Fruit – Page 19 – Lee Reich

CHERRIES JUBILEE (I HOPE)

January 27, 2016/8 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

More Plants?!?!?!

    You’d think, after decades of gardening in the same place, that I by now would have planted every tree, shrub, and vine I could ever want or have space for. Not so! Every year I make up a “Plants to order” list, unfortunately before I hone down just where I’ll sink my shovel into the ground to prepare a planting hole.
   Topping my list was Carmine Jewel cherry, a tart cherry that’s also good fresh. (Tart cherries often have higher sugar levels than do sweet cherries; but they also have tartness and other flavors that offset that sweetness.) The biggest draw for Carmine Jewel is its stature — no more, at maturity than 6 or 7 feet high. And a bush, not a grafted tree, so that if cold or deer nip back branches, new sprouts from ground level bear the same cherries that the rest of the bush does or did.
   As a bush, Carmine Jewel is easy to net against birds, and easy to harvest. One big unknown is pest resistance and its flavor — that is, whether or not I will like it.
   Some research indicated that Carmine Jewell is a hybrid of Prunus cerasus, which is the genus for conventional tart cherries, and P. fruticosa, a hardly edible cherry that offers bushiness to its offspring. It’s often listed, botanically, as P. X kerrasis, after Dr. Kerr who started this breeding line way back in the 1940s.

Carmine No, Juliet Yes

    One benefit — to me — of this weekly column is that it forces me to research more deeply topics or plants that I might otherwise gloss over. Said research this week makes me cross Carmine Jewel off my “Plants to order” list. Advertisement for Juliet cherry
   Carmine Jewel, it turns out, has siblings. Among its siblings, it’s one of most tart. A newer group of siblings, the Romance series, were born in 2004, whose fruits are larger and sweeter. From this group, the variety Juliet was very productive and the sweetest. (Romeo was also quite good, but not as sweet.) So Juliet it is for me.
   It remains to be seen just how good Juliet tastes, and how resistant it is to common cherry pests.

Nanking Cherries, All Good

Between the first paragraph and now I’ve figured out where to make Juliet home — in the “available seat” in the row of Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) that line my driveway. This position will also make easy comparisons with the Nankings, one of the most reliable, tasty, care-free, and ornamental cherries I grow.

Nanking cherries, easy, good, quick to bear, prolific

Nanking cherries, despite snowballs of pinkish white blossoms every year, sometimes followed by frosts, have never failed to offer more cherries than we could possibly eat. I prune the bushes only to keep them from swelling to their 10 foot high and wide full size. The only downside to the fruits is that they are small. But they’re so good they earned themselves a whole chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.

Choke(!)berry, Maybe

     I recently learned that I may qualify to wear a longsleeve, blue T-shirt emblazoned with a large S. The S won’t stand for Superman, but for Supertaster. I sifted out this information with another fruit bush that was on my “plants to order” list: chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa).
   About twenty years ago I planted a chokeberry bush. It fruited rather quickly, I tasted the fruit, spat it out, and dug up the plant.
   A few weeks ago I was talking with a young farmer and after agreeing on the delectable flavor of black currants, he mentioned that chokeberry was another of his favorite fruits. “They’re awful,” said I. “Not if they’re cooked, frozen, or dried,” said he. Hmmm . . . chokeberry’s bite is from astringency, which, does dissipate when certain fruits — persimmons, for example — are cooked, frozen, or dried. Perhaps chokeberry needs a second chance here.
   Then I started reading about supertasters, whose palates can be very sensitive to certain organoleptic sensations — astringency, for instance. I must be a supertaster because the slightest amount of astringency induces my spit reflex (which is why I grow Mohler and Szukis persimmon, both of which yield ripe fruits with hardly a hint of astringency). Reading more about chokeberry, it seems that those who like the fruit don’t mind, but actually enjoy, some astringency. So chokeberry is now on my “Plants to order, maybe” list.
   Taste aside, chokeberry has much to recommend it. It’s a beautiful landscape bush, white blossoms in spring and, on many varieties, fiery red leaves in fall. It tolerates cold to below minus 30° F., and some shade. It’s also cosmopolitan about the soil in which it’s planted.
   Chokeberry garners a lot of attention these days because its among the highest of any temperate zone fruit in both antioxidants and anthocyanins. The anthocyanins are one contributor to the astringency.

MULCH, SOMETIMES BETTER LATE THAN EARLY

January 7, 2016/2 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Cardoon Gets to Stay

    I haven’t yet given up on cardoon — growing it. But eating it? I just about give up. It’s like eating humongous stalks of stringy celery having just a hint of artichoke flavor.
   As an ornamental is how cardoon has made itself garden-worthy. Like most perennial plants, it grew only leaves this past season, its first season here. But what leaves they were! As I said, like “humongous stalks of celery.” Not much good for eating but nice to look at. The edges of the three-foot-high stalks were winged with undulating, pointed blades (each stalk is a leaf), and the whole plant is a very Mediterranean-looking olive-green. Cardoon in late fall
   If all goes well, next year should provide an even better show, when flowers also appear. Cardoon is in the thistle family. It’s as if you injected our common (Canadian) thistle with steroids. In addition to those giant leaves, the flower stalks rise to 6 feet and are then topped by fat, spiky, cerulean balls, each a couple of inches across.
   Cardoon not only looks Mediterranean; it is Mediterranean. As such, is not cold hardy this far north. Temperatures in the 20s do no harm to the top of the plant, but the top will die back when temperatures turn colder. The crown of the plant and the roots, shielded in the ground, tolerate even lower air temperatures. Eventually, though, our winter cold penetrates the ground to do them in.
   But not if I soften that cold affront. Once temperatures turn colder, and stay reliably so, I’m going to lop back the tops of the plants, then pile on a thick layer of mulch, from a couple of large bags of leaves I stockpiled back in November. The reason to hold off until the soil turns colder is because in still-warm soil, the crown would have pushed out new growth beneath the mulch. That new growth would have died from lack of sun, or rotted.
   Cardoon’s fleshy crown is especially prone to rotting, so I’ll lay a flat piece of plastic over the pile of mulch. That should shed rainwater while allowing some breathing room from the side.
   Perhaps next year I’ll get to enjoy the flowers. Perhaps the stalks will be worth eating.

I Put The “Straw” In (On) Strawberry

    Cardoon isn’t the only herbaceous perennial that needs protection from cold. Another is strawberry.
   The crown of a strawberry plant is, in essence, a stem that has been telescoped down. Instead of a few inches from leaf to leaf along the stem, only a fraction of an inch separates a leaf from its next higher or lower neighbor. So instead of elongating a foot or two every year, like most stems, a strawberry crown elongates only a fraction of an inch each year.
   Still, over time, that crown rises higher and higher up out of the ground, each year becoming more exposed to cold. Mulching prevents cold damage to strawberry in the same way as it does for cardoon. As with cardoon, the time to cover the plants is AFTER cold has penetrated the ground. When the soil has frozen about an inch deep is about the right time.
   Strawberry crowns are not particularly prone to rotting, so there’s no need to lay a water shedding cover over the mulch. Or to cut back the leaves; strawberry leaves aren’t fleshy and don’t rise high above the ground.

Doin’ Some Dustin’

    In addition to leafy mulches, already spread beneath other trees and shrubs, one other sign of creeping cold is the gray dust that has settled on parts of the meadow, beneath the pear trees, and around the currant bushes. There’s more to come, and it’s not snow. It’s ash, from the wood stove.
   Spreading wood ash Wood ash is both a waste product and a resource, depending on how much you have and how much space you have to spread it. As a resource, it’s high in potassium, an essential nutrient for plants, and contains other essential elements. Wood ash decreases the acidity of soils which, around here, mostly increases naturally over time.
   But too much potassium can be a bad thing. As can too little acidity; slightly acid soil is what’s ideal for most plants.
   Since wood ash varies somewhat in its composition, it’s impossible to put a number on how much to spread. No more than 20 pounds per thousand square feet is reasonable, except on alkaline soils (pH greater than 7) or beneath acid-loving plants such as blueberry, azalea, and rhododendron, which should get none. I disperse it over the whole farmden — on the meadow and the lawn, beneath fruit and nut trees and bushes — to avoid concentrating it anywhere. I also save some to spread on icy walks and to sprinkle around plants if slugs become a problem.

THE CHILL BANK IS FILLED?

December 30, 2015/0 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants, Planning/by Lee Reich

But Do I Want Flowers Now?

The season has been “chill,” literally and figuratively, the former predicted by weather experts based on a this year’s strong El Niño.
Because of El Niño, the West was pounded with rain; here in the Northeast, except for an occasional night, temperatures have been mild over the past few months, much milder than I remember for any other fall. It is those chilly, but not frigid, temperatures — in the range from 30 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit — that signal to plants that winter is over and it’s safe to begin unfolding flower buds or pushing new shoots from dormant buds. A certain number of hours within this temperature range does the trick, typically about a thousand hours, the exact requirements varying from plant to plant. Temperatures below 30 or above 45 degrees don’t contribute to the needed hours, can even set the clock back and increase the number of hours still needed.

Witchhazel blooming in autumn

   Typically, in the Northeast, required chilling hours are not fulfilled in autumn. Some are, but then temperatures typically plummet. The “chilling bank” is finally topped up in late winter or early spring. Growth then only awaits favorable growing conditions, which mostly means sufficiently warm temperatures.
   This fall, however, some or all chilling hours have been fulfilled — not a good thing, for humans. Flowers on fruit trees and bushes will probably unfold earlier than usual, at time when they are then threatened by subsequent frosts that could wipe out next season’s harvest. Ornamentals also will probably flower earlier — no big deal if all we want from them is flowers. My Arnold’s Promise witchhazel usually flowers in March. This year’s October flowering means no flowers this coming spring.
   Buds that grow into shoots will also awaken earlier next year. Shoots begin growth after the earliest flowers so aren’t as threatened by subsequent cold snaps. Even if they get burned by frost, they usually just push out new stems from undamaged buds that otherwise might have remained dormant for the season.

Native Fruits Fare Better

One plus for growing native plants is that they are more adapted to the vagaries of our climate than non-natives. Apricots, for instance, present a challenge because they need relatively few hours of chilling to awaken. They are one of the first trees to bloom.

Apricots after a good winter & spring

Low chilling requirement is no problem in apricots’ native haunts, where winters are cold but springs warm steadily. Around here, though, wild temperature fluctuations in winter and spring fulfill chilling requirements early; blossoms appear so early that they’re almost sure to be nipped out by subsequent drops in temperature. A warm fall gets the flower buds ready for opening even earlier.
I am more optimistic about my American persimmons, pawpaws, highbush and lowbush blueberries, and grapes for next year. These natives are accustomed to our variable temperatures, so rarely fail. Perhaps they won’t fail even after this wacky fall weather.

Plants Chillin’ Indoors

Just chillin’, figuratively, are houseplants. As tropical and subtropical plants, they can remain somewhat aloof to the weather, except to grow when the weather is warm, and “chill out” — that is, just sit still — when temperatures cool. “Warm” and “cool,” in this case, span a narrow range, either outdoors in summer or indoors in winter.

Windowsill fruits- avocado, Rhpsalis, lemon

   Still, sunlight and perhaps other subtle, seasonal changes in houseplants’ sheltered environment have their effects. So right now, houseplants mostly just “chill out.” I’m drumming my fingers, waiting. All these plants need now is water, when thirsty.
   Once we get over the hump (trough?) of the shortest day and light becomes stronger and longer, houseplants will perk up and begin growing. Then, they might need some fertilizer, commensurate with growth, in addition to water.
   Right now, I’m awaiting blossoms from Odontoglossum pulchellum (that’s an orchid, no common name), blossoms and fruit set from Meyer lemon and Golden Nugget mandarin, and fruits to finish ripening on Meiwa kumquat and Abraco olive.

OTHER APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLES

December 24, 2015/5 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

“Grass-fed Vegetables”

    With gardening activities grinding almost to a halt, I can take a breath and reflect on the past season — one of the best seasons ever. Of course, I’ll “blame” the bountifulness mostly on the weather. Maybe I’m also becoming a better gardener. (Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Though an old man, I am a young gardener.”)
   I wrote a couple of weeks ago about soil management here on the farmden. It’s simple and possibly sustainable. For the vegetable gardens: no digging, permanent beds, and an inch depth of homemade compost annually slathered onto those beds. For trees and shrubs, mulches of compost, wood chips or leaves, supplemented, if necessary, with soybean or alfalfa meal for additional nitrogen.
   My September trip to Maine afforded me two other perspectives on soil management. The first came from a presentation by, and conversation with, Jim Kovaleski, who farms in northern Maine. His system is also simple and possibly sustainable. His farm has 5 acres of hayfield that feeds 1/2 acre of vegetables. “Grass-fed vegetables,” as he calls it. All he does is scythe the hayfield portions and pile the mowings onto the growing areas, in so doing suppressing weeds, locking moisture within the soil, and feeding the ground with the decomposing hay.

Me, scything my field

   The question is whether or not the mowed portions can naturally regenerate nutrients through dissolution of native minerals and nitrogen fixation by microbes to keep up with the removal of mowings. Possibly, some essential micronutrient might be missing from that particular piece of ground. To avoid that possibility here on my farmden, I feed my compost a diversity of organic materials, from old Levi’s to orange peels, from Florida oranges, to neighbor’s autumn leaves, and, just to make further sure, kelp.
   I didn’t get to visit Jim’s farm, but did hear first-hand testimonials praising the quality and yield of his vegetables.
   Come fall, Jim moves his show south, with repeat performances at his mini-farm in suburban Florida, there using yard waste compost and seaweed he harvests to build and maintain soil health, sustainably.

Chicken-fed(?) Vegetables

    I did get to visit Four Season Farm, the Maine farm of vegetable guru Elliot Coleman. His system is to grow vegetables for a season, then till the ground and sow grass and clover, graze chickens on that piece of land for a season before tilling it again to grow vegetables. The chickens’ diet is supplemented with bought grain.
Eliot Coleman with carrots and broccoli    The bought grain reduces the system’s “sustainability quotient.” On the other hand, as Elliot emphatically pointed out, he is also growing chickens!
   It would be interesting to measure all the inputs and outputs from my soil management, as well as those of Jim and Elliot. And also to quantify any trends in measures of soil health (nutrients, organic matter, soil tilth, etc.) and quality of vegetables.

A Fruitful Year, Literally!

As I drove the highways and byways of Maine, I was astounded at the number of wild, roadside apple trees, and their fruits’ freedom from pests. First, why so many wild trees? Does everyone there munch on apples while driving, then toss the cores out their windows? Why are there so few wild trees here in the Hudson Valley, a major apple-growing region?
And second, why so few pest blemishes on the fruits? In the Northeast — nay, the whole eastern part of the country — pests generally run rampant on apples. Then again, apples have done relatively well, pest- and otherwise this season here in the Hudson Valley also.

Maine’s wild apples

For that matter, it’s generally been an excellent season for all fruits. Even black walnuts, whose nuts haven’t filled out for the past few years (a legacy from hurricane Irene and tropical storm Lee?) bore abundant crops fat with nutmeats this year.
I had only one failure this year, pawpaws, and it was the first crop failure in decades. Why the poor showing? Again, I’ll blame it on the weather. But what about the weather could be to blame?

IT’S A GAS!

December 10, 2015/1 Comment/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Pruning/by Lee Reich

Last Tomatoes & Peppers

   Late fall, and my thoughts turn naturally to . . . ethylene! You remember ethylene from high school chemistry. A simple hydrocarbon with 2 carbon atoms double-bonded together with 2 hydrogen atoms attached to each of the carbon’s remaining two free bonds. C2H4. It’s a gas, literally, and an important industrial chemical transmuted into such products as polyethylene trash bags, PVC plumbing pipes, and polystyrene packing “peanuts.”
   Oh, I forgot, this is supposed to be about plants. Ethylene is synthesized in plants and is a plant hormone with — as is characteristic of hormones — dramatic effects in small amounts.
   I think of ethylene as I sliced the last of the season’s fresh garden tomatoes for a sandwich a couple of weeks ago. Note that I wrote “fresh,” not “fresh-picked.” The tomatoes had been picked almost two months prior from vines I was cutting down and gathering up for composting. They sat on a tray in the kitchen, very gradually, over the weeks, morphing in color from light green to pale pink to deep red.

Tomatoes & peppers in November

Ethylene is responsible for this transformation from pale and insipid to red and flavorful (flavorful as compared with the pale green or pink stages, not as compared to vine-ripened summer tomatoes). It’s produced naturally in ripening fruits, and its very presence — even at concentrations as low as 0.001 percent — stimulates further ripening.
The tomatoes shared the kitchen tray with peppers, peppers that also were green when laid on the tray. All ripening fruits produce ethylene, peppers included. So let a green pepper sit long enough and — as long as it is sufficiently mature and does not dry out too much, or rot — it will ripen red, or yellow or purple, whatever is its ripe color. Which mine did.

Yes, One Rotten Apple Does . . .

The ethylene given off by a ripe apple or banana can be put to use in speeding up ripening of tomatoes. Just put either of these fruits into the bag with tomatoes. Apples and bananas are climacteric fruits which, instead of emanating a steady stream of ethylene, ramp up production dramatically as full ripeness nears.
Among other effects, ethylene production itself stimulates further ethylene production. So if ripening fruits are left too long in a bag, ethylene stimulates ripening which stimulates more ethylene which stimulates more ripening, ad infinitum, until what is left is a bag of mushy, overripe fruit. Hence, one rotten apple really can spoil the whole barrel.

It’s a Gas for Fruiting Also

    Ripening isn’t the only prod to ethylene production in a plant. Stress also can do it, whether from the nibble of an insect, a disease spore wending its way through a plant’s cuticle, wind or snow bending a branch, or pruning shears trimming a wayward branch.
   Exogeneous ethylene leaves its mark on more than just promoting ripening. A century and a half ago, pineapple growers in the Azores saw that plants nearer outdoor fires flowered soonest. Plants that flower sooner, fruit sooner.
   If you’ve rooted a pineapple crown — relatively easy, just twist it off, plant in pot of well-drained potting soil, and water only when soil dries out — you can speed flowering and fruiting by setting an apple in the crown for a few days, then covering the plant with a bag.

And for Not Staking (Too Much)

Soon, I’ll be going outside, pruning shears in hand, to put ethylene to use again. Ethylene also slows growth, in so doing coaxing flowering.

Flowers on bent pear branch

Pear trees are famous for being slow to settle down to flowering and bearing fruit. No, I’m not planning to hang apples in the pear trees and enclose them in plastic bags! I am planning, after I finish working on the trees with my shears, to bend some well-placed branches to a near horizontal position, using weights, string, and pieces of wire to hold bent branches in place. The stress of bending — compression on one side of a stem, expansion on the opposite side — steps up ethylene production (30-300%), slowing growth, inducing flower bud formation, and shortening the time till I bite into my first pears from young trees.
I’m not yet finished with you ethylene. I planted a few new apple trees this year. They need staking, but not too much. Stakes should allow some movement of the developing trunks, and free movement of the top third of the plants. Movement causes the same stresses as branch bending, likewise inducing ethylene production. Ethylene, as you now know, slows growth but also, as you might not know, increases the thickness of the moving part; i.e. makes for a sturdier trunk. That’s what I want for my young trees.

VIRTUAL TRIP TO MEDITERRANEAN

December 3, 2015/4 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants, Pruning/by Lee Reich

Goodbye to Figs (For Now)

With yellowing leaves and dropping leaves, my greenhouse figs are looking sickly. But all is well in figdom. A common misconception is that figs are tropical trees. They’re not. They’re subtropical, generally tolerating cold down to near 20°F.. And their leaves are deciduous, naturally yellowing and dropping this time of year, just like maples, ashes, and other deciduous trees.
My greenhouse thermostat kicks on when the temperature inside drops to about 35°F. Daytime temperatures depend on sunlight; they might soar to 80° before awakening the exhaust fan on a sunny day in January, or hover around 35°F. on an overcast day that month. All of which is to say that the weather inside my greenhouse matches pretty well that of Barcelona and Rome, with hot dry summers and cool, moist winters. And figs grow very well in those Mediterranean climates. And go dormant.
I harvested my last good fig — from the variety ‘Rabbi Samuel’ — around the middle of this month. Can figophiles enjoy the fruits that late in the season in Barcelona and Rome, I wonder? Many apparently ripe fruits were still hanging from the stems after that date. With cool weather and/or less sunshine from shorter days, the fruits developed an overripe, off flavor. I can’t complain; harvest began in July and I picked enough to periodically have to dry the excess.

Next Year: Go Fig(ure)

    I didn’t turn my back on my plants after harvesting my last fig. I jumped right into readying the plants for next year’s harvest.
   The first step was hurrying the plants along into dormancy by actually pulling off all remaining leaves.
   Next, pruning. Two of my varieties, Bethlehem Black and Brown Turkey, bear fruit only on new shoots of the current season. Unpruned, new shoots would originate further and further up and out from the trunk — a problem in the limited confines of my greenhouse. Severity of pruning needs to be balanced against when ripening begins. More severe pruning would be more dramatic in its effect, but delays ripening. (Which is why fig trees — their roots, at least — might survive outdoors here under mulch or snow, but when the plant dies back that close to the ground, new sprouts don’t have time to ripen their fruits the following season.)
   Pruning these trees back to stubs between 3 and 4 feet from the ground keeps them to size and stimulates plenty of new shoots next spring on which fruit ripens from late summer on.
   Rabbi Samuel and San Piero fig varieties ripen a July crop on one-year-old stems as well as a second crop, onward from September, on new shoots. So with these varieties, I pruned some stems severely and others enough to leave some year-old wood for the early crop.
   Easiest was Rabbi Samuel because it’s trained as an espalier in the form of a T, with a permanent short trunk and two permanent arms emanating in opposite directions from atop the trunk.
   Fruiting shoots grow vertically 6 to 12 inches apart from the arms. Today I cut every other fruiting shoot to a stub from which I’ll allow just one new, vertical shoot, for the September crop. I cut each of the other shoots down to about a foot long; they’ll bear the early crop and then, if fruiting stems are crowding each other, can be cut back right after the early harvest. If not crowded, I’ll allow one side shoot to grow on to bear the September crop.
   It’s all simpler that it reads, and looks very tidy in the greenhouse now overcrowded with lettuce, celery, arugula, mâche, claytonia, parsley, and Swiss chard. All of which are staples of the Mediterranean vegetable garden in winter.

And More form the Mediterranean

    Like figs, citrus also are subtropical plants. Depending on the kind of citrus fruit, they’ll tolerate winter cold into the ‘teens (kumquat) or just below freezing (lime). The plants neither grow as vigorously nor bear as heavily as do figs, so you don’t get much bang for your buck with a potted citrus without choosing carefully what to grow. I grow mine in pots: kumquat, because you can eat the whole fruit, sweet skin and tart flesh, wasting nothing; and, the newest addition to my citrus family (genus, actually), Meyer lemon.
   A squeeze of lemon goes a long way in flavoring a salad, livening a cup of tea, and adding pizazz to a cobbler. Growing my own lemons lets me make use also of a rind, for zest, that is free of pesticides.
   Meyer lemon is an orange x lemon hybrid, so is somewhat sweeter than lemon. This variety roots readily from cuttings, so I could have an indoor orchard in short order if I wanted, and bears quickly. A recently-rooted 3-inch-high cutting has already flowered and set a fruit.
   Citrus are evergreen and much prettier and more fragrant, when in bloom, than figs. Mine spend winter in sunny windows in a cool room rather than in the greenhouse.

Finally, Chill

A friend recently gave me a lawn chair. My plan is, on sunny winter days, to take my post-prandial siesta on that chair, basking in warm, winter light on the shores of the Mediterranean; that is, in my greenhouse. “…and fair Italia’s sunny shores, where the Mediterranean sea roars…”

THE UGLY, THE TASTY, & THE BEAUTIFUL

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

Close Your Eyes, If Necessary

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

Medlars, ready for harvest

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

Now Open Your Eyes

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

More Eye Candy

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

SWEET ANNIE AND SWEET GRAPES

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

Annie Helps the World

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

Annie, for Sweet Aroma

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

Annie’s a Weed?!

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

Sweet Ice Grapes

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

Grapes, frozen but delicious

NUTS OVER CHESTNUTS

November 5, 2015/6 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

American Chestnuts, Gone but not Dead

The chestnuts are big and fat and tasty — obviously not American chestnuts. I harvest so many chestnuts, also big and fat, each year from my Colossal variety trees that I never bothered to look beneath my Marigoule trees. Marigoule is planted further from my house than Colossal.

Marigoule chestnuts

American chestnuts, Castanea dentata, are small but very tasty, or so I have read and heard. I’ve never tasted one. The trees were devastated by a blight throughout the early 20th century. Previous to blight, the trees were so numerous in our eastern forests that it was said that a squirrel leaping from one chestnut branch to another could travel from Maine to Georgia without touching the ground.
Something like 40 billion trees died to the ground. But roots survive, sprouting new shoots each year to provide a host to keep the blight fungus alive. Trees might even grow to have trunks a half-foot or more in diameter before the fungus strikes to cut the tree to the ground again.

A Tale of Blight, Pollination, and Staining

Various chestnut species inhabit different parts of the world. Most blight resistant are Chinese chestnut (C. mollisima) and Japanese chestnut (C. crenata), where the blight originated. European chestnuts (C. sativa) is susceptible to blight, so has been mated with the Chinese or Japanese species to yield resistant, tasty hybrids. My Colossal and Marigoule trees are hybrids of the European and Japanese species.
But the plot thickens. Colossal, though a hybrid, is only slightly resistant to blight. My tree, over 15 years old, exhibits no sign yet, but I’m keeping an eye out for telltale orange pustules on its bark, limb dieback, and massive resprouting below points of infection. (It is only more recently that Colossal was determined to be more susceptible than originally thought.)

Chinese chesstnut seedling

Marigoule is quite resistant to blight. The tree also has an elegant, upright form, more like that of American chestnuts.
   So what’s the problem? If blight were to eventually strike Colossal dead, I could just walk a little further and gather Marigould nuts from the ground. Except that any chestnut tree needs cross-pollination from another variety in order to bear nuts.
   When I planted Colossal and Marigoule, I also planted some other chestnut trees, blight resistant Chinese chestnuts: a seedling and the varieties Peach and Eaton, the latter of which also has Japanese and American chestnuts in its parentage. All these yield good-tasting nuts, though not nearly as large and easy to peel as Colossal and Marigould, all are blight resistant, and any of them could pollinate Marigoule. Problem solved? Not quite.
   The plot thickens further. The nuts of Colossal, Marigoule, and other Japanese and Japanese hybrid chestnuts sometimes get a black staining that ruins their quality. Not all the nuts, just some of them. Recent research pins the blame not on yet another disease, but on pollen from Chinese or Chinese hybrid chestnut trees.

Nutty Present and Futures

    Going forward, I’m keeping a close eye on Colossal. If Colossal gets sick, one option that, so far, has been effective only in Michigan, might be to infect the blighted trees with a blight fungus that has been weakened because of infection with a virus. The weakened fungus is less deadly.
   Or, I could cut down Colossal and Marigoule, and feast only on the Chinese chestnuts and their hybrids. But Colossal and Marigoule are both so productive and produce such large, tasty, easy to peel nuts.
   I could cut down the Chinese seedlings and hybrids to prevent their pollination and staining of Colossal and Marigoule nuts. Except I’ve recently discovered that my Marigoule must have been pollinated by one of my Chinese trees because Colossal is pollen sterile. Marigoule can pollinate Colossal, but not vice versa. So to get nuts on Marigoule without Chinese chestnut pollen, I’d need another Japanese chestnut or hybrid, either a whole new tree or a branch grafted on either Colossal or Marigoule.. The variety Labor Day (also known as J60) yields good nuts and is blight resistant.
   I’ll probably take the “wait and see” option. After all, there’s no sign of blight on any trees; few nuts get staining; and we gather more than enough nuts for roasting and stews.

CLEAN UP, THEN SHAVE

October 28, 2015/14 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Out with the Old (Plants)

   Ostensibly, I’m clearing away old plant debris from the vegetable and flower gardens to spare next year’s garden a full onslaught of overwintering disease and insect pests, and so that, come spring, the soil is ready and waiting for seeds and transplants. I’ll admit it, though: I like the garden looking neat going into late autumn. As Charles Dudley Warner wrote in his book My Summer in the Garden (1889), “the closing scenes need not be funereal.”
   As of this writing, frost has not yet struck; as of your reading, it probably will have. Following that event, I will remove all dead plants. I’ll grasp the tops of smaller plants, such as marigolds and basil, give them a twist to sever the smaller roots, then lift and toss the plant into a waiting garden cart. If I tried to do that with old pepper, tomato, or okra plants, they would laugh at me. I lop off the bulk of their tops, then cut around the plant with a Hori-hori knife so that I can lift the remaining stem and main roots out of the ground.
   In either case, my goal is to remove everything but the smaller roots. Left in place, they’ll rot to add organic matter to the soil, leaving behind channels to let air, water, and creatures move through the ground.
   Even now, before frost, cleanup is well under way. Tomatoes are spent; I cleaned them up yesterday. Beans are spent; I’ll clear them away today. Leaving bean roots in the soil is like sprinkling organic fertilizer from the free nitrogen they gathered from the air.
   Along with garden plants, weeds also get cleared away, again removing only top portions and the main roots. Small roots don’t have the energy to re-sprout.

In With the New (Compost)

More than just looking neat, the cleaned up garden is — to my eye — ornamental. Think of the calm beauty of Zen gardens, some of them little more than boulders and raked gravel. Mine is wood chips (in paths) and raked soil.

Beds in fall: veggies, oat cover crops, compost

Well, not really raked soil. Bare soil looks ugly to me because I know it’s too exposed to rain and wind. So as soon as I’ve cleared a bed, I immediately put a blanket on it. Before the end of September, that blanket was oat seed topped with an inch of compost. Those beds are now lush strips of green. Post-September beds get blanketed with just an inch of compost. It’s roughness helps protect the surface, and next spring I can sow seeds or plug transplants right into it. That much compost is all the nourishment plants will need for the whole growing season next year.
And then there are the beds still green with carrots, turnips, endive, lettuce, kale, and other cold-hardy plants. I’ll dig the root crops, for storage, at my leisure. The others, we will eat, also at our leisure.

Nothing Wasted

    All that stuff that I am clearing out of the garden is going right into the compost pile. Yes, everything! I’m occasionally asked if I put leaves and stems that are infected or infested with blight, aphids, or other pests into my compost pile. Yes! Everything goes into the pile.
   I contend that if you looked closely enough (perhaps needing a microscope) at almost any leaf, stem, fruit, or root, you’d probably find some evidence of a “bad guy” on it. No matter. The combination of time and temperature within any compost pile does them in.
   This time of year, piles build rapidly. By paying attention to water and air within the pile as well as the balance of high nitrogen materials (manures and lush greenery such as vegetable plants and young weeds) and high carbon materials (old, browning plants, wood chips, autumn leaves), I’m able to get my compost piles up to 160° F.
   Soon, cooler temperatures combined with less stuff to feed the pile makes for cooler composting. I let these piles “cook” longer, the longer time making up for lower temperatures.

Lookin’ Good and Ready for Spring

Getting everything ready for winter is a leisurely process, inching along over the next few weeks. By then, tender vegetable plants and weeds will have been tucked into compost piles and beds will be blanketed in either compost, compost and growing oats, or late fall vegetables. Mr. Warner, mentioned in my opening paragraph, went on to say, “A garden should be got ready for winter as well as for summer . . . I like a man who shaves (next to one who doesn’t shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such a man will be likely to put is garden in complete order before the snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of melancholy ruin and decay.”
I’m going to shave now.