LITTLE ITALY IN THE HUDSON VALLEY
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Once cured, my New York olive harvest was delectable, spurring me on to prepare the potted tree for a bigger harvest this year. Figs, in basement, still sleep, thankfully so.
MYSTERY OF THE UNDEAD ROSE
I come to appreciate death as a sign of life -- in flower longevity. Not so happy with aging in the greenhouse, though; new seedings will, with spring-like weather in there, soon offer fresh, young lettuce, arugula, and other salad greenery.
OF MITES & MOISTURE
It Mite be a Pest Mites! Eek! A new pest in town (for me). Actually, the mites, which showed up on some newly rooted Meyer lemon cuttings, don’t really scare me, nothing like the scale insects that regularly turn up on some of my citrus. Chigger mites, scabies mites, dust mites, itch mites — they’re not pests of plants, and they WOULD scare me. The cuttings were well rooted and just sitting still, basking in a south-facing window, waiting for longer days and warmer temperatures before they can come alive. (They pick up an attenuated version of seasonal temperature changes at that…
OLIVE HARVEST IN FULL SWING HERE
What To Do With This Year's Harvest?Olive harvest will begin — and end — here this week. Yes, it’s late. After all, the harvest in Italy was in full swing weeks ago, back in autumn. But this is the Hudson Valley, in New York. What do you expect? I’m talking about harvesting real olives, not Russian olives (Elaeagnus angustifolia) or autumn olive (E. umbellata), both of which grow extensively in a lot of places, including here. Too extensively, according to some people, which is why they’re listed as “invasives” and banned from being planted in some regions. (But their fruits…
CHERRIES JUBILEE (I HOPE)
More Plants?!?!?!
You’d think, after decades of gardening in the same place, that I by now would have planted every tree, shrub, and vine I could ever want or have space for. Not so! Every year I make up a “Plants to order” list, unfortunately before I hone down just where I’ll sink my shovel into the ground to prepare a planting hole.
Topping my list was Carmine Jewel cherry, a tart cherry that’s also good fresh. (Tart cherries often have higher sugar levels than do sweet cherries; but they also have tartness and other flavors that offset that sweetness.) The biggest…
WINTER ‘SHROOMS, SUMMER DREAMS, & A WINNER
Mushrooms Think It's Autumn Again The 15 oak logs sitting in the shade of my giant Norway spruce tree more than earned their keep last year. Seven of them got inoculated with plugs of shiitake mushroom spawn in the spring of 2013; eight of the were inoculated in the spring of 2014. With little further effort on my part, reasonably good flushes of mushrooms appeared through spring and summer, then heavy flushes through fall until the mild weather turned frosty. My friends Bill and Lisa, also shiitake growers, told me a few days ago how they’re still harvesting good crops, cold weather…
TO SAVE OR NOT TO SAVE, & A FREE BOOK!
New Seeds Needed? “Ring out the old, ring in the new.” But not all the “old,” when it comes to seeds for this year’s garden. I’m flipping through my plastic shoeboxes (I think that’s what the boxes are meant for) of vegetable and flower seeds, assessing what old seeds are worth keeping and what new seeds I need to order. Seeds are living, albeit in a dormant state, and, as such, have a limited lifespan. The longevity of any seed depends, first of all on the kind of seed, its genetics. Most seed packets come dated; if not, I write the date received on the packet. Few…
MULCH, SOMETIMES BETTER LATE THAN EARLY
Cardoon Gets to Stay I haven’t yet given up on cardoon — growing it. But eating it? I just about give up. It’s like eating humongous stalks of stringy celery having just a hint of artichoke flavor. As an ornamental is how cardoon has made itself garden-worthy. Like most perennial plants, it grew only leaves this past season, its first season here. But what leaves they were! As I said, like “humongous stalks of celery.” Not much good for eating but nice to look at. The edges of the three-foot-high stalks were winged with undulating, pointed blades (each stalk is a leaf), and…
THE CHILL BANK IS FILLED?
But Do I Want Flowers Now? The season has been “chill,” literally and figuratively, the former predicted by weather experts based on a this year’s strong El Niño. Because of El Niño, the West was pounded with rain; here in the Northeast, except for an occasional night, temperatures have been mild over the past few months, much milder than I remember for any other fall. It is those chilly, but not frigid, temperatures — in the range from 30 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit — that signal to plants that winter is over and it’s safe to begin unfolding flower buds or pushing new shoots…
