A FRUITFUL YEAR IN THE OFFING
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More Fruits to Plant!?
You’d think, after so many years of gardening and a love of fruits being such a important part of said gardening, that by now I would have planted every fruit I might ever have wanted to plant. Not so! Hard to imagine, but even here in the 21st century, new fruits are still coming down the pike. I don’t mean apples with grape flavor (marketed as grapples), a mango nectarine (actually, just a nectarine that looks vaguely like a mango), or strawmato (actually a strawberry-shaped tomato). There are plenty of truly new fruits, in the sense of kinds of…
FRUIT BOOK GIVEAWAY, AND FRUIT FUTURES
The Eternal (Fruit) Optimist
We fruit growers get especially excited this time of year. On the one hand, there’s the anticipation of the upcoming season. And on the other hand, we don’t want to rush things along at all. Ideally, late winter segues into the middle of spring with gradually warming days and nights. Unfortunately, here, as in most of continental U.S., temperatures fluctuate wildly this time of year. Warm weather accelerates development of flower buds and flowers. While early blossoms are a welcome sight after winter’s achromatic landscapes, late frosts can snuff…
COMPOST TEA: SNAKE OIL OR PLANT ELIXIR?
Is the Jury Still Out on Compost Tea?
In gardening, as in life, you can’t help but want to love some things, compost tea being one of them. After all, compost is good, tea is soothing, so what’s not to love about compost tea? Perhaps it depends on how you brew your tea. Traditional compost tea was and is made by hanging a burlap bag of compost in water, then diluting and drenching the ground or the potting mix of a potted plant with the nutritious, coffee-brown liquid. More recently, “aerated compost tea” (ACT) has soothed gardeners from coast to coast, the result mostly…
MANURE ABSOLVED, PRUNING STARTED
Horse Manure: Not Guilty, So On To Pruning
A dark cloud no longer hangs over my horse manure, that is, the horse manure that I occasionally truck over here to add to my compost piles. I wrote a few weeks ago about the possibility of herbicide that, when applied to hay, retains its toxic effect when an animal eats the hay and even, for a long time, after that animal’s manure has been composted or spread on the ground. My herbicide residue concerns were soothed with a simple assay that showed satisfactory growth from bean seeds in both hay that was suspect and hay of known integrity.…
FIRST SOWINGS OF THE YEAR, DEADLINE MISSED
Onions & More, Late But They'll Be Fine
I missed my deadline by four days, sowing onion seeds on February 5th rather than the planned February 1st. That date isn’t fixed in stone but the important thing is to plant onions early. Onions are photoperiod sensitive, that is, they respond to daylength (actually, night length, but researchers originally thought the response was to light rather than darkness, so the phrase “daylength sensitive” stuck). Once days get long enough, sometime in June, leaf formation comes screeching to a halt and the plants put their energies into making…
HOW TO FEED THE WORLD
Perennial Wheat to Save Our Soil, But What About Compost?
We — that is, almost all of humanity — get all our sustenance from the thin skin that covers out planet, the soil. In appreciation of this, the United Nations has declared 2015 “The Year of Soil.” “Soil is more important than oil,” stated Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, in his keynote at this year’s recent NOFA-NY conference. Like oil, soil is a nonrenewable, or only slowly renewable, resource. Centuries go by before rainfall, freezing, thawing, and microbes and plants eat away at rocks to make new soil;…
LECTURES THIS WEEKEND
Feb. 14, 2015Gardener’s Supply Co.,Burlington, VT“Espalier Fruits”“My Weedless Garden”
Feb. 15, 2015Northeast Organic Farming Association of VT, Winter Conference,Burlington, VT“Hardy Kiwifruits” “Compost Tea: Snake Oil or Plant Elixir?”
LUSTING FOR AVOCADOS, HOME GROWN, OF COURSE
A Long Journey to Avocado-dom
This far north, an avocado plant provides reliable entertainment and, less reliably, the makings of guacamole. The entertainment doesn’t compare with the excitement of a car chase on the silver screen; it’s slower but very engaging.
To whit: I’ve been watching roots on two avocado pits elongate and branch. I spend a lot of time with plants; here is my opportunity to spend quality time with their roots. That’s all possible because avocado pits, suspended in water, will sprout roots whose growth can be watched. (Odd, since wet soils are the nemesis of avocado…
GOOD BOOKS, GOOD LECTURES
One Book = Years of Experience
I’ve been gardening for over 30 years. Don’t be impressed. The number of years spent with hands in the dirt doesn’t necessarily confer any particular expertise in the field (pun intended). Some gardeners do the same foolish things year in and year out, or never sufficiently investigate other, perhaps better, ways of doing what they’ve been doing. Or not appreciate cause and effect. (Was it really the compost tea spray that led to bountiful yields last year, or was it reliable rainfall interspersed with bright, sunny days? The tendency is to hold the…
