Pruning, Flowers

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Much of Pruning is About Renewal

Why am I spending so much time pruning these days? To keep plants manageable and healthy, of course. But also so that flowering and fruiting trees, shrubs, and vines keep on flowering and fruiting. “Renewal pruning” is what does this.

Pruning apple spur

Pruning apple spur

As plant stems age, they — like all living things — become decrepit, no longer able to perform well. But any plant’s show or productivity can be kept up if stems that are too old are periodically lopped back, which promotes growth of new, young, fecund stems. That’s all there is to renewal pruning.

Ah, but the devil is in the details. One important detail is how old is “too old.” That depends on the flowering and fruiting habit of the plant.

Near one extreme would be pear trees. Along pear stems grow stubby growths, called “spurs,” which bear the tree’s flowers and fruits.

Young pear spur

Young pear spur

Older pear spur

Older pear spur

 

 

These stubby growths grow only an inch or less each year.  Over time, spurs branch and these small branches, in turn, branch to create what look like miniature trees perched along the tree’s stems.

A pear’s individual spur can remain vibrant for about a decade, so little pruning is needed annually. But eventually, even a spur grows old and decrepit. I renewal prune my pears by cutting back some of the stubby parts of a spur system to coax out younger stubby growths or even by lopping back a whole stem on which they sit, stimulating new stem growth on which will develop new spurs.

Near the other extreme in pruning would be an everbearing raspberry plant, which bears flowers and fruits on young shoots arising from ground level. Those bearing stems are very short lived. One way to prune an everbearing raspberry plant would be to lop all stems to the ground each winter. Having borne, those stems are aging rapidly, and pruning stimulates a flush of new, bearing stems that will come up from ground level in spring.

Everbearing raspberry growth habit

Everbearing raspberry growth habit

(Not to muddy the waters, but everbearing raspberry stems actually bear late in their first summer of growth, then again in midsummer the following year, so stems could be left one more season to bear that second crop. After that, though, the two-year-old stems need to be cut back. They die after their second year anyway.)

Pear and everbearing raspberry represent two extremes in bearing habit and, hence, method of renewal pruning. Other plants lie somewhere on the spectrum between these extremes. Where? It depends, as I wrote, on their particular bearing habit. For instance, blueberry stems are most productive on stems up to 6 years old, gooseberries on stems 2 and 3 years old, and grapes and peaches on stems one year old. So I cut away stems older than 6 years old from my blueberry bushes, stems older than 3 years old from my gooseberry bushes, and stems older than a year old from my grape vines and peach trees.

For other plants grown for either their flowers or their fruits, find out how to renewal prune them by watching how they bear for a season or more, or get the information from a book (such as my book, The Pruning Book).

A Workshop

If you’re interested in delving deeper into pruning, I will be holding a pruning workshop here on my farmden in New Paltz, NY on March 28, 2020. For more information about this workshop, please go to https://leereich.com/workshops.

Not Forgetting the Flowers

Flowers are at a premium this time of year. Here on my farmden, the only flowers blooming outdoors are winter aconite and snowdrops.

Winter aconite

Winter aconite

(Typically, my ‘Arnold’s Promise’ witch hazel would be bursting into bloom about now but a few years ago I performed dramatic renewal pruning to reduce the size of the plant. No special technique was involved other than lopping the whole plant to ground level. Witch hazel’s stems bear flowers for many, many years, so don’t need regular pruning; it does take a few years, though before stems are old enough to begin bearing.)

Indoors, plants sense the lengthening days of brightening sunlight. African violets have been blooming for a couple of weeks and will go on doing so for weeks to come.

African violet

The same goes for the Odontoglossum pulchellum orchid, whose stems are weighed down with small waxy white, fragrant flowers.

One surprise was a butterfly bush that was in a large pot that I had brought indoors for winter. This plant enjoys bright sun and hot days, neither of which it receives indoors — it has, nonetheless, managed to cough forth, so far, a singe blue blossom. I stick my nose into the flowers, close my eyes, and inhale, and it’s midsummer.

Butterfly bush flowe

Butterfly bush, indoors

Most dramatic are the humongous, fire engine red bloom of an amaryllis plant. It is gaudy, but appreciated anyway.

My favorites are the white blossoms now opening on Meyer lemon. The blossoms aren’t all that showy but their fragrance is heady and heavenly. No need even to get my nose up close.

I did catch one other bit of welcome color outdoors: my first sighting of bluebirds. The day is gray but the bluebird, to quote Thoreau, was “carrying the [blue] sky on its back.“

Catalog and Weather Watchin’

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Armchair Gardening

Pretty much the only “gardening” I’m doing now is thumbing through the seed catalogs arriving in dribs and drabs in my mailbox. I’ve ordered and received what I thought I’ll need, but you never know; maybe there something else interesting out there to grow.

Among the most fun of these catalogs, and strictly for the plant-crazed, is “The 2020 Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds,” which used to be called Hudson’s Seed Catalog. The catalog originates in the Santa Cruz mountains of California (once home to Ken Kesey) but offers seed from all corners of the world. Only recently have they come online, at www.jlhudsonseeds.net.
Hudson catalog
I’ve ordered from this catalog for decades, each winter pleasurably and slowly wading through the almost 100 black-and-white pages of small print listings of botanical names and descriptions. For this first run through the catalog, I sit poised with red pen, ready to make a star next to any seed listing that looks particularly interesting. After I go through the whole catalog once, I’ll re-examine all those starred listings and select which seeds to actually order and grow.

Judging from what I’ve so far starred, I seem this year to be drawn to scented plants. Achlys triphylla, also known as vanilla-leaf or sweet-leaf, is one such plant: “Dense spikes of tiny flowers held above the trifoliate fan-shaped leaves. Moist woods from B.C. to California. The sweetly fragrant leaves were highly valued by settlers, who hung bunches in their houses. Sow 1/4″ deep in rich woodland soil, and keep moist. Slow to germinate.”

Another is Adenophora lilifolia, also known as ladybells. This one is described as “sweet-scented light blue 1/2″ wide bell-shaped nodding flowers borne profusely in summer. Very hardy perennial to 1-1/2 to 3 feet, with round, heart-shaped basal leaves. Eurasia. Cultivated in Japan for the thick, edible roots. Germinates in 2 weeks.” For only $2.50 a seed packet, oodles of each of these plants can be growing in and perfuming my backyard this summer.

  It’s not just visions of fragrant, comely, or tasty plants that make this catalog fun to read. Berkheya purpurea is native to Africa, with a common name Zulu warrior. How many plants conjure up an image like that!? The plant seems to me less warrior-like, with flowers that are large, silvery-blue to lavender daisies with dark centers. Interesting, but I don’t need another daisy for now. 

Short quotes interspersed throughout the catalog set the tone and are food for further thought. Here’s one from Thomas Jefferson: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Or, going back 17 centuries, to Aesop: “Any excuse will serve a tyrant.” And then forward, to General Douglas MacArthur: “ If you win, you stand only to lose. War contains the germs of double suicide.” Or, to another American general, Dwight Eisenhower: “Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.”

  So far, I’ve only gotten as far as “D” in the seed listings. There’s still time.

Where’s Winter?

Aren’t temperatures supposed to get colder and colder and colder until the end of this month, and then get warmer and warmer and warmer? That’s how temperatures generally trend in coastal regions, near large bodies of water, and in western Europe. Not so here in the Hudson Valley and over most of continental North America.
Current winter scene
In my garden, the low was 3 degrees in early December and the high was 59 degrees a couple of weeks ago. Such fluctuations are not that uncommon over much of continental U.S. If you don’t like winter, you welcome those balmy winter days; if you like winter and/or like plants, those balmy days make you shudder.

  Plants that can take our cold weather like the weather to stay cold all winter. Each time temperatures warm, especially after we’ve had a spell of cool weather, these plants start to awaken slightly from their winter slumber. The closer to spring and the warmer the weather, the more they awaken. Problem is that the more awake a plant is, the more likely damage, even for a cold-hardy plant, from subsequent frigid weather.

  All this makes a good case for growing native plants. They’re more used to our mercurial weather and know better than to let a winter warm spell entice them out of their slumber.

  However, many cultivated plants are not native. I like to grow fruits, and any fits of warm weather in weeks to come are going to make me nervous about the apples, plums, hardy kiwis, and pears, all non-native and sometimes awakening early enough to be damaged by subsequent cold.

Blueberries, pawpaws, persimmons, raspberries, and mulberries should be fine. Let’s hope for steadily cold weather and plenty of snow for the rest of winter.

Past winter garden scene

Older winter scene

SEED TIME

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Late this Year

This year I’m late, but not too late, with my seed orders. Usually, I get them in by a couple of weeks ago.

The only seeds that I’ll soon be planting are those of lettuce, arugula, mustard, and dwarf pak choy. They’ll fill any bare spaces soon to be opening up where winter greens have been harvested. No rush, though, because I have seeds left over from last and previous years of these vegetables, and they keep well if stored under good conditions.
Greenhouse greens
I’ve usually sowed onion seeds early also, in flats in the greenhouse in order to give plants enough time to become large transplants. Large transplants translates to large plants out in the garden before long days force them to shift from growing leaves to, instead, swelling their bulbs. More leaves before that shift makes for larger bulbs.

Last year, because of poor onion germination in the flats, I ended up getting fresh seeds and sowing them directly in the garden in early spring. Keeping the bed moist promoted quick germination and, by August, the bulbs stood up well, size-wise, to those from seeds sown in the greenhouse in past Februarys.

Seed Longevity

Onion and leek seeds don’t keep very well. Viable seeds are living, albeit dormant, embryonic plants which do not live forever. Conditions that slow biological and chemical reactions, such as low temperature, low humidity, and low oxygen, also slow the aging of seeds.

Seeds differ in how long they remain viable. Except under the very best storage conditions, it’s not worth the risk to sow onion, parsnip, or salsify seeds after they are more than a year old. Two years of sowings can be expected from seed packets of carrot and sweet corn; three years from peas and beans, peppers, radishes, and beets; and four or five years from cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cucumbers, melons, and lettuce. 
Chart of vegetable seed longevity
Among flower seeds, the shortest-lived are delphinium, aster, candytuft, and phlox. In general, though, most annual flower seeds are good for one to three years, and most perennial flower seeds for two to four years. 

In a frugal mood, I might do a germination test for a definitive measure of whether an old seed packet is worth saving. Counting out 10 to 20 seeds from each packet to be tested, I spread them between two moist paper towels on a plate. Another plate inverted over the first plate seals in moisture and the whole setup then goes where the temperature is warm, around 75 degrees.

After one to two weeks, I peel apart the paper towels and count the number of seeds with little white root “tails”. If the percentage is low, the seed packet from which the seeds came gets tossed into the compost pile. (I don’t give them away!). Or, I might use the seeds and adjust their sowing rate accordingly. 
Seed testing
No one knows exactly what happens within a seed to make it lose its viability. Besides lack of germination, old seeds undergo a slight change of color, lose their luster, and show decreased resistance to fungal infections. There’s more leakage of substances from dead seeds than from young, fresh seeds, so perhaps aging influences the integrity of the cell membranes. Or, since old seeds are less metabolically active than young seeds, the old seeds leak metabolites that they cannot use.

Finally, Get My Orders In

Today I dug out my shoeboxes of seeds from the unheated workshop and noted what was missing and what was too old.

Needed still are yet undetermined, good varieties of Brussels sprouts, celeriac, semi-hot pepper, and melon. (Any suggestions for good varieties?) Also one or more packets of Bartolo cabbage, Blues Michili cabbage, Shintokiwa cucumber, Golden Bantam 8-row sweet corn, Blacktail Mountain watermelon, Carmen pepper, Mammoth sunflower, and Empress of India nasturtium.
Ordering seeds
And, of course, some tomato varieties need replenishment: Sungold, Anna Russian, Nepal, Carmello, San Marzano, and Amish Paste. They will join Belgian Giant, Pink Brandywine, Paul Robeson, and Blue Beech out in the garden.

A colorful and flavorful growing season is in the offing.

MORE AUTUMNAL NEATENING

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An Upbeat Closing

I don’t know about you all, but I have a great urge to tidy up my garden this time of year. Partly it’s because doing so leaves one less thing to do in spring and partly because, as Charles Dudley Warner wrote in My Summer in the Garden in 1889, “the closing scenes need not be funereal.” All this tidying up is usually quite enjoyable.
Pulling creeping charlie
Moist soil – and not too, too many weeds – make weeding fun. Creeping Charlie (also know as gill-over-the-ground) has sneaked into some flower beds. Its creeping stems are not yet well-rooted so one tug with a gloved hand and a bunch of escaping stems slithers back from its travels forward from beneath and among flower plants and shrubs. What remains are occasional tufts of grassy plants, especially crabgrass, easily wrenched out of the ground or coaxed out with my Hori-Hori garden knife.

This tidying is intimate work: me, the soil, weeds, and garden plants at close range. While I’m down there on hands and knees, I’ll also cut back some old stalks of perennial flowers. When everything is cleaned up, I’m going to spread a blanket of chipped wood (free, a “waste” product from arborists) over all bare ground.

The one thing not to do this time of year, as far as tidying up, is pruning. Better to prune after the coldest part of winter is over and closer to when plants can heal wounds.

A Real Crocus, Now

A few weeks ago, I, along with anyone visiting my garden, was wowed by autumn crocuses then in bloom. As I pointed out, they weren’t not true crocuses (they were Colchicum species), they just acted like crocuses – on steroids. Then, a couple of weeks later, I noticed that my true autumn crocuses (that is, the ones that are true Crocus species) were in bloom.
autumn crocus
And I did really have to stop and notice them after that most flamboyant show of fake autumn crocuses. These true crocuses (crocii?) are dainty plants, just like spring crocuses, and their colors are subdued: some are pale violet and some are white. In contrast to the fake autumn crocuses, which multiplied like gangbusters, the real autumn crocuses look about dense as when I planted them. Both kinds of crocuses wait until spring to show their leaves.

It’s fortunate that the part of my garden that’s home to autumn crocuses, real and fake — the mulched area beneath the dwarf apple trees — is free of weeds. Otherwise, the real autumn crocuses, being so dainty and lacking a supporting role of leaves, would be swallowed up, visually or for real.

Weed? Perhaps.

Back to weeds . . . I’m trying to see the positive side of all that creeping Charlie I’ve been pulling. Bits of it that have insinuated themselves in amongst the bases of stems of woody shrubs, especially thorny ones like the Frau Dagmar Hastrup rose, are not that much fun to weed out. So what’s good about creeping Charlie?
creeping charlie
For one thing, with shiny, round leaves of a deep, forest green color, it’s not a bad looking weed. The flowers are an attractive, purple color although neither big nor prominent enough to make a statement. The otherwise excellent reference book Weeds of the Northeast (Cornell University Press) erroneously states that “the foliage emits a strong mint-like odor when bruised.” That would be nice except that I’ve never noticed that odor and didn’t even when I just ran outside to crush some leaves check up on this statement.

Creeping Charlie grows well in sun or shade, so well that when I worked in agricultural research for Cornell University, I considered the plant as a possible groundcover to replace the relatively sterile herbicide strips in apple orchards. It grows as such beneath my dwarf pear trees.

Creeping Charlie beneath trees

Creeping Charlie beneath my pear trees

The plant could even be a somewhat ornamental groundcover, making up for any lack of great beauty with its capability to rapid fill in an area and grow only a couple of inches high. You couldn’t ask much more from a plant – except to keep out of some of my flower beds.

Colorful, Sometimes Tasty, Ground

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Lurid Ground

Lurid, violet flowers have sprouted in the wood chip mulch beneath my row of dwarf pear trees. The flowers are autumn crocuses, the first part of the two-part flowery show that takes place each autumn in that piece of ground.
colchicum
The second part of that flowery show, soon to follow, will be autumn crocuses. “But,” you exclaim, “autumn crocuses were the first part of the show!” Let me explain.

This first show is from a flower called autumn crocus but which is botanically a Colchicum species. It’s not really a crocus, not even related. Colchicum flowers resemble true crocus flowers, on steroids. The second show will be from true crocuses (that is, Crocus species) that happen to bloom in autumn. The Crocus autumn crocuses are dainty and in colors like our spring crocuses.

What’s really unique about the colchicum flowers, and what makes them so striking, is that, first, they emerge from the soil this time of year, and second, that they do so without any leaves, making the contrast between the mulched ground and the flowers all the more dramatic. The color itself is dramatic, the row of bold-colored blossoms painting a wide swath along the ground.
Purple autumn crocuses, in a row
Cochicums, like every other plant, need to photosynthesize, and, like every other plant, need leaves to do so. Those leaves, which are wide, long, and fairly large, appear for awhile in spring and look nothing like true crocus leaves. Not only do the plants not need leaves in autumn, they also don’t need soil. Colchicum bulbs will sprout their lurid violet flowers even if just left sitting on a bench or table!

Green Tastes Good

Aside from spots of bright color, the dominant color in my garden is green. That verdure is especially evident in my vegetable garden, now in its autumn glory – lush and green – and becoming more so every day. I’ve been sowing and planting with almost the same fervor as in spring.

Bed of lettuce and chinese cabbage

Bed of lettuce and chinese cabbage

A few weeks ago I made my last planting of outdoor lettuce, using transplants that had been growing in seed flats for about a month. The varying textures and colors of the different varieties make a pretty tapestry on the ground, so pretty that it seems almost a shame to pick any of the tender, tasty heads and ruin the picture. I’m not sure how large they’ll grow before stopped or turned to mush by really cold weather. Protection beneath a tunnel of clear plastic with, later, an additional covering of some spun-bonded row cover material, should keep them and me happy into December.

Other beds display yet more shades of green with varying textures. There’s a bed of kale, which has been pumping out deep green leaves for good eating since spring. Another bed has endive – Broad-Leaved Batavian — planted close enough so neighboring plants push each other’s leaves over the loosely forming heads. Shaded from sunlight, those inner leaves become tender and sweet, livened up with just a hint of bitterness.

Green, Not for Eating

Lushest green of all beds in my garden are those that are sprouting oats. Yes, that’s the same oats that we (and horses) eat, except that I didn’t plant these oats for eating. I plant oats as so-called cover crops, which are plants grown to improve and protect the soil.

I can only eat just so much lettuce, endive, kale, and other greens. If I’ve filled this quota for planting and no longer have further use for every bed this season, I plant it with oats. September 30th is my deadline because after this date — here in the lower Hudson Valley, at least — days are too short and weather becomes too cold to expect much growth.
Oat cover crop
Oats, just one of a number of potential cover crops, thrive in the cool weather of autumn and early winter. Their roots, pushing through the soil, crumble it and latch onto nutrients that might otherwise wash down below the root zone. After the roots die, they enrich the soil with humus and leave behind channels through which air and water can move within the soil. Above ground, the stems and leaves protect the soil surface from being washed around by pounding raindrops.

Most of all, I like the look of that green carpet of grassy oat leaves. Both I and Mother Nature abhor bare ground, which becomes subject to wind and water erosion, and large swings in temperatures through the year.

GOOD LOOKS, GOOD TASTES

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Kale’s Delights

I’m lucky enough to have a French window of two big, inward swinging panels out of which I can look over my vegetable garden every morning. Oddly enough, the garden bed that is catching my eyes these mornings for its beauty is the bed of kale plants.
Kale plants
No, it’s not a bed of one of the so-called colorful, ornamental kales, not even a reddish kale such as Russian Red. I mostly grow just plain old Blue Curled Scotch kale, which is no more bluish than any other kale, or any other member of the whole cabbage family for that matter. What catches my eye each morning is the frilliness of the leaves and how neatly they line up along the stalk. It’s pretty.

My vision could be swayed by the fact that kale is such a healthful vegetable, being especially rich in calcium and vitamin A. Or the fact that it’s so easy to grow. I sowed the seeds in March, put out transplants in early May, have been harvesting it since the end of May, and will continue to do so probably well into December. (Another bed of kale, which I seeded right out in the ground at the end of May, is also looking good.)

Kale is unlike other members of the cabbage family. Broccoli is past its prime once buds open into flowers. Cauliflower is over the hill once the florets sidle apart from each other. Cabbage splits if left too long. Brussels sprouts needs sowing in early spring but aren’t ready for eating until touched by frost at the other end of the growing season.

Kale doesn’t have a small window of time for optimum harvest; actually, no window. It just keeps growing taller, with more leaves, still tasting good at all stages.

The only thing kale needs protection from is rabbits and woodchucks, like most vegetables, and from the various cabbage worms. One or two sprays of the biological pesticide Bacillus thurengiensis (sold under such trade names as Thuricide and Dipel) is all that’s needed for the worms, or nothing, especially in a year like this when worms were pretty much absent.

What more could I ask for from a plant: flavor, health, and beauty?

Free Kisses

I take it upon myself to personally promote the revival of an old-fashioned flower: kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate (Polygonum orientale). It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it’s distinctly old-fashioned.

If you know the weed called smartweed, you have a hint of what kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate looks like. Smartweed is a trailing weed whose flowers look like small droplets of pink dew at the ends of its stems. Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate looks like smartweed on steroids, with “droplets” the size of bb’s. Rather than trailing, the plant rises with robust arching stems to more than seven feet high. It’s just the height and form for growing next to a garden gate, which is where my plants grow.
Kiss me over the garden gate
Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate is a little hard to get started because the seeds germinate slowly and erratically. My plants thankfully lived up to their reputation of being self-seeding annuals, and those self-seeding plants come up more robustly than the few coddled seedlings I used to plant out each spring.

It’s self-seeding habit is sufficiently restrained for me. All I do each spring now is to weed out the few extra plants, as well as those that stray too far from the garden gate.

Ever Green Onions

For many years, in addition to starting onions from seed (sown in February!), I also went the more conventional route and bought a few “sets” for planting. Sets are those small bulbs that grow first to become scallions, which are mostly leaf, then go on to fatten into bulbs that can be harvested and stored.
Vegetable face
This year, instead of planting sets for scallions, I grew bunching onions, yet another type of onion, one that never ever makes fat bulbs. During the growing season, slender new scallions are produced around the bases of older ones. Left outdoors, they will perennialize and multiply by offsets year after year. 

I set out transplants back in early summer grown from seeds sown in spring. Even now, these scallions still look like scallions, some larger, some smaller, depending on how crowded they are to each other. No matter their size, they’ve all been flavorful right through summer and on into fall, maintaining all the time their scallion character.

SOW NOW?

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Next Year’s ‘Chokes

Ahh, such a leisurely time of year to sow seeds. And for some of them, I don’t care if they don’t sprout for months. You might wonder: Why sow now; why so laid back?

I’ll start with artichoke, from whose seeds I did want to see sprouts soon. And I did. The seeds germinate readily. Right now, a few small seedlings are growing, each in its own “cell” of a seed flat, enjoying the cool, sunny weather.
Cynara, artichoke seedlings
Artichoke is a perennial whose natural life cycle is (usually) to grow leaves its first year, then edible buds its second year and for a few years hence. Especially in colder regions, artichokes can sometimes grown from seed like annuals, with a wrinkle.

To make that transition from growing only leaves to growing flower buds, the plants need to get vernalized, that is, to experience some winter cold. Except that winter cold here in the Hudson Valley (and everywhere else colder than Hardiness Zone 7) will do the plants in. So we cold-climate gardeners need to trick the plants into feeling like they experienced winter cold, just not our winters’ depth of cold.

When growing artichokes like annuals, from seed sown in spring, you make “winter” by exposing the young, growing seedlings to cool, but not frigid, temperatures (32-50°F) for a couple of weeks. The problem with this method is that the plants are fairly small when they get this signal that “winter” is over. In my experience, these small plants make commensurately small buds for harvest.

I’m lucky enough to have a greenhouse that gets very cool in winter, but not below freezing. My young artichoke plants will continue to grow very large though the very extended “autumn” weather in the greenhouse. In midwinter, they should get plenty of chilling. Come spring, after frost danger is past, I’ll plant out the large plants to, I hope, make large, fat buds.

I got this idea from growing cardoon, which is essentially the same as artichoke, except it’s grown for its large leaf stalks.
Large cardoon plant
Or it’s grown as a flower, in which case it would require the same conditions as artichoke to make flowers. I don’t like cardoon as a vegetable but do like it as a flower, so last year, around now, I sowed cardoon seeds and grew the seedlings in the greenhouse just as I’ve described for artichoke. The result was big, fat, beautiful, blue flowers. I expect the same, except I’ll harvest the artichoke buds before they open.

Actually, I grew two cardoon plants, and for some reason one of them grew only leaves all summer, and is still growing them, the olive-green leaves each rising from ground level in a four-foot-high-whorl.

More Hucks’

A couple of months ago I collected huckleberry seeds from my huckleberry plant and sowed them. As expected, they still haven’t sprouted. They weren’t expected to sprout, at least not until they were “stratified.”

Like artichoke, huckleberry (Gaylussaccia baccata) needs to feel that winter is over, in this case before its seeds will sprout. Stratification, as this cold exposure is called, prevents small seedlings from being killed by winter cold after sprouting in late summer or autumn.

My huckleberry plant in fall

My huckleberry plant in fall

Again, it’s a certain duration of cool (32-50°F) temperatures that do the trick. Under natural conditions, these chilling requirements are fulfilled in late autumn and/or in spring. In this case, colder temperatures would do no harm, but would not put any hours into the “chilling bank.” Once the “chilling bank” has been filled, the seeds await warm enough temperatures to sprout.

(For more details and wrinkles about seed germination, see my latest book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.)

The pot of huckleberry seeds has been sitting outdoors, covered, since they were sown. If I want earlier sprouting, I’ll bring the pot into the greenhouse in winter. 

Ramping Up

I collected seeds from my ramp plants about a month ago with an eye to increasing my holdings. You guessed it: Ramps also need cold. But given mere stratification, the seed will not germinate. The behavior of ramp seeds is a little different from huckleberry seeds in that ramp seeds have a double dormancy.
Ramps seed heads
Roots need to grow before the shoots will sprout. That first stage requires a couple of months or so of warmth. Only after then can the second stage, shoot growth, begin, except that won’t occur until after a stratification period, with cool temperatures, again between 32-50°F. 

Under natural conditions, ripe ramp seeds get their warm period before winter sets in and then are ready to sprout in spring. But further north, where seeds ripen later, that first stage, to get root growth underway, is delayed until the summer after the seeds drop. In that case, sprouts don’t poke above ground until their second spring.

I don’t want to wait that long so I sowed my ramp seeds in a seed flat which I’m keeping in a warm place for a couple of months. After that, I’ll move the flat to cooler temperatures. And then, come spring, sprouts — I hope.

My ramps planting

My ramps mother plants

TWENTY-TWENTY FORESIGHT

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North Vegetable Garden

I’m stepping outside this sunny afternoon for a walk around the farmden, pad and pen in hand to evaluate some of this season’s goings on to make notes for next season. Not that the season is anywhere near over yet. I expect to be out and about with pitchfork, harvest basket, and garden cart at least into December. But no surprises are expected at this point.

Starting in the north vegetable garden: tomatoes. Over the years I’ve honed the number of varieties here from too many to our half-dozen or so favorites.

Valencia tomato

Valencia tomato

The goal is top-notch flavor and reasonable productivity. San Marzano, which is very productive, might taste like cotton fresh but it’s a must for the best-tasting cooked tomatoes. The San Marzanos get their dedicated canning jars, but also good canned is Blue Beech and, great for fresh eating also, are Amish Paste and Anna Russian.

Three more, mostly for fresh eating next year, are Paul Robeson, Belgian Giant, and Valencia. Valencia has year after year proven to be a very good, very beautiful, and productive tomato. Pretty also, round, smooth, and pale orange. Cherokee Purple hardly produced this year, and hasn’t in years past, so it’s scrapped from the list for next year.

I consider Sungold to be the best-tasting cherry tomato, and it’s still bearing a daily abundance of persimmon-orange fruits. I put in 8 plants; next year, I’ll plant a few more.

That makes a total of only seven tomato varieties — unless someone twists my arm into trying any other variety.

I’ll try for a repeat abundance of peppers next year by again growing Carmen and Sweet Italia.

Italian Sweet peppers

Sweet Italia peppers

Sweet Italia tastes better but Carmen bears a little better, especially now. The non-hot hot pepper Habenada, is billed as having hot pepper flavor minus the hotness. More like no hotness and no flavor, a no-go for next year.

South Vegetable Garden

Walking over to the “south garden,” the highlights this year were cauliflower, beans, and squash. Cauliflower is allegedly a challenge to grow. I don’t like it so grew it just for the challenge, and because Deb likes it. I was successful, and she can eat it all.

Blue Lake and Kentucky Wonder pole beans keep pumping tender new beans, as pole beans are wont to do. Or is it Blue Lake and Romano? Or Kentucky Wonder and Romano? The row label is buried deep in a wall of foliage so I won’t know until the end of the season. Pole beansI guess two plants per pole, with poles about a foot apart, is too crowded. Next year: one plant per pole.

Pole beans begin bearing late so I also grow bush beans (bush Blue Lake and bush Romano), which peter out after a couple of weeks but yield an early crop for the freezer. I usually put in a second planting also, which is — note for next year — not needed. We didn’t have to harvest any of them because the pole beans kicked in soon enough.

It’s been a banner year for winter squash. I usually plant squash out in the meadow in the cleared strip of land between the dwarf apple trees. And usually, deer or my poultry eat the vines or the fruit so the harvest is usually nil. This year I planted squash in the rich soil along and inside the back fence of the south garden, which backs up to the poultry run. The squash climbed up and over the fence and onto the fenced roof of the run; now there’s plenty to harvest, perhaps too many!Winter squash on poultry run

South Vegetable Garden

Two flowers were standouts this year: On a whim I purchased red buckwheat seed from Baker’s Creek (www.rareseeds.com). With no place special in mind about where to plant it, I ended up sprinkling the seed in a bed just outside the north vegetable garden.
Red buckwheat
For the past couple of months it’s been a 4-foot high cloud of pale red beauty, which, along with how easy it is to grow, earns it a place in next year’s garden. But where?

One other flower stood out also, delphinium. Not a five foot spire of pale blue — I also have them, the Pacific Giant hybrids — but a spire less than two feet tall with dark blue flowers.
Delphinium, Blue Mirror
It’s Blue Mirror Chinese delphinium (www.reneesgarden.com) and it surprised me by blooming its first year from seed. Let’s see how perennial this perennial turns out to be. Around here, its giant cousins typically die out after a  couple of years.

All in all, it’s been an excellent growing season. Spring frost hazard was minor for tree fruits. Rainfall and sunshine were balanced well. Pest problems were minor. Pears are still challenging to harvest at just the right moment so that they can ripen indoors to that delectable window between underripe grassy and overripe sleepy. I did get Concorde at the right moment this year. The ripe fruits are delectable, combining some of the smooth buttery sweetness of Magness pear along with a dash of vanilla.

SOME THINGS FOR SOME SENSES

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Visual Delight, and some Aroma

I once grew a rose, Bibi Maizoon, that I considered to be as close to perfection as any rose could be. Its blooms, that is. They were cup-shaped and filled with loosely defined row upon row of pastel pink petals, nothing like the pointed, stiff blossoms of hybrid tea roses. Completing the old-fashioned feel of Bibi Maizoon blossoms is the flowers’ strong, fruity fragrance.
Bibi Maizoon rose
(In case you don’t know who Bibi Maizoon was, she was a member of the royal family of Oman. The Bibi Maizoon rose was bred by British rose breeder David Austin.)

The bush itself was as imperfect as the blossom were perfect. Where to begin? For starters, the thin stems could hardly support the corpulent blossoms. Couldn’t, in fact, so the blossoms usually dangle upside down. Upside down blossoms were not that bad because I considered Bibi best when cut for vases indoors to better appreciate her rare appearances and fragrance.

Top those deficiencies with the fact that Bibi Maizoon was also only borderline cold hardy in my garden and you would rightly guess that I no longer grow this rose.

I haven’t abandoned David Austin roses. I generally like them for their old-fashioned look: the bushes are, well, bushy and full; the blossoms have softer colors than those of traffic-stopping hybrid tea roses; and they are disease resistan and strong-growing.

I’ve previously praised the variety L. D. Braithwaite for its almost nonstop, dark red blossoms, red tinted leaves, and ability to laugh off any amount of cold. Three other varieties — Golden Celebration, Lady of Shallot, and Dame Judi Dench — came into my garden in the last year, their blossoms with varying degrees of yellow, the first a pure golden yellow, the second apricot-yellow, and the third apricot orange. Delicious. They all seem, so far, near-perfect.

Golden Celebration rose

Golden Celebration rose

Lady of Shallot rose

Lady of Shallot rose

Organoleptic Delight, and also Beautiful

Ellison’s Orange is as unknown to most people as is Bibi Maizoon. It’s an apple, an old and very delicious apple, and, oddly enough, ripening right now. Everywhere else I read that this apple is supposed to ripen later in September and on into October, yet every year my Ellison’s Orange fruits ripen about this time of year.

Like Bibi Maizoon, Ellison’s Orange has its good and bad sides. On the plus side, it bears very well and at a young age. It also seems to be somewhat resistant to scab and cedar apple rust diseases, contradicting other sources on this point also. And what a beauty the fruit is, with its orange blush over a yellow background.

For me, the downside of this variety is the absolute necessity to pick it at just the right moment. One day an apple seems puckery underripe; the next day it might be sleepy and soft. If I harvest very carefully, I catch an apple at its delectable best, which is sprightly with an intense flavor that hints of anise seed.
Ellison's Orange apple
I made my tree from a piece of stem whose cells trace back over a hundred years, to the garden of a Reverend Ellison in Lincolnshire in the east of England. The parents of the reverend’s new apple weren’t lightweights. One parent, Cox’s Orange Pippin, the king of British apples, has an intense flavor that sometimes hints of anise seed. The other parent, Calville Blanc, an old French apple popular in the court of King Louis XIII, has a spicy flavor with just a hint of banana. No wonder Ellison’s Orange tastes so good – as long as I catch it at the right moment.

Another Tasty Delight

If you buy corn at a farmstand or market these days, no need to have boiling water ready, as gardeners did in the past to stop enzymes from starting the conversion of kernels from sugary sweet to starchy bland. Two genes incorporated into modern corn varieties dramatically slow this flavor decline. They also ratchet up the sugars, making modern corns supersweet to begin with.

Call me old-fashioned, but my favorite variety of sweet corn, the only variety that I grow, is the old variety Golden Bantam, which lacks those modern corn genes. Although not nearly as sweet as modern hybrids, Golden Bantam has a very rich corny flavor with – to some tastes — just the right amount of sweetness.

Golden Bantam, a hit since 1906

Golden Bantam, a hit since 1906

Golden Bantam was introduced into the seed trade in 1902 by W. Atlee Burpee Company, who got their original 2 quarts of seed from New York farmer William Coy, who had tasted and enjoyed eating some ears at his cousin’s house in Massachusetts. Long story short: Everyone fell in love with Golden Bantam and it became the most popular corn of its day. An article in The Boston Transcript of 1926 states that “In the twenty-four years since [1902] it has made more friends than anyone else could make outside the movies. Which proves that popularity does sometimes follow real merit.” It’s an odd way to compliment but you get the picture.

Golden Bantam pre-dates hybrid varieties, the latter of which, in addition to other characteristics, ripen very uniformly. In a backyard garden, a whole bed of corn ripening at once isn’t necessarily a plus. I want to eat some corn every day, with a little extra each day for freezing.
Corn hills
My four beds of corn, the first planted in mid-May (around the date of our last-killing frost of spring)  and the subsequent beds staggered every two weeks, provides just that. We’ve eaten corn almost every day since each mid-August and Golden Bantam shows no signs of slowing down or boring us.

Seeds Want to Grow

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Yes, They Want To, But . . . 

Today, as I was carefully planting a bed with turnip, arugula, and mustard seeds, I got to thinking how easy it is to grow plants from seeds. It’s not surprising. After all, seed plants evolved millions of years ago and over the years have further evolved to germinate and grow under varied conditions. This would be especially true of those plants we call weeds.
Cynara, cardoon, in bud

So, with all that evolution backing me up, why the great care in planting those seeds today? Seeds do want to grow, but extra care increases the chances for success. The threats to germination and growth are competition from weeds, temperatures that are too warm or not warm enough, old seed, and insufficient soil fertility, air, or moisture. That’s not all, of course; there’s too many salts in a soil (and not just NaCl “salt”), seed-eating animals, and infections from pathogenic fungi. 

Whew! That list makes growing from seed seems fraught with roadblocks. But it’s not.

Steps to Improved Germination and Growth

My extra care in planting began back last autumn when I spread an inch depth of compost on top of the bed right after clearing it of garden plants and weeds. That compost provides nutrients, beneficial microbes, and increases aeration and water retention.

Earlier this season, the bed had been home to bush beans. Bean roots, left in the soil to rot, will provide further fertility — mostly nitrogen — for today’s planting.

The bean plants, and a few weeds, were cleared from the bed a couple of weeks ago, still too early for today’s planting of fall crops. While the ground was waiting, I covered it with a black tarp. The tarp, an old billboard sign (from www.billboardtarps.com and reusable for years) that is black on its back side, stimulated growth of ever present weed seeds in the soil. The seeds germinated, then died from lack of light beneath the tarp.

After year upon year of compost applications, the soil has very good tilth, so all it needed, once I removed the tarp, was a light raking to present a loose seedbed. Into it, with a trowel, I carved the first furrow the length of the bed. 

Depth of planting is important. An oft-repeated rule of thumb is that the depth to sow seeds is twice their thickness. Not true! Correct planting depth needs to also take into account the looseness of the soil; looser soil, more depth. And anyway, the seeds that I planted are only about 1/32” in diameter, making it well nigh impossible to make a furrow 1/16” deep. In my loose soil, that depth would dry out too quickly. I went with the less precise “sow shallowly.”
Radish seedlings

Garden plants grown from seed can suffer from competition not only from weeds, but also from each other. True, the young seedlings could be thinned out if too crowded after germination. With seed less than two years old and care in planting, I was confident about germination, so sowed the seed thinly.

After sowing the seeds and covering them came the all-important firming of the soil. The removal of the bean plants and the pre-plant raking to smooth the surface left plenty of large pores, through which water would run right through. 

Tamping down the soil with a garden rake over the covered furrow tightened up the pores so that they can hold capillary water. Remember high school chemistry class (or was it biology class) when water was shown to be drawn up into a capillary tube against the force of gravity? Firming the soil keeps moisture around the newly sown seeds; plus, water can be drawn upwards or sideways to that area. Weed seeds, sitting in still loose soil beyond the tamped area, won’t have such an easy time of it.

Finally, I watered — thoroughly enough for the water to penetrate but, to avoid washing away the seeds, not too fast. My vegetable garden has drip irrigation; I moved the drip line up right next to where the furrow was. Frequent watering is needed until seeds germinate and their new roots reach the wetting from down in the soil. An electronic moisture probe can indicate how deep moisture lies beneath the surface.

And Now for a Flower, or Is It a Vegetable?

Many years ago I grew cardoon, a vegetable whose 3-foot-high stalks are something like celery on steroids. Cardoon stalks growing in gardenThe flavor hints of artichoke, a close relative. None the less, for me the flavor was awful and the stalks were tough. (Cardoon is usually covered to blanche them a few weeks before harvest. Blanching did not make mine more edible.)

Yet I am now enamored with this plant — not for eating but for its thistle-like flower. Cardoon is a perennial that begins to bloom in its second year, after experiencing a period of cool temperatures in winter. Cool, not frigid; cardoon is not cold hardy here in the Hudson Valley.

Last summer I planted seed and grew the plant in pots. Those pots spent the winter in my greenhouse, where temperatures never dipping below 35° F. reminded them of their Mediterranean origin. Once warm weather settled in this spring, I planted them out in my flower garden.Cardoon in flower

The bud on one plant that has been slowly unfurling is well worth the care I put into the plants.