Payday Here, Beginning with Pears and Persimmons
Sept 6, 2012 #35
A GARDENER’S NOTEBOOK
by Lee Reich
It’s payday here on the farmden. The first Magness and Beurrée d’Amanlis pears dropped to the ground, signaling that it’s time to harvest those varieties. Immediately, before the chickens peck at the fallen fruit, which will then get hollowed out by this year’s abundant yellow jackets. The crop is pretty substantial considering last spring’s wide swings in the weather.
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| My Seckel pear, ready to harvest |
Actually, the real payday — eating the pears — needs to wait a couple of weeks. European pears, such as Magness and Beurrée d’Amanlis, need to be picked underripe to finish ripening off the tree, or else their insides are mush. These two varieties are early ripening, and early ripening pears ripen best if chilled for a couple of weeks before being brought to room temperature for ripening.
The pears must achieve a certain degree of maturity before they can ripen to perfection off the tree. The easiest way to tell when that magic moment has arrived is when the fruit stalk separates readily from the tree as the fruit is gently lifted and rotated. That’s after a few fallen fruits call attention to the tree. Not all fruits reach that lift-twist-separate stage simultaneously so I’ll go over the trees again 2 or 3 more times. (A refractometer, which measures sugars, also can indicate when to harvest, although the fruit must be cut so then can’t ripen for eating; most pears can be picked if sample fruits show refractometer readings greater than 10°Bx.)
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| Magness, one of the best of the European pears |
Color on my Asian pears, the varieties Chojura and Yoinashi, is becoming more vibrant, which is their way of telling me that they’re near ripening. Unlike European pears, Asian pears don’t taste their best unless plucked from the tree dead ripe. When ready, they’re at that lift-twist-separate stage. They’ll need especially careful picking because as a result of last spring’s frost, less than a dozen of the golden gems hang from the branches, making each fruit all the more prized.
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The tree fruits highlight what a strange growing season it has been. Besides the dramatic early warming last spring and the dramatic freezes that followed, the growing season got started early and has been unusually hot. The upshot is that everything, fruitwise, is advanced ahead of its usual schedule. Magness pears typically ripen for me around the middle of September, with Chojura beginning soon after. This year, all these fruits are ripening about 2 weeks early.
A hot season and early ripening could effect fruit quality, especially of pears. Some varieties taste best following warmer summers, others during cooler summers. Temperatures during ripening also have an effect on quality. It’s known that hot temperatures in the two months preceding harvest bring out the best flavors in Bartlett and Bosc pears, and that Anjou pears like it cool. The effect of temperature on the more obscure pear varieties, which are what I grow, is not well elucidated. Time, beginning in 2 weeks, when tasting begins, will tell.
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This morning I was scything some tall grass and weeds beneath my persimmon trees in anticipation of their ripening. Mowing exposed a ripe, orange persimmon couched softly among stems and leaves on the ground. And then another one, and then another. I looked up and confirmed that Mohler persimmons are ripening.
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| Szukis persimmon |
Mohler is one of a number of varieties of American persimmon that are cold hardy and will ripen their fruits this far north. My persimmons have survived winter lows below minus 20 degrees F.; Asian persimmons, which you find in the markets, are not nearly that cold hardy. The flavors differ also. American persimmons are drier, with richer flavor, the best varieties having taste and texture something like a dried apricot that’s been soaked in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice.
Mohler is not available from nurseries. I made my tree by grafting a stem of Mohler, which I got from someone named Mohler in Pennsylvania, onto an American persimmon seedling. I was able to hook up with Mohler through North American Fruit Explorers (www.nafex.org), a fun organization of fruit nuts who write about their fruit adventures, home and afield, and exchange plants.
Mohler, as well as my Szukis, Dooley, and Yates, American persimmons (the others are available from specialty nurseries) are very reliable and easy to grow. Mine have never succumbed to late spring frosts and the mature trees require no spraying, pruning, or any other care. They’re among the fruits highlighted in my books Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden (Timber Press, 2004) and Grow Fruit Naturally (Taunton Press, 2012).
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Do you want to grow fruit but think you don’t have room? I’ll be giving a workshop “Fruit for Small Gardens,” covering the fruits and growing techniques needed to reap delectable rewards from spaces as small as a balcony to as “large” as a small suburban yard. The venue is Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, NY on September 22nd from 1-3 pm. For more information, see http://www.stonebarnscenter.org/products/backyard-fruit-for-small-gardens.html
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To experience firsthand the possibilities in home-grown fruits, come to my workshop BACKYARD FRUITS: A TASTING AND A WORKSHOP, which will be held here at my farmden. Learn how to grow delicious fruits organically and then taste some that are in season, such as pears, grapes, pawpaws, persimmons, and kiwifruits. The workshop is Oct. 6th, 2-5 pm. Contact me for more information and registration.
Seedy Visions, Some Hard, Some Eeasy
What a perfect time of year to plant seeds. Yes, seeds! There’s no rush as to timing, with flower seeds, at least; there’s no worry about the soil being warm enough for germination; there’s no need to squeeze seed flats together near sunny windows; and there are plenty of empty seed flats.
Right now I have seedlings of endive, lettuce, kale, cauliflower, and cabbage growing in seed flats. The seedlings call the flats “home” for a month or more before they’re transplanted into beds now housing early corn, early bush beans, and other vegetables soon to be cleared away. Timing for these plants is critical if they’re going to be ready for harvest during the cool days from late September on into November. Cabbage and cauliflower were sown in early June, endive in early July, and lettuce, for a continued harvest through summer and fall, every two weeks or so all summer.
I’ve also sowed seeds with next year in mind. Flower seeds, in this case. Perennial flowers usually don’t flower their first year from seed. Ones that I sow this summer should make enough growth to put on a good show next year.
The flower bed undergoing renovation is crying out for black-eyed Susan plants (Rudbeckia hirta ‘Indian Summer), oodles of them. I could buy the plants but almost as easy and a lot cheaper and more satisfying is to buy a packet of seeds. One packet is going to provide many times the number of plants I need. Another bed needs more oriental poppies. Again, a packet of seeds is the more satisfying and economical way to go.
I have visions of blue spires of delphiniums rising up in the space between black currant plants and the fence to my south vegetable garden. A packet of ‘Pacific Giant’ delphinium seeds fills the bill, although these seeds are more difficult to germinate and the plants more difficult to grow than the poppies and black-eyed Susans. Delphinium seeds germinate best if fresh and some sources suggest chilling them awhile before or right after sowing. My plan is to plant them in a seed flat and set the covered flat on a bench that sits along the north side of my house — along with all the other seeds I am germinating. Another secret to germinating most seeds is patience.
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Patience surely has been the secret to my success with cyclamen seeds. Many years ago I purchased seeds of hardy cyclamens. Besides hardiness, these plants offer dainty blossoms that hover above the ground like small, pink butterflies. And when the plants aren’t in bloom, the speckled leaves earn the plants’ keep.
With the original batch of seeds came exacting instructions of temperature and time requirements for germination. I ended up with two seedlings from the whole packet of seeds, but those two seedlings have given rise to many more plants. A couple of weeks ago, the seed capsules, which are attached to a squiggly stalk, flared open to offer their ripe seeds, which I collected and sowed.
The flat of cyclamen seeds now sit on that same bench on the north side of my house. My only jobs now are to make sure the flat never dries out, which is unlikely, given the pane of glass that covers it, and to have patience.
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The most challenging seed of those I planned to sow this summer was chamomile, not because it’s at all hard to grow but because it’s hard to figure out just what is “chamomile.” Mostly, what people grow for tea is annual chamomile, but there’s also a perennial chamomile that’s been used medicinally. But just what is “annual” or “perennial” chamomile?
Usually, we garden nuts can fall back on botanical names to help out with such confusions. The fallback is not so easy with chamomile. Chamaemelum would seem an appropriate genus for chamomile and, in fact, C. nobile is a botanical name for perennial chamomile, which has also gone under the monikers of garden chamomile, Russian chamomile, and Roman chamomile. Not to confuse things, but this plant has also paraded under the botanical name Anthemis nobilis. Anthemis plants generally are referred to as dog fennels and, of course, chamomiles. Not to further confuse things, but I must mention A. tinctoria, golden marguerite, a wonderful ornamental in this genus, especially nice trained as a small tree with a head of white, daisy flowers.
Getting back to my tea, with annual chamomile . . . that’s Matricaria recutita, which, oddly, has the common name “sweet false chamomile.” It’s also gone under the botanical name of Tripleurospermum maritimum subsp. inordorum. And not to be confused with Matricaria matricarioides, pineapple weed, which grows all over the place and differs from any of the other chamomiles in that the flowers lack prominent, white petals. It has a pineapple-y aroma.
Bottom line: For my tea, I need annual chamomile, Matricaria recutita. Because it’s an annual, I’m going to wait until next year to sow it.
SEED LONGEVITY
Watching tiny, green leaves push up through the soil never ceases to amaze me, even after watching it happen for decades. And it’s all the more amazing with certain seeds, such as onions. It must be that I was scarred years ago by having a difficult time getting them to germinate. Well, I sowed them in the greenhouse a couple of weeks ago and they’re up and growing strongly. Most of them, at least.
My failure with onions years ago was due to old seed, and old for onion seed means anything more than a year old. Lettuce seed, in contrast, is one of the longest-lived of vegetable seeds and keeps up to 6 years. Here’s the life expectancy for other common vegetable seeds: 5 years for cucumber, endive, muskmelon, and radish; 4 years for beet, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, chard, eggplant, kale, mustard, pumpkin, tomato, turnip, and watermelon; 3 years for bean, broccoli, carrot, Chinese cabbage, pea, and spinach; 2 years for sweet corn, leek, okra, and pepper; and, along with onion, 1 year for parsley and parsnip. Under poor storage conditions — moist and warm, like my garage in summer — longevity is decreased.
Still, it seemed like such a shame to throw away good onion seed only a year old. So, in the seed flat a couple of weeks ago, a sowed one row of one-year-old onion seed alongside the rows of fresh onion seeds (and one row of leeks).
Confirmed: onion seed isn’t worth sowing after one year. In the seed flat are five neat rows of narrow, green sprouts and one barren row.
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Few seeds have as short a life as onion. More astounding is the longevity of some seeds, such as the 10,000 year old lupine seed that germinated after being taken out of a leming burrow in the Yukon permafrost. Just think: This same species was up and growing when humans first crossed the Bering Land Bridge, and saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths may have brushed up against its leaves. Except that the story of the 10,000 year old lupine seed turned out to be apocryphal, as confirmed by radiocarbon dating.
The record for seed longevity is, in fact, 2,000 years and held by a date palm grown from seed recovered from an ancient fortress in Israel. But a recent discovery, once confirmed, will break that record by a long shot.
A kind of campion seed (Silene stenophylla) found buried, this time in a squirrel burrow, in Siberian tundra could very well be 32,000 years old. The seed has been grown into a charming, white-flowered plant.
Some coaxing was needed to get that original, 32,000 year old seed to sprout. A few cells, removed from the placenta, were grown under sterile conditions on a specially concocted growth medium. Once cells had multiplied sufficiently, the growing medium was altered to induce leaves, stems, and roots, and eventually the plants were robust enough to be planted in soil. The plant flowered and set seed, which germinated readily to produce more seedlings.
I wonder what seed has the shortest longevity. It’s not onion. Seeds in the family Tillandsioideae, related to pineapple, probably hold the record, with a viability of 4-6 weeks.
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