Design – Page 5 – Lee Reich

PROXIMAL THOUGHTS, PROXIMAL ACTION

August 25, 2016/4 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Planning, Tools, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Easy Access Water

I am reminded today of the importance — in a home garden — of proximity. Proximity of the garden to a door or, even better, a kitchen door. Proximity of the compost pile to a door, to the garden, and, if bulky materials such as manure or wood chips are hauled in, to a driveway. And, the spur for today’s rambling, proximity of the garden to water spigots. Trench for water hydrant
   The saying that “April showers bring May flowers” notwithstanding, supplemental water is usually critical in my garden in April. Just a few days of sunny, balmy weather is enough to dry out the surface of the ground, just beneath which lie in waiting, for moisture, my newly sown seeds. Or recent transplants, whose roots have yet to venture out and down into the ground.
   Once roots from sprouting seeds and transplants start growing in earnest, they’ll encounter plenty of residual moisture still sitting in the soil from winter’s rain and snow. Until then, I either have to carry watering cans (two cans at two gallons each) back and forth from the frost-free spigot against my house to the garden, or haul around hoses. The cans are top of the line Haw’s galvanized with good balance; even so, hauling water can get tedious, and the tendency to skimp a little on watering is unavoidable.
   Fifteen years ago I installed a frost-free outdoor hydrant near my secondary vegetable garden. What a luxury! Problem is that to get water to the main vegetable garden I have to unwind a hose and thread it through the garden gate. And then, if temperatures drop below freezing at night, common in April, nothing can be done till ice in the hose has defrosted. Again, watering is too often inadequate because I’m avoiding all this hassle.
   (Hot temperatures, dry weather, and plants feverishly sucking moisture out of the soil present no problem during most of the growing season — now, for instance. A few times each day, an inexpensive timer automatically opens a valve to let water flow through tubes to each vegetable bed and then out specially designed emitters to drip water into the ground at about the rate at which plants are drinking it up. But this automated, drip irrigation system can be damaged if put into service when temperatures drop below freezing.) My new hydrant
   So today I’m digging tenches and holes for two new, frost-free hydrants to bring the source of water right next to the main vegetable garden and to my compost bins. In the future, I’ll have no excuse to skimp on watering.

Free “Fertilizer”

Too may gardeners shove their gardens in a far corner of their property, as if the garden was an eyesore. (Which it often is.) I suggest locating the garden as close to the house as possible, given constraints of sunlight; six or more hours of summer sun, daily, is ideal. And make it ornamental, with fencing, a nice gate, and shrubs and flowers around and in it. Keeping it weeded also helps, as far as appearance and productivity.
There’s an old saying that “The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.” Make it so that shadow conveniently falls on not only the plants but also spigots and compost piles.

Celeriac, What’s Up?

Insufficient water in April could not be blamed for the poor showing of my celeriac plants. They weren’t even in the ground until early May, after the drip irrigation was up and running.
Celeriac is a nice addition to the variety of root crops that can be left in the garden until late into fall and then stored for the winter under cool, moist conditions. The flavor, which comes from the swollen root (actually a hypocotyl, which is the portion of the plant above the roots and below the stem), is akin to celery, but smoother. It’s a botanical variety of celery.

Celeriac in old home

Last year, the first time in years that I grew celeriac, plants were stunted with nothing to harvest. Last year, I set the plants in a narrow bed on the west edge of the garden next to a full bed of tall corn. I blamed my failure on shade.
This year celeriac got a sunnier spot. Still, the plants are puny. Some of the plants share the bed with kale which has spread its large leaves to create more shade than expected. Celeriac, according to reputable sources, allegedly tolerates a bit of shade.

Celeriac in new home

My plan is to slide a trowel into the ground beneath some of the puniest plants, lift the plants out of the soil, and plop them into more spacious, sunny environs.
Next year I’ll pay even closer attention to celeriac and expect a better harvest. (Then again, this season’s plants may be gathering energy, readying themselves to swell their hypocotyls as autumn draws near.) All part of next year’s even better vegetable garden, to which my new frost-free hydrant will be a serious contributor.

FLOWERS, ONE VERY, VERY SPECIAL

March 24, 2016/3 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

My Quest, Fulfilled

    For thirty years, I’ve longed to catch at least a glimpse of Himalayan poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia) in blossom; finally, yesterday, I achieved that goal. I wish I could say that I braved high seas to get to India, then traipsed across increasingly mountainous plains, and finally clawed my way up some jagged peak before coming face to face with the blossom. No, I was in Philadelphia, at the the Philadelphia Flower Show, when I remembered that nearby Longwood Gardens puts on a show of Himalayan poppies each year in early March. All that was needed was to brave traffic for the one hour drive (40 minutes without traffic) over to Longwood.
   It was thirty years ago that expert plantsman and orchid hunter Norman Kellar told me of his admiring the blue poppy’s sky blue blossoms, both in reality and in reflection, from across a pond in England. The flowers, he said, are the purest blue of any flower. Did Longwood’s show meet up to my thirty year buildup? Yes. The petals, delicate as tissue paper, are a sky blue, the bluest I’ve seen in any flower. The center of each nodding blossom is lighted by a bottlebrush of orange stamens.
   So why haven’t I, and why didn’t Norman, just plant Himalayan poppy to enjoy in our own backyards? The plant thrives — no, survives — only where summers remain cool. Above 70°F, the plant can’t photosynthesize, so it starves. I’ve tried growing blue poppy in the past. Each time it grew fine until July’s summer heat caused it to collapse, dead.
   Longwood’s plants avoid heat by starting life in Alaska, where the plant thrives. Young plants are shipped in from Alaska in the fall and kept dormant in cold storage. Brought into Longwood’s cool (50-60°F) conservatory in January, they slowly awaken and, finally, blossom in March.
   My plan is to sow seeds in potting soil in a seed flat in late summer, then water and chill the flat in a refrigerator for a few weeks. (Some seeds need that chilling to break their dormancy or speed germination. Whether or not blue poppy needs it, a few weeks of cool temperatures will do no harm.) By early fall, the seedlings should be up and growing, which they can do outdoors and then, if needed, in the greenhouse. When cold temperatures and low light slow the plants into dormancy, I’ll store the pots at a cool location in my basement.
   Finally, in January, I’ll move the plants to a sunny window to begin growth. That time of year, even sunny windows don’t get too hot. Come March, with luck, a green thumb, and clicking my heels together three times, the sky blue blossoms will be staring at me — or out the window.
   My first sighting of “our” bluebird was a week ago. Next year, looking at blue poppy plants blossoming at a window and bluebird outside the window would be a very nice prelude to spring.

Three Perennial Treats

    Flowers have never been a focus of my gardens, and less so as each year goes by and I pay more attention to more enduring elements of my yard, such as fences, arbors, hedges, trees, and walls. Still, some flowers, such as the blue poppy, are worth the effort.
   In years past, seed flat upon seed flat of all kinds of flowers would occupy growing space. This year: Just one flat of perennials, that one flat with four mini-furrows, one for dianthus, one for cardinal flower, one for foxglove, and one for purple coneflower. Each of those mini-furrows will yield enough seedlings, to be carefully separated then planted in individual cells of potting soil to grow into plants, for transplanting, for a nice show this summer and beyond.
   The main attraction of the dianthus, for me, is its fragrance. From descriptions, the Riesen Giant Superb Mix Dianthus I just sowed seems very similar to the Dianthus caryophyllus that I grow in the greenhouse except, in contract to its greenhouse cousin, this dianthus is allegedly cold-hardy outdoors in Zone 5. (I have the feeling that both dianthus’s may be the same; the “giant” and “superb” in the name hooked me.)

Cardinal flower

Cardinal flower is perennial, but not a long-lived one. It thrives in wet areas and, in congenial locations such as, I hope, here, will self-sow. This flower first caught my attention when its spike of fire engine red blossoms stared out at me from deep, deep shade. Deep shade is not home to many colorful flowers.
With spikes of pastel-colored blossoms, foxgloves have a charm evocative of blowsy cottage gardens. They also are only weakly perennial; but they self-sow readily. Their popping up willy-nilly around any garden from self-sown seeds adds to their blowsy effect.

Foxglove

One downside to foxgloves is that flowers all line up only on one side of the flower spike, facing the sun. Except for the Excelsior series of foxgloves, which is what I have sown this year. It will be interesting to see how thoroughly the blossoms embrace the spikes and then how future years’ blossoms, from self-sown seedlings, display themselves, especially since they’ll be mating with run-of-the-mill foxgloves already growing here.
Nothing special about coneflowers. They’re native, easy to grow, and common. They’re also pretty.

Back to Fruit

Enough with the frills! Back to pruning kiwifruit and grape vines, blueberry, gooseberry, and currant bushes, and the plum, pawpaw, mulberry, a pear trees. They are pretty, too, and give me fruit.
Fruit bowl with fig, grape, persimmon, nashi

THE UGLY, THE TASTY, & THE BEAUTIFUL

November 25, 2015/7 Comments/in Design, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Close Your Eyes, If Necessary

“A crabby looking, brownish green truncated little spheroid of unsympathetic appearance.” That’s how a British writer of almost 75 years ago described one of my favorite fruits, medlar (Mespilus germanica). True, the fruit is no beauty to some eyes. To me, the fruit has an authentic, old-fashioned, unvarnished look to it, like that of a small, russeted apple whose calyx end (opposite the stem) is flared open.

Medlars, ready for harvest

   Medlar is truly an old-fashioned fruit, whose popularity peaked in the Middle Ages. Chaucer mentioned it, indecorously referring to it as “open arse.” Even Shakespeare got his digs in, more discretely call it “open et cetera.”
   This past season was a good season for fruits, including medlar. Yesterday, I harvested the crop from the leafless tree. But no, I couldn’t yet sink my teeth into one. Besides its odd appearance, medlar has one more quirk: The fruit needs to be bletted before being eaten. During the bletting process, at cool room temperatures for a couple of weeks, the white, rock-hard interior of the fruit turns to brown mush. A delectable brown mush, much like a very rich applesauce with wine-y overtones.
   Past writers have also gotten their digs in mocking the required bletting, as if it was akin to rotting. But banana, avocado, and European pears also require post-harvest softening before they are ready to eat. Admittedly, not softening AND browning, which might look like rot, but actually, with medlar, indicates an increase in sweetness and a decrease in acids and tannins. British wine connoisseur George Saintsbury considered medlar the ideal fruit to accompany wine; D. H. Lawrence considered medlars “wineskins of brown morbidity.”
   I like the fruit and look forward to drawing out the season by refrigerating portions to delay bletting.

Now Open Your Eyes

    Whether or not the fruit is considered ugly and uncouth, the medlar plant has much to recommend it. It’s the perfect multi-use tree for a small yard.
   Where space is limited, no need to choose between whether to plant an ornamental or a fruit tree, because medlar is both. The elbowed contortions of the branches, more evident now that the plant has dropped its leaves, lend an air of rusticity. Come spring, white blossoms, each a couple of inches across and every bit as showy as a wild rose, unfold after the plant has pushed out a few inches of growth. A whorl of dark green leaves behind each flower contrasts and frames the blossom.
   Each of those blossoms will generally morph into a fruit. No additional tree is needed for pollination — another plus for small yards.
   And this is a small tree, so fits well into a small yard. My tree, in rich soil and over ten years old, is only about eight feet high and wide.
   (For more on the history, cultivation, and varieties of medlar, see the chapter on this fruit in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden).

More Eye Candy

    As I walked back to my medlar tree, harvest basket in hand, other fruit plants, my blueberry bushes, caught my attention, these solely for their beauty. Blueberries offer some kind of “eye candy” in every season, with sprays of urn-shaped, white flowers in spring and slightly bluish, green leaves that look spry all season long.
   Autumn is blueberry’s showiest season, when the leaves usually come alive with a crimson color that rivals that of burning bush, a shrub grown solely for its autumn show. This month, the blueberry bushes look finer than they ever have, with some of each bush sporting golden yellow leaves, some orange leaves, and some crimson leaves.
   I’m going to attribute this year’s blueberry spectacular to the weather. Leaves’ crimson color is due to anthocyanins, which need sugars to develop. Warm, sunny days foster photosynthesis and sugar production but the relatively warm night’s of this season burn up those sugars. Carotenoids are responsible for the oranges and yellows of leaves. They’re always present, and my theory is that, with warm nights, less anthocyanin was present to mask them.
   Even after leaf drop, blueberries have something to offer, visually, when cold weather turns the stems red (perhaps less this year because of less anthocyanins?). This winter, I’ll enjoy whatever the plants have to offer, along with last season’s berries, now in the freezer.

SWEET ANNIE AND SWEET GRAPES

November 11, 2015/2 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Annie Helps the World

    Sweet Annie (Artemisia annua): such an unassuming name. Likewise for the plant itself, with its ferny, but not distinctive, foliage, and flowers not worth a second look. You’d hardly peg this plant as a player in global health and global warming.
   But look within the leaves and you find artemisin, a biologically active compound that has contributed to Sweet Annie’s figuring into Chinese herbal medicine for the past 2,000 years. Artemisin was isolated from the plant in the 1970s by Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, for which she shared a Nobel Prize. Sweet Annie’s uses in Chinese medicine — qinghao in Chinese — run from treating asthma to skin diseases to stomach pain to rheumatism to . . . but not all such claims have been experimentally verified (and Sweet Annie could have bad side effects).
   The most widespread and thoroughly documented use of Sweet Annie is, in combination with other drugs, in the treatment of malaria, a disease responsible for over a half a million deaths per year. One roadblock to the more widespread use of artemisin is its cost.
   Which brings us to global warming, or, more specifically, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, which is one cause for global warming. Carbon dioxide, for all its bad press, is one ingredient in the recipe for photosynthesis. The carbon in carbon dioxide is what becomes the organic carbon in a plant’s cellulose, starches, sugars, fats, proteins, and other essential building blocks that store energy and build a plant’s physical structure. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could translate into greater growth, although increased temperatures from global warming could have the opposite effect.
   In the case of Sweet Annie, research by the USDA indicates that a more carbon dioxide rich future would lead to more growth, which translates to greater yields of Sweet Annie and more artemisin for treating malaria.

Annie, for Sweet Aroma

My two Sweet Annie plants aren’t destined for drug production. They’re for olfactory pleasure. Tied into bundles and hung in the mudroom alongside the front door, the bundle will effuse its camphor-sweet aroma each time a breeze or a person brushes past.

Annie’s a Weed?!

    Sweet Annie is a self-seeding annual that, like some other members of the wormwood family, can become weedy. Which makes it perhaps unwise that I planted it where I did.
   Garden areas closest to my front, back, and side doors are the ones that get most care and that I look at the most; these considerations guide my plantings, both for aesthetics and for pragmatism. Things get wilder as you move further from the house, the most dramatic example of which is the meadow that begins where the lawn ends.
   So it was perhaps foolish to plant Sweet Annie, which is not much to look at and could become weedy, in the bed next to my terrace. Having the fragrant leaves close by was one rationale. But for some reason, that one bed is cared for the least, perhaps because or perhaps consequently it has become a dumping ground for miscellaneous plants for which there are no obvious homes.
   That bed is also home to chamomile. Again, one rationale was to have it nearby so I could conveniently pluck flower heads for tea — which I do. But really, no other home presented itself. I planted chamomile there many years ago and got scared of its seeding all over the place. With diligence, I was able to get rid of it — until this year, when I replanted it. I’ve been warned (by myself).
   I even planted mint in that bed, again, to have it handy for tea, but knowing how it could, and once did, knit the soil, just beneath the surface, with its lacework of stolons from which sprouts new stems. I did have the foresight, this time, to contain the roots by planting the mint into a chimney flue sunk into the ground. Constant attention will be needed to prevent the stems from flopping down over the sides of the flue to root — which they do very easily — where they touch soil.
   From today’s perspective, a handy little garden overflowing with sweet aromas is appealing. I’ll see how I feel next year at this time.

Sweet Ice Grapes

Hanging from vines on the arbor over the terrace are remnants of the season’s grapes and the white paper bags that protected some of the bunches. I found a few bags still with unharvested clusters, frozen but still intact. “Ice grapes,” the precursor to “ice wine,” except that these are eating grapes. They were smooth, sweet, and flavorful.

Grapes, frozen but delicious

I Find Common Ground, and More, in Maine

October 14, 2015/3 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Uncategorized/by Lee Reich

My Favorite Country Faire

   Two dogs, one cat, six ducks, and one chicken are trusted to the care of friends; sourdough starter is re-fed and chilled; plants are on their own. It’s hard to leave the farmden. But this trip — to Maine — is well worth it.
   Walking through the entrance gate to the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine, my senses are overloaded with color and fragrance. Along either side of the entrance path are boxes piled high with bright orange carrots, spilling over with the blue green leaves of kale, or packed full with yellow or red beets. Also flowers, herbs, and cheeses. Pervasive is the resiny fragrance of sweet Annie (Artemesia annua), which for some reason seems to be perennially the signature herb of the fair. Buckets are filled with stems for sale; knapsacks sprout bunches of purchased sweet Annie from their zippered pockets; and girls and women sport woven sweet Annie headdresses. From the shade of tents on either side of the walkway, Maine’s myriad organic farmers are hawking their wares.
   Sweet Annie isn’t the only fragrant herb at the fair. In the tent devoted to some of Maine’s political groups, buds of marijuana — medical marijuana — are available for olfactory sampling.
   Central to the Common Ground Fair, like all country fairs, are agriculture and rural skills. A team of oxen strain under the weight of logs they are pulling. Border collies bead down on sheep, demonstrating their herding skills and the training skills of their owners. A bearded, young man swings an adze as the log on which he is standing takes on a square cross-section. Another bearded man helps a young boy pull a bow back and forth until smoke curls up from the round, maple peg rubbing the round notch in a maple board: fire-making without matches.
   In other tents, these with closed, darkened flaps, someone standing near a flap holds the attention of a seated crowd in the darkened interior. No, not a cult gathering. Throughout each of the three fair days, workshops are offered in such diverse topics as “Farm-Raised Kids on an Organic Farm in Maine,” “Backyard Grain Growing,” “Advanced Seed Saving,” “Growing Grass-fed Vegetables,” and “Weedless Gardening.” (The last was one of the three workshops I held at the fair.)

Old-Fashioned Fun

    Common Ground Fair is “retro,” an improvement on country and county fairs, in doing less. No amplified voices of barkers try to woo you in to win a stuffed gorilla. In fact, a three-year-old boy trying to pound an oversize sledge hammer onto a pad as a test of strength, with a lot of help from his mom, was the only strength or skill test I saw — and no prizes offered.
   No rides either. No fun? Given the happy whoops of the slew of children running up a grassy slope with flattened cardboard boxes, then jumping on them with a running start to slide down, I’s say they were having fun.
   Just about everything at the fair is made or grown in Maine. (Used to be that everything had to be grown in Maine, which put coffee drinkers on edge. Maine-roasted coffee is now available at the fair.)
   Twilight is wondrous at the fair, mostly because you can see the twilight. No strings of electric lights bring the fair to new life at the end of the day. Most people leave. The only light, besides the setting sun, is the soft, yellow glow of lanterns or campfires. The fragrance of the campfires and the sounds of campers’ home-grown music around the campfires are the parting senses as I leave the fair.

My Favorite Garden Designer

    Beatrix Farrand is a name that most people do not recognize, although she was a woman who created some of the most beautiful landscapes and gardens in the world. And she did so at a time — in the early 20th century — when such professions were not open to women. Much of her landscape work was in Maine, on Mt. Desert Island, as was her home, Reef Point.
   Reef Point was Beatrix’s family estate; under her care, it evolved into a horticultural heaven, with garden areas woven together by grassy paths. Spruce trees created microclimates that allowed azaleas and other plants not usually adapted to cold of Maine winters and the buffeting by ocean winds to survive and thrive. The gardens, the experimental plantings, and their descriptions in Farrand’s Reef Point Bulletins were all part of her vision of Reef Point as an educational enterprise.
   Alas, Reef Point Gardens did not fulfill the vision: wildfire and lack of funding forced Ms. Farrand to down-size. She dismantled Reef Point and moved to an addition she had built attached the home of Lewis and Amy Garland, the superintendent and chief horticulturalist of her Reef Point Estate.
   Garland Farm — my last stop on my visit to Maine — was Beatrix Farrand’s final design, incorporating many architectural elements and plants salvaged from Reef Point. In contrast to Ms. Farrand’s other projects, which included designs for Princeton University, Rockefellers’ Seal Harbor estate, The Mount (home of Edith Wharton, Beatrix’s aunt), Dumbarton Oaks (my favorite of all gardens), and the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Garland Farm is a small garden.
   Looking out the French doors of Ms. Farrand’s study at Garland Farm onto the small parterre garden, your eyes are carried along a path to a Buddhist statue. Along that path are beds home to lavender, heathers, and other plants with year ‘round effect. The whole area is defined by a low balustrade, setting it off from the view of the meadow and grove of Norway spruce trees in the distance. This garden incorporates the same design principles — axis, year ‘round effect, structure, and integration of views — on an intimate scale, that were so successful in Beatrix Farrand’s larger projects.

SUCCESSES, EDIBLE AND OTHERWISE

October 2, 2015/9 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Stand Up Straight!

I am particularly proud of my Brussels sprouts this year — and I haven’t even tasted them yet. How odd that I should be proud of this vegetable that I spurned in the past, often quoting a friend who referred to them as “little green balls of death.” Then I put my own twist on that description, saying that perhaps the friend meant that Brussels sprouts were only palatable a “little boiled to death.”
I’ve come around, and decided, a couple of years ago, that Brussels sprouts were worth growing, despite their high demands on space and time. For good production in northern climates, the seeds need to be sown indoors in early March, and then harvest doesn’t start until October or sometime after the first frost. And for all that waiting, each plant — a mere single stalk with whorls of leaves from top to bottom and a sprout at the base of each leaf — takes up an area of about three feet by three feet.

Gustas Brussels sprouts, standing up straight.

   Things would be bad enough if a Brussels sprouts plant just grew straight up to fill its allotted area. But the plant can’t support itself, so in its youth it flops down on the ground. Once that supine stem has created a firm base upon which to rise, the end of the growing stem curves more or less upward according to original plan. That youthful waywardness wastes and muddies lowermost sprouts, with the sprawling plant demanding even more space, which is a problem in an intensively-planted garden.
   This summer, before the plants even had time to consider flopping down, I poked a bamboo pole into the ground next to each one, which I tied to the pole, adding ties to keep up with growth. Perhaps a bit too orderly for a vegetable garden, but my Brussels sprouts “trees,” each now over four feet tall, look quite attractive.
   The “trees” are not likely to grow much higher because I pinched out the top bud of each plant in early September. This pinching redirects the plants energy from the highest growing point to the side shoots — which are the sprouts. All month, the sprouts have been fattening, soon to be snapped off and eaten.

Not Your Average Marigold

    I also count among this season’s successes two little-known flowers, both of which elicited “oohs and ahhs” from visitors here. One of the flowers were Signet marigolds. You might think, marigolds?, they’re okay, but more “ho hum” than “ooh and ahh.” Not so.
   Signet marigolds, Tagetes tenuifolia, are a different species from common marigolds, and they look a little different. Mostly, they’re smaller, expanding into amorphous mounds of fine, lacy, lime-green leaves, from which stare out small yellow or orange blossoms — most charming. A lemony-marigold aroma wafts from both the blossoms and the leaves.
   Actually, the aroma can waft over the whole garden if you plant enough Signet marigolds — which I did this year. In the past, the seeds never germinated very well for me, so I just spot planted what few seedlings I could raise here and there in the garden.
   This spring, in mid-April, I sowed the seeds densely in an 8 by 6 inch seed flat. The dense planting led to an excessive number of crowded seedlings. While they were still young, I gently lifted each one to transplant into its own potting-soil-filled cell to grow for a month or so before planting out in the garden.
   The few plants I poked in at the feet of vegetable beds on either side of the main path through the vegetable garden have grown into sprawling mounds that wash into the main and side paths of the vegetable garden like seawater into an undulating beach. The flowing mounds effectively soften any excessive orderliness of the garden — from the soldier-straight Brussels sprouts plants, for example.

A Cardinal in our Midst

    My grape arbor creates a horizontal roof nine feet above my terrace. Each of the four grape vines rises to that height on a single trunk. What an opportunity for a climbing vine, especially one that climbs by twining! My other floral success this year has been with such a twining plant, cardinal climber (Ipomoea x multifida, a hybrid created by mating I. coccinea and I. quamoclit).
   In the past, other species of Ipomoea climbed those trunks. Morning glory was one, but that only blooms, of course, in the morning. Moonflowers have also dressed up the trunks, but they bloom only at night.
   So this year, cardinal climber was the Impomoea species for the grape trunks. It blooms all day long, clothing itself in blossoms from top to bottom. The size and color of the blossoms, an inch or so across and cardinal red, seem best for relatively close viewing when sitting on the terrace.
   No need for these flowers to soften any excessive orderliness of the arbor. The grape trunks wend their way skyward and their long, new shoots create plenty of disarray except right after they are pruned each spring.

I WAS WRONG

September 9, 2015/0 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Hog Peanuts, Groundnuts, Whatever

I was wrong. A few weeks ago I wrongly dissed groundnut (Apios americana) for invading my flower garden. Yes, I planted it; that was 30 years ago, and it’s resisted my attempts at eradication for the past 28 years.
The worse culprit, this year at least, is related to groundnut. Like groundnut, it’s a legume, it’s native, it’s edible, and it’s a vining plant with compound leaves. But each leaf of hog peanut (Amphicarpaea bracteata), has 3 egg-shaped leaflets, as compared with groundnut’s 5 lance-shaped leaflets.

Hog peanut leaves

Hog peanuts produce flowers both above ground and below ground. Below ground is where the goodies are. Pods that form there enclose peanut-sized seeds that allegedly are tasty raw or cooked. I’ll see if I can dig some up in a few weeks. Like groundnuts, hog peanuts provided food for Native Americans; the plants were among the four sacred plants of the Osage.
So what can be bad about a plant that tolerates some shade, adds nitrogen to the soil, and yields an allegedly tasty seed below ground? The problem is that it’s run wild over the flower bed, the fine stems and leaves attempting to smother, sometimes successfully, every plant in its path. Even non-native, invasive Japanese stilt grass and garlic mustard can’t hold their own against hog peanuts.

Permaculture Reality

Low maintenance, protection and enrichment of soil, and edible parts recommend hog peanut and groundnut to permies (permaculturalists). As with so much in permaculture, these plants perform better in theory than in practice.

Hog peanut & groundnut strangling crocosmia

In humid climates, plant growth — and not just groundnut and hog peanut — can run rampant. Growth needs to be controlled and balanced, a job made more difficult in a permaculture “guild” of groups of plants working together. I’m all for interplanting different species to make best use of light, water, and soil resources, and form communities that resist pests — to a point.
   I’ve had the opportunity, over the years, to visit the permaculture garden planted by students at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Now in its 5th year, the garden pays tribute to the compost, mulch, and sweat students put into soil preparation. The plants have grown very well. Too well, perhaps. One could say that the plants have commingled nicely; from another perspective, one could say that they are overunning each other. A blackcurrant bush or bushes has swelled into a mass of unapproachable stems 10 feet deep and wide. Chives and oregano have each taken over their areas. (How much chives or oregano can you eat? I’d rather eat tomatoes.)
   Not that I’m immune to such errors. A few years ago I created a very permaculturesque planting that included elderberries, seaberries, and rugose roses almost elbow to elbow. It all looks very nice but these three shrubs all spread by suckers. I keep everything in check with elbow grease and a scythe . . . for now, but Mother Nature is relentless. Am I?
   The most productive and accessible parts of the UMass garden are the beds of kale, beets, and other vegetables — straight rows in cultivated soil. How un-permaculturalesque.
   Oh, I forgot to mention the groundnuts at UMass. Stems of those plants are twining around and overpowering others in their guild in an ever-widening circle. Even if the groundnuts could peacefully coexist with their neighbors, grubbing up the golf ball size tubers will require an inordinate amount of time and soil discombobulation.
   My memory fails me. Perhaps it was hog peanut rather than groundnut vines threatening their neighbors. Perhaps it was both plants. Hog peanut has been suggested for erosion control, and as a groundcover, a livestock forage, and a food for humans. My suggestion: Hog food. Turn some hogs loose in a patch, and they’ll fatten as they clear the ground of this pernicious weed. Does anybody have a small hog for rent?

Elderberry Wine — No, Syrup

    Elderberry looked to be one of the most successful plants in the UMass permaculture garden. It grows fast and it grows high. My two plants, now in their third year, yielded more than four gallons of berries. And harvest, last week, was quick and easy; aggressively tickling the umbels had the berries quickly filling a basket.
   Elderberries can also be recommended for their flowers and the berries’ deep, blue color. Flowers open in June to dinnerplate size umbels of small, white blossoms. They’re good for tea, fritters, or to flavor wine.
   The berries impart their good color, but little flavor, to wine, pie, and juice. (They should not be eaten uncooked or unripe.) There’s a bit of scientific evidence than an extract or syrup of the berries can help fight flu, perhaps other ailments also. I’m good at growing fruit, not cooking it, so I gave my crop to Dina Falconi who concocted a syrup using the recipe from her book Foraging & Feasting. I look forward to tasting the benefits of my horticultural and her culinary skills.

MAYPOP & ASPARAGUS, BEAUTIFUL & EDIBLE

August 28, 2015/20 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Awesome, Made More So

You would think — or I, at least, would think — that a purple and white passionflower would be more passion-inducing than one that was merely white. Not so. The white one displays a passionate juxtaposition between a pure, lily-whiteness and a wildness from the the squiggly, threadlxike rays of its corona backdropping female stigmas’ that arch over the yellow pollen-dusted anthers.
   A white passionflower is a rarity. Mine sprung up by chance from a batch of seeds I planted last year. Mostly the plants bear purple and white flowers.
   Most passionflowers are tropical, but this white-flowered passionflower, like its mother and siblings can survive outdoors even with our winter lows of well below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Commonly known as maypop, Passiflora incarnata is native to eastern U.S. as far north as Pennsylvania. Tropical passionflowers, are woody perennial vines; maypop is an herbaceous perennial vine, dying back to the ground each fall, but sprouting each spring from its perennial roots.
   Vine growth begins late, typically not showing until early June here in the Hudson Valley. Summer warmth coaxes it along to begin flowering in July. Once the flowers appear, they continue almost nonstop through the summer until fall, with one to a few new flowers opening each day.
   Fruits soon follow the flowers. Yes: Fruits! Passionfruits are delicious, and maypop fruits taste pretty much the same as tropical passionfruits — the main flavor in Hawaiian punch, in case you think you’re unfamiliar with the fruit. The fruit is egg-shaped, its interior packed full of seeds, each of which is surrounded by a thick coat of deliciousness, in much the same way as pomegranate seeds.
   I haven’t figured out where to plant my maypops, so they’re still in large pots. Years ago, I had a couple in the ground at the base of a lilac tree. The maypops climbed into the lilac to put on a show through summer, after the lilac itself was no longer interesting. Now I want a fence for it to clothe in a heat-capturing spot in full sunlight. Maypop does spread underground, to the extent that it’s considered a weed in the Deep South, where it really can run wild. Spread is less here, but still, I need a location for it that takes that potential into account. Alternatively, I’ll plant it in a deep, bottomless container, such as a chimney flue.

The Other Kind of Passion

    If truth be told, the “passion” that gave passionflowers their name refers to a religious passion, the passion of Christ. The plant was a seventeenth-century teaching tool for spreading the gospel.
   Passionflower “had clearly been designed by the Great Creator that it might, in due time, assist in the conversion of the heathen among which it grows,” wrote a Christian scholar of the seventeenth century. The ten so-called petals (botanically, five petals and five petal-like sepals) were taken to represent the ten apostles present at the crucifixion. The threadlike rays of the corona were taken for symbols of the crown of thorns. The five stamens and three styles referred, respectively, to the five wounds of Christ and the three nails used in the crucifixion. Even the rest of the plant figures in, with the three-lobed leaves representing the Trinity and the tendrils representing the scourges.
   Passionflowers are heavenly enough to bring on a religious devotion to growing the plants. Which brings us to sex . . . The flowers are andromonoecious, which means that on every plant some flowers are perfect (have functioning male and female flower parts) and some are functionally male. Functional males have female parts but are functionally male either because their stigmas are held upwards out of the way of insect visitors or because their female parts are atrophied. So grow two plants if insects are to do your bidding, one plant if you’ll take care of pollination.
   See my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden for more — a whole chapter! — on hardy passionfruits.

“Sparrowgrass” Need Help

    My asparagus is now a six-foot-high, ferny hedge outside and along the eastern edge of one of the vegetable gardens. It’s a pretty sight until my eyes drop downward to see the weeds sprouting at the “hedge’s” feet. Not that the weeds are putting the brakes on the asparagus, but they are making seeds that then spread into the vegetable garden.
   I’ve seen gardens and farms where asparagus beds were abandoned because of weeds. Mulching and early season weeding only go so far.
   The usual recommendation for growing asparagus is to purchase roots and plant them at the bottom of a deep trench. As new shoots grow, the trench is gradually filled in with soil.
   More recent research showed that such heroic efforts were unnecessary. I planted my asparagus just deep enough to get them into the ground.
   The reason for trenching asparagus was to get the crowns low enough so that a tiller or hoe could be used to kill weeds without damaging the crown. All of which is impossible when the crowns are planted with their buds just beneath the surface.
   So these days I’m periodically crawling into the hedge, becoming very intimate with the ground there, and pulling out all the weeds.

QUICK, NO WORK GARDEN, FOR STARTERS

May 1, 2015/18 Comments/in Design, Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Prescription for a New Gardener

It seems like everybody’s a gardener, or is becoming one, this time of year. And a lot of people have been asking me questions. Like my niece Lana, for instance, who moved along with her husband, a baby, and a toddler to a new house last fall and is ready to dig into a garden this spring — but, as Lana said, a garden “that will be easily manageable for her and interesting to her 3 year old.” (The one-year-old is still enthralled with her thumb and other such things.) So, for Lana and other beginning or non-gardeners, here is a simple plan for a small garden that requires almost “no time.”

A small, productive garden

   The most stringent requirement for this garden is sun. The more the better. And the closer the garden is to the back door, the more you will be drawn to it, whether to dash out to pick a few leaves of lettuce, or to pull a wayward weed. This garden can be, probably should be, small. Let’s assume it is ten feet by ten feet.
   The second requirement is soil that does not stay sodden for hours after a heavy rain. Push a can with both ends open into a hole in the soil and add water; it should drain faster than an inch an hour. If not, choose a new location or make raised beds.
   With sun and water taken care of, soil preparation begins. And ends a few minutes later! Blanket this area with a four-sheet thickness of newspaper (do not use colored pages), overlapped and wetted. Done, almost. The newspaper will smother existing vegetation, and keep out weeds during the growing season. And as the paper rots away, it will enrich the soil.
   The planting plan is simple: divide the garden into four beds, delineated by two 18 to 24 inch wide paths going up the center of each side and crossing each other in the center of the garden. Cover the newspaper in the paths with wood chips, wood shavings, sawdust, or pine needles. In the beds, purchase some weed-free compost, enough to lay at least a one-inch depth over the newspaper.
   Sow seed right into the compost layer. Peas and lettuce need to be planted early — as in now — because they both enjoy cool weather in rows about a foot apart. Make each pea row four inches wide, then scatter the seeds so they are about an inch apart down and across the row.
   The next wave of planting takes place after warm weather has settled, in late May. Buy tomato transplants and set them in one of the northern quadrants. If needed make a hole through the newspaper into the soil below to accommodate the full depth of the transplant. Grow a variety for flavor, like Brandywine, Sungold, or Amish Paste. Each plant should be two or three feet from its neighbor, depending on whether you are going to stake your tomatoes or allow them to sprawl. Eventually you will have a jungle of vines in danger of overtaking or enlarging your garden, so take a few minutes occasionally during the summer to prune wayward stems from the tomato plants.
   Plant sweet corn and cucumber seeds at the same time as tomato transplants. Since corn is a tall grower, it gets the other northern quadrant. Plant three seeds together in “hills,” which are groups of seeds, not mounds of dirt, spaced two feet apart each way. Cucumbers get the final, southern quadrant. Sow six seeds per hill, with hills three feet apart. Grow a bush-type cucumber, like Salad Bush or Bush Pickle. Once the corn and cucumber seeds are up and growing vigorously, ruthlessly thin the plants so each corn hill has only one plant and each cucumber hill has three plants.
   This garden gets one final planting in early July. But where, since all four quadrants are used up? Pull out the peas and lettuce, which flag anyway during hot weather, and plant in their place bush beans. Bush Blue Lake and Bush Romano are good choices.
   This garden will produce a limited amount of vegetables with a minimum amount of work. Success may tempt you to enlarge your garden and grow a greater variety of plants next year.

Get Your Compost On

A gardening friend called to ask how much compost is needed to cover his garden. It turns out that a one inch depth of compost will supply all the nutrition, plus a lot of other goodies, that a vegetable garden needs to nourish the plants for one year. So that one-inch depth needs replenishment annually.

Spreading compost on bed

(Less compost could be used if the deficit is made up by fertilizer. But compost is the Cadillac of plant foods while also offering protection against pests, improved aeration and water retention in the soil, protection against erosion, and other known and unknown benefits.)
Back to the amount needed: 1/3 of a cubic yard (300-500 pounds, depending on moisture) will cover 100 square feet 1 inch deep. That’s a lot of compost, which beginning gardeners will likely be buying. If you’re buying compost in bulk, which is the least expensive way to purchase it, make sure it’s good stuff by asking some questions, such as what went into the compost. Avoid using compost that contains industrial wastes — especially in the vegetable garden — because of possible toxins like excessive quantities of heavy metals that could contaminate your food. Also ask how the compost has been prepared and stored.
The ideal would be to make enough of your own compost. Next year, perhaps.

MANURE ABSOLVED, PRUNING STARTED

February 26, 2015/12 Comments/in Design, Fruit, Gardening, Pruning, Soil/by Lee Reich

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. Also, the bedding in the horse manure is mostly wood shavings rather than hay.
   But another ugly dragon kept raising its head above the manure. Another chemical, this time, Ivermectin, a de-worming medication given to horses (and other animals). Ivermectin or its metabolites might pass through the animal and injure soil dwelling creatures such as beneficial nematodes and earthworms. Past studies have shown negative effects on, for example, “dung fauna and degradation of faeces” (to quote a research paper from 2006).
   Ivermectin is, admittedly, a very useful material, even useful in humans to combat lice, bedbugs, and some more frightening tropical afflictions such as river blindness and elephantiasis. Agriculture is always a balancing act, but I like to keep my soil-dwelling partners happy.
   So I was gladdened when a veterinarian recently directed me to a Stanford University publication that summarized research findings on the environmental effects of Ivermectin. To whit: Ivermectin is excreted and it can affect earthworms, springtails, and other fauna. But it degrades quickly at summer temperatures (1-2 weeks, but much longer in winter) and within a day or two of exposure to bright sunlight. With temperatures within my compost bins reaching 150°F., or more, with the compost sitting many months before use, and with the compost being spread on top of the ground, little Ivermectin would end up in the soil. And soil anyway naturally has low levels of this compound.

Snow Makes Me Taller

Let’s look aboveground, at stems; there’s pruning to be started. With well over a foot of snow on the ground, I turn my attention to taller plants. The snow is actually an advantage because, with snowshoes on, I can reach more than a foot higher into the branches without a ladder.

Sammy (the dog) and I pruning pawpaws

   For now, I’m going to start with the easiest pruning, mostly with plants that don’t need regular pruning beyond removing dead, diseased, broken, and grossly misplaced branches. Right here, such plants include pawpaws, plums, cornelian cherries, and a teenage honeylocust tree. Light is important for fruit production from the fruit trees and, generally, to keep diseases and insects at bay, so I also prune away enough branches to let remaining branches bathe in sunlight.
   I go at the pawpaws with one more goal in mind, to keep fruit from forming either too high in the tree or two far out on the limbs. Pawpaw trees will grow 15 to 25 feet high but I harvest fallen fruit from the ground. By my estimation, fruit can make a soft landing, undamaged, from a height of about 10 feet onto mulched ground. So I lop back the tops to weak side branches at about that height.
   Each pawpaw flower is a multiple ovary, potentially spawning up to nine fruits, each of which can weigh more than half a pound. That’s a lot of weight perched onto the end of a branch, so I shorten long branches to decrease leverage of that fruit load.
   (More about all types of pruning on all kinds of plants in my book, The Pruning Book.)

A Beautiful Climber

I actually did begin pruning a few weeks ago, before the first snow fall. The plant was hydrangea — no, not the common bigleaf hydrangea which has many people scratching their heads about how to prune, but climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris).

Climbing hydrangea in summer

Climbing hydrangea is one of the most beautiful vines, even right now as the peeling, pale cinnamon, bark is in focus among the leafless stems. All summer long, the stems are clothed in lustrous green foliage and, in early, summer clusters of white flowers twinkle against that backdrop like stars in the dark sky.
As expected, the vine took a few years to get firmly established. Now it threatens to engulf my brick home except that I want to restrict it to only the north wall. Every year now, I prune back stems creeping like groping fingers around the east and west walls. And each year the flower stems reach further directly out from the wall, so I also shortened them.

Climbing hydrangea, partially pruned

The present pruning doesn’t permanently subdue the plant. This summer, I’ll again shorten the wandering stems, and I’ll be back at it again next winter and for winters to come.