AN ICEY BEGINNING, WITH KIWIS
Pruning Weather
Yesterday was a fine day for pruning, windless with a sunny sky and a temperature of 19 degrees Fahrenheit. The ice storm had turned this part of the world into a crystal palace, with branches clothed in thick, clear sleeves of ice. 
From an auspicious vantage point, a pear tree glowed like a subdued holiday tree as hints of sunlight’s reds and blues refracted from the natural prisms on the branches.
Witchhazel flowers
What a pleasant setting for pruning! The usual recommendation is to hold off pruning until after the coldest part of winter, which typically occurs in late January and early February, is over. I’ll admit to rushing outdoors, pruning shears in hand, before that time period, with some plants not long after they dropped their leaves in autumn. That was with plants, such as gooseberries and currants, least likely to be damaged by cold weather.
I was anxious to begin pruning in earnest as an excuse to get outdoors and because I have lots of plants to prune, mostly fruit plants. It all needs to be done before leaves unfurl in spring. And, as spring inches closer, sowing seeds, spreading compost, and other gardening activities increasingly vie for my time.
So I’m out in the crystal palace working on my hardy kiwifruit vines (Actinidia arguta and A. kolomikta). In case you’re unfamiliar with this plant, it’s a dead ringer for the fuzzy, kiwis you see in the markets — except that hardy kiwifruit is grape-size with a smooth, edible skin. The resemblance is even greater beneath the skin — except that hardy kiwis are sweeter and more aromatic. And while a fuzzy kiwi vine will sulk or die back below 10 degrees Fahrenheit, hardy kiwis tolerate winter weather below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Kiwi Training and Pruning
A hardy kiwi vine bears fruits on new, growing shoots originating off one-year-old stems. 
The goals in pruning are to keep the plant reined in to a convenient size for easy harvest, to eliminate enough stems so that those that remain bathe in sunlight and air, and to coax growth of new stems off which will emerge, the following year’s fruiting shoots.
Kiwi vine, before pruning
Pruning also removes plenty of one-year-old stems. That cuts down yield but lets the vines pump more goodness into fruits that remain, for better flavor. (Pruning kiwis is described and also diagrammed in my book The Pruning Book.)
Training a kiwi vine to some sort of system keeps the vigorous growth organized. My plants grow on a trellis of metal or locust T-posts spaced 15 feet apart, with 5 wires (actually nylon monofilament) running perpendicular to and spaced out across to the tops of the T’s. Each kiwi trunk runs from ground level up to the middle wire, at which point it bifurcates into two permanent arms, called cordons, running in opposite directions along the middle wire. Fruiting arms grow out perpendicularly to the cordons and the wires, draping themselves over the two outermost wires on either side of the the cordons.
I actually began pruning a couple of weeks ago, starting to disentangle the stems by walking along on either side of the row with my cordless hedge shear, shortening any stems to a few inches beyond the outermost wires. Yesterday I began cutting any two-year-old stem — any stem that fruited last summer — back to its origin or to a one-year-old stem near the its origin. The one-year-old stems, those a little more than pencil thick of moderate vigor, will bear fruiting shoots this year in late summer or fall.
After all this pruning, plenty of one-year-old stems remain, too many for top notch fruit. So I’ll move down the cordons and remove enough one-year-old stems so that none is closer than eight to twelve inches from its neighbor.
Not done yet. In spring, after growth has begun, I’ll clip each one-year-old stem back to about 18 inches.
If you grow grapes, you probably noted that they bear and can be pruned similarly to the kiwis. I even grow some grape vines along the same trellis as the kiwi vines.
The main difference is that grape vines’ one-year-old shoots can be cut back more severely than the kiwi stems. Mine get shortened to a couple of buds each, which is only about three inches, from the cordon; it’s called spur pruning. Everything else is the same.
Ice is Nice, Sometimes
Those sleeves of ice on the kiwis actually made pruning easier. A sharp tug on a cut stem quickly disentangled it and let it slide free from its neighbors.
All this ice did, of course, weigh down branches of large trees which, coupled with strong winds after the storm, sent many limbs plummeting to the ground. Particularly surprising were my birch trees, a tree known for the limberness of its trunk, a characteristic immortalized in Robert Frost’s poem Birches:
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
This storm was more than two of my multi-stemmed birches’ trunks could bear; they cracked. But Mr. Frost was writing about white birches. Mine are river birches.
A HOUSEPLANT, AN “ALMOND,” AND PAPER
Easiest Houseplant of All?!
What with the frigid temperatures and snow-blanketed ground outside, at least here in New York’s mid-Hudson Valley, I turn my attention indoors to a houseplant. To anyone claiming a non-green thumb, this is a houseplant even you can grow.
Most common problems in growing houseplants (garden plants also) come from improper watering. Too many houseplants suffer short lives, either withering in soil allowed to go bone dry between waterings, or gasping for air in constantly waterlogged soil. Also bad off yet are those plants forced to alternately suffer from both extremes.
The plant I have in mind is umbrella plant (Cyperus alternifolius); it requires no skill at all in watering. Because it’s native to shallow waters, you never need to decide whether or not to water. Water is always needed! The way to grow this plant is by standing its pot in a deep saucer which is always kept filled with a couple of inches of water. What could be simpler?
One caution, though. The top edge of the saucer does have to be below the rim of the pot. Umbrella plants like their roots constantly bathed in water, but not their stems.
Lest you think that umbrella plant sacrifices good looks for ease of care, it doesn’t. Picture a graceful clump of bare, slender stems, each stem capped with a whorl of leaves that radiate out like the ribs of a denuded umbrella.
The stems are two to four feet tall, each leaf four to eight inches long. A dwarf form of the plant, botanically C. albostriatus, grows only a foot or so high, and has grassy leaves growing in amongst the stems at the base of the plant. There’s also a variegated form of umbrella plant, and a wispy one with especially thin leaves and stems. 
Umbrella plants aren’t finicky about care other than watering. They grow best in sunny windows, but get along in any bright room. As far as potting soil, your regular homemade or packaged mix will suffice. Umbrella plants like a near-neutral pH, as do most other houseplants.
Want More?
As the clump of stems ages and expands, they eventually get overcrowded in the pot, calling out to be repotted. You could move it to a yet larger pot, or make new plants by pulling apart, cutting if necessary, the large clumps to make smaller clumps and potting each of them separately.
One way wild umbrella plants propagate is by taking root where their leaves touch ground when the stems arch over. You can mimic this habit indoors if you want to increase your umbrella plant holdings without dividing the clump. Fold the leaves down around the stem with a rubber band, as if you were closing the umbrella. Cut the stem a few inches below the whorl of leaves and poke the umbrella, leaves pointing upward, into some potting soil — kept constantly moist, of course.
An Almondy Relative
Though you may be unfamiliar with umbrella plant, you probably have come across its near-relatives either in the garden or in literature. One relative is yellow nutsedge (C. esculentum), a plant usually considered a weed and inhabiting wet soils from Maine down to the tropics.
The edible nutsedge, also C, esculentum, usually called chufa or earth almond, is not invasive, at least in what I’ve read from many sources, and in my experiences growing the plants. It’s a perennial that has been cultivated since prehistoric times and was an important food in ancient Egypt.
But esculentum in the botanical name means “edible,” and refers to the sweet, nut-like tubers the plant produces below ground. I grow this plant, and now consider it quite esculentum, with a taste and texture not unlike fresh coconut. 
The main challenge with this plant is clearing and separating the almond-sized tubers from soil and small stones.
Storage improves their flavor, but they must be dried for storage, at which point they become almost rock hard. Give them an overnight soaking and they’re ready to eat as a snack or incorporate into other edibles or drinkables.
Paper Plant
Umbrella plant’s other famous relative is papyrus (C. papyrus), a plant that once grew wild along the Nile River. In ancient times, papyrus was used not only to make paper, but also to build boats and as food. Papyrus looks much like umbrella plant, and being subtropical, also would make a good houseplant. But with stems that may soar to fifteen feet in height, except for the diminutive variety King Tut, this species is too tall for most living rooms.
The Egyptians never recorded their method for making papyrus into paper but the Romans learned the process from the Egyptians and Pliny the Elder, a Roman, wrote about it in the first century B.C.
Genuine, Egyptian papyrus
Here’s how: You put on your toga and sandals (the latter also once made from papyrus), and prune down a few umbrella plant stalks. Cut the stalks into strips and, after soaking them in water for a day, lay them side by side in two perpendicular layers. Make a sandwich of the woven mat surrounded on either side by cloth, to absorb moisture, surrounded on either side with pieces of wood, then press.
In Egyptian sunlight, you could figure on the paper being dry and ready for use after about three weeks. Cut it to size to fit your printer.
SOWING PEARS AND LETTUCES
For the Long Haul
Among the must-have tools for any good gardener are hope, optimism, and patience. I thought of all three last week as I was planting some seeds.
The first of these seeds especially emphasizes patience. They were a few pear seeds I saved from pears I had eaten. After being soaked for a couple of days in water, the cores were soft enough for the seeds to be squeezed out, after which they were rinsed, and then planted in potting soil.
I put the planted seeds near a bright window in my basement where the cool (about 40°) temperatures would, in a couple of months, fool the seeds into feeling that winter was over. They would sprout.
Given time, those seeds would grow to become pear trees and, given more time (ten years, possibly more) go on to bear fruit. Those seeds came from Bosc and Passe Crassane pears. The genetics of the resulting trees will represent the sexual union of egg cells within the flowers with whatever male pollen happened to fertilize those eggs. As a result, said trees would bear fruits different, and probably worse, than the fruits from which they were taken. (There’s less than 1 in 10,000 chance of a seedling apple tree bearing fruit as good or better than the fruit from the mother tree; the ratio for pears should be similar.)
Shortening the Long Haul, and Other Benefits
Grafted tree, this one NOT interstem
So why will I be wasting all that time nurturing these plants? Because they’re not for fruit. They’re for rootstocks, for grafting. Pears and most other tree fruits are very hard to root from cuttings, so are propagated by grafting a stem of a good-tasting pear low on a rootstock.
So-called “seedling” rootstocks make for very sturdy trees, well anchored and genetically diverse so some scourge can’t wipe out a whole bunch of equally susceptible, genetically identical trees. On the other hand, seedling rootstocks make for very large trees that are very slow to induce bearing in their grafted portions.
Enter from stage right: clonal rootstocks, that is, plants reproduced asexually (cuttings are one example of asexual plant propagation) so that all members of the clone are genetically identical. Some clonal pear rootstocks — with such unalluring names as Pyrodwarf and OH x F 87 — have been developed that make smaller grafted trees that also are quicker to come into bearing. (I delve more deeply into the nitty gritty of grafting in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.)
My plan is to make interstem trees, each one by grafting a 9 inch stem of one of the clonal rootstocks near the base of a seedling rootstock, and then some variety for eating, such as Passe Crassane, atop the clonal interstem. That 9 inch clonal interstem has the same good effects as if it was used as a rootstock, except that the interstem trees also have sturdy root systems and genetic diversity at their roots. Because plants grow from the tips of stems, the heights of the grafts above ground remain the same even as the tree grows.
Parts of interstem tree
I’ll do both grafts at the same time, next spring. I’m hopeful, optimistic, and have patience that I’ll be biting my first pears from these trees within 5 years.
Lettuce be Hopeful, Patient, and Optimistic
The other seeds for this week’s sowing were four varieties of lettuce. No, not for eventual outdoor planting, but for planting in the greenhouse in spaces that will open up where some of last autumn’s lettuce will have been harvested.
It’s chilly in the greenhouse, where temperatures drop into the 30’s at night and on cloudy days, too chilly for good sprouting of lettuce seeds. 
So I sowed them in a 4×6 inch seed flat filled with potting soil, then moved the flat in front of a sun-drenched, living room window. Once the lettuce seeds sprouted, which was in a few days, I moved them to the greenhouse. Warmer temperatures are needed to sprout a seed than to grow a plant.
The seedlings should not, of course, remained crowded in their mini-furrows in the flat. So once the seedlings grow a little larger, I’ll gently lift each one by its leaves, coaxing it up and out of the flat, and then lower the roots into a dibbled hole in one potting-soil-filled-cell of GrowEase. And so on, until each of the 24 cells has a small plant in it.
I use this same method to keep up a steady supply of lettuce and other seedlings all through summer, the plants typically needing about a month in the GrowEase before they’re ready to transplant into the ground. Not so in winter, with the sun still hanging low in the sky and greenhouse temperature still cool. I estimate that it won’t be until early March before the lettuces will be ready to plant in the ground in the greenhouse.
No matter; I’m hopeful, optimistic, and patient. And I’ll still be harvesting some of last autumn’s lettuce beyond that date.
