A WINTER DAY WITH SPRING IN THE AIR
Spring Dreams
Looking out a window today, all I see is white, a thick blanket of snow covering the ground and howling winds periodically puff clouds of it swirling into the air. Still, I can feel the pull of spring. Perhaps it’s the bright sunlight. Couple that with the colorful gardening magazines and catalog strewn on the kitchen table, and how can I resist vicarious planting — by ordering plants instead.
David Austin roses, whose blooms have the look and fragrances of yesteryear (pastel colors and blowsy form), and the repeat blooming of pest-resistance of presentyear roses, are always a draw. Every year, new varieties are offered, some, I’m gad to see, that are cold-hardy to zone 4.
Rose, L. D. Braithwaite
And m–m-m-m, the thought of picking fresh, ripe sweet cherries is also enticing. No, no! I ordered and planted what was allegedly a self-fertile Compact Stella cherry tree seven years ago. It wasn’t compact and it has yet to bear a cherry. I tell others that sweet cherries are a poor bet around here because of winter cold, spring frosts, and various inset and disease pests. And, after that, even if fruits do develop, birds will likely eat them. I should have been listening when I dispensed that advice.
The cherry tree has one more season to prove it’s worth. If it doesn’t, I have a replacement plant (hardy orange, Citrus trifoliata) anxiously waiting in the wings.
I’ve always wanted to plant a magnolia, of which there are many newer and older varieties, but where could I plant it? Now that I think of it, I did plant a magnolia last spring. It died. And a few years back, I planted a sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) purchased on an impulse at a nursery a few years ago. I remember planting it, but not what happened to it, except that it’s no longer around.
The magnolia that I really want to plant is southern magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora. This large evergreen gracing many homes from Virginia southward with its large, glossy, dark green leaves and it’s large, lily-white, fragrant blossoms seems to politely call for a chair in its shade, a frosty mint julep on the armrest.
Problem is that southern magnolias are not hardy here — yet. I know of a gorgeous tree about an hour south of here and two varieties — Edith Pogue and Bracken’s Brown Beauty — are hardy below zero degrees F. It hardly gets below zero here these past few winters and, with global warming . . . ?
Yes, it is hard to keep my wits about me as spring approaches, and will be increasingly so as spring edges in. “I will not buy another sweet cherry tree, I will not buy another apricot tree (even more problematic), I will not buy another magnolia (yet), . . .”
Dorris, I’d Like To Meet You
Uh oh, another new variety of filbert from the breeding program at Oregon State University. This variety, Dorris, is, like some of its recent predecessors, immune to the eastern filbert blight that has for so long made filbert growing east of the Rockies unfeasible. They’re breeding blight-resistant filbert in Oregon because the blight fungus has made its way west.
Filbert nut harvest last fall
But eastern filbert blight is a capricious fungus, sometimes changing in a way that let’s it attack even “resistant” filberts. So I’m constantly cutting down diseased filberts and replanting “resistant” ones. One of the newest varieties, which will get a spot in the line of filberts that draws my eyes and footsteps along the edge of meadow, is Dorris.
Good luck Dorris.
Making Trees
Some trees and shrubs coming to my garden this year are going to be home-made, that is, created by me from seeds, cuttings, or grafts. To that end, I recently collected hackberry seeds as well as scions (for grafting) of persimmon, pear, and cornelian cherry, and packed them all away in an insulated box in my garage. I will deal with them in a few weeks.
Gathering scionwood
Collecting scionwood for grafting segue nicely with pruning. From the prunings strews about on the ground, I cut and save one-year-old stems into foot-long sections.
NO SIGN OF SPRING HERE YET, BUT . . .
The Onion Cycle Begins Again
Early February, February 6th to be exact, was the official opening of my 2017 gardening season. No fireworks, waving flags, or other fanfare marked this opening. Just the whoosh of my trowel scooping potting soil into a seed flat, and then the hushed rattle of seeds in their paper packets. And the grand opening was not for a flamboyant, who-can-reap-the-earliest-meal of a vegetable like peas or tomatoes.
No, the grand opening for the season is rather sedate: I sowed onion seeds in mini-furrows in a seed flat. Why onions? In addition to the fact that I love the flavor of onions raw and cooked, onions need a long growing season. The summer growing season is cut short because the plants stop growing new leaves to put their energy into swelling up their bulbs when daylengths grow sufficiently long, 14 hours long, to be exact. Around here, that happens sometime in May. The more leaves the plants make before then, the bigger the bulbs. Hence my early planting.
So I poured about a 3-inch depth of potting soil into an 18 by 24 inch plastic tub in which I had drilled drainage holes, and then made seven parallel furrows in the soil into which I dropped onion seeds. This year I’m growing New York Early, Patterson, and Ailsa Craig. (I also sowed leeks in one of the furrows.) After closing up the furrows, I watered, covered the tub with a pane of glass, and put the tub on a heating mat set at 75 to 80° F.
Done. The season has begun.
Other Beginnings
There are so many ways to grow onions. Let me count the ways, some other ways.
1, and easiest, is to just plant onion sets, those mini-onions you can buy to plant as soon as the ground outside warms and dries up a bit. One downside to sets is that the variety selection is very limited. Not only limited, but also restricted to so-called “American-type” varieties, which keep very well but are very pungent and not very sweet. Onion sets that are too large — larger than a dime — tend to go to seed. Plants going to seed look very pretty but don’t make bulbs for eating.
Number 2 method overcomes one of the limitations of method number 1: Purchase onion plants, which are growing plants, with leaves. The sweet “European-types” — Ailsa Craig, Sweet Spanish, and Granex, for example — are available in this form. The plants are grown in fields in the South, and there’s the potential to bring a disease into the garden on these plants. Also, “organic” onion plants might be hard to find.
Setting out onion transplants
Method number 3 is the most involved. (I’ve never tried it.) Grow your own onion sets. The trick is to sow the seeds outdoors densely enough so that they bulb up while still small — dime size. Once bulbs mature, their harvested to store for winter, and then planted in spring just like the sets in Method 1.
Method number 4 is fairly easy, and that is to sow seeds of the Evergreen variety onions right in the ground in spring. This variety never forms bulbs but makes tasty green onions, or scallions. It’s also perennial, so any scallions left in the ground will multiply year after year. The downside here is that you don’t get onions for winter. I grow these every year and do get them for winter use also, in my greenhouse.
Method number 5 is easiest of all. Grow Egyptian, or Walking, onions. This is another perennial onion. It “walks” by forming bulblets on top of some stalks. The weight of the bulblets pulls down the stalk, and when the bulblets touch ground, they root to make new plants. The new plants eventually send up bulblet-topped stalks which likewise bend to the ground, etc., etc., walking the plants around. To me, Egyptian onions are all hotness with little other flavor. I no longer grow them.
Walking onions
I learned of method number 5 from Jay at Four Winds Farm. Simple enough. Just sow the seeds outdoors as soon as the ground is warm enough and dry enough for a nice seedbed. A nice seedbed is key here, because onions compete very poorly with weeds and the goal is to get the seeds to germinate as fast as possible. I tried this last year and the bulbs ended up pretty much the same size as those from the plants I sowed last February and then transplanted into the garden in April. So I get a wide choice of varieties without having to start the seeds in February. Thanks Jay. (I’m growing transplants and direct seeding this year, just to make sure.)
My Pea Planting Will Not Be On St. Pat’s Day!
My early February onion-sowing date isn’t some magical date. My greenhouse is only minimally heated, making for very slow growth early in the season. Growth picks up as sunlight grows more intense and further warms the greenhouse. A week or more difference in sowing date early in the season doesn’t translate into that much difference in growth near harvest time.
The same goes for pea-planting, which is attended by more fanfare than onion planting. Many gardeners rush to get their pea seeds planted by St. Patrick’s day, but planting a week later doesn’t delay that harvest by a week. Perhaps by a couple of days or by a few hours, depending on the season. And anyway, St. Patrick’s day might be the traditional date for planting peas in Ireland, but it would be way too early in Maine and way too late in Georgia. I plant peas here in Zone 5 on April 1st, give or take a few days.
In my book Weedless Gardening, I have a chart that shows what and when to plant, whether as seeds, indoors or out, or as transplants, for all regions. All you have to do is plug in your average date for the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn. This date is available from your local Cooperative Extension Office.
I TAKE A CLOSER LOOK, AND LIKE WHAT I SEE
Hey Bud, ‘Sup?
Nothing like winter to force me to take a closer look at my trees and shrubs. “To see what, you may ask?” To look at their buds, within which lie the makings of this season’s flowers and shoots. Not only are the buds quite distinctive, but they also offer a crystal ball into the future, which is very important to me as a fruit grower.
Trees’ and shrubs’ fruit and shoot buds look different from each other. It’s the fatter ones that open to become flowers and then, barring damage from late frosts, insects, diseases, or hail, fruits.
Last year, perhaps because of dry weather or a late spring freeze, my pawpaw crop was a failure. This explains why I now see so many distinctive plush, velvety, fat, brown buds — flower buds — lining the stems. For any fruiting plant, a light crop of fruit one year generally makes for a bumper crop the following year.
Pawpaw buds
Cornelian cherry buds
My cornelian cherry tree also prognosticates a bumper crop, even more obviously, because its flower buds stand prominently proud of the stems like buttons on the ends of short stalks.
On peach trees, flower buds develop only on one-year-old stems. The flower buds aren’t that distinctive except for being fat. The buds at some nodes, the junction where leaves met stems last summer, come in triplets, one single, small shoot bud wedged practically into hiding between two big, fat flower buds. The buds tell of a good crop of, at least, flowers.
Peach buds
Apple buds are different still. Their flower buds are mostly on spurs, which are short, stubby growths that elongate only a half and inch or so each season. Not all buds on these spurs will open to flowers, though. Some — again, those that are less fat — will open to shoots that will grow only a fraction of an inch longer and then flower the following year.
Apple buds
Pear buds are very similar to apple buds, the main difference being that I find it harder to differentiate, especially now, between their shoot from flower buds. As spring inches closer, these and other buds will all begin to swell to let their plans be better known.
A Bud Is Like A Crystal Ball
All this staring at buds is not just for winter entertainment. It also guides me in pruning.
To ripen a fruit demands a lot of a plant’s energy. If a tree or shrub bears too many fruits, it will, once danger from frosts and many other hazards are behind it, naturally shed some of the excess. But what’s left might still be more than it could ripen to perfect size and flavor for us humans.
One reason I’m stomping around among my trees and shrubs outside is to prune them, and one of many reasons that I prune them is to remove some of the fruits before they even begin to form. Cutting back some stems cuts off some flower buds, which makes for less fruits.
With all their fat flower buds, my pawpaw trees will get a severe pruning. The same for my peach tree, but not quite so severe. I’ll wait on the apples and pears until it becomes more evident what’s what.
Not that my sole purpose in pruning is to cut back fruit production. Some kinds of pruning cuts also are meant to stimulate vigorous shoot growth to reinvigorate a plant or provide flower buds for the following year. I’ll also prune to let branches bathe in light and air, keeping photosynthesis chugging along this summer and limiting pest problems. My cuts will also be directed towards maintaining strong limbs able to support a good crop. (Interested in more about pruning? See my book, THE PRUNING BOOK.)
Nice Bark, Woof, Woof
Looking at buds isn’t the only winter entertainment provided by my plants. How about checking out their bark?
Among the trees and shrubs I’ve planted, my three favorites barks are those of hackberry, river birch, and stewartia. Hackberry has a gray bark with ridges on it that, when struck by low winter sun, have a distinct, achromatic light and shadows that remind me of photos of the lunar landscape. My tree still have some years to grow before their bark is notable; for now, I enjoy looking at he bark on some wild plants I know.
Hackberry bark
River birch bark has a cinnamon-colored bark that naturally curls and peels off up and down the trunk to create a colorful mix of creamy white, pink, and brown colors.
River birch
My Japanese stewartia has the bark that would stop traffic, if there was traffic here. This bark is mottled with dark brown, light brown, and silvery patches. In a few months, leaves will mostly hide the bark, but then white blossoms that look much like camellias will continue the show.
Stewartia bark
