Design – Page 4 – Lee Reich

Read the Book, Bro’

December 13, 2018/12 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Pruning/by Lee Reich

To Prune or Not To Prune, That is the . . .

So I visited my brother and his family for Thanksgiving. As usual, we walked around his yard to look at his plantings. As usual, he asked my advice, this time about pruning. (As usual, he didn’t want to consult a copy of my book, The Pruning Book, which I had given him a few years ago. “Why read it, when I can just ask you?!” he says.) My brother's mystery shrub

He was considering taking blades to a row of handsome, evergreen shrubs along the front of his house. Over the years, the lengthening branches had sprawled out to encroach upon the bordering lawn, in some places leaving exposed bare stems. He questioned whether new growth would sprout if he lopped all those sprawling stems back to near the roots.

But what was the plant? I had an excuse, admittedly rather lame, for not knowing it: I learned all my ornamentals in Wisconsin where not many broadleaf evergreens are hardy. No matter. Sometimes you can figure out how to prune an unknown plant by just studying its growth habit.

Many evergreens, including most pines, Douglas firs, rosemary, and some rhododendrons, will not sprout new growth if cut back to bare old wood. (At the other extreme are boxwoods and yews, which sprout all over the place no matter how they are cut back.)

I suggested going ahead with drastic pruning of the unknown shrub. My confidence came from seeing many young sprouts emerging from the old stems right near where they emerged from the ground and then bent over from their own weight. Hormones within plants promote sprouting of vigorous, new shoots near the high point of a stem wherever it bends over. Pruning a stem back likewise promotes sprouting right near the cut.

I Pass Judgement

Looking across the front path, bro’ next asked me how I liked the pruning job he’d done on his rhododendrons. Hmmm, pretty good. My brother's pruned rhododendron

As often happens with rhododendrons, they are planted near a home and then too often grow so large as to swallow up windows, even the whole side of the home. His had done so, and he had pruned stems back to the height he wanted.

Two problems with this pruning. First, as noted above, when a stem is pruned back, most regrowth, and the most vigorous regrowth, occurs just below the cut. So although he cut the plant down to size, he should expect it to start growing back up to its previous size quickly.

The other problem with this pruning is that it leaves the plant looking butchered, large wounds gaping out atop thick stems whose upward mobility has been abruptly stopped. The best pruning jobs are ones where a plant looks nice without looking as if it has even been pruned.

My approach would have been to make a few cuts of the largest stems down in the interior of the shrub, where the stems originated. The largest stems would also be the tallest ones, so such cuts would be effective in lowering the plant. If too many need removal at once, the operation could be spread over 2 or 3 years. Then the pruning cuts would hardly be noticed, and letting light down low among the stems would promote healthy new growth starting low.

With all that said, my brother’s rhodies didn’t look too bad — and he has the opportunity over the next year or two to make my suggested cuts. Lucky for him, his rhodie was not one of the few that are reluctant to make new sprouts in lopped back older wood.

Moving On

Once I get started pruning, it’s sometimes hard to stop. As I looked at his yew shrubs along another part of his house, I suggested paring down the size of that rectangular block of greenery. My brother's yew hedge

Pruning yew is easy. Since it resprouts up and down stems no matter how severely it’s cut, you can do almost anything to it. His large hedge could even be cut down to stumps to begin life anew — quickly, because it has an established root system.

Most important when reducing the size of the hedge, no matter how it’s cut, is to reduce the whole hedge to a size smaller than finally desired. When maintenance trimming a shrub with hedge shears, trimming is generally further out from where the newest shoots began their growth for the season. That’s why hedges grow larger over time, unless they’re periodically lopped back more drastically, which doesn’t leave them looking that good until those cuts are covered by new growth.

And the Mystery Shrub is . . . ?

I don’t feel so at a loss at not being able to identify my brother’s mystery shrub: I sent a photo of it to a few experts, none of whom could identify it.

Shaving and Composting

October 31, 2018/17 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Pests, Soil/by Lee Reich

. . . But My Garden is in Order

“Some men there are who never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in the bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to one who doesn’t shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such a man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before the snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of melancholy ruin and decay.” So wrote Charles Dudley Warner in his wonderful little book (much more than a gardening book) My Summer in a Garden (1898). I gave up shaving a few months ago, but I am putting my garden in order for autumn.

The scene is quite pretty as I look out my upstairs bedroom window upon my garden — my vegetable garden — each morning. Garden view, autumn Weeds have been removed from the paths and the beds, and spent plants have been cleared away. What remains of crops is a bed with some tall stalks of kale that were planted back in spring. Yet another bed is home to various varieties of lettuce interplanted with endive, all of which went in as transplants after an early crop of green beans had been cleared and the bed was weeded, then covered with an inch depth of compost. Also still lush green is a bed previously home to edamame, which was subsequently weeded, composted, and then seeded with turnips and winter radishes back in August.

From my window, the remaining eight beds in the garden present mostly grasses in various states of lushness. The “grass” in this case is oats, sown in any bed no longer needed for vegetables at the end of this season. I had cleared such beds of spent plants and weeds, sprinkled oat seeds (whole “feed oats” from Agway), watered, and then, as with the other beds, covered them with an inch depth of compost. One bed was finished for the season except for six floppy cabbage plants. I staked those plants up tall and out of the way, and then gave the bed the same treatment around the cabbages’ ankles. Cover crop, 3 beds with cabbage

Ready for Spring

That’s it: It all looks fresh, green, and neat — but more than that, what I did is also good for next year’s garden. Cleaning up weeds this year makes for less self-seeding of annual weeds and seeding and establishment of perennial weeds. Cleaning up spent plants takes any pest-ridden plant parts off-site, reducing chances for future pest problems.

Dense growth of oats protects the soil surface from pounding rain so water percolates in rather than skittles off the surface, promoting erosion. Cover crops, 2 beds Below ground, oat roots pull up nutrients that rain and snow might otherwise leach away into the groundwater.

And finally, that inch depth of compost that each bed gets helps support the many beneficial fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes, and other soil microorganisms that make up the soil food web. In so doing, it will provide ALL the nutrition my vegetable plants, even intensively planted vegetables, need until this time next year.

Mr. Warner, I think, would approve. Even my non-shaving; I do trim my beard regularly.

Add Water, Conveniently

A lot of compost is needed to cover all those vegetable beds. For all the beds in my two vegetable gardens, as well as those in my greenhouse, I estimate my annual needs at almost 5 cubic yards per year.

My compost is made from hay I scythe from my small field, kitchen scraps, spent vegetable plants and weeds from my garden, some horse manure in wood shavings, and, for fun, old cotton or woolen clothing, and leather gloves and shoes.

Yes, I’ve read about striking a balance between feedstuffs high in carbon and those high in nitrogen in order to get a compost pile chugging along. As important is good aeration and moisture. Most compost piles that I see suffer from thirst.

A lot of water is required to wet the inner layers of a compost pile, and applying it requires more patience than I have. So I no longer do it manually.

I purchased a small sprinkler which I connected with 1/2” black plastic tubing (the same as I use for drip irrigation mainlines) along with some L connectors to lead the water line from the top center of a pile neatly down to ground level. Water pressure is variable from my well so I also put a pressure reducer, to 15 psi, in the line; a valve needing just one-time adjustment keeps the sprinkler wetting only the top of the pile. A U-shaped metal pin keeps the sprinkler firmly in place in the center of the pile. Compost sprinkler

All that’s needed after adding a batch of material to the pile is to set up the sprinkler, turn on the spigot, and set a timer for about 20 minutes. The droplets cover the pile right to the edges and in a day or two temperatures soar to 140° or more.

Next year at this time, this year’s piles will be ready to do their part in putting my garden neat and in order.

New York Grown Oranges!

October 17, 2018/21 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Yes, A True Citrus

Oranges? In New York, planted outdoors in the ground? Yes, I have them ripening on the branches now. No matter if they ripen thoroughly or not because, although they are true oranges, delicious flavor is not one of their assets. It’s still a plant well worth growing.

The plant is the aptly named “hardy orange,” actually a true citrus species, Citrus trifoliata. (Previously, hardy orange was a citrus relative; botanists recently moved it to the Citrus genus from the closely related Poncirus genus.)
Hardy oranges ripening

Mostly I planted hardy orange for its stems, whose show is at the same time intimidating, interesting, and decorative. Stems of the variety that I grow, Flying Dragon, twist and contort every which way, and then add to the show with large, recurving thorns. Stems and thorns are forest green, even as they age, and remain so all through winter to make the plant especially decorative when leafless. Bare stems of hardy orange

I would have planted Flying Dragon hardy orange just for its stems. But adding to the show, in spring are white flowers — citrus flowers — that are fragrant just like those of oranges and lemons. On my plant, at least, they’re smaller with commensurately less fragrance.

This year, this month, Flying Dragon has presented yet another attractive face. Its leaves are preparing to drop by turning a pinkish crimson. This color, developing for now on leaves towards the ends of the topmost branches contrasts nicely with the still forest green leaves and the few fruits starting to yellow.

The problem with the fruits, gustatorily, is that they’re not very juicy, and they are very tart, somewhat bitter, and seedy. Still, they can be used to add a bit of home-grown citrus flavor to an -ade (Flying Dragonade?), fish, etc.

I Plant A Seed

New hardy orange plants are easy to raise from seed. The most important ingredient, as with other citrus, is not letting the seeds dry out once extracted from the fruit.

With most plants, you don’t get an exact replica of the mother plant in seedlings. Plant a McIntosh apple seed and the resulting tree will not bear McIntosh apples. (Just as you are not a genetic replica of your mother.) It depends on what pollinated the mother tree and how the chromosomes sorted out. Even though peaches are self-pollinating, the offspring of a Redhaven peach won’t bear Redhaven peaches.

Plant a seed of Flying Dragon hardy orange (or some other citrus varieties, in general), and you could get more Flying Dragons, exact replicas of the mother plant. That’s because citrus are among the few plants that exhibit apomixis, that is, seeds within the fruits that develop from only mother plant tissue.

Other plants that also bear apomictic seeds are some species of onion and dandelion. Some coneflowers, apples, and raspberries also bear apomictic seeds, but only if the flowers are pollinated — even though the pollen does not insinuate itself into the apomictic seed’s genetics.

Not all the seeds within a Flying Dragon fruit are apomictic. Hence, not all will grow to become Flying Dragons.

The seedling on right is probably apomictic

Further complicating matters, some seeds can develop into more than one seedling! And some of those seedlings growing from that one seed might be apomictic while others will be run-of-the-mill.

None of these complications interferes with my propagating Flying Dragons from seed. The contorted stems and recurved thorns are so distinctive that it’s easy to tell the Flying Dragons from the others. Apomictic seedlings also are generally more vigorous than sexually-produced seedlings.

Not Everyone’s A Fan

Southerners are not nearly as enamored with hardy orange as I am . The hardiness, the thorns, and the seeds’ enthusiasm to sprout make the plants a threat down there, where the shrubs grow from 8 to 15 feet tall.

Hardy oranges were introduced into the south about 150 years ago, possibly to contain livestock. There, the plants have spread to woodlands, forest edges, and fencerows to shade out native plants. The lack of affection for the plant might be summed up in a quote from a Texas publication stating that hardy orange “does respond well to bulldozing.”

While bemoaning not being able to grow southern magnolia, gardenia, camellia, and crape myrtle this far north, I am thankful for being able to grow hardy orange without any danger.

Wild and Cultivated Pleasures

October 3, 2018/7 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Mythbusting

Before going any further, let me bust a myth that still might be having some traction: Late summer and fall allergies are not caused by goldenrod (Solidago spp.). Field of goldenrod Goldenrod gets the blame for its showy, yellow blossoms during this allergy season. But the true culprit is ragweed, which goes unnoticed because it bears only small, green flowers.

It makes sense that the pollen of a showy flower would not cause allergies. Showy flowers put on their show to attract insect (and, in some cases, bird or bat) pollinators. Wind can’t carry their heavy, sometimes sticky, pollen.

Pollen that causes allergies wafts around in the wind. Wind-pollinated flowers (euphoniously called “anemophilous” flowers) don’t need to attract animal pollinators. Goldenrod in the morning

And Now, Enjoy the Flowers

With that said, I can safely revel in the rich golden yellow with which goldenrod’s flowers are painting sunny hillsides and fields this year. Goldenrod’s beauty comes as no surprise once you realize that it comes from a very good family, the Daisy Family, Asteraceae. Sunflower, black-eyed-Susan, coneflower — and thistles and dandelion — are among its kin.

Confirm goldenrod’s heritage with a magnifier trained on one of its small florets. Flowers in the Daisy Family are made up of one or both of two kinds of florets. Each disk floret is a relatively small, symmetrical tube of fused petals. Petals of the other kind of floret, ray floret, are also fused, but asymmetrically into one long, strap-shaped petal. The head of a sunflower (most varieties) is mostly disc florets circumscribed by prominently-petaled ray florets that create that decorative ring around the head. At the other extreme is a dandelion flower, all of whose florets are ray flowers, resulting in a powderpuff of yellow petals. Most species of goldenrod have flowers like those of sunflower — but you have to look closely. (For more about plant families, see my new book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Lot Better Garden.)

Meadow Reclamation

My meadow — or hayfield, or whatever you want to call it — was once replete with goldenrod. And before that, pale lilac flowers of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulas) blanketed much of the field. And before that, the field was grass, kept that way by the previous landowner’s regular mowing throughout the season. Meadow with monarda

Sadly, for me, goldenrod has lost its prominence in my field, replaced by coarser and more woody plants such as poison ivy, sumac, and wild blackberries. My once-a-year mowing has kept these plants from totally getting control of the landscape. Without mowing, the field would, in time, become forest.

This spring, I decided to try to reclaim the field and, I hope, invite back some goldenrod and wild bergamot. My modus operandi is to mow regularly. In previous years, the wide paths I would mow and maintain mowed through one season would reflect that mowing for at least the following season or two or three. Mostly, it was the grasses, the only plants that can tolerate frequent mowing, that came into prominence.

I expect plants such as goldenrods and wild bergamot will gain footholds beginning next year and increasingly so in years to follow — until, of course, poison ivy and friends start to move in again.

Landscapes aren’t static, and changes come relatively quickly, not always predictably as the changes are seasoned with each year’s and more long term weather and climate patterns.

Wild Aromas, Cultivated Flavors

Wild grapes are also prominent in the wild landscape this year, mostly from the jasmine-like aroma with which they perfume the air. Here in eastern U.S. and Canada, fox grape (Vitis labrusca) is a prominent wild grape. Fox grapes

The variety Concord typifies the flavor and texture of fox grapes. Why “fox?” No one knows for sure, but around 1880, the botanist William Bartram suggested that the epithet was applied to this grape because of the “strong, rancid smell of its ripe fruit, very like the effluvia from the body of a fox.” Others suggested the epithet came about because foxes ate the grapes, or because the leaves resembled fox tracks.

Disease resistance and cold tolerance of fox grapes helped save the French wine industry a century and a half ago, when these grapes were hybridized with the traditional, disease-prone wine grapes (V. vinifera) of Europe. Thousands of hybrids now exist all along the spectrum from vinifera to fox as far as flavor, disease resistance, cold tolerance, and other characteristics.

I’m enjoying the aroma of the wild grapes but most appreciate the flavors of Vanessa, Somerset Seedless, Alden, Edelweiss, and my other cultivated varieties.

Vanessa grapes

In the Wild

August 16, 2018/0 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Row, Row, Row My Boat, and Then!

Paddling down a creek — Black Creek in Ulster County, New York — yesterday evening, I was again awed at Mother Nature’s skillful hand with plants. The narrow channel through high grasses bordered along water’s edge was pretty enough. The visual transition from spiky grasses to the placid water surface was softened by pickerelweeds’ (Pontederia cordata) wider foliage up through which rose stalks of blue flowers. Where the channel broadened, flat, green pads of yellow water lotus (Nelumbo lutea) floated on the surface. Night’s approach closed the blossoms, held above the pads on half-foot high stalks, but the flowers’ buttery yellow petals still managed to peek out.

Soon I came upon the real show, as far as I was concerned: fire engine red blossoms of cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis). Coming upon this flower in the wild is startling. Such a red flower in such shade?

So many shade plants bear white flowers which, after all, are most easily seen in reduced light. Only twice before had I come upon cardinal flower in the wild, and both times the blooming plant was in deep, deep shade; it was a rare treat to see such a lively color in the shade.

Though the stream bank was not in deep shade, the cardinal flower was still a treat. And not just one cardinal flower but groups of them here and there along the way. Cardinal flower Black Creek More than I have ever seen in the wild. (In Chanticleer Garden outside Philadelphia is a wet meadow planted thickly with cardinal flowers.)

Nature’s Hand

Two other landscape vignettes come quickly to mind when I marvel at natural beauty.

The first are the rocky outcroppings in New Hampshire’s White Mountains; placement of these rocks always looks just right. In addition, the flat areas against the rocks and in rock crevices in which leaves have accumulated to rot down into a humus-y soil provide niches for plants. Among the low growing plants are lowbush blueberries and lingonberries.

Lingonberry in White Mountains

Good job at “edible landscaping” Ms. Nature!

The other vignette was (one of many) in the Adirondack Mountains. Picture a clump of trees and a large boulder. Now picture those trees on top of the boulder, their roots wrapping around and down the bare boulder until finally reaching the ground on which the boulder sat. A scene both pretty and amazing. Tree roots and rock

But My Fruits and Vegetables are Better(?)

Mother Nature might have it in the landscape design department; not when it comes to growing fruits and vegetables though. There may be some disagreement here: I contend that garden-grown stuff generally tastes better. And for a number of obvious reasons.

In the garden, most of what we grow are named varieties, derived from clones or strains that have been selected from among wild plants, or have been bred. Named varieties generally are less bitter, sweeter, and/or more tender. Perhaps also high-yielding and pest-resistant.

In some cases, “cultivated” plants offer too much of a good thing. Humans long sought to sink their teeth into the sweetest sweet corn, harvesting ears at their peak of perfection and then whisking them into already boiling water to quickly stop the enzymatic conversion of sugars to starches. In the 1950s, a “supersweet” gene was discovered that quadrupled the sugar content of sweet corn — too sweet for me and and lacking the richness of an old-fashioned sweet corn variety such as Golden Bantam.

A nutritional case can be made against cultivated varieties of plants. Studies by the US Department of Agriculture have shown modern fruits and vegetables to be lower in nutrients than those tested 50 or so years ago. Have we excessively mined our soils of minerals? No. Breeding for bulk, along with pushing plant growth along with plenty of water and nitrogen fertilizer, has diluted the goodness in plants.

In Eating on the Wild Side Jo Robinson contends that breeding for sweeter and less bitter plants inadvertently selects for plants lower in many nutrients and phytochemicals.

All this makes a good case for growing more “old-fashioned” varieties, such as heirloom tomatoes and paying closer attention to how plants are fed. (Compost is all my vegetables get.) And perhaps focussing more on what food really tastes like. Does Sugarbuns supersweet really taste like corn. Or a candy bar?

And eat some wild things. Purslane is abundant and, to some (not me) tasty now. As is pigweed, despite its name, a delicious cooked “green.” I mix it in with kale and chard for a mix of cultivated and wild on the dinner plate.

Playing Around With Stems

May 31, 2018/7 Comments/in Design, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Top Doggery

My pear trees look as if a giant spider went on a drunken frolic among the branches. Rather than fine silk spun in an orderly web, strings run vertically from branch to branch and branch to ground. Yet there is method in this madness. Mine.

As I spell out in my new book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, plants produce a natural hormone, called auxin, at the tips of their stems or at high points along a downward curving stems. This hormone suppresses growth of side branches along the stem, allowing growth from a bud at the stem tip or high point be the “top dog,” that is, the most vigorous shoot.

Within any plant a push and pull goes on between fruiting an stem growth. Both require energy, which the plant has to apportion between the two. The more vigorously growing a stem, the less fruitful it is.

All this talk of hormones and inherent stem vigor is more than academic; it can translate into delicious fruits.

Pear trees tend to grow very vigorously, especially in their youth, with many vertically oriented branches. A certain amount of stem growth is, of course, desirable; leaves are needed for harvesting sunlight for energy and stems are needed on which to hang fruit.

Tied branches in British orchard

But pear trees, especially in the youth, tend to put too much of their energies, too much for me, at least, into stem growth. The result is that they can take long time to settle down and begin bearing fruit.

Hence, the strings. I can change my pear trees’ habits by merely tying down branches, reducing the effect of that auxin so that growth is more uniform along a length of the stem. And, as important, slowing growth nudges the energy balance in the direction of fruiting.

Branch bending

The one branch on each young tree that I do not tie down is the main vertical stem, which is the still developing trunk off which grow the main side branches. I want this stem to keep growing upward. Also, I have to be careful not to create a downward arch when tying down any stem. You know why: a very vigorous shoot pops up from the high point in that arch.

More Fruit or More Growth?

Branch bending is not only for coaxing a tree into fruiting. On young branches, it creates a wide angle between a branch and the developing trunk. Wide angles here have been shown to result in good anchorage, sturdy side branches that can carry a weight of fruit.

Suppressing the vigor of side branches also ensures that they won’t compete with the developing trunk, which needs to be top dog.

And using string to play around with plant hormones isn’t needed on every fruit tree. At the other extreme from pear in its growth and fruiting habits is peach. Peach is naturally very fecund, and becomes naturally so at a very young age.

One reason for peach’s fecundity is that it bears all its flowers and fruits along stems that grew the previous season. Every year new stems grow that bear flowers and fruits.

Beauty, Fruit, and Fun

All this concern with auxin, vigor, and fruiting comes most prominently into play with espalier, which is the training of a tree to an orderly, often two dimensional form. The tracery of the branches themselves adds to the decorative value of the plant. Pear espalier

Fruiting espaliers, besides being decorative, produce very high quality fruit. Pruning and branch bending maintain a careful balance between yield and stem growth, and the form of the plant allows leaves and fruits to bathe in sunlight and air.

Bedding Down

May 24, 2018/6 Comments/in Design, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Flat Beds

My vegetable garden is in beds. Your vegetable garden is in beds. Seems like just about everybody plants in beds these days. And with good reason. Beds make more efficient use of garden space. Soil compaction is avoided because planting, weeding, pruning, and harvesting can be done with feet in the paths. And the shapes of the beds can help make even a vegetable garden look prettier, especially with decorative plants edging the beds.

Raised beds are also one way to grow happy plants in otherwise poorly drained ground, or in ground that has been contaminated by lead or arsenic. Such contamination is likely to occur from past use of leaded gasoline near roadways, from old paint near buildings, and from residual pesticides in sites that were once orchards.

My vegetable garden is laid out in 3-foot-wide beds with 18-inch-wide paths between them that feed into one 5-foot-wide path down the center of the garden. Many gardeners, when considering planting in beds, equate that with RAISED beds. My vegetable beds are not intended to be raised even a hair above the paths. My garden's beds

When I began my garden, I laid out the beds and covered them with compost, and then laid wood chips from local arborists in the paths. The difference in appearance of the two materials makes it easy to see where to walk and where not to walk. (For most people, that is. A well-known food writer once visited my garden. As I walked up a path, he tromped along next to me — right up the middle of the bed adjacent to the path! — until I let out a scream that brought him to an abrupt stop. Some lush plants in the bed were admittedly flopping onto the path, obscuring the difference between walking and planting areas.)

Raised Beds

Soil in raised beds is usually held there with boards or other edging. That edging material might itself be decorative: lumber, bricks, roof tiles, or, in a “colonial” garden, logs. Garden beds

Ideally, any wooden edging is rot resistant. Locust or redwood would be my top choices, but hard to get. “Manufactured” lumber, such as Trex, is another possibility. Then again, pine or spruce boards are readily available, relatively inexpensive, and should last quite a few years.

A six-inch-high bed provides enough well-drained root depth for pretty much all vegetable plants.

One disadvantage to raised beds is that you have get soil to fill them up. That soil could, of course, come from what will be the paths. Metal edged raised beds If the area is wet, though, taking soil from paths is going to lower them, making them that much wetter.

Most people bring in soil for raised beds, and, in the interest of having the best possible garden, make that “soil” compost. Not a good idea. For one thing, compost is mostly “organic matter,” meaning compounds of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. With time, as organic matter decomposes to nourish soil microorganisms and plants, it disappears, literally, becoming carbon dioxide and water. So a raised bed filled with compost will eventually shrink down to almost nothing.

The thing to do is to fill beds almost to their brims with any any well-drained soil. Fertility is not important; that will come from the one to two inches of compost with which the soil is topped. Replenishing the compost each year will provide all the nutrition plants need for that year; no additional fertilizer is necessary. And no need to dig or rototill the compost into the ground.

One more thing about raised beds: The improved drainage also means that they dry out faster, so benefit from irrigation.

Table-like Beds, Not

If you were to walk into my garden, you might notice that my planting beds are indeed a bit higher than the paths. This was not deliberate.

Each year for many years I’ve topped all my beds and an inch or two of compost. Dog Sammy and garden beds Paths get replenished with wood chips only if they start to get weedy or bare soil starts peeking through.

If it weren’t for decomposition, those yearly additions of compost would have made each bed into a “table” more than three feet high. It hasn’t. Q.E.D.

Happy Birthday Ficus

March 1, 2018/0 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

Another Year, Another Pruning and Re-potting

I’d like to say it was the birthday of my baby ficus except I don’t know when it was actually born. And since it was propagated by a cutting, not by me, and not from a seed, I’m not sure what “born” would actually mean. No matter, I’m having its biannual celebration marking its age and its growth.

Just for reference, baby ficus is a weeping fig tree (Ficus benjamina), a tree that with age and tropical growing conditions rapidly soars to similar majestic proportions as our sugar maples. That is, if unrestrained in its development.

Baby ficus (FIGH-kus) began life here as one of three small plants rooted together in a 3 inch pot and purchased from a discount store. (Weeping figs are common houseplants because of their beauty and ability to tolerate dry air and low light indoors.) Eight years later, it’s about 4 inches tall with a wizened trunk and side branches that belie its youth. Bonsai, Ficus, at 8 years Moss carpeting the soil beneath it and creeping up the trunk complete the picture. I’ve made and am making baby ficus into a bonsai.

The biannual celebration begins with my clipping all the leaves from the plant. Baby ficus’ diminutive proportions keep this job from being tedious. Lear pruning Clipping the leaves accomplishes two goals. First, plants lose water through their leaves so removing leaves reduces water loss (important in consideration of the next celebratory step).

And second, clipping the leaves reduces the size of leaves in the next flush of growth, keeping the in proportion to the size of the plant. Leaves on an unrestrained weeping fig grow anywhere from 2 to 5 inches long, which would look top heavy on a plant 4 inches tall.

The next step is to tip the plant out of its pot so I can get to work on its roots. The pot is only an inch deep and 4 inches long by 3 inches wide, so obviously can’t hold much soil. Bonsai root pruning Baby ficus gets all water and its nourishment from this amount of soil. Within 6 months or so, roots thoroughly fill the pot of soil and have extracted much of the nourishment contained within.

So the roots need new soil to explore, and space has to be made for that new soil. That space is made by cutting back the roots. (Less roots means less water up into the plant, which is why I began by reducing water loss by clipping off all the leaves). I tease old soil out from between the roots and with a scissors shear some of them back.

Next, I put new potting mix into the bottom of the pot, just enough so the plant can sit at the same height as it did previously. Any space near the edges of the pot gets soil packed in place with a blunt stick. Throughout this repotting, I manage to preserve more or less intact the moss growing at the base of the plant.

Now the plant needs its stems pruned. After all, I don’t want the plant growing larger each year, just more decorative as the trunk and stems thicken and age. Pruning involves some melding of art and science. As far as art, I’m aiming for the look of a mature, picturesque tree. Bonsai stem pruning As far as science, I shorten stems where I want branching, usually just below the cut. Where I don’t want branching but want to decongest stems, I remove a stem or stems right to their base. I also remove any broken, dead, or crossing branches unless, of course, leaving them would be picturesque.

Finally, a thorough watering settles the plant into its refurbished home. Until new leaves unfold and new roots begin to explore new ground, water needs for baby ficus are minimal.

Oh, one more step. I stand back and take an admiringly look at baby ficus in its eighth year. Bonsai ready for another year

Life Goes On

January 3, 2018/14 Comments/in Design, Fruit/by Lee Reich

The dark green wreath was tied with red ribbons and gliding towards me, in its progress stirring up snowflakes gently floating out of the grey sky. No, the wreath was not hanging from a horse-drawn sled, but was plowing through the frigid air affixed to the chrome grille of a gleaming white Cadillac! Here we are in the twenty-first century, still infusing a breath of life into our winters with cut evergreen boughs, just as did the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Jews, Christians, and Druids.

Whether for Christmas, for the ancient winter festival of Saturnalia, or for any other tradition, a wreath celebrates the continuity of life through winter. Evergreens are favorite wreath materials because their year long green flaunts winters’ apparently lifeless cold.

A few evergreen boughs tied together make a doorway more inviting or a room more cozy in winter, but a bona fide wreath creates something special. And the actual making of a wreath can be an end in itself this time of year. Wreath

Plenty of native and cultivated plants, many probably growing right in your backyard, could supply evergreen leaves for wreaths. Depending on the weather and the variety, needles of some junipers might still look bright green, although many turn purplish in the cold. Norway spruce always looks rich green, as do, with a softer look, the long, slender needles of white pine. With flattened sprays of scale-like leaves, arborvitae is another good choice, surely one of the best choices for a winter wreath when you translate its name to “tree of life.”

Don’t forget broadleaf evergreens also. Mahonia, holly, leucothoe, rhododendron, boxwood, and English ivy are suitable broad-leaf evergreens for a wreath. Indoors, none of the broadleaf evergreens will hold their leaves in a wreath as long as the needle-leaved evergreens.

To get a little wilder — more in keeping with the raucous Saturnalia celebrated in ancient Rome — use some evergreens with splotches or borders of yellow on them. No evergreen has all yellow leaves, but Gold Star and Kuriwao Sunburst junipers, for example, have yellow-tipped leaves. Midas Touch and Variegata are broadleaved evergreens, varieties of Japanese holly, with spots or splotches of yellow on their otherwise green leaves.

Okay, let’s calm down and get to some practical matters. Any wreath needs a support on which to mount the branches. That support could be a purchased styrofoam “doughnut” or one you make yourself from coat hangars. For an “organic” frame, readily available from the wild or backyard pruning, grape vines come to mind. Vines of bittersweet or virginia creeper would also work. Before grabbing at any wild vine, make sure you can identify and avoid poison ivy — it can cause rashes even this time of year.

Wrap any of these vines into a doughnut shape, weaving it into itself and weaving in new lengths as you go around and around. Wreath materials A few loops of string or thin wire can unobtrusively firm everything in place.

Next, wire, glue or tuck small bunches of evergreens onto the base, with all the bunches facing the same direction. Be generous so as to create a harmonious backdrop for the colorful stuff that comes next.

A walk in the woods or around your yard should turn up some colorful fruits, even this time of year. Still abundant are wild rose hips, bittersweet, winterberry, and barberry. Other seed pods are also good as ornaments. Wreath, almost finished Besides the obvious — pine cones — also consider the flattened silvery pods of silver dollar plant, the wiry ones of love-in-a-mist, and the shaggy manes of clematis. If yet more ornamentation is wanted, there’s always chains of cranberries or popcorn strung together.

When hints of spring are in the air and you tire of your wreath, just compost it or throw it in the woods (if made from all organic materials). For now, though, deck the halls.

Note: The “comments” part of these blog posts has been erratically functional. It’s fixed! So fire away. Or just send a comment to test that it’s now working. Thanks.

Autumn’s Leaves

December 15, 2017/2 Comments/in Design, Planning/by Lee Reich

Wherefrom the Colors?

Autumn is a season when New York’s Hudson Valley, and much of the Northeast, unfolds in all its glory. Not this autumn, though. What’s going on in the leaves this year? Is there anything I can do about it?.

Chlorophyll is what makes leaves green, but hidden behind that green, all season long, are some of autumn’s colors. Chlorophyll must be continually synthesized for a leaf to stay green. The shorter days and lowering sun of waning summer are what trigger leaves to stop producing chlorophyll and let some of the other colors come to the fore.

Yellows and oranges, no longer masked by chlorophyll green, come from carotenoids, which help chlorophyll do its job of harvesting sunlight to convert into plant energy. Thank carotenoids for the warm, yellow glow they give to gingko, aspen, hickory, and birch leaves.

Gingko

Tannins are another pigment, actually metabolic wastes, that all summer are hidden by chlorophyll. Their contribution to the fall palette are the season’s subdued browns, notable in some oaks and enriching the yellow of beeches.

Because leaves harbor carotenoids and tannins all summer long, nothing particular about autumn weather should either intensify or subdue their autumn showing. I’m blaming this autumn’s poor show on the season’s extended warm weather. It was slow to arrest chlorophyll production and induce leaf drop. A couple of hard freezes brought the whole works to a screeching halt, so instead of showy yellow leaves, my witchhazel’s stems are now “adorned” with wrinkled, green leaves frozen in place. Other trees and shrubs suffered a similar fate, and their frozen, green leaves are dropping without any fanfare.

Autumn color also spills out reds and purples, most evident in red maples and some sugar maples, scarlet oak, sourwood, blueberry, and winged euonymus. Those reds and purples come from anthocyanins, yet another pigment. Except for trees like Purple Fountain beech and Royal Purple smokebush, whose leaves unfold dusky red right from the get go in spring and remain so all season long, in most leaves anthocyanins do not begin to develop until autumn.

Sugar maple

Anthocyanin formation requires sugars, which accumulate best with a combination of warm, sunny days to maximize photosynthesis, and cool, but not frigid, nights to minimize nighttime burning up of accumulated sugars. A cloudy, rainy autumn means less red because less anthocyanin is formed, and any that does form is diluted. Warm nights, such as characterized much of autumn, reduce anthocyanins by burning up much of each day’s sugar production. The result: Less reds and purples, as evidenced by the blah color of this year’s blueberries in my garden and maples in the forests.

Can We Make the Color Better?

Is there anything we can do about the autumn show?

Here in the garden, my role in the autumn show is to plant trees genetically programmed for good autumn color. Colorful trees and shrubs include goldenrain tree, hickory, ironwood, and black tupelo. Certain varieties within each species might pack a bigger wow than the others. Hence the spicebush variety Rubra, brick red in fall, or Wright Brothers sugar maple, whose leaves become a mottling of gold, pink, orange, and scarlet. Other especially colorful varieties include Autumn Flame and October Glory red maple, Commemoration and Legacy sugar maple, Autumn Gold and President gingko, and September Beauty Chinese sumac.

Japanese maple

Despite this autumn’s weather, fothergilla and Japanese stewartia both managed to look as flamboyant this year as in others. If you believe that, going forward, autumn weather is going to bring on less spectacular color, choose varieties that originated from more southerly latitudes.

Fothergilla

Stewartia

And if warmer autumns are going to be one effect of global warming, we can help the autumn show beyond our gardens, in the forests, by traveling less or more efficiently, using less plastic and other petrochemicals, eating more locally grown food and less farmed meat, investing in energy-efficient appliances and renewable energy, etc. (For more, see https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/stopglobalwarming.php.)

Back in the garden, my other role in ratcheting up the reds and purples is to make sure that leaves bask in light. I plant a tree where light is adequate (for that species) and, as necessary, prune so that branches don’t shade each other. Street lights don’t count as light, and actually have a negative effect, disrupting the signal that days are getting shorter and it’s time to slow chlorophyll production.

Lee’s New Book!!

Knowing something about how plants work can make gardening more interesting as well as make the landscape prettier and vegetable gardens more productive. And that’s the thrust of my upcoming book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, to be published in early spring of 2018 but available for pre-order through Amazon or, signed, from me.