FINAL HARVESTS
Compressed Gardening Experience
People are so ready to sit at the feet of any long-time gardener to glean words of wisdom. I roll my eyes. Someone who has gardened for ten, twenty, even more years might make the same mistakes every year for that number of years. I, for instance, swung a scythe wrong for 20 years; I may have it right now. Even a wizened gardener who has evaluated and corrected their mistakes has garnered experience only on their own plot of land; these experience may not apply to the differing soils, climates, and resources of other sites.
When I began gardening, my agricultural knowledge and experience was nil, zip, niets, rien, nada. But — and this is important — I had easy access to a whole university library devoted solely to agriculture. Hungry to learn, I read a lot. (I also was taking classes in agriculture.) In one year I was able to garner years of, if not actual experience, much of the knowledge that comes with that experience. And my garden showed it.
I’ve now gardened many decades and still gobble up the written word.
All of which is to say that reading reputable sources about gardening can make anyone a much better gardener and do so quicker than by gardening alone. “Reputable” is a key word in the previous sentence. So here’s the, to use the phrase of Magliozzi brothers on the radio show Cartalk, Shameless Commerce Division of this blog: a plug for my books. I stand firmly by anything I’ve written and am open to criticism.
Here’s the book list, all available from the usual sources or, signed, from me through this website (good gift idea, also):
•A Northeast Gardener’s Year: A month by month romp through all things garden-wise, what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.
•The Pruning Book: Plant responses, pruning tools, how to prune just about every plant (indoor, outdoor), and final sections on specialized pruning techniques, such as scything and espalier.
•Weedless Gardening: A four-part system, emulating Mother Nature and based on current agricultural research, that makes for less weeds and healthier plants, along with other benefits such as more efficient use of water and conservation of humus.
•Landscaping with Fruit: Following introductory chapters about designing your landscape is a listing of the best fruits to use for “luscious landscaping” in various regions and how to grow each of these fruiting trees, shrubs, vines, and groundcovers.
•Grow Fruit Naturally: Describes multi-faceted approaches to growing fruits without resorting to toxic sprays, starting with selecting kinds of fruits and varieties and moving on to encouraging natural predators, beefing up the soil, and more.
•The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden: Knowing some of the science behind what’s going on in the garden can make you an even better gardener; here’s how.
Vegetable Finale
And now, on to some gardening . . .
I’ve said it before and Yogi Berra said it before me, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Last night’s temperature plummeting to 18°F was still not enough to put the brakes on the vegetable garden. Beneath their covered “tunnels,” arugula, mustard, endive, and napa Chinese cabbage still thrive. Along with mâche and kale, which aren’t under cover, all these greens are looking as perky as ever and, most important, taste better than ever.
Interestingly, temperatures I’ve measured within the tunnels are not that different — actually, not different at all — from temperatures I’ve measured outdoors. But something’s different. The increased humidity under the tunnels is probably at least partially responsible for the fresh tastes and appearances.
It’s a wonder that these tender, succulent leaves tolerate such temperatures. You’d think the liquid in their cells would freeze and burst the contents to smithereens. That would have been the case if the 18°F had come on suddenly, without any precedents.
Plants aren’t passive players in the garden. Increasingly cold weather and shortening days acclimated these plants to cold. (A month ago, temperatures dropped one night to 16°F.) Plants move water in and out of their cells, as needed, to avoid freezing injury. And increasing concentrations of dissolved minerals and sugars in the cells make the water freeze at lower temperatures. Perhaps that’s one reason why these vegetables taste so good. The tunnels also slow down swings in temperature, giving plants time to move water in and out of their cells and whatever else they do preparing for and recovering from cold.
Too many people, even gardeners(!), consider endive as nothing more than a bitter, green leaf best used as garnish. Reconsider. Given close spacing so that inner leaves of each head blanche from low light along with cool and cold temperatures, and endive takes on a wonderful, rich flavor. 
Only the slightest hint of bitterness remains, enough to make the taste more lively — delicious in salads, soups, and sandwiches.
Fruit Finale
The last fruits of the season, Szukis American persimmon, were harvested last week after over a month of eating them. Definitely the easiest fruit I grow. No pruning, no pest control. And definitely one of the tastiest: imagine a dried apricot soaked in water, dipped in honey, then given a dash of spice.
Fruits were very mushy for the final harvests — perfect for a jam. Squeezing a bunch of the fruits in a mesh bag (such as used for women’s “delicates” in a washing machine) pushed out 
the pulp without seeds. No sweetener needed. Just jar it up and refrigerate (keeps about 2 weeks) or freeze. Delicious.
GARDEN ESSENTIALS, FOR PEGGY
Compost, of Course, and More
Very soon I plan to drive a truckload of compost to my sister Peggy’s house. Like many people, she’s caught the gardening bug, and this compost, along with a wheelbarrow I fished out of my town’s metal recycling, is a gift. It includes my help spreading it.
What else would be a good gift for any beginning gardener? (Okay, Peggy has been dipping her toes in the gardening waters for years, but only recently got more serious about growing vegetables.)
For starters, indispensable, would be a trowel or a hori-hori knife, the latter being something of a hybrid of a garden knife and a trowel, not as good as either parent but great for all-around use. No need to labor over the worth of a high-end, stainless steel, oak-handled trowel; either will work well and last long if stored out of the elements.
A pair of hand shears would come in handy for clipping tomato suckers or cutting down pepper or eggplant plants at season’s end. They’e admittedly not indispensable for vegetable gardening but very useful if any shrubs or trees are also in the picture. 
For a hand shears, quality counts. Blades of the best hand shears, as in their name, shear past each other like those of scissors. They’re called “bypass pruners.” My favorite is the ARS hand shears. Shears with anvil blades — “anvil pruners” — sport a sharp blade that comes down on a narrow, flat surface; the flat surface limits how close you can make a cut and the shear works poorly if any nick or waviness develops on the sharp blade.
For anyone venturing into growing their own seedlings, which greatly widens the choices of varieties to grow, I recommend one of the many “self watering seed starters.” Cells housing plants sit on a capillary mat that dips into a water reservoir just below. 
Soil in the cells sucks up moisture from below through capillary action to remain consistently moist, and the reservoir requires replenishment infrequently.
And finally, gloves, although these are very personal and it’s hard to pick out a pair suited to anyone else besides yourself. How about money for gloves? And some people like to get their hands in the dirt. As a professional pianist and piano teacher, probably not Peggy (check her out at www.peggyreich.com).
Reading Can Substitute for Years of Gardening
Okay, moving on to a most important “tool” for beginning, even intermediate and advanced, gardeners alike: books and the web. That is, if the information offered is sound — not always the case. One way to get solid information off the web is to follow any search term(s) with “site:edu” or “site:gov”, which brings you to university or government sites, respectively.
Not that those are the only reputable sites, but then judge whether other sites are reputable based on the author(s), possible agendas for financial gain, and comparing other information on the site with that you know for sure is either correct or false.
As an example, someone recently told me that black walnut plants are high in iodine, as evidenced by the brown stain from the hulls and the first of many hits if you enter “iodine” and “black walnut” into a search engine. This didn’t ring true to me so I looked up analyses of iodine concentrations in black walnut on a number of reputable sites. No, black walnut plants do not contain iodine, despite all the sites touting the myth that they do.
(Everything you read on my site is, of course, reputable. Ha, ha.)
On to books . . . if I may be so bold as to begin by recommending my own. Weedless Gardening 
tells how to prepare and manage the soil, when to sow and transplant vegetables, what to use for mulch, how to make compost, the ins and outs of drip irrigation, and more. A Northeast Gardener’s Year 
takes you on a timely jog through the year with all things gardening: soil, flowers, houseplants, naming plants, etc., depending on what needs doing gardenwise indoors and out. I’ve written more books (all are listed on this site), but these two are more essential.
Plenty of other reputable gardening books are around if you seek them out. For an all around gardening book, check out Barbara Damrosch’s The Garden Primer. Specifically, for vegetables, there’s E. C. Smith’s The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible or some oldies, or, if you can get them, A. C. Burrage’s Burrage on Vegetables or Gardening: The Complete Guide to Growing America’s Favorite Fruits & Vegetables from the National Gardening Association.
Quality Compost?
Back to that truckload of compost for Peggy. A truckload of compost is more than I can spare of my own black gold, so I’m purchasing it in bulk.
I picked up the phone, dialed some numbers, and asked some prospective compost merchants about their products to make sure the compost would be of good quality. What went into the compost, for instance? A greater the variety of raw materials results in a better variety of nutrients in the end product as long as those raw materials don’t include industrial wastes that might contain heavy metals, or, in dry regions, feedlot manures, because of excess salts.
What about the acidity or pH? Ideally the pH lies between 6 and 7.
How rocky or stony is the compost? No need to pay for rocks rather than compost. Similarly, is the material pure compost (desired), or compost diluted with a large portion of soil?
How about weeds or weed seeds? Time, temperature, and pile turning all have bearing on the number of viable weed seeds in a finished compost. A carefully built compost pile easily reaches a high enough temperatures to kill most weed seeds. But even when weed-free initially, composts that sit around too long (especially if uncovered) will pick up weed seeds carried in by wind and animals.
Good gardening, and especially organic gardening, involves moving bulky organic materials such as hay, straw, wood chips, wood shavings, leaf mold, and compost. These organic materials are what feed the friendly soil microbes which, in turn, feed the plants, as well as beef up the soil ecosystem in many biological and physical ways.
So two other items that come to mind, after the trowel, pruning shears, seed starting flats, and books, are a wheelbarrow or garden cart, and pitchfork or shovel. As I wrote, I’ll leave the wheelbarrow with her and can also leave of the many pitchforks I’ve accumulated over the years. Have I forgotten to mention any other gardening essentials?
ONE OF THANKSGIVING’S UNSUNG HEROES
Years ago I wrote about one of the unsung heroes of Thanksgiving, the groundnut (Apios americanum). This plant, which helped nourish the Pilgrims through their first winters, never achieved the reknown of corn, pumpkins, cranberries, and other foods of the season.
When I first wrote about groundnuts, I had just planted them. I pointed out that there was renewed interest in the plant, though specifics as to how to grow it were wanting and selection of superior clones was just beginning. Now that I have grown groundnut for a few (thirty plus!) years, I am ready to share my experiences.
It Looks Like . . . And Acts Like . . .
As you might guess from the name, the plant makes edible tubers, usually the size of golfballs and strung together on a thinner, ropelike root. The swollen roots on one of my plants are more the size of tennis balls than golf balls. Not as obvious, below ground, at least, is that the plant is a legume; as such, it can “fix” atmospheric nitrogen, that is, put it in a plant-available form.
The plant also has shown some virtues aboveground. Chocolatey brown flowers dangle like jewelry from the twining stems. The flowers are pretty enough to have accorded groundnut a place in flower gardens in France a hundred years ago. On some plants, the flowers also have a strong and delicious aroma – vanilla, instead of chocolate, though.
I started some of my plants from seed; others I purchased growing in pots. I trained each vine up and down and around a tomato cage. The plants were and still are in full sun and rich soil, with a thick mulch of wood chips. The ground is so fluffy that I can harvest by just grabbing one end of a root, then pulling it up and out of the soil.
Soon after I planted groundnut, I discovered that it is weedy. I was soon finding plants, first sneaking across the ground a couple of feet from mother plants, and then further and further.
Aboveground, the twining stems reached around and insinuated themselves amongst the branches of a nearby bush cherries and other plants.
To further unsettle me, I was startled at the reappearance, with vigor, of one young plant which I thought I had destroyed as I dug looking for edible roots. (I since learned that harvest must be delayed until the second season.) I hope groundnut will not prove to be as unruly and as hard to remove as the horseradish I once foolishly planted in the garden!
Is It Good To Eat?
Now for the important question: What does groundnut taste like? Thomas Hariot, in A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (1590) may have been the first to write of groundnut, and his opinion was “boiled or sodden they are very good meate.” In 1602, a correspondent from New England wrote to Sir Walter Raleigh that groundnuts were “as good as potatoes.”
Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant (Sturtevant’s Notes on Edible Plants, 1919) reported an eighteenth century horticulturalist writing that the “Swedes ate them for want of bread, and that in 1749 some of the English ate them instead of potatoes.” He also quotes a nineteenth century writer, who wrote that the Pilgrims “were enforced to live on ground nuts.”
Moving up to the twentieth century, wild food forager Euell Gibbons, who enjoyed everything from cattails to milkweed pods, was reserved in his praise of groundnuts.
I have harvested groundnuts and, because they should not be consumed raw, boiled some and baked some. They taste almost as good as potatoes, though less distinctive. The texture was dry and mealy. Like Euell, I am reserved in my praise of the roots, though other groundnut plants might have better or worse roots. (After all, not all potatoes taste the same.)
I do think that groundnut, even in its present primitive state, is a native, perennial, permaculture friendly vegetable (I have been accused by some of being a permaculturalist) good enough to deserve a place at the Thanksgiving table. That is, it deserves a place in the garden and on the Thanksgiving table as long as it’s planted where its growth and spread can be reined in.
How about calling it one of its Indian names – nu nu, perhaps – and making nu nu stuffing standard Thanksgiving fare? Happy Thanksgiving!
