IS IT SUNNY, ENOUGH?
A Plant’s Perspective
No matter what you’re growing, and especially if you’re growing most fruits or vegetables, you need to know what “full sun” and “part shade” mean. People with shady yards often have their own definitions.
The tall trees that surrounded my father’s yard created lots of shade; he once planted a grapevine in what he called a sunny spot, which was where the leafy tree canopy spread open enough to let a ray of sunlight peek through for about an hour at 12:30. The grape vine did grow, but bore a paltry crop, and those grapes it did bear were sour.
Grapes need “full sun. “Full sun” to a plant means direct, unobstructed sunlight for at least five or six hours a day. Besides vegetable gardens and most fruit trees, many flowers also require this exposure.
Sometimes Shade is Tolerable
There are plants that are well adapted to, even need, shade in their youth, but require more sunlight as they age. Maples and beeches, for example, as well as other forest trees which start out as seedlings in the shade of existing forests, but eventually reach light and become the canopy itself.
Pawpaw, which is a forest tree native throughout the eastern part of this country, is also in this category. That applies to seedling trees, that is, trees Read more
PRUNING AN APPLE TREE, A NECESSARY EVIL
Too Many Blossoms, Too Many Fruits
I winced with almost every snip of the pruning shears yesterday. My apple trees needed pruning and they were loaded with buds showing pink and about to pop open. Pruning was late this year, not that it would matter to the trees, but I had hoped to get it done a month or more ago, before the vegetable garden started beckoning.
What was making me wince was all the blossoms I was removing, blossoms that, after pollination, could swell into luscious apples. I kept reassuring myself that removing blossoms and, hence, fruit was one of the reasons to prune an apple tree.
Left to its own devices, an apple tree tends to set too many fruits, too many for best quality, that is. With the number of fruits reduced, the tree can Read more
MARCH OF THE LETTUCES
A Pinch Every Now and Then
Deb is always impressed at the almost nonstop march of home grown lettuce that makes its way into our kitchen and then to salads and sandwiches each year. Not just a leaf here and there, or even the paltry amount in “side” salads served up in restaurants. No, I’m talking about day upon day lots of lettuce, often even whole heads — even here in zone 5.
The key to this abundance is sowing seeds every couple of weeks or so. Not right out in the garden, but in seed flats; mine are four inches wide by six inches long and a couple of inches deep. After filling a flat with potting soil, onto the soil I press down a four by six inch board to which I’ve glued four dowels, each four inches long and Read more
