Fruit – Page 22 – Lee Reich

BLUEBERRIES OUTSIDE, APHIDS INSIDE

April 23, 2015/12 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Pruning, Soil/by Lee Reich

Plant the Best-Tasting Fruit

My sixteen blueberry plants keep me in blueberries year ‘round, so I’m not planting any this year. But you are, or should be. The bushes are attractive in every season, with white blossoms in spring, foliage that looks spry all summer and turns crimson red in fall, and stems that shade to red in winter. The bushes are almost pest-free. And the berries are healthful and delicious.

   All you would-be blueberry planters out there: Pay attention to the soil for your plants, about which I’m going to offer advice. Too many people plunk a blueberry bush into a hole dug in their lawn and then wonder about the lack of berries. Poor growth, that’s why. The plants bear fruit on one year old stems. If shoots grow only a few inches one year, there’s little room on which to hang berries the following year.
   Taking a cue from wild blueberries, here’s what the bushes need, soil-wise: acidity (pH 4-5.5), organic matter, relatively low fertility, moisture, air, and no competition from weeds. For starters, check the soil pH with either a home testing kit or by taking a sample to a Cooperative Extension office or soil testing laboratory. If soil is not sufficiently acidic, add sulfur, preferable pelletized sulfur for ease of handling, 3⁄4 pound of sulfur per 100 square feet in sandy soils or three times this amount in heavier soils, for each pH unit the soil is above 4.5. Contrary to popular myth, adding oak leaves or pine needles will NOT do the trick. Spread sulfur over the ground as far as the eventual spread of the roots, which is about 3 feet in all directions.
   Then dump a bucketful of peat moss right where you plan to dig each hole. Dig the hole deep and twice as wide as needed to get the plant in the ground, mixing the peat moss with the soil. Peat moss provides a long-lasting source of organic matter, which also helps with aeration and water retention.
   Finally, plant and water.

My planting, 7 years later

Wait, you’re not finished yet. Right after planting, spread some organic mulch, such as wood shavings, leaves, or pine needles, a couple of inches deep and as wide a spread as the roots. Mulch keeps the soil moist and further enriches the ground with organic matter as its lower layers decompose.

Soil & Birds

Ongoing soil care for blueberry bushes is simple and necessary, mostly food and drink.
Assuage the bushes’ thirst with, barring rain, three-quarters of a gallon of water per week for each square foot spread of the roots. Satisfy their hunger by spreading a high nitrogen fertilizer late each fall. I use an organic fertilizer, such as soybean or alfalfa meal, at the rate of 1.5 pounds over every hundred square feet of root spread. These fertilizers offer nitrogen throughout the growing season in a form blueberries can use.

Blueberry temple in winter

Periodically re-check the soil pH and add more sulfur, if needed. Replenish the mulch each fall, laying the new mulch right on top of the old mulch.
For the future — harvest of first berries should begin within a couple of years — think about birds. Are you going to share? Are they going to share? I opt not to share, enclosing my whole planting in netting, to create a walk-in “blueberry temple.”

Aphid Attack & Counterattack

    Turning inward, not introspectively, but to the greenhouse, I see aphids getting a foothold. Their populations soared a few weeks ago as young and old feasted on aging celery and arugula plants beginning to send up seed stalks.
   My first counterattack was to cut down or dig up these old plants and whisk them to the compost pile before too many insects dropped off to take up residence on smaller plants and seedlings. Not that there weren’t plenty of stragglers fattening up on younger plants.
   My tack with the stragglers has been to set my watering wand on “fan spray” and blast the plants with water. Most aphids that get knocked off plants don’t return. I spray on mornings of sunny days so leaves dry relatively quickly, limiting potential disease problems. The temporary increase in humidity might increase the likelihood of aphids’ getting fungal diseases, to which they are very susceptible.
   Of less effect are the ladybugs I periodically introduce into the greenhouse, in large part because I don’t have enough of them. They used to enter my home in large numbers via leaks around an old, south-facing window and nearby crack in the wall. I’d merely vacuum them up as they clustered on the window pane and shake the contents of the hand-held vacuum among plants in the greenhouse late in the day. That window and the wall crack have been repaired, so few ladybugs end up indoors.
   I’m considering making a hole in the wall to let the ladybugs indoors again and hanging a ladybug live trap (available commercially or made from online plans at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/lbeetle/001030.trap.pdf) right near the hole.
   Thus far, though, cleanup and water sprays have kept aphids under control, and plants are growing well. Once transplanted outdoors aphid problems vanish because of the weather and natural predators.

POPPING, PRUNING, AND EATING

April 16, 2015/3 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Popcorn Gets Bigger, But Medlar Is Still Ugly (Not To Me)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about increasing the poppability of my home-grown popcorn by exposing the kernels to the vapor of a saturated salt solution. Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored popcorn, a variety that usually pops fairly well, popped to 1/3 greater volume.
This week Pink Pearl, a variety that’s not usually a very good popper, underwent testing. The result: No effect of the treatment; both the treated and untreated batches popped pretty well. Was it the change in the weather, stronger hints of spring? Perhaps. (Previously, I pointed out how cold weather outside turns indoor air drier, perhaps too dry for good popcorn popping.) At any rate, Pink Pearl was tasty.

Medlar Teaches How To Prune A Fruit Plant

    The weather change also had the effect of drawing me outdoors more — for pruning. Looking at my medlar tree’s branches going every which way, I scratched my head (figuratively) wondering where to start, what to cut.
   Medlar is a fruit tree (more on medlar later), and the first step in pruning any fruit tree is attending to light. Light provides the energy for photosynthesis which translates into flavorful fruits. The goal is to let every branch bathe in sunlight, which also helps thwart potential disease problems.
   So I stopped scratching my head and started with a few dramatic pruning cuts, lopping some of the larger limbs back to their origins. Medlar has a naturally spreading growth habit, so cuts were aimed at removing limbs trying to fill in and shade the the center of the tree. I wanted a whorl of branches reaching up and out.

Medlar tree, after pruning

   Next to go were dead, diseased, and broken branches. I saw remnants of cicada damage from two years ago. Away with most of those stems also.
   For the next cuts, you have to know how a particular kind of fruit tree bears fruit. At one extreme are peaches. They bear only on one-year-old stems so need aggressive pruning each year to stimulate new shoots that become next year’s bearing, one-year-old stems. At the other extreme are apple and pear trees. They bear fruit on long-lived spurs, which are stumpy, branching stubs that develop on older limbs, so relatively little pruning is needed.
   Medlar’s bearing habit lies somewhere between those two extremes. I shortened a few very old branches to invigorate them with new growth.
   On most fruit trees, drooping branches make poorer fruit. Probably for medlar also. So off came the drooping branches, either back to non-droopy portions or to their origin.
   Finally, some detail work: shortening or removing those vigorous, vertical shoots called watersprouts; thinning out smaller areas of congested branches; removing stems growing too close to where major limbs exit the trunk; and lopping down root sprouts growing at or near ground level from the rootstock.
   Besides fruit, medlar offers beauty. Part of the beauty is the craggy shape of the tree, its muscular limbs clothed in golden brown bark. I stepped back to admire the tree and my work after pruning. If I’ve done a good job, the tree looks happily ready to bask in light and air and, because the major cuts removed limbs at the origin, hardly looks like it’s been pruned.

Medlar Teaches To Eat With Your Tongue, Not Your Eyes

Medlar is a fruit whose popularity peaked in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne was a fan, a big fan who demanded the tree be planted in every town he conquered.

Medlar, fruit in summer

Despite its popularity, even in the Middle Ages, the fruit has often been described disparagingly — for its appearance, though, not its flavor. The fruits resemble small, russeted apples, tinged dull yellow or red, with their calyx ends (across from the stems) flared open. “Open-arse” was the name Chaucer chose. A more recent writer described medlar as “a crabby-looking, brownish-green, truncated, little spheroid of unsympathetic appearance. “ (All recounted, along with information about growing, procuring, and eating medlars in the chapter on medlar in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)

Medlar, after bletting

Oh, one more quirk about medlar: The fruit, rock hard at harvest, needs to be bletted before eating. This means gently setting it on a counter in a cool room for a couple of weeks, or more, depending to the temperature, during which time the fruit’s interior turns to brown mush. Ugly to look at, but the flavor has a refreshing briskness with winy overtones, like old-fashioned applesauce laced with cinnamon. Between the fruits’ appearance and their need for bletting, you’ll never find medlars for sale on a supermarket shelf.
Perhaps the fruit is ugly. The tree is not. I already mentioned the attractive form and color of the limbs. The white flowers, opening here in May, are like those of a wild rose, each one enhanced because its late opening gets a backdrop of a whorl of already unfurled, dark, green leaves. The tree grows only 8 or 10 feet high and wide and will fruit without another pollinator, so is perfect for a small yard. No need to decide whether to plant a fruit tree or an ornamental tree; medlar is both trees in one.

Medlar, tree in bloom

ELUSIVE AZURE AND FRUIT

April 8, 2015/2 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Too Hot Here For These Gems, But Maybe I Can Trick Them

   It was decades ago that Norman — gardener, orchid expert, one-time cattle farmer, and lawyer — described to me his first sighting of blue poppy, Meconopsis betonicifolia. He was traveling in England, and at this particular garden was a pond whose far side was electrified by the sky blue petals of blue poppy, perhaps the purest blue of any flower. The mirrored surface of the water stepped up the voltage, as do the frilly clusters of golden anthers trembling in the center whorls of petals.
   Since then, I’ve lusted for blue poppies but have yet to see the plant in bloom. Twice I tried to grow it, from seed. Each time the seedlings germinated and got off to a good start. Each time, in July, as temperatures here started to get steamy, the plants collapsed, dead. Blue poppy is native above 10,000 feet in the Himalayas and doesn’t like hot weather.
   I don’t feel compelled to grow the plant (although that would be nice); I just want to feast my eyes on those bluest of blue petals. To see the plant in bloom requires being somewhere: 1) in late spring or early summer, 2) with cool summers, 3) where blue poppy grows wild or has been planted. The second condition, cool summers, is found in North America in the Pacific Northwest, New England and adjacent parts of Canada, and Alaska. I like hot summers so I’m not relocating to any of these places in order to grow this plant. Also, my garden is particularly needy and entrancing in late spring and early summer, so I’m not leaving then.

I Almost Cross Paths With Blue Poppy, After 20+ Years

    As it turned out, I just missed an opportunity to see blue poppy in bloom at Longwood Gardens in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania. Not only is Longwood not far from here, but I happened to be in nearby Philadelphia two weeks ago, when the plant was in bloom. Who would have thought blue poppy could be grown in Pennsylvania?
   I had, at least, to find out how the plants are grown there. As described by Longwood horticulturalist Jim Harbage, each October Longwood has potted plants shipped from a nursery in Alaska. The plants are put into cold storage until early January, then brought into Longwood’s cool (50-60°F) conservatory to slowly awaken and, finally, blossom in March. After bloom, the plants, although perennials, are discarded.
   Most important is to keep temperatures below 70° F. Research at Longwood Gardens showed that respiration outpaces photosynthesis at warmer temperatures. The plant, essentially, starves. Warmer temperatures also cause some purpling of the petals, ruining the whole reason for growing the plant.
   Could Longwood’s prescription be mimicked in my greenhouse? Probably not. Longwood’s large, high-ceilinged conservatory, with dappled shade from tree ferns and citrus trees, perhaps also cooling mists of water puffed into the air as needed, is a lot cooler than my greenhouse. Here, greenhouse temperatures on sunny days in February and March soar, despite vent fans, into the 80s.
   How about a sunny window sill? Temperatures are cool in my house, more so the further you go from the woodstove. So that’s a possibility. But purchasing new plants every year could get expensive, especially plants that are good only for compost once their blossoms fade.
   How about starting the seeds in early or mid winter for planting outdoors to blossom before temperatures get too hot? Or starting the seeds in fall and exposing the young seedings to very cool temperatures for more assured earlier blossoms outdoors? Blue poppy, if it behaves like many other perennials, should blossom the first season if started very early or if tricked into thinking it’s been through winter before blossoming. I later learned that Chanticleer Garden, also in the Philadelphia region, gets outdoor blossoms from plants purchased in October, wintered in cold frames, then planted outdoors in March. Bloom is in April; composting is in June.
   The most important and most reliable route for me to eye blue poppy in bloom is to pencil in a trip to Longwood Gardens for early March next year.

King Red, For Fruit & Beauty, Also Elusive . . . Do Far

My blue poppy experience is reminiscent of my experience with another plant of western Asia, a plant variously called King Red Russian olive, iğde (in Turkey), botanically Elaeagnus angustifolia var. orientalis, or, erroneously, Trebizond date (which is a persimmon species).

King Red seeds, sprouting last spring

   King Red is invasive out West but definitely is not invasive here. As with blue poppy, I’ve grown the plant from seed only to have it collapse, dead, when steamy weather arrived.
   Beautiful blossoms are not the attraction of King Red, although they do sweetly perfume the air in spring. Rather, it’s the bright red fruit that is highlighted by the gray-green foliage and, when dried, is like sweet talcum powder contained within a cherry-sized, brittle shell. Even without the flowers or fruit, the tree imparts a soft, Mediterranean look to the landscape, much like an olive tree, a relative.
   I started some seedlings of King Red Russian olive last year, hoping for some genetic variability in heat tolerance. All the seedlings thrived, probably because of last summer’s relatively cool temperatures.

King Red branch that someone sent me

The seedlings are now dormant in 4 inch pots in my basement. I want 20 foot tall King Red trees so eventually the baby trees need to be planted out. I’m scoping out suitable locations with cooler microclimates. A spot receiving only morning sun is the current best candidate.
Perhaps in a few years I’ll be eating home-grown iğde while enjoying the sight of blue poppies.

BANANAS & GINGER BRING TROPICS HERE

March 27, 2015/6 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Spring Coming? Might As Well Go For Something(s) Tropical

   Do I smell spring in the air? Must be. And the calendar confirms that it’s just around the corner. These hints finally stir longings for that season — even for a skiier. And what better way to welcome spring in than with attention to some tropical plants.
   My banana plants have weathered winter very well this year, indoors, of course. Last year I was proud that my one plant survived. After all, banana is a truly tropical plant. It shivers at temperatures below 50° F. and enjoys 80° days and nights as its broad, satiny leaves drink in year ‘round bright sunlight, occasional rains, and humid air. Even if my house was warm, which it is not, only a relative paltry amount of sunlight streams through even a south-facing window, and the air is bone-dry. Hence my pride.
   My philosophy last year was to send my banana tree into a state of suspended animation by withholding water and keeping the plant on the cool side. It did survive winter, barely. Once the weather warmed outdoors, it took a few weeks before the plant fully awakened. Actually the mother plant never did awaken, but two of its pups did. Pups are small plants that arise at the base of the mother plant, and are one of the ways in which new banana plants are propagated. (You no doubt noticed that cultivated bananas do not have seeds).
   Once the pups were growing strongly, I tipped the plant out of the pot and cut off each pup to pot up separately.
   This fall my approach was to keep the banana plants happy. Even if they couldn’t have steamy conditions of the tropics, I would at least provide their roots with plenty of water. And happy they are: New leaves have unfurled all winter, with few of the older ones drying out. By the end of May, the weather outdoors will be ready to receive the plants, which should grow exuberantly, as bananas are wont to do with good conditions.
   Bananas bear quickly so at this rate I may sometime be harvesting fresh fruit. If not, I can always use the leaves to make Indonesian pepes.

Banana (Not) Trees

    Notice, above, that I never referred to a banana “tree.” Banana plants might look tree-like and grow to the proportions of trees, but they are not actually trees. They are giant, perennial herbs. The “trunk” is composed of a sheath of tightly-wrapped leaf stalks. Each vertical stalk successively unfurls into a broad leaf which then splays its blade out horizontally.
   All new growth is pushed up from the corm at the base of the leaf stalks.
   Musa basjoo is a banana that’s cold-hardy to about zero degrees F. The top will die to the ground in winter but the corm, if mulched for further protection in the ground, survives winter. Nothing worth eating from this banana plant, although it makes a bold, tropical statement in summer.

Immature Ginger, Mmmmm

    I could never understand the current commercial interest in growing ginger, a tropical plant, in cold winter regions, such as here. Until last year, that is, when I tasted freshly harvested, immature ginger I got from a gardening friend. The roots had a smooth flavor and fiber-free flesh as compared with the mature roots usually sold.
   So this year, of course, I’ll be growing ginger, and the time to begin is now. To that end, I “harvested” some mature rhizomes from the grocer’s shelves, broke them into pieces each with 3 to 4 eyes, and planted them. Not outdoors, but indoors. And not just any place indoors, but somewhere especially warm.
   The goal is to get just the beginnings of shoots and roots growing. Each rhizome piece went into a bed of potting soil in a 4 inch pot, covered with another half to 3/4 inch of soil, and watered. Best growth is at about 80°F., no problem when the sun beams down on the greenhouse. On cloudy days and at night, though, temperatures can drop into the 30s. So I placed the pots on a large heating mat in the greenhouse that I use to warms seedling flats to get seeds started. (Seeds need warmer temperatures to germinate than seedlings need to grow.)
   Ideally, roots and shoots will have filled those pots by the time the greenhouse has been cleared of lettuce, arugula, and other cool weather greens and the soil temperature is above 55°F. That’s when the ginger can be planted in the ground; I figure on the end of May. Ginger is a heavy feeder, so each plant will go into a mound of pure compost that I’ll add to as the plants grow.
   Come September, I’ll pull the roots. They won’t yet be mature. That’s a good thing.

Corms, Cormels, Rhizomes, and More

    Banana and ginger both grow from underground structures, a corm and a rhizome, respectively, each providing energy storage and buds for new plants. Corms and rhizomes are modified, underground stems.
   A corm is an upright, fleshy, thickened stem having a protective tunic of modified leaves. Baby cormels arise near the base of the corm. The cormels sprout leaves and become pups like the two that grew at the base of my mother plant.
   A rhizome is a horizontal-growing, underground stem. New plants can be made by breaking off pieces of rhizome and planting them, as I did with the ginger and as is done with potatoes.
   Sometimes banana corms, like ginger rhizomes, are eaten. I won’t be eating my corms.

And The Winner Is . . .

Wendy, who commented on March 19 about her travails in fruit growing, is the winner, by random drawing, of my book GROW FRUIT NATURALLY. Congratulations Wendy.

New Video, Seed Starting . . .

Check out my video page for my timely, new video about seed starting.

A FRUITFUL YEAR IN THE OFFING

March 18, 2015/7 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

More Fruits to Plant!?

Pawpaw, tastes like crème brûlée

   You’d think, after so many years of gardening and a love of fruits being such a important part of said gardening, that by now I would have planted every fruit I might ever have wanted to plant. Not so!
   Hard to imagine, but even here in the 21st century, new fruits are still coming down the pike. I don’t mean apples with grape flavor (marketed as grapples), a mango nectarine (actually, just a nectarine that looks vaguely like a mango), or strawmato (actually a strawberry-shaped tomato).
   There are plenty of truly new fruits, in the sense of kinds of fruits hardly known to most people, even fruit mavens. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of them. Aronia is a beautiful fruit that makes a beautiful juice, so it’s getting more press these days. I grew it and thought it tasted awful. Goji’s another one in the public’s eye for it’s many health benefits and ease of growing; it also tasted terrible and I also escorted that plant to the compost pile.
   Some lesser known kin of raspberry had greater potential. I planted arctic raspberry, which grows as a groundcover and has been used in breeding for the good flavor it imparts to its offspring. The plant never bore for me. Salmonberry and thimbleberry similarly had gustatory potential but never bore well in my garden. I’ll give these plants another try someday.
   I’m tentative about honeyberries, which are blue-fruited, edible species of honeysuckle that bear young, fruit early in the season, and weather cold to minus 40 degrees F.. The “blueberry-like fruit” is so only in being blue. I planted a couple of bushes about 20 years ago and was not impressed with their yield or flavor — but I admit to neglecting the plants. More importantly, a lot of breeding has been done to improve the plants since I put my bushes in the ground. Stay tuned for my tastebuds’ report on the flavor of recently planted Blue Mist, Blue Moon, and Blue Sea honeyberries.

Some Fruits Are So Easy — And Tasty

Reading what I just wrote might give the impression that planting any fruit except apples, peaches, and cherries — the usual, that is — leads to either failure or tentative flavor. Again, not so!

Persimmons, nashi, figs, and grapes

Uncommon fruits adaptable over large swathes of the country that are easy to grow and have excellent flavor include pawpaw, American persimmon, gooseberry, black currant, hardy kiwifruit, Nanking cherry, and alpine strawberry — all documented in detail in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden. All these plants grow and bear with little or no intervention on my part (and are available from such nurseries as www.onegreenworld.com and www.raintreenursery.com).

Seaberries on bush in fall

Seaberry (Hippophae rhamnoides) didn’t make it into the book, which includes only “dessert fruits,” that is, those you can enjoy by just popping them into your mouth. But I’m happy I gave these bushes some of my real estate. Juiced, diluted, and sweetened, the delectable flavor is akin to rich orange juice mixed with pineapple. What’s more, the bushes are decorative and tolerate neglect, cold, drought, and deer.

New Fruits

This spring I’m planting a new kind of a somewhat familiar fruit, back raspberries. They’re also called blackcaps, and grow wild along woodland borders, which is where I gather my harvest. (A ripe blackcap comes off the plant with a hollow core, like a thimble, in contrast to a ripe blackberry, whose core persists.)
Blackcaps have perennial roots but their stems are typically biennial, growing only leaves their first year, fruiting in midsummer of their second year, then dying.

Blackcaps, ripe last summer

Two new blackcap varieties, Niwot (www.noursefarms.com) and Ohio’s Treasure (www.hartmannsplantcompany.com), do this one better: They start to bear on new canes towards the end of the first season, then bear again on those same canes, now one-year-old, in midsummer of the following year. You reap two crops per year, one in midsummer and one in late summer going on into fall. Or, for easier care but only one crop per year, the whole planting is mowed to the ground each year for a late summer-fall harvest.
These two-crop blackcaps, just like two-crop (sometimes called everbearing) red and yellow raspberries, have the added advantage of bearing their first crop the same year that they are planted. My plan is to plant in mid-April, even though right now more than a foot of snow still blankets the ground.

Vegetables Are So Easy

Snow or no snow, I’m sowing vegetable seeds, the second wave of the season. (My seed sources are www.fedcoseeds.com, www.sustainableseedco.com, www.johnnyseeds.com, and www.reneesgarden.com.) Today, the lineup includes the new varieties (for me) Tuscan Baby Leaf kale, Tiburon Ancho hot pepper, and Round of Hungary and Odessa Market sweet peppers. With encores for their good past performance are Gustas Brussels sprouts, Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage, Winterbor kale, and Carmen Sweet, Sweet Italia, and Italian Peperocini sweet peppers.

FRUIT BOOK GIVEAWAY, AND FRUIT FUTURES

March 13, 2015/53 Comments/in Books, Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

The Eternal (Fruit) Optimist

   We fruit growers get especially excited this time of year. On the one hand, there’s the anticipation of the upcoming season. And on the other hand, we don’t want to rush things along at all.
   Ideally, late winter segues into the middle of spring with gradually warming days and nights. Unfortunately, here, as in most of continental U.S., temperatures fluctuate wildly this time of year. Warm weather accelerates development of flower buds and flowers. While early blossoms are a welcome sight after winter’s achromatic landscapes, late frosts can snuff them out. Except for with everbearing strawberries, figs, and a couple of other fruits that bloom more than once each season, we fruit lovers get only one shot at a successful crop each season.
   How did all these fruits ever survive in the wild? They did so by not growing here — in the wild. Apples, peaches, cherries — most of our familiar fruits — were never wild here, but come from climates with more equable temperatures, mostly eastern Europe and western Asia. We favor them because they are part of our mostly European heritage.
   The fruits that I never worry about here are the few that are native: pawpaw, persimmon, grape, mulberry, lingonberry, and blueberry, to name a few. (Also raspberry, gooseberry, and currants, cultivated varieties of which are hybrids of native and European species.) After decades of fruit growing, I’ve hardly missed a harvest, no matter what the weather, from any of these native fruits. (I cover native, non-native, common, and uncommon fruits in my books Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden and Grow Fruit Naturally.)
   Still, I can’t deny the delicious flavor of apples, peaches, and other non-native fruits, especially those I grow myself. So I do grow them, do what I can for them, and hope for the best. I may even put a thin coat of white kaolin spray on these trees to reflect the sun’s warmth and further delay awakening of the buds.
   Last year was a very poor year for many tree fruits, and I’m not sure why. (Recovery from the previous years cicada attacks could be part of the reason.) Nonetheless, every year about this time I’m bursting with optimism for a bountiful fruit harvest.

Veggies, As Usual, Chugging Along Nicely

    I consider vegetables relatively easy to grow because most are annuals and because, with most of them, I can sow and harvest repeatedly throughout the growing season. Let cold or some pest snuff them out, and I can just replant.
   The first of my lettuces, sown early last month in little seed trays, are up and growing strongly, each seedling transplanted into its own APS cell (available from www.gardeners.com). Ninety-six seedlings take up little more than a couple of square feet and, with capillary watering from a reservoir beneath the APS trays, I need check the water only about every week.
   My next wave of indoor seed-sowing will take place in the middle of this month. That’s when I’ll sprinkle pepper, eggplant, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and cabbage seeds into the miniature furrows of miniature fields of my seed flats.
   I’ll also sow another batch of lettuce seeds indoors, this batch for eventual transplanting outdoors. The first batch is soon to be transplanted into greenhouse beds.

Fig Prophylaxis

    Buds on fig trees planted in the ground in the greenhouse are showing hints of green and swelling ever so slightly in spite of the cool night temperatures in there. The scale insects that I battled last year are undoubtedly also coming to life on those plants. In the past, I’ve kept these insects at bay by scrubbing the bark in winter with soapy water or by spraying it with insecticidal soap, or, during the growing season, wrapping the trunk with a sticky Tanglefoot barrier to stop travel of ants that herd the insects.
   I’ve never gotten rid of scale insects, only kept them from gaining the upper hand. And some years it’s been a neck and neck race as to who would win out before the end of the season.
   I’ve already begun this season with prophylactic sprays of oil. Oil has a long history of controlling insects and some diseases, with the advantage of causing little collateral damage to the environment, including beneficial insects. Because it’s main effect is to clog insect breathing ports (spiracles), there’s little danger of insects developing resistance.
   Oil’s major hazard is its potential to injure plants, mitigated by spraying when temperatures aren’t too hot or below freezing, or when rain is likely, all easily avoided in a greenhouse. Various kinds and formulations of oil — kinds include vegetable, mineral, and neem oils — differ in their hazard to plants. I’m using a high-purity mineral oil (Sunspray) from which I expect no damage, especially since the plants are still leafless.
   Scale insect eggs should be hatching about now. Brutal as it may sound, I hope to suffocate the crawlers before they settle down to one spot to cover themselves with their protective armor and literally suck the life from the plants. Weekly sprays should cover successive hatches.

New Video

Check out my new video on “pricking out” seedlings!

Free Book!

Book giveaway! Write a comment here telling us which is the most difficult fruit you grow, and why, and why you grow it, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to get a free copy of my most recent book Grow Fruit Naturally. Comments must be submitted no later than noon, March 23rd.

Upcoming Lectures

Check out the “Lectures” page of my website for some lectures I’ll be giving in the next few weeks.

MANURE ABSOLVED, PRUNING STARTED

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

Horse Manure: Not Guilty, So On To Pruning

   A dark cloud no longer hangs over my horse manure, that is, the horse manure that I occasionally truck over here to add to my compost piles. I wrote a few weeks ago about the possibility of herbicide that, when applied to hay, retains its toxic effect when an animal eats the hay and even, for a long time, after that animal’s manure has been composted or spread on the ground.
   My herbicide residue concerns were soothed with a simple assay that showed satisfactory growth from bean seeds in both hay that was suspect and hay of known integrity. Also, the bedding in the horse manure is mostly wood shavings rather than hay.
   But another ugly dragon kept raising its head above the manure. Another chemical, this time, Ivermectin, a de-worming medication given to horses (and other animals). Ivermectin or its metabolites might pass through the animal and injure soil dwelling creatures such as beneficial nematodes and earthworms. Past studies have shown negative effects on, for example, “dung fauna and degradation of faeces” (to quote a research paper from 2006).
   Ivermectin is, admittedly, a very useful material, even useful in humans to combat lice, bedbugs, and some more frightening tropical afflictions such as river blindness and elephantiasis. Agriculture is always a balancing act, but I like to keep my soil-dwelling partners happy.
   So I was gladdened when a veterinarian recently directed me to a Stanford University publication that summarized research findings on the environmental effects of Ivermectin. To whit: Ivermectin is excreted and it can affect earthworms, springtails, and other fauna. But it degrades quickly at summer temperatures (1-2 weeks, but much longer in winter) and within a day or two of exposure to bright sunlight. With temperatures within my compost bins reaching 150°F., or more, with the compost sitting many months before use, and with the compost being spread on top of the ground, little Ivermectin would end up in the soil. And soil anyway naturally has low levels of this compound.

Snow Makes Me Taller

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

Sammy (the dog) and I pruning pawpaws

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

A Beautiful Climber

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

Climbing hydrangea in summer

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

Climbing hydrangea, partially pruned

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

LECTURES THIS WEEKEND

February 8, 2015/2 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Feb. 14, 2015
Gardener’s Supply Co.,Burlington, VT
“Espalier Fruits”
“My Weedless Garden”

Feb. 15, 2015
Northeast Organic Farming Association of VT, Winter Conference,
Burlington, VT
“Hardy Kiwifruits”
“Compost Tea: Snake Oil or Plant Elixir?”

LUSTING FOR AVOCADOS, HOME GROWN, OF COURSE

February 6, 2015/4 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

A Long Journey to Avocado-dom

This far north, an avocado plant provides reliable entertainment and, less reliably, the makings of guacamole. The entertainment doesn’t compare with the excitement of a car chase on the silver screen; it’s slower but very engaging.

To whit: I’ve been watching roots on two avocado pits elongate and branch. I spend a lot of time with plants; here is my opportunity to spend quality time with their roots. That’s all possible because avocado pits, suspended in water, will sprout roots whose growth can be watched. (Odd, since wet soils are the nemesis of avocado trees planted outdoors in tropical and subtropical climates, and you can’t get much wetter than water.)

Despite being plants of warm climates, avocados are frequently raised by us northerners, as houseplants. I could have planted the pits in potting soil in a pot, but would have missed out on root entertainment. So I stuck three toothpicks into and spaced evenly around each pit so that the pits could be suspended in a beaker with their bottoms — their fatter ends — sitting in water. Taking a thin slice off the top and bottom of the seed, which I did, reputedly speeds germination.

Roots typically sprout before the tops show any sign of growth.

Whoops, Things Don’t Look So Good

Avocado houseplants are so common that probably none of the above is new information to most readers. I’m embarrassed, then, to admit that my two plants have faltered in their growth.

One of them sent a sprout upwards after its roots were a couple of inches long. That sprout has dried out and, of course, ceased growth.

I noticed a slime surrounding the root of the other pit. This pit was very slow to sprout, and my guess is that there’s some bacteria attacking the weak growth.

I ascribe both failures to growing conditions which, here, indoors, are a far cry from the mostly warm, humid climes avocados call home. Mine sit near a window, experiencing wide swings in temperature in a room heated with a wood stove. Starting new plants in spring should bring better luck.

Entertained by Apical Dominance

I did get to effect and observe apical dominance on one of the plants. More benign than it sounds, apical dominance is the tendency for most vigorous growth from a plant’s uppermost buds, those either at the ends of branches or spatially at the highest points.

That vigor comes from suppression of buds lower down by auxin, a plant hormone that is produced in the uppermost buds and transported down the stem. Lopping off the top of a stem stops hormone production (temporarily, until the new higher buds start making it) so lower buds grow as they let go of their inhibitions.

The taproot growing from one of the avocado pits was threatening to bump into the bottom of the beaker so I pinched off a half inch of its tip. The effect was a mirror image to what happens with branches: within a few days, branch roots began to develop. Very entertaining.

An avocado sprout typically shows strong apical dominance, developing into a gawky plant with a single, upright shoot. Cutting the growing top back by a few inches induces branching and makes for a prettier plant.

Flowers, But No Fruit

More than beauty, I’d like fruit from my avocado plant. Under good conditions, such as in the ground in Florida, a pit would need 8 years or more before it became old enough to bear fruit. And then, said fruit might not be of best quality because the seedling would reflect whatever jumbling around of chromosomes occurred when the female flower that gave rise to the fruit that begot the seed got dusted with pollen from a male flower.

For quicker bearing and more reliable good taste, cloning is needed, in this case grafting a branch from a tree known to bear good-tasting fruits onto the young seedling. Bearing, then, occurs within 3 or 4 years, and the fruit should be identical to the mother plant from which the stem for grafting was taken.

Not so fast, though. You need two varieties for cross-pollination, and avocado has some pollination quirks. Still, my plan is to get new pits sprouting, and once their stems are large enough to graft, to get scions for grafting. Years ago, I did all this and got flowers but no fruit. I’m hopeful, this time around, to be making guacamole within 6 years.

Outside Now, For More Apical Dominance

The time is drawing near for some real gardening, which could start with pruning. I’ll be putting apical dominance to work on some young fruit trees — each a mere “whip,” single, vertical stem — planted last year. Shortening the main stem will induce side branches that will eventually become the permanent scaffold limbs of these plants. The more severely any stem is shortened, the fewer and the more enthusiastic the sprouts from the buds lower down.

To Every Thing There is a Season

January 10, 2015/0 Comments/in Books, Fruit, Gardening, Pruning/by Lee Reich

Pruning is reduced to small steps, in time & process

So many branches, so little time. Or so it seems. Annual pruning is needed to get the best out of most trees, shrubs, and vines, of which there are many here on my farmden.

But wait. My brother once remarked — and the remark rang true — that a large part of feeling overburdened from so much to do comes from thinking about it, rather than doing it. And now that I think about it — if I may be allowed a bit more thought — many trees, shrubs, and vines do not need annual pruning except for size control, in which case a different plant or dwarfer variety could have been planted. My witch hazel shrub is in that hardly-ever-needs-pruning category, as is fothergilla, goumi (an attractive shrub with tasty fruits), mountain laurel, and rhododendron.

Witch hazel is a shrub needing little or no pruning

Most ornamental trees do not need annual pruning, and the same can be said for ornamental vines, except when they threaten to take down an arbor, fence, or trellis that is lending them support.

Mostly, what needs annual pruning are flowering shrubs, and trees, shrubs, and vines that bear tasty (to us humans) fruit. But exceptions exist even among those edibles. Fruit plants that hardly ever needing pruning include such delicacies as pawpaw, persimmon, huckleberry, juneberry, Nanking cherry, elderberry, and lingonberry.

All shrubs are pruned the same, sort of

I already feel like pruning is under control, without even lifting a finger. And usually I don’t lift a finger to prune until, as is commonly recommended to avoid winter cold damage, after early February, when the coldest part of winter has passed. The last couple of years, though, I decided to go ahead and get a jump on pruning my rather extensive collection of gooseberries and currants. These plants are very cold-hardy so would be expected to laugh off winter cold, even following a December pruning, and they have.

Pruning currants and gooseberries captures the essence of pruning any flowering or fruiting shrub. Shrubs are shrubs because they are shrubby (duh!). That is, their stems are not long-lived but new stems, called suckers, are always popping up through the ground to replace old, decrepit ones. So these shrubs are “renewal pruned.” Old stems are cut away and the number of new stems, if too many, are reduced so that they don’t become crowded as they age.

Gooseberry bush, before & after pruning

The questions then become, “How old is too old for a stem, and how many new stems is too many?” The questions are related because shrubs whose old stems perform well in terms of fruit or flowers also tend to make fewer suckers, and vice versa. The easiest way to approach shrub pruning (and the way it’s detailed in my book The Pruning Book) is to group shrubs into one of four categories. At one end of the spectrum are shrubs that flower or fruit well on very old wood and make few suckers — and, hence, are in the aforementioned hardly-ever-needs-pruning category. At the other end of the spectrum are shrubs that flower or fruit only on new stems, such as butterfly bush, so can have every one of their stems lopped to ground level every year.

A now I do it, prune currants & gooseberries

The other day I stopped thinking about pruning my gooseberry shrubs and, instead, approached them with lopper and hand shears and a new-found sense of having all the time in the world. Gooseberries fruit best on stems that are 2 and 3 years old. Pruning is straightforward. Merely lop to the ground any stems more than 3-years-old (they were 3-years-old last season and bore fruit) and reduce the number of new stems to about a half-dozen of the sturdiest, most upright ones. The ideal, pruned gooseberry shrub, then has about a half-dozen each of 1, 2, and 3-year old stems. A shrub never becomes a tangle of stems nor has old, decrepit, unproductive ones.

Black currant, before pruning

Red, white, and pink currants get pruned exactly the same as gooseberries; black currants, though, are a whole ‘nother animal. They bear best on 1-year-old stems and, to a lesser degree, 2-year old stems. So for the black currants, I lopped back to the ground any stems more than 2-years-old as well as some 2 year olds and thinned out new, 1-year old stems, again to the best half-dozen.

How do I know the age of any shrub’s stem? I could count back the age of the various side branches starting at their tips. That would be tedious. The thickness of the base of a stem and the appearance of the bark are just as telling. Old bark is darker and, often, peeling.

After pruning any shrub I go over the plant to remove or shorten stems that will droop so low as to set their fruits on the ground. Especially with strictly ornamental shrubs, I also lop back any stems shooting gawkily skyward or otherwise looking out of place. And then, for any shrub, ornamental or fruiting, I step back to evaluate and admire my handiwork.

Black currant, after pruning

The why, how, and details of pruning any plant

For more about how to prune everything from houseplants to delphiniums to maples to raspberries, check out my book, The Pruning Book.

Live, On Stage Now!!!

I’ll be giving a number of lectures at various venues over the next few weeks. For a listing of what and where, see Lectures.