Fruit – Page 16 – Lee Reich

CHANGING STEMS, CHANGING LEAVES

November 11, 2016/0 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

Korean Giant Pear, In Training

    Stepping down the two stones at one end of my bluestone wall, a friend looked up and asked, “Are you torturing or training this tree?” He was referring to the tree on one side of the the stairway, one long stem of which was arching overhead, held in that position with a string tied to a stone on the opposite side of the stairway.
   “Training,” I replied. The stem was being coaxed into this seemingly submissive position both for form and function. Not to inflict pain. Pear branch, bent in training
   But first, something about this tree. It is an Asian pear, the variety Seuri Li that I created many years ago by grafting a Seuri Li stem on a semi-dwarfing rootstock (OH x F 513). It’s initial training was as an en arcure espalier. Deer found the young pear trees sitting high enough on the backfilled soil behind the wall a convenient smorgasbord; they didn’t even have to bend down to nibble at them. So the espalier became a deer-modified en arcure.
   Seuri Li never bore as well as the other Asian pears — Yoinashi, Yakumo, and Chojuro — trained above that wall. Last year I lopped back one major stem of Seuri Li and grafted a stem of the variety Korean Giant onto the stump. The graft “took,” and fueled by the established root system, buds from the grafted stem soared skyward.
   Growth from the graft was vigorous enough to start a large arch over the two stone stairway. A very big en arcure.

Hormonal Control

    Training to en arcure entails bending the single stem of a young fruit tree over to its neighbor. Typically, a bud near the high point of the arch will grow out into a vigorous shoot which is then bent in an arch in the opposite direction, to its neighbor on the other side. The vigorous shoot growing from the high point of that second arch is trained back to the next tier of arch of first neighbor. And so on, as high as desired.
   The end result is a flat plane of adjacent trees decoratively linked as a living fence.
   The fence might be considered functional, but the truly functional aspect of en arcure is physiological. Enhanced vigor of the highest buds can be traced to a plant hormone, auxin. Auxin, present in all plants, is synthesized in the uppermost growing points of a plant, either the tip of a vertical stem or the high point of an arched stem. But this auxin also puts the brakes, to some degree, on growth from buds below that high point.
   Growing fruit takes energy, as does growing stems; more fruit means less stem growth, and vice versa. (Left to their own devices, plants more or less balance these needs themselves, although not always to our satisfaction, which is why you have to pluck off peach fruitlets so that a peach tree can pump more energy into the fewer — and resulting — tastier fruits that remain.) Bending a branch over quells its growth, coaxing it to divert more energy to making fruit — except for the uppermost bud, which puts out a vigorous shoot.
   My plan, then, is to have that long stem of Korean Giant pear festooned with flowers in spring and fruits in autumn as it arches over the stone stairs. Plants don’t read plant physiology books and tow the line to all this theory, but I’m confident in a fruitful, decorative future for my plant because Asian pears generally are very eager to bear fruit.

Uncommon Autumn Color

Speaking of physiology, I wrote last week about the carotenoids, tannins, and anthocyanins that make autumn so warmly colorful, and especially so this year here in the Hudson Valley. A few plants, not commonly planted, are contributing boldly to that warmth.
•Japanese Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia) earns its keep year-round, with rich, red autumn leaf color right now, bark mottled in hues of gray and brown in winter, and camellia-like flowers in early summer.

Stewartia in autumn

•Fothergilla (Fothergilla major) also earns its keep for much of the year, with bottlebrush clusters of fragrant, white flowers in spring and leaves that turn brilliant shades of yellow, orange and red in autumn.

Fothergilla in autumn

•Korean mountainash (Sorbus aucuparia) bears flat-topped clusters of white flowers in spring. In autumn, leaves take on a yellow color enriched with some brown and hints of red. Clusters of red fruits also ripen in fall. They’re small, but edible, a nice nibble.

Korean mountainash in auatumn

•Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) bears large leaves that have lost their summer-y, tropical look and have turned a clear yellow. The large fruits, also with tropical aspirations, have been ripe for a few weeks, with flavors akin to vanilla custard, banana, or crème brûlée. Take your pick.

Pawpaw, autumn leaf color

THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF A DRY AUTUMN

November 3, 2016/3 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Just Like Korea?

The bone dry weather blanketing the Hudson Valley and much of northeastern U.S. does have its saving graces. For one thing, it forces perennial plants to shut down and direct their energies to toughening up for cold weather lurking over the horizon. That’s a good thing — unless, of course, the soil gets dry enough to kill a plant. Deciduous plants have the option, before that happens, to drop their leaves, drastically reducing their water loss and needs.
This dry autumn weather is not unlike that in many parts of Korea. So what? When it comes to cold-hardiness, some plants that survive Korea’s frigid winters typically are done in by our similarly frigid winters. One plant that comes to mind is Asian persimmon (Diospyros kaki). The chances of an Asian persimmon surviving a winter here at my Zone 5 farmden and ripening its fruits are generally not good. Autumn weather like this year’s ups the odds.

Asian & American persimmon, compared

(American persimmons (D. virginiana), on the other hand, easily survive, and varieties such as Szukis and Mohler reliably ripen their fruits here.)
Survival of an Asian persimmon here is very topical to me because I planted one this past spring. I did plant one of the most cold-hardy varieties, Great Wall. This variety is allegedly hardy and will ripen fruit in Zone 5 (at least that’s what Lee Reich wrote in the book Uncommon Fruits for every Garden). This autumn weather should help get it through its first winter here.

Autumn Color Chemistry

This bone dry weather has also made for glorious autumn leaf colors, even more than usual. Did I write, last year, that autumn color was the best ever, and the year before that, and . . . ? The reason for the exquisite color is physiological (the leaves’, not mine).
Leaves can, of course, be green. Other colors also figure in, obscured by the green of chlorophyll until autumn’s cooler weather and shorter days dissolve away the chlorophyll to let these other colors strut their stuff. Autumn’s fiery oranges and yellows, especially prominent in sugar maple, gingko, aspen, hickory, and beech, are from carotenoids. Tannins are another color component that get expressed in autumn; they give oaks their brown color, and enrich the yellow hues of beeches and hickories.

Japanese maple in autumn

   Unless an early freeze burns off trees’ leaves while they are still green, those oranges and yellows and browns put on a reliable show every autumn, no matter what the weather.
   Not so for the reds and purples of autumn leaves. These colors are expressed by anthocyanins, compounds which are not present or obscured by the green of chlorophyll during the growing season. Anthocyanins develop in autumn, and they need sugars for their development. Sugars come from photosynthesis, whose driving energy is sunlight.
   So, less rain and more sunny weather means more photosynthesis, more sugars, and better red and purple color in such plants as blueberry, sourwood, scarlet oak, and sugar maple. A recent spate of warm days and cool nights enhances the whole effect, the warm days spurring photosynthesis and the cool nights slowing respiration to slow “burning” of sugars. Blueberry, in autumn color

But How About Some Rain?

   Much as I revel in day after day of clear, sunny weather and trees alive in color, I’d like a few heavy rains. The water supply of many homes on my road tap into shallow groundwater, the level of which is very low at this point.
   Also, my drip irrigation system has been disconnected. The timer, the pressure reducer, and the filter, all of which must greet water as it comes out the spigot, before it enters the main lines, have been brought indoors to be protected from the recent freezing temperatures.
   With reduced transpiration from cooler weather, autumn’s usual rainfalls can carry winter radishes, endive, Chinese cabbage, and other cool weather vegetables on a few more weeks until the end of the season. But we need these usual rains.

NUTTY TIMES AND COLD WEATHER

October 27, 2016/9 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Nuts Galore

    What a nutty time of year, literally! Chestnuts and black walnuts, two of my favorite nuts, were raining down, figuratively, just before the middle of the month.
   Black walnuts are free for the taking. Wild trees are everywhere around here, and keep increasing because of overlooked nuts buried by squirrels. The nuts are so abundant this year, and most years, that squirrels and humans can have their fill. (Not so with my filbert nuts; squirrels will strip those bushes clean.)
   Black walnuts have a strong flavor. Like dark beer, fresh blackcurrants, and okra, not everyone likes the flavor. That’s fine. Fast food chains might purvey foods that everyone sort of likes, while a home gardener and gatherer can grow and gather fruits and vegetable and nuts that he or she really, really likes, and ignore what he or she really, really does not like.
   There’s also, if you’re not a squirrel, the getting-to-the-nut problem with black walnuts. The first step is to remove it, as soon as possible after gathering the soft, messy, dark-staining husk. My wife, Deb, does this; I try and come up with contraptions to ease the job of husking 10 five-gallon buckets worth of nuts that eventually transmutes to 8 one-quart mason jars filled with nutmeats.
   We’ve gone through a few incarnations of huskers. One year I bought an old fashioned corn husker, which needed some modification with an angle grinder. It didn’t do the job. Another year I ran the tractor back and forth over the nuts in the driveway, a common method, but not effective enough. Various black walnut hullers
   In years past, Deb has given each nut a tap with a light sledge hammer, which is enough to loosen the husk so it can be easily twisted off. Another year, I mounted a flat piece of metal in a slot I cut in a short length of 2-by-4 wood. Rolling the nut over the metal edge was enough to make the husk easy to twist off.
   This year I drilled a nut-sized hole in a piece of wood and mounted it over a bucket. One whack with a light sledge hammer drove the nut through, minus the husk. Or, it was supposed to do that. One piece of husk, on the leading edge, alway stayed attached to the nut.
   So now Deb is back to one of the standard methods for de-husking black walnuts: Stomp on them with your heel, then pick them off to rub off any remaining husk.

Readying for Cold Weather

    Enough with the nuts . . . tonight (October 10th) temperatures are predicted to be in the low 30s, which means the high 20s in this cold spot. Mostly, I and the garden are ready for cold. Still to be done are:
   •Close all hose spigots and open ends of drip emitters and main lines, watering wands, and hose sprayers to prevent the expansion of freezing water water from causing damage; row covered vegetables
   •Set up hoops and either clear plastic or row covers over beds of lettuce, Chinese cabbage, endive, arugula, and mustard greens. These vegetables tolerate temperatures well into the 20s, but I’ll cover them just in case. And they’ll anyway need the protective coverings soon; Row covered vegetables
   •Bring tropical plants indoors. Banana “trees,” staghorn fern, avocado, and clivia have laughed off cold so far, but tomorrow morning would not look so cheery if left outdoors. They get bright windows. A banana’s growing point is below ground which allows some gardeners to merely lop the whole top off the plant and store the bulb, in its pot, through winter under cool, dark conditions; Tropical plants indoors
   •Subtropical plants could survive temperatures into the 20s. I’m hoping for a crop from Golden Nugget mandarin, Meyer lemon, and Meiwa kumquat, so they’ve been walked indoors and perched near the most sun-washed windows in my house.
   •Feijoa, olive, and Chilean guava are, like citrus, evergreen, subtropical plants, except they can tolerate colder temperatures than citrus. They sport neither fruits, flowers, nor flower buds now, so will remain outdoors until temperatures dip into the low 20s. Potted rosemary is also in this category; because I will be visiting it many times over the months that follow to clip off sprigs clipped for pizza and salad dressing, it’s new home is a sunny kitchen window.
   •Basil will be dead tomorrow. Leafy stems picked today, their bottoms plunked into a glass of water, will provide fresh basil for a few weeks. Then it’s on to frozen basil pesto.

Cold Weather Takes a Rain Check, Without the Rain

The Morning After: No drama. That’s the way I like it. The slider on my min-max thermometer registered a low of 29° last night. A far cry from my first gardens, in Wisconsin, where it seemed every year (for the five I gardened there) around September 21st I would be wake to a frigid morning and a garden of blackened tomato, marigold, and pepper plants. This morning, marigolds and peppers have felt the chill, but live on to die slowly day by day as the sun dips lower in the sky and temperatures creep lower and lower.

DUCKS AND TOMATOES

October 21, 2016/14 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

My Discerning Ducks

    Every morning when I throw open the door to my Duckingham Palace (a name coined by vegetable farmer Elliot Coleman, for his duck house), my four ducks step out, lower their heads as if to reduce air resistance, and race to the persimmon tree. They trace a large circle around the base of the tree, scooping up any fallen persimmons and, still running, gulping them down quickly enough so no other member of the brood snatches it. Duck eyeing my persimmon fruits
   The circle is wide because of the low, temporary fence I’ve set up around the tree. Within the fenced area, I gather up most of the fallen fruit for myself. The ducks, can’t, or haven’t figured out how to, fly over an 18 inch high fence.
   My tree is an American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), native to eastern U.S. from Florida to northern Pennsylvania. Until they are dead ripe, most American persimmons taste awful, with an astringency that dries out your mouth. (As Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, wrote, “When a persimmon is not ripe, it will draw a man’s mouth awrie with much torment.”) Some persimmons never lose that astringency, even when ripe, and here, in the northern reaches of persimmon growing, the season isn’t long enough to ripen most persimmons. Ducks not sharing persimmon fruits
   But good persimmons, when ripe, taste like dried apricots that have been soaked in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice. Mine are selected varieties that ripen this far north, the first, Mohler, beginning in early September, and the second, Szukis, beginning in early October. (I grafted both varieties on one tree.) They also set fruit without the need for the separate male pollinator that most American persimmons require.
   I highly recommend planting an American persimmon tree. Besides bearing delicious fruit, the tree is attractive all season long and shows off its pretty bark in winter. All this, without the need for spraying or pruning. (I wrote about American persimmon in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.) Persimmon fruits on tree

And the Winning Tomatoes Are . . .

    As of this writing, tomato plants have not been killed by cold. But with cool weather and disease, they’re pretty much done for the season, bearing few or no fruits. That is, except for Sungold, the most tasty variety of cherry tomato. It just keeps pumping out ropes of orange fruits.
   I grew over 20 varieties of tomatoes this year, all heirlooms, except for Sungold. My main criterion for planting any variety is flavor, which was very similar for certain varieties of tomato. They did differ in productivity, my second criterion for choosing a variety. So next year I plan to pare down the number of varieties I grow to the best tasting, most productive ones.
   Topping that list will be San Marzano. Right off the plant, eating one is like eating bland cotton. Thrown into pot with a little water to prevent burning and simmered till soft, and the flavor morphs to tart, tomato-y richness. No wonder, canned San Marzano tomatoes are labeled as such in Italy.
   Moving on to fresh eating tomatoes . . . Sungold, of course, with eight plants supplying enough for grazing outdoors and salads indoors. Anna Russian, Paul Robeson, and Red Brandywine all have excellent flavor and bore well and late into the season. Anna Russian is also quite good for paste.
   Carmello and Valencia are good-tasting tomatoes, although not as good as Anna Russian and company. I’ll grow these two because they’re also very productive, and their fruits are almost perfect spheres. Many heirloom fruits are interesting for their convoluted shapes but sometimes I want just a standard issue, round tomato (that also tastes good).
   One more possible variety is from seed a reader sent me a few years ago, a variety labeled Winterkeeper. The fruits allegedly store very well. The plants are still growing well; soon I’ll see how long into fall I’ll be eating tomato sandwiches. Ones I’ve already sampled have pretty good flavor.

Persistent, Young, and Vigorous

    Every time I walk back to the compost bin and see the volunteer tomato vine insinuating itself out of a gap in the slats of the bin, I’m reminded of the importance of crop rotation. This vine is still lush and green, and laden with perfect, red, pear-shaped tomatoes.
   Sure, the vine could be healthy because its roots are running through the rich, brown compost within the bin. Perhaps the vine is so healthy because, as a random seedling, its genetics, by lucky chance, makes it so.
   Most likely, this plant is so healthy and productive because it’s growing where no tomato has grown before. No disease spores linger there from previous crops of tomatoes. (The plant got a late start for the season, so its youthful vigor could also have a hand in its health.) Compost pile tomato
   I rotate my tomato beds every year, but that only puts them 10 feet or so from beds of the previous year. That’s the problem with home gardens; it’s hard to get plants far enough away from where they recently were. Thorough cleanup and mulching help, but go only so far.
   I have the luxury of two vegetable gardens separated by 50 feet of lawn, one of which hasn’t been home to tomatoes for over a year. Next year it will be.
   The flavor of the compost-grown tomato? Good enough, not great.

THE WEATHER, AND BLACKCAPS

October 12, 2016/0 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Dry Soil

Digging a hole to bury an animal last week gave me new respect for the plant world. Each shovelful brought up dusty, light brown soil, even to a depth of more than two feet. That’s expected, since it hasn’t rained more than 1/4 of an inch here for the past five weeks.
With their leaves flagging in midday, trees and shrubs don’t exactly look spry. Still, they are alive, even some spring-planted trees and shrubs which have had little time to spread their roots deep and wide.

Thirsty, young Asian persimmon

   Appearance of a soil can be deceiving. There’s some water lurking within those pores, water held tightly by capillary attraction. After heavy rains or irrigation, all soil pores get filled with water, a situation as bad for plants, if it lasts too long, as dry soil. Plant roots need air as well as moisture; air gets sucked in once gravity drains water from the largest soil pores.
   From then on, capillary attraction is what holds moisture in the ground — a pleasant situation for plants because the roots can tap into the more loosely held capillary water while they breathe freely. I prepare for possible droughts when planting by digging relatively small planting holes, which minimizes the amount of ground loosened up, in turn, among other benefits, preserving capillary networks in the soil. (Mulching and watering, right after planting, also helps.)
   Eventually, more and more of the loosely held capillary moisture gets sucked out of the ground by plants and evaporation. At some point, there’s still moisture in the soil, but what’s left is in the smallest pores and right against soil particles. It’s tightly held capillary moisture, water that plants can’t access. They wilt. When moisture levels drop to what’s known as the “permanent wilting point,” plants die.
   We’re not there yet and now, toward the end of the season, woody plants do have a Plan B: They can just drop their leaves, reducing moisture loss from stems and roots, and segue into winter on stored energy and moisture. To a point.

Cold Air

    If it’s not one thing, weather-wise, it’s another. On September 26th, I woke to find parts of the lawn hoary with frost. I’m not complaining. Frost should be expected, on average, around that date around here. Except that I’ve been spoiled for the last few years by much later frosts, frosts, so late that I pulled out old tomato plants because chilly weather drained tomatoes of their flavor rather than frosty weather killing the plants. Endive, lettuce, and old tomato plants
   Also, no complaints because the September 26th brought only a light frost; temperatures just hit 32°F. and the hoariness was spotty, here and there. A light frost is a good thing this time of year. It signals plants to get ready for even colder weather. In preparing for cold, cell walls strengthen and permeability of cells to water is actively altered. Even subtropical plants like peppers and tomatoes toughen up, with some chilly preparation, so that they can now tolerate temperatures that drop even a few degrees below freezing.
   Tender vegetables, frost or no frost, on the wane, have left the door open to vegetables that enjoy the cool weather of autumn. Most of the garden now presents a verdant sight of beds lush with lettuce, Chinese cabbages, winter radishes, endive, turnips, cabbages, arugula, mustard greens, carrot tops, and leeks, all ready for harvest, at my leisure, over the next few weeks.

Fall Black Raspberries

Segueing over to the fruit world, I’m still harvesting the last of the blackcaps (black raspberries) of the season. Blackcaps? Anyone familiar with this fruit, abundant in the wild and often cultivated, knows that they ripen in midsummer.

Niwot blackcap, now ripe

Last year I planted two new varieties of blackcap, Niwot and Ohio’s Treasure. With most blackcaps, canes just grow their first year, then fruit their second year. (During the second year, new canes are also growing, to fruit the following year, so a planting bears fruit every year.) Niwot and Ohio’s Treasure bear fruit at the end of the canes’ first year of growth, in late summer and autumn. Those same canes — I think — then continue bearing the following year, in summer, just like most blackcaps.
I haven’t yet decided whether Ohio’s Treasure or Niwot offer the better berry, but it’s nice to be harvesting fresh berries this late in the season.

FRUIT HARVEST, WHEN?

September 29, 2016/7 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests/by Lee Reich

Easy to Grow, Hard to Harvest

Of all commonly grown tree fruits, pears are the easiest, mostly because they succumb to fewer pest and weather problems than do other common tree fruits. Of all commonly grown tree fruits, pears are the most difficult to harvest.
Timing is what makes pears so difficult to harvest, a skill I’m ashamed to admit I have yet to master. You can’t time when to pick by taste because pears are among the few fruits that will not ripen well on the tree. They start ripening from their innards outward so by the time the outside of the fruit looks and feels ripe, the innards are brown mush.

Concorde European pear, ripe?

   No need to refer me to the guidelines of experts: The skin should undergo an almost imperceptible change in color, lightening or yellowing. The fruit softens ever so slightly, going from the firmness of a basketball to that of a softball. The fruit stalk separates readily from the stem when the fruit is lifted and given a slight twist. And finally, in my opinion the most obtuse indicator, lenticels (small pores on the skin) change from white and raised to brown and shallow. Yadda, yadda, yadda, . . .
   I grow about 20 varieties of pear, and each of those very subtle indicators are slightly different for one variety to the next.
   Another of my excuses is that most of my varieties are just beginning to bear so I don’t have a lot of fruits from each tree to play around with. I am adept at harvesting those varieties — Magness, Seckel, Harrow Delight — that have borne the most fruit for the most years.

Easy to Grow, Easy to Harvest

Ah, but my horticultural shortcomings don’t extend to all pears. I also grow a few varieties of Asian pears, which differ from the aforementioned and more common European pears in being usually round and of a few different species. Most significantly, Asian pears will ripen to perfection on the tree. In fact, for best flavor, they must remain hanging until dead ripe, at which point they have a “cracking” texture, that is, they are crisp but explode in your mouth with their sweet, ambrosial juice.

Yoinashi Asian pear

The skin of Chojuro, the earliest of my Asian pears, started changing from brown russet to golden yellow russet earlier this month. As a further check to ripeness, I picked a fruit and sunk my teeth into it. Delicious! They’re ripe and hang in good condition to be plucked from the branches, as needed, for a week or two, or they can be harvested in toto and refrigerated. The varieties Yoinashi and Seuri Li will follow shortly here, with Korean Giant following these two varieties next year, when it comes into bearing.
Asian pears are as easy, perhaps even easier, to grow than European pears. They bear at a young age and heavily, often too young and too heavily, which is why it’s necessary to grit your teeth and aggressively thin the fruits. Too heavy a crop stunts young trees or spells small, less flavorful fruits on grown trees. (I devote a whole chapter to Asian pears in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)

And Then There are Grapes

Grapes . . . they’re easy to harvest ripe. Except that most people don’t. Color is but one indicator that a bunch wants to be harvested and eaten (that is, after all, fruits’ raison d’être). But like some other fruits — blueberries, for example — grapes turn their ripe color before they are dead ripe.

Concord grape

So I also pull off a berry or two to taste. The difference in flavor between just ripe and dead ripe is dramatic. And especially so with my bagged grapes, which can segue to the dramatic stage within their bags without threat of predation by birds and bees.
The variety Concord presents an exception to that last statement; birds don’t like the flavor and leave the berries alone. This means the berries don’t have puncture holes that attract bees and wasps, so they also are not a problem. The deterrent in Concord grapes is the chemical methyl anthranilate, which has been formulated as a spray to keep birds at bay. My wife also doesn’t like Concord.

BACTERIA AND FUNGI, AND GRAPES, OH MY

September 15, 2016/7 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests/by Lee Reich

Upcoming Fall Fruit Workshop

See web page https://leereich.com/workshops for details.

The River Runs Green

    Crossing the bridge over the Wallkill River on my way home, I glance to my right to admire the river itself. What a beautiful color it has turned, a bright turquoise. Ponds I pass also have taken on this bright complexion, for which we can thank, or curse, organisms known as blue-green algae (heretofore referred to as BGA).
   Algae, they are not, though. BGA are bacteria known as cyanobacteria. “Algae” generally refers to eukaryotes, organisms with distinct nucleii and specialized organelles. BGA are prokaryotes, lacking such features. Green river, from cyanobacteria
   BGA can be toxic, which is good reason to curse them. Drinking or swimming in contaminated waters can cause problems to humans and other animals, including dogs, who seem to be otherwise able to drink almost any water without ill effect. The “cyan” in the name and the criminal cyanotoxins are not at all related to cyanide. The name come from “cyan,” which is the color blue-green.
   Many kinds of BGA are found throughout the world, often in extreme conditions. Not all produce cyanotoxins; some produce them only under certain conditions. Not all are even blue-green; the Red Sea gets its color from Trichodesmium erythraeum, a species of BGA. Certain conditions cause “blooms,” such as those I was admiring in the river and ponds. Here, it’s probably a combination of relatively dry conditions resulting in shallow and calm waters along with the usual influx of nutrients, mostly phosphorus and mostly from farms, septic systems, and lawns.
   BGA are photosynthetic organisms, just like plants, imbibing carbon dioxide during the day and spewing out oxygen. These primitive organisms, “in the beginning,” were important for oxygenizing the Earth’s atmosphere, thus stimulating biodiversity. We could praise them for sequestering carbon.
   Agriculturally, some cyanobacteria are important because they can convert atmospheric nitrogen into forms of nitrogen that plants can use. Although these cyanobacteria are especially important for maintaining fertility of rice paddies, they are present, to some degree, in virtually all soils. Some research even points to benefits of inoculating soils with these organisms.

Bags vs. Fungi

    So now I’m home, my head out of the soil, and admiring my grape vines. The dry weather has been almost as good for the grapes as it has been for the cyanobacteria. Dry weather minimizes grape diseases and abundant sunlight puts flavor and sweetness into the berries. With annual applications of mulch around the grapes and their far reaching roots, I never worry about my established vines being thirsty. Bagging grapes earlier in the season
   Back in early summer, we went to the trouble of affixing paper “delicatessen” bags around 100 bunches. Now is the payoff. Peeling back the paper usually reveals perfect, full, bloom-dusted bunches of especially delectable grapes. “Especially delectable” because I can let these protected bunches hang longer on the vines than unbagged bunches, which do have some disease and are prey to bees, wasps, and birds. These bagged grapes get dead ripe before being harvested. Unbagging grapes for harvest
   The bagging isn’t really all that troublesome. We just select downward hanging bunches, made easier because I train fruiting canes horizontally across a 5-wire, flat trellis, and remove any tendrils or leaves opposite the bunches. After making a slit down each side of a bag, the slitted opening is slid up the cane on either side of the bunch, the top of the bag is folded over, and then the flap stapled down on either side — well worth the minute or so it takes from selection to finish bagging a bunch.

Grapes to Keep

With many varieties of established grapevines, I can cut down any whose flavor is not up to snuff or that don’t produce well without having to bemoan waiting for new ones to start bearing. The “keepers” tide me over. Variety choice is somewhat limited here because of winter cold and because cooler, damp air collects in this valley, promoting disease, abetted by inoculum from all the wild grape vines grappling high into neighboring trees along the forest edge.

Glenora and Vanessa seedless grapes

   I’ll be doing a Henry IVth on Mars and Concord.
   Some of my current favorite varieties are Vanessa, Somerset Seedless, and Glenora, all seedless varieties. Of the three, Glenora has the best flavor, Vanessa the best texture, but they’re all very good. Some of my favorite seeded varieties are Alden, whose corpulent berries hang in large bunches, and Brianna, which isn’t quite ripe yet, but every year has rewarded us with foxy-flavored, pale green berries.
   Still to come for this season are Edelweiss, which has a rich, very foxy flavor but has not been very productive the last few years, and Brianna, with its own rich flavor not so dependent on foxiness.
   A few more years of tasting and watching will dictate whether New York Muscat, Cayuga White, Bertille Seyve 2758, Lorelei, Reliance, Swenson White, and Wapanuka keep their home here. They’re all good grapes, but why grow good grapes when I could grow great grapes from among the 5,000 or so varieties (not all adaptable here, of course)?
   (That “foxy” flavor I kept referring to is characteristic of many American grapes, and is typified by the variety Concord. No one is sure how “foxy came to describe that flavor.)

UNPERMACULTURE

September 1, 2016/0 Comments/in Design, Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Accusations, (Mostly) not True

I’ve understandably been accused of being a “permie,” that is, of practicing permaculture.
(In the words of permaculture founder, Bill Mollison, “Permaculture is about designing sustainable human settlements. It is a philosophy and an approach to land use which weaves together microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management, and human needs into intricately connected, productive communities.” In the words of www.dictionary.com, permaculture is “a system of cultivation intended to maintain permanent agriculture or horticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem.”)
Walk around my farmden and, yes, you’ll come upon Nanking cherry bushes where forsythia bushes once lined the driveway, an American persimmon tree where a lilac bush once stood, and other edible plants used also for landscaping. In the vegetable garden, I preserve soil integrity by never tilling it, and, in the south field, blackcurrant bushes make use of the space beneath pawpaw trees. There’s the requisite mushroom yard of shiitake-inoculated logs, free-range poultry, solar panels, a rain barrel . . .

Pawpaws interplanted with blackcurrants, and a row of hardy kiwis

   But no! I am not a permie. My vegetables grow in beds in parallel, straight rows (rather than keyhole plantings) and, despite that commingling of blackcurrants and pawpaws, most trees, shrubs, and vines here keep to themselves. Permaculture plantings of, say, hazelnuts in tall grass and rubbing elbows with elderberries, seaberries, apples, pears, and other edibles become, over time, an unproductive management nightmare with some plants drowning out others, productivity declining due to shade, and diseases increasing from tangled stems creating dank conditions. The paltry output of such planting are best left for wildlife, who can afford to spend all day foraging for a few tidbits of food.
   My hazelnuts are grown in a mown strip that, for easy gathering, is sheared low as nuts ripen.
   Low maintenance is a goal touted by permaculturalists; understandably so. But taken to the extreme, low maintenance means not giving the grape vine the pruning it needs to be a healthy vine yielding the most flavorful berries that are easy to harvest. (One book suggests, rather than troubling with a trellis, growing grape vines up trees; the vines do so in the wild, but such fruit, in partial shade and not easily accessible, can never be high quality.)
   Much of permaculture seems to me to be not only unrealistic, but also no fun. I enjoy caring for my plants, reaping the gustatory and other rewards for a job well done. I like the challenge of researching some pest or nutritional problem and finding a solution. I like watching how plants respond to my ministrations, whether I’m wielding pruning shears, a pitchfork piled high with compost, or my winged weeder hoe.
   Agriculture is about balancing Nature’s designs and human will. Too much of the latter is a losing battle. Too much of the former leaves nothing worth harvesting.

Big Bantam, an Oymoron

    My planting of sweet corn is very un-permaculture. It’s high-culture: 6 seeds per hill dropped into compost-enriched ground maintained weed-free, timely watering with drip irrigation, hills thinned to 3 stalks per hill, even stakes to keep the stalks standing soldier straight. I mentioned, last week, how my Golden Bantam variety of sweet corn isn’t bantam at all. The stalks soar over 10 feet high.
   Was it because of my green thumb? No. I now know that it is genetics.
   This year I made four plantings of Golden Bantam. The two later plantings are, in fact, bantam-size. Looking over my seed orders, I see that I had planted Golden Bantam Corn, Original 8-row Golden Bantam Corn, and Improved Golden Bantam Corn.
   Golden Bantam is an open-pollinated variety. As with any open-pollinated variety, various strains might arise, strains which might differ in some ways from the original. With any good variety, the hope is that progeny are monitored to eliminate any off-type varieties — or to look for something that might be better than the original.

Golden Bantams compared

So the name Golden Bantam could be attached to the original Golden Bantam, from 1902, or any strain, which could also have “Improved,” “Original,” etc. attached its name. (Golden Bantam was also developed into a hybrid, Golden Cross Bantam, which, like other hybrids, would be genetically more consistent and ripen in a shorter window of time.)
On the theory that bigger is better, “Improved” was tacked onto name of the strain of my early plantings. The original Golden Bantam was 8-row; Improved Golden Bantam is 10 to 14 row. I should have read the catalog more closely because Improved Golden Bantam casts too much shade, ripens too late for my intensively planted vegetables, and yields less, with but a single ear per stalk. The original also has better flavor, to me.

Permaculture, but not by Me

Walking down the main path of my vegetable garden yesterday, you’d come upon a very permaculturalesque planting — in the path. The path was overrun with purslane, which I didn’t even have to plant. Purslane is a tasty, very nutritious vegetable enjoyed raw or cooked. But not by me. Hoeing purslane in path
I grabbed my winged weeder and hoed the purslane loose from the soil. As a succulent, purslane can continue to grow — and seed! — even with its roots flailing in the air. So after hoeing, I scooped the plants up to feed to the compost file.

A VERY GOOD YEAR, SO FAR

August 17, 2016/5 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Bye, Bye Beetles

    So far, this growing season has been one of the most interesting ever. Could it be global warming? Perhaps. Perhaps it’s all a legacy from the relatively snowless winter with long periods of cold, but not frigid, temperatures. Perhaps it was spring’s two nights of plummeting temperature that followed a warm spell. Perhaps it was this summers extremes of dry and wet periods. Perhaps all that’s from global warming. Perhaps . . .
   All I know is that it’s all been pretty good. As I wrote previously, for the second year in a row, Japanese beetles made their entrance on time in June, and then, as if from stage fright, skittered away. Or never emerged from the soil. Or never hatched from eggs laid in the soil. Or the eggs never got laid last summer.
   For years, Mexican bean beetles would lay eggs on my bean plants, and those eggs would hatch into voracious larvae and then adults that would shred bean leaves. I was able to harvest enough beans for fresh eating and freezing only with succession planting of bush beans every couple of months.
   For the past couple of years, only a few beetles show up here and there; nothing to worry about. So now an early sowing of bush beans provides the first plates of beans, and then passes the torch on to pole beans, which unlike bush beans, keep yielding till the end of the season. Bush beans peter out after a few pickings.
   (I did spray neem oil and the biological insecticide ‘Entrust’ a few years ago. Perhaps that broke the Mexican bean beetle cycle here. Perhaps it was the mere threat of a wall at the Mexican border . . . No, no, that can’t be it. Mexican bean beetles have established themselves north of the border for many generations, human and beetle. Throughout the country over many decades, this pest has waxed and waned in its severity, at times turning its taste to soybeans, sometimes to lima beans. My beetles never showed an appetite for my soybeans.)
   Two other pests that, I hope, can now be off my radar are scale insects on the greenhouse figs and flea beetles on the eggplants. That status comes with some effort on my part: weekly sprays, until recently, of “summer oil.” I expect to have to maintain those efforts every season. (Late update: I saw a few scale insects on the figs so did have to spray again.)

Skyrocketing Corn, De-Luscious Blueberries

    This season’s interests aren’t all about pests.
   Right now, corn stalks are as high — no, higher — than an elephant’s eye. (For journalistic accuracy, I looked up the height of an elephant’s eye. One report on the web, that fount of highly accurate information, reported the median height at 98 inches.) I just stepped away from my desk to measure the actual height of my corn, and it topped out at about 10 feet high. And that’s the variety Golden Bantam. I’ve grown it for many years, during which it always topped out at 6 or 7 feet.
   The first ears of this rich-tasting, old variety should be ready any day now. Will they also seem to be on steroids? Tall Golden Bantam corn
   No explanations for this corny behavior jump out. Year after year, the soil gets the same one-inch depth of compost, the 3-foot-wide corn bed is planted in two rows of hills, thinned to 3 stalks per hill, with each hill 2 feet apart in the row, and the bed is drip irrigated. Mislabeled seed can’t explain the phenomenon because this season’s popcorn (Dutch Buttered and Pearl) and polenta corn (Otto File) also have higher aspirations. Anyway, I’m not complaining.
   Apples never grow well here. This low lying valley is a sink for colder, moister air that, along with the backdrop of thousands of acres of forest, is a haven for apple pests. This season, with some spray assistance from me, the apple crop is relatively heavy and attractive. Apples, in those years when I do get a decent crop, are especially tasty here. Blueberry fruit cluster
   I have to tip my hat, once again, to blueberries, my favorite fruit and the most consistent performer among my many fruits. I have never not gotten a good crop of blueberries, come hell or high . . . 17 year cicadas, hurricane Irene, late frosts, etc. This season, canes are arching to the ground with a particularly heavy crop of berries.
   What will next year hold? An even better growing season?

ROT AND FLOWERS

August 11, 2016/0 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Planning/by Lee Reich

Brown Rot Strikes Again

   The plan was for me to be now sinking my teeth into the soft, juicy, rich flesh of my Oullins golden gage plums. The tenuous start this past spring, with a freak late freeze that sent temperatures plummeting into the low teens, had me worried. The trees shook off the cold and, when warmer weather returned, burst into snowballs of white blossoms. Tiny fruitlets that followed those blossoms have swelled to the bountiful crop now dangling from the branches.
   The plan has been foiled — by brown rot disease. Almost every plum, just as its skin starts to shade towards ripeness, becomes spotted with fuzzy, gray droplets that, with good weather (good for the fungus, that is), soon covers the fruit. Brown rotted plum fruit
   Brown rot was not unexpected, and a counterattack was planned. All through spring, before blossoms even unfolded, I doused the plant with insecticide and fungicide sprays. Insecticides help control brown rot by preventing insects, most notably plum curculios, from laying eggs in the developing fruitlets. Even if the egg-laying itself doesn’t cause the fruit to drop, holes left behind provide easy entrance for the brown rot fungus.
   Perhaps I was too lenient, using relatively benign (to us humans, that is), organically approved sprays. ‘Surround’, a commercial formulation of kaolin clay for the insects. And sulfur, a naturally occurring mineral, for the brown rot fungus. Brown rot mummy
   That’s not all. Gathering up infected fruits cuts back the number of new disease spores that waft among the branches looking for new fruits to infect. In fall and winter, those infected fruits are easily recognized as blackened, dry “mummies.” They lose their dryness and come to life, fungal life, with spring’s warmth and moisture. I’ll gather them up also. I’m hoping my ducks develop a taste for the fresh, dropped, rotten fruit; so far, they seem to be picky eaters.
   My late winter pruning of the trees should also have helped reduce brown rot disease. Removing enough stems and limbs to allow those that remain to bathe in light and breezes allows for quicker drying from dew or rain.

The Disease Triangle

    Three conditions must be satisfied for any disease, whether in animals or plants, to take hold: inoculum must be present, the host must be susceptible, and the conditions must be suitable for disease development. Check, check, check for my Oulin plum (a susceptible host plant) getting brown rot here in the Hudson Valley, throughout most of the humid eastern U.S., in fact. We have plenty of wild and cultivated plums and related plants here to provide brown rot inoculum from infected fruits, and the weather is usually just about perfect (for the disease, that is).
   But Oullin isn’t the only great-tasting plum. How about a less susceptible host variety? Fungi are picky eaters, and varieties of plants vary in their susceptibility to specific diseases.(Unfortunately, most gage-type plums, which are heart-shaped, with greenish flesh, are very susceptible to brown rot.) Infected plums on tree
   My plum trees are grafted to multiple varieties. The variety Shiro also finds a home on the tree grafted to Oullin. This year, and in years past, Shiro seems to be somewhat resistant to this disease. And I see that Cummins Nursery has a variety called Jam Session that also is resistant. This past spring I also planted the varieties Alderman and Superior, which are American hybrids with some alleged resistance.
   As consolation, plums are, at least, less susceptible to this scourge than are peaches and apricots.

Flowers to the Rescue?

    I’m planning and planting for flowers for next season and for years to come, with perennials.
   I could, of course, just purchase some potted plants to plug into the ground now or next spring. I could buy seeds and sow them next spring. Instead of those two options, I’m sowing seeds now, a time when, admittedly, there’s not that frenzied urge to plant seeds as in spring. Black-eyed Susan Purple coneflower
   One packet of seeds can — should — result in oodles of plants, plenty to plant and to give away. Sown now, the seeds should grow into plants that will be large enough to weather autumn, then winter’s, cold. Plants should also be large enough to flower next year. Their experience of cold, known as vernalization, will further coax them on to flower. Spring sown perennial flower seeds often don’t flower their first season, no matter what their size, because they have yet to be vernalized. Liatris
   I’m sowing purple coneflower (Echinacea), black-eyed-susan (Rudbeckia), and blazing star (Liatris). They’re all in the daisy family, a family known not only for its good looks but also for providing nectar to attract and help support beneficial insects. If I plant enough, perhaps the increased number of beneficial insects will significantly decrease the number of plum curculios and other plum fruit insects resulting in, because of less insect scarring of fruit, significantly less brown rot of my plums.
   It’s a stretch but the flowers, anyway, are very pretty.