disappointed by the incessant darkness. They die. Timing, temperature, sunlight, and duration of tarping all play a role in this techniques effectiveness.

(Tarping is very different from using black plastic mulches. The latter are kept in place all season long, with garden plants growing in holes or slits in the plastic. Soil beneath the plastic can suffer from lack of air or, if not drip irrigated, lack of water. Also, the tarp — mine came from www.billboardtarps.com — can be folded up and re-used for many seasons.)

And finally, we were happy to find some assassin bugs and anchor stink bugs, Stiretrus anchorago, in the garden. Both are beneficial insects — yes even that particular stink bug.

Immature beneficial stink bug

Good Overall

All in all, it was a good season — as always. The secret is to grow many different kinds of plants. No season, no matter what the weather or pests, has ever been bad for all plants.

Mystery Solved, and Frigid Dealings

December 19, 2018/5 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Mystery Plant: No longer a Mystery

Last week I mentioned my brother’s mystery shrub, which he wanted to prune back heavily. I told him it was okay to do so even though I — and a number of experts I consulted — could not identify the plant.

(Drum roll . . .) The plant has finally been identified, by Mark Brand of the University of Connecticut, as Wilson rhododendron, Rhododendron x laetevirens. I had narrowed it down to R. carolinianum, which is one of the parents of this hybrid, the other being R. ferrigineum.

Wilson rhododendron flower bud

My brother’s not noticing flowers on this rhododendron is understandable. It’s a super cold hardy but sparse bloomer that’s grown mostly for its foliage; the pointy leaves don’t droop or curl, but remain perky, even in frigid weather.

Now I can sleep nights.

It was Cold Outside!

Talk about frigid weather: I was surprised at how cold it was on the farmden during my Thanksgiving visit to my bro’ in Rhode Island. The night of Friday, November 23rd, New Paltz weather reported a low of 7° F. Brrrrr. As I’ve mentioned before, I live in a valley. Cold air, which is heavier than warm air, sinks into low spots, bringing the temperature right out in my garden even lower, down to 3° F.

(I knew this even when in Rhode Island, thanks to Sensorpush, a nifty device that transmits minute by minute temperature and humidity conditions to my cell phone from wherever the device is located.)

It’s all about microclimates, which are localized differences from the general climate due to such influences as heat-absorbing masonry walls and paths, which keep temperatures warmer in winter. Or nearby bodies of water, which keep temperatures warmer in winter and cooler in summer. Or differences in elevation, lowering the temperature 6°F for every 1000 feet of elevation, and low lying areas.

Lower temperatures with elevation might seem contradictory to the locally colder temperatures in my garden that night. These colder temperatures occur only when still windless air and a clear sky let any heat the ground has accumulated by day re-radiate back to the heavens. A cloudy night or tree cover would reflect that re-radiated heat back downwards, preventing the cooling. With radiative cooling, air near the ground is coldest, and and warmer air hovers higher up.

Microclimate Adjustment=Fresh Salad Greens

As a gardener, I can play around with microclimate and have it work for me, as evidenced from the fresh endive, winter radishes, lettuce, and turnips just harvested from right out in the garden.

Preparation for that harvest began in late summer with spreading compost in the bed and the sowing of endive seeds. I planted turnip, lettuce, and winter radish seeds in the bed in September.

Back in early October I spaced metal hoops 4 feet apart along the bed, each one spanning from one side to the other of the bed. Later on in October, I covered the hoops with a length of clear plastic, slitted row cover creating a tunnel over the bed. The slits keep the interior of this mini-greenhouse from overheating. Tunnel, clear plastic, vented, closeup

Moving into November, temperatures gradually cooled but still not enough to threaten the covered plants. Between the plants natural cold hardiness and the cover, I figured they were fine into the low 20s. (For more on microclimates and their manipulation, see my new book The Ever Curious Gardener.)

Short days and low hanging sun, coupled with cool temperatures, were not providing conditions for plant growth. But the plants were, by then, fully grown, so no more growth was needed. At that point I laid a cloth cover over the tunnel to keep out further depths of cold. Light became immaterial; I just wanted the plants alive and fresh. Tunnel with covers, Dec, endive revealed

And so they have remained, even after temperatures plummeted to 3°.

Not only are the plants alive and fresh. Cold temperatures have brought out the best in their flavor. The veggies are crisp, sweet, and tangy. Turnip from tunnel

Read the Book, Bro’

December 13, 2018/12 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Pruning/by Lee Reich

To Prune or Not To Prune, That is the . . .

So I visited my brother and his family for Thanksgiving. As usual, we walked around his yard to look at his plantings. As usual, he asked my advice, this time about pruning. (As usual, he didn’t want to consult a copy of my book, The Pruning Book, which I had given him a few years ago. “Why read it, when I can just ask you?!” he says.) My brother's mystery shrub

He was considering taking blades to a row of handsome, evergreen shrubs along the front of his house. Over the years, the lengthening branches had sprawled out to encroach upon the bordering lawn, in some places leaving exposed bare stems. He questioned whether new growth would sprout if he lopped all those sprawling stems back to near the roots.

But what was the plant? I had an excuse, admittedly rather lame, for not knowing it: I learned all my ornamentals in Wisconsin where not many broadleaf evergreens are hardy. No matter. Sometimes you can figure out how to prune an unknown plant by just studying its growth habit.

Many evergreens, including most pines, Douglas firs, rosemary, and some rhododendrons, will not sprout new growth if cut back to bare old wood. (At the other extreme are boxwoods and yews, which sprout all over the place no matter how they are cut back.)

I suggested going ahead with drastic pruning of the unknown shrub. My confidence came from seeing many young sprouts emerging from the old stems right near where they emerged from the ground and then bent over from their own weight. Hormones within plants promote sprouting of vigorous, new shoots near the high point of a stem wherever it bends over. Pruning a stem back likewise promotes sprouting right near the cut.

I Pass Judgement

Looking across the front path, bro’ next asked me how I liked the pruning job he’d done on his rhododendrons. Hmmm, pretty good. My brother's pruned rhododendron

As often happens with rhododendrons, they are planted near a home and then too often grow so large as to swallow up windows, even the whole side of the home. His had done so, and he had pruned stems back to the height he wanted.

Two problems with this pruning. First, as noted above, when a stem is pruned back, most regrowth, and the most vigorous regrowth, occurs just below the cut. So although he cut the plant down to size, he should expect it to start growing back up to its previous size quickly.

The other problem with this pruning is that it leaves the plant looking butchered, large wounds gaping out atop thick stems whose upward mobility has been abruptly stopped. The best pruning jobs are ones where a plant looks nice without looking as if it has even been pruned.

My approach would have been to make a few cuts of the largest stems down in the interior of the shrub, where the stems originated. The largest stems would also be the tallest ones, so such cuts would be effective in lowering the plant. If too many need removal at once, the operation could be spread over 2 or 3 years. Then the pruning cuts would hardly be noticed, and letting light down low among the stems would promote healthy new growth starting low.

With all that said, my brother’s rhodies didn’t look too bad — and he has the opportunity over the next year or two to make my suggested cuts. Lucky for him, his rhodie was not one of the few that are reluctant to make new sprouts in lopped back older wood.

Moving On

Once I get started pruning, it’s sometimes hard to stop. As I looked at his yew shrubs along another part of his house, I suggested paring down the size of that rectangular block of greenery. My brother's yew hedge

Pruning yew is easy. Since it resprouts up and down stems no matter how severely it’s cut, you can do almost anything to it. His large hedge could even be cut down to stumps to begin life anew — quickly, because it has an established root system.

Most important when reducing the size of the hedge, no matter how it’s cut, is to reduce the whole hedge to a size smaller than finally desired. When maintenance trimming a shrub with hedge shears, trimming is generally further out from where the newest shoots began their growth for the season. That’s why hedges grow larger over time, unless they’re periodically lopped back more drastically, which doesn’t leave them looking that good until those cuts are covered by new growth.

And the Mystery Shrub is . . . ?

I don’t feel so at a loss at not being able to identify my brother’s mystery shrub: I sent a photo of it to a few experts, none of whom could identify it.

GREAT GIFT IDEAS

December 10, 2018/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Gardening books, of course.

Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden

Landscaping With Fruit Grow Fruit Naturally

Of Crocs and Glads

December 5, 2018/11 Comments/in Flowers, Gardening/by Lee Reich

No-Dig Crocs

Plants grow and multiply, which sometimes causes trouble. Such trouble was highlighted this week as I was digging up my crocosmia bulbs.

Crocosmia up close Backpedaling perhaps 20 years, you would have found me ordering crocosmia bulbs from a mail-order catalog. I’d seen the plants blooming in a friend’s garden in New Jersey and marveled at the graceful flower stems that arched up and out from clumps of sword-shaped leaves. Lined up near the ends of each flower stalk were pairs of tubular, hot scarlet blossoms.

Crocosmia isn’t supposed to be cold-hardy outdoors where winter temperatures drop below minus 10 degrees F. (hardiness zone 5), so the first couple of autumns, as instructed, I dug up the bulbs for winter storage. Each spring following, the plants would get off to a slow start, finally blooming late in the season or not at all.

In disappointment or laziness, I stopped digging the bulbs up each fall. I was surprised to see them appear in spring anyway. Not only did they appear in spring; they had some real oomph, growing almost as luxuriantly as the ones in my friend’s garden. To make matters better, they started blooming earlier, in July, and in great profusion, and they have done so reliably year after year with no help at all from me. Crocosmia and daphne

The crocosmias also multiplied, and they did so with such enthusiasm that there became just too many of them at the original location. So I started digging. And I uncovered bulb after bulb after bulb, ready to bloom and multiply next year. Now I have to decide what to do with all those bulbs. Plant them? Give them away? Compost them? I would have never thought I could have had too many crocosmias.

Glads Won’t Die

Does anybody around here still dig up their gladiolas each fall? I don’t, but to no avail. Left outside, they still survive every winter. Yuk. (Gladiolus “bulbs” are, like crocosmia “bulbs,” actually bulb like structured called “corms.”)

I don’t like gladiolas. Perhaps it’s because they are the most popular flower for funerals.

At any rate, I did, for some reason, plant some glads over 30 years go, glads whose beautiful salmon, pink color I subsequently felt was wasted on glad flowers. The nice color couldn’t outweigh the funereal associations, so after a couple of years of digging them up for storage each fall, I decided to sacrifice them to winter cold. Gladiolus

Unfortunately, they reappeared each year, and have continued to do so annually. I have to chuckle whenever I read instructions such as: “Corms should be dug after foliage has matured and started turning brown. Lift corms carefully with a spade or spading fork, taking care not to cut into the corm. Cut the tops off 1inch above the corm and dry for 2 to 4 weeks in a warm location (70-80 degrees Fahrenheit) with good air circulation. Remove the old corm which is beneath the new corm. Discard any rotted or damaged corms. Cut stems back to within an eighth of an inch of the corm. Place the corms in an onion sack or old nylon panty hose. Hang from a wall or ceiling. Ideal storage temperatures are between 35 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Hah! Doing nothing at all has, unfortunately, worked fine for me. At least the gladiolas haven’t multiplied as fast as the crocosmias.

Cold Air, Not So Cold Soil

The whole concept of winter hardiness for a plant only whose roots (or corms, in the case of crocosmia and gladiola) need to survive winter is hazy. After all, three feet down in the soil almost everywhere, temperatures hover around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Lay some mulch on top of any soil and penetration of winter cold can’t reach as deeply as through bare soil or lawn. Bare soil doesn’t peek out anywhere in my garden. Whatever is not lawn has been mulched year after year for many years with leaves, wood chips, sawdust, compost, hay, or whatever other organic materials I can get my hands on. (No, my garden isn’t three feet higher than it was when I started because those organic mulches decompose, enriching the soil as they do so.)

Nonetheless, the ground that the crocosmias and glads call home is well-insulated from winter cold. Warmer winters for the past few years have also helped these “nonhardy” bulbs survive outdoors, especially the less cold-hardy gladiolus.

Of Worms and Leaves, Here and Beyond

November 28, 2018/25 Comments/in Gardening, Pests, Soil/by Lee Reich

Unreiking is Good Exercise

For the past few days I’ve been engaged in the esoteric exercise of unreiking. Basically, this involves lifting heavy (or sometimes light) sacks, slitting them with a knife, and then moving my arms back and forth over the spilled contents. Okay, okay, the “sacks” are plastic bags, their contents are autumn leaves, and I’m holding a pitchfork in my hands as I spread out the spilled leaves.

Sammy is looking forward to this leafy mattress

(Unreiking is the reverse of another esoteric exercise, reiking, whereby . . . well, leaves are raked up into plastic bags.)

Some people have too many leaves or otherwise don’t want them around. I have too few leaves and have use for them. By unreiking, the leaves get spread beneath my berry bushes, grape vines, and pear trees. These leaves feed bacteria, fungi, and other soil microbes, which slowly rot down the leaves to enrich the ground with nutrients and add organic matter that helps the soil hold both moisture and air.

Ahhhhhh

After doing this autumn after autumn for many years, the ground beneath these plants is as good as any agriculture soil in the world.

A Gardener’s, Farmdener’s, and Farmer’s Friend, Reconsidered

Our forest soils are similarly enriched, though to a lesser degree, with each autumn’s leaf drop. But change is under way, and the culprit is the earthworm.

Backtrack to about 12,000 years ago; that’s when the last glacier receded from the northern parts of the U.S. The glacier froze, compacted, churned and moved soil everywhere north of New Jersey, the upper parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and parts of Wisconsin and South Dakota. Most of North Dakota was also enveloped by the the glacier, as well as, moving further west, the northern parts of the northern most states. In so doing, it killed off any native earthworms.

The still existing native earthworms to the south could have migrated back up here, but they move very slowly. Earthworms’ top speed is estimated at less than 6 yards per year.

Here, north of that line of glaciation, you and I do see earthworms in our soil. They’re not native; they arrived here nestled within pots of soil and organic debris, and as discarded soil ballast in ships, beginning in about the 17th century, with European colonists. And they liked it here.

More recently, those European immigrants — the worms, that is — were joined by worms from Asia.

Both species of non-native earthworms continue to spread in the soil of potted plants, in compost and leaf mulches, in home composting kits, and in discarded fishing bait (“nightcrawlers”).

Problem is that a few species of these non-native earthworms are very good a decomposing the leafy mulch that blankets forest floors. The blueberry, mountain laurel, rhododendron and other shrubs and ground covers in our forests thrive in that leafy mulch. The action of these non-native earthworms threatens to change the character of our forests.

Eek, A Snake Worm!

A number of years ago, my friend Sandy told me of strange happenings in her garden, of the abundance of worms and worm castings to the extent that the soil became so loose that her plants were flopping over. I pooh-poohed this report until a bit of research revealed this invasive worm issue.

I couldn’t offer Sandy any advice on what to do and, in fact, there’s no recommended way to deal with invasive worms. Discarding fishing bait at the end of a fishing day is one way these worms spread. (Sandy’s husband does fish.) They also can be spread in potted plants and in composts that were insufficiently heated and in mulches. (Uh oh; what about all my leaf hauling?)

For all the compost I make and spread, and all the leaves and other organic materials I haul here to the farmden, I come upon surprisingly few worms. One did catch my eye the other day, something about the way it moved and its robustness.

Crazy snake worm?

Could it be the European Lumbricus terrestris? Could it be the Asian “crazy snake worm”(probably Amynthas agrestis or A. tokioensis). Judging from the crazy way it moved and the pale collar (clitellum) circling its body completely, I’m guessing it’s one of the crazy snake worms.

Earthworms have always been a friend of gardener and farmer. Charles Darwin was a notable champion of them. After spending a lot of time on his belly in observation of these creatures, he wrote up his observations in a book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. Darwin calculated that earthworms (probably Lumbricus terrestris) brought 18 tons of nutrient-rich castings to the surface per acre per year, in so doing tilling and aerating the soil while rendering nutrients more accessible for plant use. He wrote that “worms played a more important role in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose.”

In our forests, European and Asian earthworms can eliminate leaf litter and change the soil composition to create conditions that favor non-native plants, decrease native plant biodiversity, and result in less understory vegetation. To the gardener and farmer, earthworms are a friend.

Greenhouse Happenings, Figs and Lettuce and . . .

November 21, 2018/9 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Darkness Descending

Plant growth has come screeching (almost) to a halt. Lettuces just sit, hardly growing. No wonder, you are no doubt thinking. It’s getting colder and colder outside. I know that, but I’m writing about lettuces in my greenhouse. The issue isn’t lack of heat. It’s lack of light. Planting greenhouse lettuce

For more evidence that light is the issue, look to good vegetable gardens in southern Europe. In that mild climate, harvest from a well-planned vegetable garden continues year ‘round. But year ‘round harvest there takes planning — lack of light also makes for very slow growth over there in these darkest months. Unprotected plants survive because the winter weather never gets that cold over there. (And cool-season vegetables, such as spinach, radish, and turnips, that we plan for sprig or fall, are what do well in Mediterranean winters.)

My garden here in the Hudson Valley, at about the 42nd parallel, experiences winter day lengths the same as Rome, Italy or the island of Corsica — all on about the same 42nd degree of latitude. If lettuce plants grow slowly in Rome and Corsica, then the slow growth of lettuce in my greenhouse should come as no surprise. But it always does surprise me, and the brakes seem to start getting applied back in October, with full pressure about now.

All this came to the forefront of my attention back in 1992, when I read Eliot Coleman’s excellent book Four-Season Harvest. After highlighting the similar insolation of much of our “northern regions” with much of balmy Europe, he went on to describe various ways of protecting winter vegetable from our winter cold, which would kill most of them. Keeping the plants a bit warmer also gets them growing sooner once days become longer and brighter.

My goal, in the greenhouse, is to get a good share of the plants almost fully grown going into December. With lettuces, I try to plan to have enough of them to fill salad bowls through January and February, after which smaller plants are starting to grow fast enough to fill those bowls.

The 42nd Parallel

The reason Corsica and Rome remain relatively balmy all winter while winters here, with both locations at the 42nd parallel, get so frigid is that Corsica is bathed by the Gulf Stream, that warm mass of air that flows up from the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to wash over western Europe.

The warm touch of the Gulf Stream is lost as you move further east across Europe and into western Asia. Kazakhstan, parts of which also lie at the 42nd parallel, experience average annual temperatures from -60°F to 104°F!! The climate of nearby Turkey, whose north end touches that latitude, is moderated by the Caspian Sea. Moving further east to parts of Inner Mongolia, still within the 42nd parallel, winter temperatures might dip to -90°F.

A Greenhouse is not a Hothouse

If you were to join me in my greenhouse today, don’t forget your hat and gloves. The greenhouse is heated, but only minimally, enough to keep the temperature from falling below 37°F. That temperature provides a nice balance between energy use and reasonable year ‘round harvest. (Expotentially more energy is needed for incrementally increasing temperatures.)

Today is rainy and very cool, but not cool enough to kick on the greenhouse heater. So it’s pretty much the same temperature inside the greenhouse as outside the greenhouse — in the 40s. Most of what’s growing — kale, celery, mâche, claytonia, Swiss chard, mustard greens, parsley, and arugula — do fine with these conditions.

Leafy vegetables require less energy (i.e. sunlight) than do fruiting vegetables, so the low light is also fine to keep them happy even if only slowly growing, just as they would be planted (outdoors) in a garden in Corsica or Rome.

That’s also home to my baby, hardy cyclamens (about which I recently wrote), in a seed flat, until they decide to lose their leaves and go dormant. And two cardoon plants, also native to Mediterranean regions.

One Mediterranean plant that is very unhappy this year, even in the greenhouse, is fig. Figs are still ripening but, with the high humidity and low light, each is soon covered with fuzzy, gray mold. Figs rotting in greenhouse Splitting fig Roots of Rabbi Samuel fig, near the endwall, spread under the wall and outside the greenhouse, soaking up so much water that the figs split before ripening. Yet, a few fig fruits escape both afflictions and ripen to juicy sweetness.

I wonder if fig gardeners in the Mediterranean share my fig problems. Eating a fig

Winter Prep for Some of my Figs

November 15, 2018/19 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Fig Abuse?

Anyone watching what I was doing to my fig trees might have called “Fig Protective Services” to have my trees removed to a new home. But figs are tough plants and tolerate a lot of what looks like abuse.

Let me offer some background: Figs are subtropical plants so can’t survive to fruit outdoors around here. I grow a few fig trees in pots that I can put in a protected location for winter (more on that later). Problem is that the trees’ roots eventually fill the pots and exhaust nutrients in the mix.

I could move each tree to a larger pot. Then the branches could grow commensurately larger, and more growth of branches translates to more figs to harvest. But these pots have to be moved every spring and fall, and there’s a limit to how big a pot I can handle.

The other way to give the roots new ground to explore is to root prune them. That is, slice off some roots to make space for new soil in the same pot. Trust me; I’ve done this for many years and the plants tolerate it well, growing happily each spring following the operation. (Fall or spring, when the plants are leafless, is the best time for root pruning and re-potting.)

So I tipped each plant on its side and pulled on the stem while holding the pot in place to slide the root ball out of the pot. Sliding root ball out of pot After standing the root ball upright, I started slicing it from top to bottom. For root balls 18 to 24 inches across, I slice a couple inches off all around. I used to use an old kitchen knife but discovered that my reciprocating saw with a medium-tooth blade works much better. Slicing root ball

With the old root ball shrunken, it goes back into its pot and I start packing potting soil back in the space between the pared down root ball and the sides of the pot. Adding new potting soil to pot For good contact, I pack the potting soil in with my fingers and the flat end of a 3/4 inch dowel. Packing new soil in around root ball

Next year at this time or, at most, two years from now, trees will get root-pruned again.

Winter Quarters

Now, what will I do with the fig trees for winter. It’s a conundrum, because the trees, being subtropical, do well with a cold season rest, ideally below 50°. On the other hand, they can’t tolerate cold much below about 25°F. in their pots.

Some places that might provide temperatures within this range are an unheated garage that’s attached to a house, an unheated and uninsulated basement, or an unheated foyer or mudroom. As long as they are dormant, the plants do not need light.

For many years, I’ve lugged my plants down the rather narrow stairway to my basement. There’s an oil burner down there but it’s rarely used since most of our heat is with wood. In midwinter, basement temperatures hover around 40°F.

As of this year, my days of lugging the heavy pots down stairs are over. I now have access to a ground level, unheated room in a well-insulated, rarely heated building having a concrete floor for good thermal mass. The Ritz!

The goal is to keep the plants cold enough so that they stay dormant until it’s safe to move them outdoors in spring. If all goes well, the plants are still dormant when outdoor temperatures rarely dip below 32°F. Then the plants, moved outdoors, slowly awaken with cool temperatures and bright sun promoting sturdy growth.

Because fig trees in pots tolerate temperatures down into the 20s, there’s no rush to move them into storage. I usually wait until sometime in December.

What Makes Soil Potting Soil?

Notice that I mentioned my trees growing in “potting soil.” Straight soil, even good, well-drained garden soil, is unsuitable for plants in pots because it becomes unavoidably waterlogged. (The reason, described in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, has to do with what is known as a “perched water table;” take my word for it or read the book.)

Drainage is improved in potting soils by adding aggregate such as perlite, vermiculite, or calcined montmorillonite clay (the latter better known and more often sold as kitty litter).

Roots in containers have more limited volume to explore for nutrients, so potting soils also need to be richer that even good garden soils. Compost is one way to provide nutrition. Among the advantages of compost is its ability to offer nutrients over a long period of time, as soil microbes slowly decompose it.

Water, like nutrients, also must be accessed from a limited volume of soil. The compost helps a potting soil hold water; I boost that further with the addition of some peat moss or coir.

My finished mix is made up of equal parts garden soil, perlite, compost, and peat moss. All my plants, not just the figs, like it.

Peat, perlite, soil, and compost

Mo’ Plants

November 7, 2018/8 Comments/in Flowers, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

Cyclamen Addict

I’ll admit to being an addict. But my addiction — to propagating plants — is benign. It pains me to throw away an interesting seed or pruned-off stem; either can grow into a whole new plant, anything from a charming little flower to a towering tree.

Hardy cyclamen self-sown seedling

Hardy cyclamen in pot

Case in point are some cyclamen seeds I collected and sowed a couple of years ago. The mother plant is Cyclamen hederifolium, a species that differs from the large, potted cyclamens you now see offered in garden centers, hardware stores, even supermarkets. Cyclamen hederifolium is cold-hardy here, so comes back year after years planted outdoors in the ground, and it’s a dainty plant, with small flowers and commensurately small leaves. Otherwise it looks just about the same as the widely sold commercial species, the pink or white flowers hovering like butterflies on thin stalks above the whorls of variegated leaves.

Following those flowers are seed capsules, mostly hollow balls the size of small marbles each attached to the plant by a stem that is wound up like a spring. It was in the beginning of the growing season 2 years ago that I sowed the seeds in a seed tray filled with sterilized potting mix. (I don’t usually sterilize my potting mixes but I didn’t want weeds to interfere with the slow-germinating seeds.) Eventually the seeds sprouted and I kept them watered, as needed, for good, albeit slow, growth.

Hardy cyclamen’s flowers fade and leaves melt into the ground as plants ease into dormancy with the approach of winter. Not my seedlings, though. I learned, years ago, not to push them into dormancy; instead, keep them growing as long as they want to until they’re ready to start storing energy. Which I did, with plenty of light and, as before, water as needed.

This summer, the plants were still growing — and still small — and I noticed some swelling beneath each plant. Cyclamen herodifolium, small tuber The youngsters finally were growing tubers, small bulb-like structures that will, in the future, store energy to carry the plants, dormant and leafless, through winter.

This time next year I expect my plants will be officially adult, with flowers as testimony to their maturity.

Little House Not on the Prairie

In her youth, my daughter periodically entered the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, so the one acre, adjoining field we acquired became “the prairie.” Moving the playhouse I built out to the field would have completed the picture of “little house on the prairie.” The playhouse never got out there but the “prairie” — or “hayfield” — as I usually refer to it, has remained as such.

My affection for prairies came from my living 12 years in Wisconsin (and studying the rich soils — the richest in the world — underlying prairies). My daughter has long outgrown her prairie phase but I’m going to make my “prairie” more prairie-like. One plant for that purpose would be big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), the star of the Big Four of grasses native to the tall grass prairies, the other three bering indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), and little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). Big bluestem is the tallest of the lot towering 6 to 10 feet high. It’s also good for hay and wildlife, and tolerates drought.

A few years ago I bought some big bluestem seeds and ended up with just a few plants. Those plants are now producing seed which — I can’t help myself — I’ve collected. Andrapogon, big bluestem seed head Not that some of the seeds wouldn’t self-sow near the mother plans, but seedlings that do sprout under natural conditions are subject to competition for light, nutrients, and water from other plants.

Like many fall-ripening seeds, big bluestem seeds won’t sprout as soon as they hit the ground; otherwise winter cold would do them in. So they need “stratification:” a false (or real) winter. For many seeds, cool, moist conditions, such as a few weeks residence in a mix of moist peat and perlite in a plastic bag in the refrigerator will do the trick. Big bluestem can also be coaxed out of its winter slumber with cool, dry conditions. Perhaps I’ll try both ways.

Bluestem Addiction

My present tallgrass prairie is only about 4 square feet, from two seedlings I originally planted plus their slow underground spread with rhizomes. Over time, with my additional plantings and help — a once a year, late winter mowing (taken care of under natural conditions with fire) — my prairie will swell.

A prairie takes time, as does, though less is needed, raising cyclamen to flower from seed. That time element itself brings with it certain satisfactions, both with the process and the result. That’s fortunate, since patience is an important element in successful propagation of plants.

Shaving and Composting

October 31, 2018/17 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Pests, Soil/by Lee Reich

. . . But My Garden is in Order

“Some men there are who never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in the bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to one who doesn’t shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such a man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before the snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of melancholy ruin and decay.” So wrote Charles Dudley Warner in his wonderful little book (much more than a gardening book) My Summer in a Garden (1898). I gave up shaving a few months ago, but I am putting my garden in order for autumn.

The scene is quite pretty as I look out my upstairs bedroom window upon my garden — my vegetable garden — each morning. Garden view, autumn Weeds have been removed from the paths and the beds, and spent plants have been cleared away. What remains of crops is a bed with some tall stalks of kale that were planted back in spring. Yet another bed is home to various varieties of lettuce interplanted with endive, all of which went in as transplants after an early crop of green beans had been cleared and the bed was weeded, then covered with an inch depth of compost. Also still lush green is a bed previously home to edamame, which was subsequently weeded, composted, and then seeded with turnips and winter radishes back in August.

From my window, the remaining eight beds in the garden present mostly grasses in various states of lushness. The “grass” in this case is oats, sown in any bed no longer needed for vegetables at the end of this season. I had cleared such beds of spent plants and weeds, sprinkled oat seeds (whole “feed oats” from Agway), watered, and then, as with the other beds, covered them with an inch depth of compost. One bed was finished for the season except for six floppy cabbage plants. I staked those plants up tall and out of the way, and then gave the bed the same treatment around the cabbages’ ankles. Cover crop, 3 beds with cabbage

Ready for Spring

That’s it: It all looks fresh, green, and neat — but more than that, what I did is also good for next year’s garden. Cleaning up weeds this year makes for less self-seeding of annual weeds and seeding and establishment of perennial weeds. Cleaning up spent plants takes any pest-ridden plant parts off-site, reducing chances for future pest problems.

Dense growth of oats protects the soil surface from pounding rain so water percolates in rather than skittles off the surface, promoting erosion. Cover crops, 2 beds Below ground, oat roots pull up nutrients that rain and snow might otherwise leach away into the groundwater.

And finally, that inch depth of compost that each bed gets helps support the many beneficial fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes, and other soil microorganisms that make up the soil food web. In so doing, it will provide ALL the nutrition my vegetable plants, even intensively planted vegetables, need until this time next year.

Mr. Warner, I think, would approve. Even my non-shaving; I do trim my beard regularly.

Add Water, Conveniently

A lot of compost is needed to cover all those vegetable beds. For all the beds in my two vegetable gardens, as well as those in my greenhouse, I estimate my annual needs at almost 5 cubic yards per year.

My compost is made from hay I scythe from my small field, kitchen scraps, spent vegetable plants and weeds from my garden, some horse manure in wood shavings, and, for fun, old cotton or woolen clothing, and leather gloves and shoes.

Yes, I’ve read about striking a balance between feedstuffs high in carbon and those high in nitrogen in order to get a compost pile chugging along. As important is good aeration and moisture. Most compost piles that I see suffer from thirst.

A lot of water is required to wet the inner layers of a compost pile, and applying it requires more patience than I have. So I no longer do it manually.

I purchased a small sprinkler which I connected with 1/2” black plastic tubing (the same as I use for drip irrigation mainlines) along with some L connectors to lead the water line from the top center of a pile neatly down to ground level. Water pressure is variable from my well so I also put a pressure reducer, to 15 psi, in the line; a valve needing just one-time adjustment keeps the sprinkler wetting only the top of the pile. A U-shaped metal pin keeps the sprinkler firmly in place in the center of the pile. Compost sprinkler

All that’s needed after adding a batch of material to the pile is to set up the sprinkler, turn on the spigot, and set a timer for about 20 minutes. The droplets cover the pile right to the edges and in a day or two temperatures soar to 140° or more.

Next year at this time, this year’s piles will be ready to do their part in putting my garden neat and in order.