The Morning After
Endive Galore
I don’t know if was a case of green thumbness or the weather, but my bed of endive is now almost as frightening as a zucchini planting in summer. The bed, 3 feet wide by 20 feet long, is solid green with endive plants, each and every plant looking as if it’s been pumped up on steroids.
I sowed seeds in 4 by 6 inch seed trays around August 1st, “pricked out” the seedlings into individual growing cells filled with homemade potting soil about a week later, and transplanted them into the garden in the beginning of September. The bed had been home to one of this summer’s planting of sweet corn (Golden Bantam), a heavy feeder, so after clearing the corn I slathered the bed with an inch depth of pure compost.
Perhaps the vigor of these plants also reflects the extra space I gave them. In years past I would cram 3 rows into a 3-foot-wide bed. Because we never can eat all the endive I plant, this year I planted only 2 rows down the bed. Hating to see any wasted space in the garden, I set a row of lettuce transplants, now eaten, up the middle of the bed. The endive plants have opportunistically expanded to fill whatever space they can.
Fortunately, there’s no rush to eat all that greenery. The bigger they get, the more the endives’ leaves fold in on themselves to create blanched, succulent leaves of a loose head. Upcoming cooler weather also brings out the best flavor in these plants. After being covered with clear plastic, which I’ll support with a series of metal hoops, the endive should remain flavorful for weeks to come. That’s assuming the muscular plants can be fit beneath the hoops and plastic.
I do have a Plan B: Just as zucchini bread was invented as a way to deal with zucchini excess, white bean and escarole soup might be just the ticket for my escarole “problem.”
Floating Row Cover
Another bed, planted from seed sown on August 15th, is also full of greenery. Not nearly as dense, though, which is okay because the bed is planted for its roots. Up the bed run 2 rows of turnips and one row of winter radishes.
One year I couldn’t see the turnip and radish bed because I had hidden it beneath a “floating row cover.” Floating row covers, which let water, light, and air pass through, are so lightweight that they can be just laid on top of the ground to be pushed up by growing plants. That year, I made it even easier on my plants by propping the covers up with the same kinds of metal hoops that will hold the clear plastic over the endive bed once the weather turns cold. The row of hoops propping up the plastic creates a tunnel that, every year, looks like a sleeping, giant, white caterpillar. 
The purpose of the floating row cover was to block the root maggots that typically tunnel into many — too many — of my turnip and radish roots. Beneficial nematodes are supposed to help deal with that problem, but have been — in my experience, at least — ineffectual.
This year, for no apparent reason, most of the turnips and radishes are free of maggot attack.
A View From Above
Every morning I look down from my second story bedroom window at the garden. Closest in view is the bed of endive; looking further back, my eyes come to the back of the garden, where a row of tall, thin evergreens stand sentry to block the view of the compost piles. Those evergreens, spires of the Emerald (also known as Smaragd and Emerald Green) variety of arborvitae, are among the commonest of landscape plants. I like them.
The trees are at their upper limit of 15 feet high and 5 feet wide, and create a perfect screen without needing too much elbow room. They’re also perfect for injecting a bit of civility to the more frowsy gooseberry bushes and overgrown (at least till I prune them) grapevines in the foreground. Some arborvitaes turn a muddy green in winter but Emerald keeps its vibrant green color.
To the north, just beyond the garden is another row of spires, five plants of a juniper variety called Gold Cone. Each plant will mature to 10 feet tall with a spread of a mere 3 feet, just enough to hide my Cool Bot walk-in cooler, now home to boxes of apples, pears, pawpaws, cabbages, carrots, and persimmons. Livening things up is the gold coloration at the tips of Gold Cone branches.
Timing Gone Awry But Composting On Schedule
Time Change
Much of gardening is about timing — getting tomato plants in the ground early enough for a timely harvest, but not so early that transplants are killed by a late frost; checking that there’s enough time following harvest of early corn for a late planting of turnips, etc. So, when I began gardening, I read a lot and took lots of notes on what worked here in Zone 5, and eventually compiled everything into a neat table of when to do what.
I figured, with that table, that I was all set and would no longer have to respond to a gut impulse to plant peas during a freak warm spell in late February. Or to keep reading seed packets and counting back days to maturity to compute if there was still time, or it was too early, to plant a late season crop of endive.
Not so! In the few years I have gardened, which, though decades, is infinitesimal in geologic time, the climate has changed enough for me to have to shift those dates I so carefully figured out. No longer must I wait until the end of May to sow okra, squash, and other vegetables; the ground warms sufficiently to induce them to sprout a couple of weeks earlier now. No longer does a hard freeze strike tomato vines dead by the end of September. As I write, it’s the end of October and last night the first frost — a light frost — crept into the garden; later today, though, I’ll be picking ripe Sungold tomatoes.
Some perennial plants that, in the past, usually died back to the ground each winter, then resprouted in spring, no longer die back. Yellow groove bamboo, for instance. Nowadays their leaves stay green through most winters, which translates to taller and thicker canes. Crocosmia corms would hardly flower in years past; nowadays I don’t bother to dig up the corms, which flower and spread prolifically.
Taking Care of My Little Pets
Some things, gardenwise, are timeless or, at least, not time sensitive. The changing daylength throughout the year, for instance. And composting.
Although I feed my compost “pets,” that is, all the micro- and macroorganisms living and working the compost pile, all season long, this time of years those pets have a veritable banquet. In addition to the usual trimmings and scraps from the kitchen, beds are being cleared of corn, beans, okra, cucumbers, and all those other summer vegetables that are petering out.
I’m also having a lot of fun weeding. Yes, fun. Yes, weeding. (You might wonder why the author of the book Weedless Gardening has weeds. I grow a lot of fruit trees, shrubs, and vines, and some flowers, in addition to vegetables. I have too much garden. I can’t help myself. But everything is Weed-less.)
The ground has enough moisture in it so weeds are easily pulled. On my knees, I pull at a clump of Creeping Charlie, and creeping vines extending for 2 feet in all directions move up and out of the ground. I grab a clump of quackgrass and, if I lift carefully, a couple of feet of its creeping rhizome that attempts to extend its reach releases from the ground.
All this goes into the compost pile along with some horse manure and bedding, some hay I scythe from my field, and occasional sprinklings of soil and dolomitic limestone. As I layer these materials, I pay attention to their ratios of carbon and nitrogen, the two main feedstuffs of my compost pets. Old plants are relatively richer in carbon, young ones in nitrogen. Manure is rich in nitrogen, the bedding (wood shavings, which is old plants) in carbon. Too much carbon, and decomposition is sluggish. Too much nitrogen, and the pile gets smelly.
I also consider how fast ingredients might decompose. Wood shavings, for instance, are high in lignin, which slows decomposition no matter what their ratio of carbon to nitrogen.
The Little Guys Are (Usually) Thirsty
Two things that often slow composting are heat loss and insufficient moisture. Small compost piles lose too much heat; the critical mass for good heat retention is about a cubic yard. The bins into which I pile ingredients insulate the edges to further retain heat.
A lot of water is needed to seep way down into a pile. Rather than keep trying my patience holding a hose wand, a couple of years ago I purchased a small sprinkler and attached it to some plastic pipe so it fit neatly on top of my compost pile. A pressure regulator (usually used for drip irrigation systems) keeps incoming pressure constant so I could adjust an inline valve to make the spray consistently reach just to the edge of the pile. Twenty to thirty minutes gives my compost pets a good drink.
A long-stemmed compost thermometer is my final check that all is well. The piles typically reach 150°F. Compost piles don’t need to get that hot; more time composting also does the trick. Any pile of organic materials eventually becomes compost..
Grapes And Onions
So Many Choices, In Grapes
With over 5,000 varieties of grapes from which to choose, how can anyone decide which to grow? For better or worse, that choice is naturally limited by climate and pests in each part of the country. Here in the northeast, major limitations are humid summers that spread indigenous disease and frigid winter temperatures.
There’s still plenty of grape varieties from which to choose, which I’ve done over the years, weeding out varieties that would succumb to cold or disease. My varietal possibilities are further limited by my low lying land close to acres upon acres of forest. Cold, moisture-laden air sinks into this low spot, and the abundance of wild grapes clambering up forest trees provide a nearby reservoir of insects and disease spores.
With all that, I want to grow varieties that taste good to me (fresh, not for wine). I have dairy farmer-cum-grape breeder Elmer Swenson to thank for many of the delectable varieties that bear well here, and that I would recommend to others. His Somerset Seedless was ripe back in August, as was his seeded Swenson Red. Right now, the seeded variety Brianna — one of my favorites for flavor — is just finishing, just after Edelweiss and Lorelei.
Swenson Red Grape
Edelweiss has the strong, “foxy” flavor characteristic of American-type grapes, so is not for everyone. That flavor is most familiar in the well-known variety Concord, originated by Ephraim Bull in Concord Massachusetts over 150 years ago. I finally got around to planting a Concord vine a few years ago, and finally decided this year, despite my affinity for grape foxiness, that I didn’t like Concord’s flavor.
Edelweiss grape
Mr. Swenson isn’t responsible for all my favorite grapes. There’s Alden, with a nice, meaty texture to go with its distinctive flavor. And two excellent, seedless grapes: Glenora and Vanessa. I’m going to rip Concord out of the ground, as well as Cayuga White, which also didn’t make the flavor cut, and Mars, which gets too much disease, and replace them with additional vines of Glenora and Vanessa. The jury is still out on Wapanuka, Reliance, and NY Muscat.
Concord grape
All my “keeper” varieties bear reasonably well and are bursting with distinctive, delicious flavors such that I cannot, even when grape season has passed, bring myself to eat the relatively flavorless varieties generally offered from supermarket shelves.
Rotting Onions
How are your onions holding up? Mine, not so well. I knew that the giant Ailsa Craig onions weren’t keepers. But they shouldn’t be already turning soft and smelly.
Some sleuthing uncovered the culprits: the bacteria, Pantoea agglomerans and/or its cousin P. ananatis, both of which can be lumped together in the affliction called “center rot.” The symptom is rotting of one of the rings (scales) somewhere between the center and the outside of a bulb.
Most plant diseases are caused by fungi rather than bacteria, and fungal diseases are generally easier to control. Even pesticide sprays are not very effective against either onion pathogen. Warm, moist conditions are what have allowed the Pantoea cousins to thrive this year.
Which is not to say that I plan to sit back and watch my onions spoil in future years, or give up growing onions. I already rotate my onion plantings, which would have been my first plan of attack. Although now that I think of it, though, I do often stick a few of various types of onions and excess seedlings here and there around the garden. No more.
The environment can be made less friendly to the bacterium. Mulching the plants would keep the soil cooler. Especially a few weeks before harvest, any watering should cease. Nitrogen fertilization also needs reining in, which would be hard to do in my garden because I fertilize only with compost. Perhaps mulching would cool the soil enough to slow the compost’s mineralization of soluble nitrogen that plants could absorb.
Onion varieties vary in their susceptibility to center rot. Generally, it is the sweet, European type varieties, such as Sweet Spanish, Candy, and Ailsa Craig, that are most susceptible.
Harvest can play a role also. Too early, before leaves have sufficiently dried and flopped down, and the bacteria might be able to edge its way into the bulb. I normally harvest when tops flop down and bulbs easily roll out of the soil (good), then leave them in place to cure in the sun (bad). Next year, I’ll roll them out of the soil and then move them to a shaded, airy place to cure. Or lay them out in the garden so each onion’s leaves covers its neighboring onion’s bulb.
All these measures are worthwhile even if your onions have always looked fine. Center rot bacteria are pretty much ubiquitous, just waiting for good enough conditions to ruin your (and my) onions.
