Fruit – Page 12 – Lee Reich

Get Crackin’

January 23, 2019/11 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Cured!

It’s finally time to get crackin’. Literally. Black walnuts are ready for shelling.
This nutty story goes back to early this past autumn as black walnut trees were shedding their nuts. The nuts fall in their husks, the whole package looking like green tennis balls. Lots of people curse the trees for littering lawns, sidewalks, and driveways. We, on the other hand, praise and collect the nuts. Cracked and whole black walnuts

The first step to the present day crackin’ was husking the nuts. The soft, fleshy covering is easy to twist off the enclosed, hard-shelled nut. But we’ve also tried many methods to speed up the process, from spreading the dropped fruit in the driveway and driving over them to pounding them through a 1-1/2” hole in a thick piece of plywood to running them through a suitably modified old-fashioned corn-sheller. Black walnuts in husks Various black walnut hullers

There’s no way around it: Husking black walnuts is a tedious job. And messy, because the soft flesh readily releases a juice which stains everything a deep brown color.
A friend recently told me of some novice black walnut enthusiasts that husked the walnuts bare handed, assuming the stain would wash off when they were finished. Not so. My wife Deb, who husks our black walnuts, chooses to sit herself down on a stool, don rubber gloves, and twist off the hulls, coaxing firm ones off with an initial tap with a light sledge hammer.

(The stain, which is colorfast and resistant to ultraviolet rays, is very easy to extract from the hulls for ink, for dyeing textiles, and staining wood. Just mix the hulls or unhulled nuts with water and boil for awhile or let sit a longer while. Strain and you’re good to go.)

In not too long, we had a number of 5 gallon bucketfuls of hulled nuts — a slimy, ugly mess from bits of hull still attached to the nuts and from the myriad white maggots crawling.

Now it was my turn — to clean up the nuts. I loaded all the nuts into shallow harvest boxes that had plenty of large holes for air or water and drove over to a nearby car wash. After suiting up in an old pair of rain pants, a rain jacket, rubber gloves, and a face shield, and spreading out the boxes on the ground in the car wash, I gave them a thorough, water-only cleaning. Husked nuts

I then spread the boxes out in the sun for a couple of days to dry out the surface of the nuts. Squirrels would be a serious threat but I spread the boxes on our south-facing deck where our two dogs also spend much of the day unknowingly guarding the nuts. Each night, or if any rain was predicted, I stacked and covered the boxes.
After the nuts were sufficiently dry, I stacked the trays in the barn where our cat is the squirrel deterrent.

Then the nuts needed to be cured, which involves nothing more than leaving them alone in a cool, dry, squirrel-fee area. And that brings us up to the present day.

A Tough Nut

Black walnut is a hard nut to crack. No run-of-the-mill nutcracker is up to the job. The usual tool, which is effective, is a hammer against the nut resting on an anvil or concrete. Used with care, a vise might do the job.

Two problems: With the hammer, hitting your finger occasionally as you hold the nut is inevitable. You could, I guess, hold the nut in a pliers. With either method, you have to use just the right amount of force to crack the shell sufficiently in order to extract the nutmeats in reasonable sized pieces without crushing everything too, too small.
The hands-down best job for cracking black walnuts is, in my opinion, the “Master Nut Cracker” (http://www.masternutcracker.com). It’s expensive but well worth the money for the speed with which the nuts can be cracked and the large nutmeats that result from efficient cracking. Besides which, it’s a very well-made tool with a very ingenious design.

Once nuts are cracked, nutmeats still occasionally need further coaxing to free them from the shell. A useful tool that I use that almost everyone has is a type of wire cutter sometimes called a diagonal cutting plier. The right squeeze in the right place, the result of observation and practice, yields large nutmeats that pop right out. Prying out nuts with pliers

But Is It For You?

Black walnuts have a strong flavor that, like dark beer and okra, is loved by some but not enjoyed by everyone. But there’s no reason why everyone should like everything. Leave that goal to MacDonald’s. As L. H. Bailey, a doyen of horticulture, wrote back in 1922 (about apples), “Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many kinds of folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate tastes.”

Black walnut is one of my favorite nuts. And, the trees and nuts abound around here, and elsewhere, free for the taking. black walnuts in jar

Dry, Wet, Bad, Good?

December 26, 2018/10 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Some Bad

Wow! What a gardening year this has been. Looking back on 2018, it’s been the oddest year ever in terms of weather, insects, and disease.

After starting off the season parched, seemingly ready to go into drought, the weather in July did an about face. The rains began. Average precipitation here in the Northeast is about 4 inches per month. July ended up with about 6 inches, August saw 5 inches, September 8 inches(!), October 5 inches, and November 8 inches(!!).

All that rainfall brought humidity, which might have been responsible for my celeriac plants hardly growing, then rotting.

Celeriac, early in the growing season, before the rains

(Perhaps not, because this was my third growing season of failure with celeriac.) I’m taking this as a celeriac challenge. Perhaps next year I’ll try them in a large tub where I can have more control over soil composition and moisture.

The humidity also had too many figs morph into fuzzy, gray balls as they softened and sweetened.

Tomatoes this year tasted very good, as usual, but yield was way down and too many showed some rotting areas. (In my experience, growing tomatoes under variable soil and weather at various locations around the country, their flavor is mostly a matter of genetics; a good variety tastes good everywhere.) Particularly irking was anthracnose disease, which often isn’t noticeable when fruits are harvested, but quickly shows up as round, sunken areas.

Onions suffered this season. Mostly they were stunted, and I’m not sure why.

Zucchini was a bust because the plants petered out from powdery mildew and vine borers just after midsummer. I usually circumvent these common problems with multiple plantings, starting new zucchini plants in early summer to replace the decrepit ones. I forgot to replant this summer (probably because I don’t like zucchini all that much anyway).

Medlar is an uncommon, very old-fashioned fruit that I’ve grown for many years. Although it’s gotten a bad rap for it’s ugly — to some people — appearance, the flavor is delicious, the soft flesh creamy smooth like apple butter with a similar flavor livened with vinous overtones. Medlar fruit in hand Usually the plant is pest-free but a few years ago something, perhaps a fungus, perhaps an insect, started attacking it, leaving the flesh dry and crumbly. I have yet to identify the culprit so that appropriate action can be taken. Medlar pest damage

Some Good

Not that this past growing season was bad. I won the battle against soft scale insects (mealybugs) on my greenhouse figs, although their ecological niche was filled by just-as-bad armored scale insects. A close eye and an occasional spray of Neem oil kept flea beetles at bay from eggplants.

A couple of the same Neem sprays beginning in mid-September may have kept a new pest in the area, Allium leafminer (ALM, Phytomyza gymnostoma) at bay. Last year each of my near perfect-looking leeks revealed a rotted stalk as I lifted them out of the ground.

Allium leafminer

Then again, I did plant this past season’s leeks far from where the previous season’s leeks grew. Then again, the ALM flies can fly. Then again, maybe they weren’t here this year; perhaps the weather was not to their liking.

This past season’s leeks

There was also no sign this past season of the white flies that decimated my kale the previous season.

Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), a species of fruit fly that has invaded the country relatively recently, did mostly ruin autumn ripening yellow and black raspberries. But little damage was suffered by my favorite (and perennially most successful) fruit, blueberries, probably thanks to some experimental traps developed by Peter Jentsch of Cornell University.

SWD trap

Peppers were even more of a success than usual, mostly due to my staking the plants. The only fault of Sweet Italia, my favorite variety for its early ripening, for its flavor, and for its good yields, is that the fruit-laden plants flop over under their own weight. Eventually, the small bamboo stakes I used proved only partially adequate; next year they’ll get the stakes they deserve.

I treated a few beds in spring to a relatively new method for weed control: tarping. Laying a sunlight-blocking tarp down on the ground for a couple of weeks or more in spring warms the soil beneath, stimulating germination of any weed seeds lurking there. The sprouting seeds are disappointed by the incessant darkness. They die. Timing, temperature, sunlight, and duration of tarping all play a role in this techniques effectiveness.

(Tarping is very different from using black plastic mulches. The latter are kept in place all season long, with garden plants growing in holes or slits in the plastic. Soil beneath the plastic can suffer from lack of air or, if not drip irrigated, lack of water. Also, the tarp — mine came from www.billboardtarps.com — can be folded up and re-used for many seasons.)

And finally, we were happy to find some assassin bugs and anchor stink bugs, Stiretrus anchorago, in the garden. Both are beneficial insects — yes even that particular stink bug.

Immature beneficial stink bug

Good Overall

All in all, it was a good season — as always. The secret is to grow many different kinds of plants. No season, no matter what the weather or pests, has ever been bad for all plants.

Greenhouse Happenings, Figs and Lettuce and . . .

November 21, 2018/9 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Darkness Descending

Plant growth has come screeching (almost) to a halt. Lettuces just sit, hardly growing. No wonder, you are no doubt thinking. It’s getting colder and colder outside. I know that, but I’m writing about lettuces in my greenhouse. The issue isn’t lack of heat. It’s lack of light. Planting greenhouse lettuce

For more evidence that light is the issue, look to good vegetable gardens in southern Europe. In that mild climate, harvest from a well-planned vegetable garden continues year ‘round. But year ‘round harvest there takes planning — lack of light also makes for very slow growth over there in these darkest months. Unprotected plants survive because the winter weather never gets that cold over there. (And cool-season vegetables, such as spinach, radish, and turnips, that we plan for sprig or fall, are what do well in Mediterranean winters.)

My garden here in the Hudson Valley, at about the 42nd parallel, experiences winter day lengths the same as Rome, Italy or the island of Corsica — all on about the same 42nd degree of latitude. If lettuce plants grow slowly in Rome and Corsica, then the slow growth of lettuce in my greenhouse should come as no surprise. But it always does surprise me, and the brakes seem to start getting applied back in October, with full pressure about now.

All this came to the forefront of my attention back in 1992, when I read Eliot Coleman’s excellent book Four-Season Harvest. After highlighting the similar insolation of much of our “northern regions” with much of balmy Europe, he went on to describe various ways of protecting winter vegetable from our winter cold, which would kill most of them. Keeping the plants a bit warmer also gets them growing sooner once days become longer and brighter.

My goal, in the greenhouse, is to get a good share of the plants almost fully grown going into December. With lettuces, I try to plan to have enough of them to fill salad bowls through January and February, after which smaller plants are starting to grow fast enough to fill those bowls.

The 42nd Parallel

The reason Corsica and Rome remain relatively balmy all winter while winters here, with both locations at the 42nd parallel, get so frigid is that Corsica is bathed by the Gulf Stream, that warm mass of air that flows up from the Caribbean and across the Atlantic to wash over western Europe.

The warm touch of the Gulf Stream is lost as you move further east across Europe and into western Asia. Kazakhstan, parts of which also lie at the 42nd parallel, experience average annual temperatures from -60°F to 104°F!! The climate of nearby Turkey, whose north end touches that latitude, is moderated by the Caspian Sea. Moving further east to parts of Inner Mongolia, still within the 42nd parallel, winter temperatures might dip to -90°F.

A Greenhouse is not a Hothouse

If you were to join me in my greenhouse today, don’t forget your hat and gloves. The greenhouse is heated, but only minimally, enough to keep the temperature from falling below 37°F. That temperature provides a nice balance between energy use and reasonable year ‘round harvest. (Expotentially more energy is needed for incrementally increasing temperatures.)

Today is rainy and very cool, but not cool enough to kick on the greenhouse heater. So it’s pretty much the same temperature inside the greenhouse as outside the greenhouse — in the 40s. Most of what’s growing — kale, celery, mâche, claytonia, Swiss chard, mustard greens, parsley, and arugula — do fine with these conditions.

Leafy vegetables require less energy (i.e. sunlight) than do fruiting vegetables, so the low light is also fine to keep them happy even if only slowly growing, just as they would be planted (outdoors) in a garden in Corsica or Rome.

That’s also home to my baby, hardy cyclamens (about which I recently wrote), in a seed flat, until they decide to lose their leaves and go dormant. And two cardoon plants, also native to Mediterranean regions.

One Mediterranean plant that is very unhappy this year, even in the greenhouse, is fig. Figs are still ripening but, with the high humidity and low light, each is soon covered with fuzzy, gray mold. Figs rotting in greenhouse Splitting fig Roots of Rabbi Samuel fig, near the endwall, spread under the wall and outside the greenhouse, soaking up so much water that the figs split before ripening. Yet, a few fig fruits escape both afflictions and ripen to juicy sweetness.

I wonder if fig gardeners in the Mediterranean share my fig problems. Eating a fig

Winter Prep for Some of my Figs

November 15, 2018/19 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Fig Abuse?

Anyone watching what I was doing to my fig trees might have called “Fig Protective Services” to have my trees removed to a new home. But figs are tough plants and tolerate a lot of what looks like abuse.

Let me offer some background: Figs are subtropical plants so can’t survive to fruit outdoors around here. I grow a few fig trees in pots that I can put in a protected location for winter (more on that later). Problem is that the trees’ roots eventually fill the pots and exhaust nutrients in the mix.

I could move each tree to a larger pot. Then the branches could grow commensurately larger, and more growth of branches translates to more figs to harvest. But these pots have to be moved every spring and fall, and there’s a limit to how big a pot I can handle.

The other way to give the roots new ground to explore is to root prune them. That is, slice off some roots to make space for new soil in the same pot. Trust me; I’ve done this for many years and the plants tolerate it well, growing happily each spring following the operation. (Fall or spring, when the plants are leafless, is the best time for root pruning and re-potting.)

So I tipped each plant on its side and pulled on the stem while holding the pot in place to slide the root ball out of the pot. Sliding root ball out of pot After standing the root ball upright, I started slicing it from top to bottom. For root balls 18 to 24 inches across, I slice a couple inches off all around. I used to use an old kitchen knife but discovered that my reciprocating saw with a medium-tooth blade works much better. Slicing root ball

With the old root ball shrunken, it goes back into its pot and I start packing potting soil back in the space between the pared down root ball and the sides of the pot. Adding new potting soil to pot For good contact, I pack the potting soil in with my fingers and the flat end of a 3/4 inch dowel. Packing new soil in around root ball

Next year at this time or, at most, two years from now, trees will get root-pruned again.

Winter Quarters

Now, what will I do with the fig trees for winter. It’s a conundrum, because the trees, being subtropical, do well with a cold season rest, ideally below 50°. On the other hand, they can’t tolerate cold much below about 25°F. in their pots.

Some places that might provide temperatures within this range are an unheated garage that’s attached to a house, an unheated and uninsulated basement, or an unheated foyer or mudroom. As long as they are dormant, the plants do not need light.

For many years, I’ve lugged my plants down the rather narrow stairway to my basement. There’s an oil burner down there but it’s rarely used since most of our heat is with wood. In midwinter, basement temperatures hover around 40°F.

As of this year, my days of lugging the heavy pots down stairs are over. I now have access to a ground level, unheated room in a well-insulated, rarely heated building having a concrete floor for good thermal mass. The Ritz!

The goal is to keep the plants cold enough so that they stay dormant until it’s safe to move them outdoors in spring. If all goes well, the plants are still dormant when outdoor temperatures rarely dip below 32°F. Then the plants, moved outdoors, slowly awaken with cool temperatures and bright sun promoting sturdy growth.

Because fig trees in pots tolerate temperatures down into the 20s, there’s no rush to move them into storage. I usually wait until sometime in December.

What Makes Soil Potting Soil?

Notice that I mentioned my trees growing in “potting soil.” Straight soil, even good, well-drained garden soil, is unsuitable for plants in pots because it becomes unavoidably waterlogged. (The reason, described in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden, has to do with what is known as a “perched water table;” take my word for it or read the book.)

Drainage is improved in potting soils by adding aggregate such as perlite, vermiculite, or calcined montmorillonite clay (the latter better known and more often sold as kitty litter).

Roots in containers have more limited volume to explore for nutrients, so potting soils also need to be richer that even good garden soils. Compost is one way to provide nutrition. Among the advantages of compost is its ability to offer nutrients over a long period of time, as soil microbes slowly decompose it.

Water, like nutrients, also must be accessed from a limited volume of soil. The compost helps a potting soil hold water; I boost that further with the addition of some peat moss or coir.

My finished mix is made up of equal parts garden soil, perlite, compost, and peat moss. All my plants, not just the figs, like it.

Peat, perlite, soil, and compost

New York Grown Oranges!

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

Yes, A True Citrus

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Plant A Seed

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

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

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

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

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

The seedling on right is probably apomictic

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

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

Not Everyone’s A Fan

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

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

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

Wild and Cultivated Pleasures

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

Mythbusting

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

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

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

And Now, Enjoy the Flowers

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

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

Meadow Reclamation

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

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

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

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

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

Wild Aromas, Cultivated Flavors

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

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

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

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

Vanessa grapes

Some You Win, Some You Lose. Why?

September 20, 2018/8 Comments/in Fruit, Pests, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Mo’ Better Berries

Because I’ve grown a number of varieties of blueberries for a long time, I’m often asked what variety I would recommend planting. Or whether you need to plant two varieties for cross-pollination in order to get fruit.

The answers to both questions are intertwined. First of all, blueberries are partially self-fertile so one variety will bear fruit all by itself.
Large blueberries
But — and this is important — berries will be both more plentiful and larger if two different varieties cross-pollinate each other. (Apples, in contrast, are self-sterile so, with few exceptions, won’t bear any fruit at all without cross-pollination.)

Benefits of cross-pollination aside, why plant just one variety of blueberry? Different varieties ripen their fruits at different times during the blueberry harvest season. With a good selection of varieties, that season can be very long.

Here on the farmden, the season opens with Duke and Earliblue, both usually ready for picking (in Zone 5) at the end of June. The season moves on, with Blueray, Berkeley, and Bluecrop ripening in July, and Jersey, Toro, and Nelson in August. Blueberries galore As I write, in September, the variety Elliot is still bearing ripe berries.

So if you’re going to plant blueberries, which I highly recommend doing, plant more than one variety, and choose the varieties that let you enjoy berries with your morning cereal or your after dinner ice cream over a long season.

Soil Matters

I pay special attention to the soil when I plant blueberries, and it pays off. Blueberries have rather unique soil requirements among cultivated plants, demanding those that are very acidic, high in organic matter, low in nutrients, and consistently moist and well-aerated. (Most cultivated plants like soils that are only slightly acidic and have moderate to high fertility.) No matter if a soil is not naturally to blueberry’s liking; it can be made so.

The soil where I planted my blueberries drains well. If it did not, I would either choose a better location or else create mounds on which to plant.

Next in importance is soil acidity; I test it before planting. If it’s not at the required pH of 4 to 5.5, I spread pelletized sulfur, a naturally mined mineral, over the ground. (Pelletizing the sulfur makes it less dusty to work with.) Mulched blueberry planting
The amount of sulfur, per 100 square feet, needed to lower the pH by one unit would be a pound in a sandy soil and three pounds in a clay soil. My clay loam’s initial pH was about 6.5, so I needed 3 pounds of sulfur per hundred square feet to lower that pH to 5.5, that upper limit enjoyed by blueberries.

Now, for planting. I mix a bucketful of peat moss with the soil in each planting hole and then tuck the plants and soil into the hole, setting the plants slightly deeper than they stood in the nursery. Peat moss is a long-lasting source of organic matter, unique among organic matters in also being low in nutrients.

Right after planting, I spread a 2 to 3 inch depth of some weed-free, fluffy organic material, such as wood shavings, wood chips, straw, pine needles, or autumn leaves, as mulch. The mulch snuffs out weeds, which are more adept than blueberry at soaking up water and nutrients, and keeps the soil cool and moist, just as it is in blueberry’s natural habitats.

With regular watering, as needed, pruning, and annual mulching and attention to soil acidity, blueberry leaves should maintain a healthy, green color, and stems should grow a couple of feet or so each year. My planting of 16 plants yields almost 200 quarts per year of delicious, organic blueberries.

Celeriac Failure, Again

Blueberries have been a great success; now for a failure. Celeriac, a celery relative that puts that flavor into its softball-sized, white root, isn’t well-known as a vegetable, but I’d like to grow it. I’ve tried, for the past couple of years, without success. The problem is some sort of celery blight that kills the top growth so there’s no greenery to feed the root.

Both early blight and late blight, fungal diseases, could cause problems. They arrived in gardens on infected celery seed and/or infected celery debris from the previous cropping season. Celery bacterial blight Last fall I thoroughly cleaned up diseased plants, even planted some celeriac this year in the greenhouse. Failure occurred both outdoors and in the greenhouse, although lots of rain and heat could have helped (the fungi or bacteria, not me).

I’m not giving up. Perhaps the seed is the problem. Seed can harbor the disease, but can be “cleaned” up with a heat treatment: 30 minutes at 118°F. As a last resort, I could spray an organic fungicide such as one of the organically approved materials based on copper or hydrogen peroxide. Perhaps this time next year I’ll be eating celeriac.

Figs and Peppers and . . .

September 12, 2018/14 Comments/in Fruit, Pests, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Fig Frustrations and Joys

Over the years I’ve shared the joys and frustrations of growing figs in my minimally heated greenhouse. The joys, of course, have been in sinking my teeth into fruits of the various varieties. Also, more recently, the neat appearance of the plants which are trained as espaliers. Fig espalier

Left to its own devices, a fig can grow into a tangled mess. In part, that’s because fig trees can’t decide if they want to be small trees, with single or a few trunks, or large shrubs, with sprouts and side branches popping out all over the place.

A major frustration in my greenhouse fig journey has been insects, both scale insects and mealybugs. These pests never attack my potted figs which summer outdoors and winter indoors in my barely heated basement. In the greenhouse the problem each year became more and more severe, eventually rendering many of the ripe fruits inedible. More fig espaliers All that despite my attempts at control by going over plants with a toothbrush dipped in alcohol, oil sprays, and sticky barriers to keep ants, which “farm” these pests, from climbing up the trunks.

Scale and mealybugs are hard to control, let alone eradicate. Yet I am now secure enough in my victory to have claimed success in the battle.

Success began last year, when research pointed me to two predators of these pests, Chrysoperla rufilabris and Cryptolaemus montrouzieri, both of which I ordered online and released into the greenhouse. They were expensive, bringing the cost of my fresh figs to about one dollar each. Still worth it, though.

I got to thinking, “Perhaps I could perennialize these predators in the greenhouse so that additional annual purchases would be unnecessary.” As a first step to creating a home (or a jail, depending on your perspective) for them, I covered all greenhouse openings to the outdoors with window screening. These predators also like moisture, so I periodically spritzed the greenhouse and laid some absorbent wads of paper here and there on the branches.

I further thought, “How does the greenhouse environment differ from the great outdoors, where my figs are pest-free?” Rainfall! Although the greenhouse environment is humid, water never falls on the plants’ leaves and stems. So rather than period spritzing, almost every day since early spring I have blasted leaves, stems, and developing fruits with water.

The result: I haven’t seen one mealybug or scale insect all season!

Success, Who Knows Why?

I have to restrain myself from the usual gardener’s hubris in thinking that what I did cured the problem. Perhaps the “rainfall” favored the predators, of which there’s been nary a sign, by knocking the pest insects off the plant, or by creating a moist environment inimical to the pests, or . . . Perhaps my screening the greenhouse cured the problem. Perhaps the pest problem disappeared for none of these reasons. Or from some combination of these reasons.

If I had a full-blown experimental station and was willing to sacrifice some fresh figs to science, I could possible sleuth out the answer with control plants to what happened. But I don’t, so I’ll just keep enjoying and be thankful for the fresh figs — and keep a close eye on what’s going on.

Dondé Está la Salsa?

I have a lot of faith in natural systems (aka Mother Nature), but sometimes she gets things mixed up. Case in point relates to peppers. The pepper crop this year is excellent, mostly because I staked each plant, weeded well, and grew varieties that do well here (Escamillo, Carmen, Perperoncini, and, best of all for flavor and production, Sweet Italia).

What can be done with excess peppers? Salsa, of course.

But a key ingredient for salsa is cilantro, which enjoys cool weather both for germination and growth. Self-seeded cilantro plants were sprouting and growing all over the place a few months ago. The dried stems topped by BB-sized seeds is all that remains of them. Cilantro seeds Those seeds will drop and germinate in the cooler temperature a few weeks hence. But I need cilantro now.

With foresight, I could have collected and sown these seeds a few weeks ago. The plants would have bolted (put energy into flowers rather than leaves) rather quickly but repeated sowings would have kept me in fresh new plants.

Belatedly, I have sown those seeds. To speed germination, I soaked them, then planted them in seed flats I kept in the refrigerator for a day and then moved to a cool, shaded area. Optimum temperatures for germination and growing of cilantro is 50-85° F. As I write, the temperature is in the mid-90s.

Fig Redux, One Week Later, A Bummer

Yes, mealybugs are still not to be seen. But now I see closely related scale insects. And plenty of them. Fig scale

So I started the water sprays again, which have the potential problem of creating so much humidity and moisture that ripening figs rot. On the other hand, it might set back the scale, perhaps by knocking off ants, who “farm” scale. I also ordered a new predator, one for scale, Aphytis melinus.

Mulberries and an (a?) Herb

September 5, 2018/3 Comments/in Fruit, Pests/by Lee Reich

Mulberries, Still

I finally am getting to eat some ripe mulberries this year, and they were — and are — very, very good. The wait wasn’t because the tree was too young. And anyway, mulberries are very quick to bear fruit, often the year after planting.

I got to eat fruit from my tree this year because resident birds have been kind enough to share some with me. Of course, it was not really kindness on their part. Illinois Everbearing mulberry fruit Birds also eat fruit for their juiciness, and the past weeks and weeks of abundant rainfall probably satisfied some of that need. The only other year I had plenty of mulberries — much more than this year — was a few years ago when 17-year cicadas descended upon here. All summer I awoke to their grating cacophony, but did feast on mulberries as birds feasted on the cicadas.

You might think it late in the season for mulberry fruits, which started ripening back in early July, to still be ripening. The variety name of my tree says it all: Illinois Everbearing. Not only is this variety everbearing, but it also has a very fine flavor, much better than the run-of-the-mill and ubiquitous wild mulberries whose fruit is usually too cloying. Illinois Everbearing’s sweetness is balanced with a bit of refreshing tartness.

Good as it is, Illinois Everbearing’s fruits cannot compare with that of black mulberry. The “black” refers to the species, Morus nigra. Illinois Everbearing is a hybrid of our native red mulberry, M. rubra, and white mulberry, M. alba, an Asian species that was introduced into our country about 200 years ago, liked it here, and mated with the native species. Black mulberry can only be grown in Mediterranean climates, so mine, in a large pot, bears only a handful of berries each year.

Some people contend that black mulberries adaptability is more widespread than mild winter climates. I have my doubts but I am going to graft a branch from my little tree onto some stems of some wild mulberries and see what happens. (The wild mulberries might either be white or red mulberries, or natural hybrids of the two; the color designations have nothing to do with the color of fruit a tree bears.) Illinois Everbearing tree

I’m happy enough with the long season, good flavor, and occasional harvest of Illinois Everbearing. Plus, it’s a pretty tree, and large, so the branches are now beyond reach of deer, who love to eat mulberry leaves.

I devote a whole chapter to mulberries, white, red, and black, in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.

Basil, Uh Oh

Bringing my eyes down from the dark mulberries to ground level, and walking over to the vegetable garden, I take a close look at this year’s basil. Hmm. Very slight yellowing of some of the leaves. Could it be . . . ? Yes, turning over one of those slightly chlorotic leaves I see tell-tale purplish brown spores, indicating downy mildew disease. Basil downy mildew, lf upper

A relative newcomer to the garden scene, basil downy mildew (a different pathogen than cucumber downy mildew, grape downy mildew, etc.) arrived on the East Coast in 2007, made it to the West Coast by 2009, and to Hawaii by 2011. It hitchhike around on infected seed, infected plants, and infected leaves.

Basil downy mildew, leaf underside

Some organic fungicides are allowed for controlling the scourge, but my basil mingles so intimately with other plants in the vegetable garden that I don’t consider that an option. Fortunately, other controls are feasible.

One thing would be to not mingle my basil so intimately with other plants. Sunlight is one nemesis of the mildew, as with most fungi. Better air circulation would also lower the humidity around the plants and speed drying of the foliage, also not to the liking of the mildew fungi.

Going one step further, Dr. Meg McGrath of Cornell University suggests growing basil in pots. Plants can be whisked under cover on cool nights, when dew threatens, or during rain or cloudy conditions.

Starting off with clean seed or plants would also limit infection. Not totally, though. Although the fungus does not overwinter in cold regions, given good (for the fungus) conditions, it can hitchhike up here over hundreds of miles.

Breeders are hard at work developing resistant varieties of basil, with some success. Among the resistant varieties are Amazel (shouldn’t the name be Amasil or Amazil?), Eleanor, Emma, Everleaf (Basil Pesto Party), Devotion, Obsession, and Thunderstruck. I’m growing Amazel and Everleaf this year. No sign of mildew on Amazel. Everleaf, this year, at least, has it as bad as my standard varieties.

None of the resistant mentioned varieties are immune to basil downy mildew, just resistant. So it pays to also give the plants a lot of sunlight and good air circulation, and consider pitted plants, for their mobility.

And Some Entomo . . . No, Etymology

Fun herb fact: The word “herb” was borrowed from the old French word erbe, which is why we don’t — and the British didn’t, initially — pronounce the h. Scribes in the 15th century, influenced by their knowledge of Latin, started using the Latin word herba. But still, no one spoke the h. Fast forward to the mid-19th-century and, all of a sudden, dropping h’s became a marker of low social class among the Brits, so they dropped them.

In the Wild

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

Row, Row, Row My Boat, and Then!

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

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

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

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

Nature’s Hand

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

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

Lingonberry in White Mountains

Good job at “edible landscaping” Ms. Nature!

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

But My Fruits and Vegetables are Better(?)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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