Fruit – Page 23 – Lee Reich

Who’s the Best Gardener/Farmdener?

November 21, 2014/3 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Fresh Watermelon, and More, with Help from Ethylene

Could I possibly be the best gardener west of the Hudson River? Perhaps. As evidence: On November 1st, here in Zone 5 of New York’s Hudson River Valley, where temperatures already have plummeted more than once to 25°F, I was able to harvest a fresh, dead-ripe watermelon. Not from a greenhouse, not from a hoop house, not even from a plastic covered tunnel. Watermelon, a crop sensitive to frost and thriving best in summer’s sun and searing heat.

Okay, perhaps I can’t assume all that much responsibility for the melon. Let me explain . . .

Every fall, I have a landscaper dump a whole truckload of leaves vacuumed up from various properties at my holding area for such things. Rain and snow drench the pile in the coming months, starting it on the road to decomposition. When sufficiently warm weather has decided to stay in spring, I scoop out a few holes in the pile, fill them with compost, then tuck in watermelon transplants.

Last fall’s pile yielded well from summer until early fall this year, at which time I gathered up remaining melons for eating or, if unripe, for composting along with the vines. The tractor, with its bucket, was able to move and compact the now dense pile to make way for this year’s crop of leaves.

Ben & Jeremy show off the November watermelon.

Now we’re up to November 1st, time to spread the leaf mold before it freezes — a big job that necessitated enlisting the help of my neighbors Jeremy and Ben. We were loading and hauling and loading and hauling, forking deeper and deeper into the bowels of the pile, when Jeremy yelled that he’d just speared a watermelon I had overlooked when cleaning up. I cleaned it off and sliced it open. It proved to be a ripe watermelon. The taste? “Awesome,” to quote Jeremy.

The Watermelon Mystery

Okay, I admit to not being able to claim too much credit for the ripe watermelon. How did it get there? Was it ripe and overlooked, then buried and preserved in the warm bowels of the leaf mold pile? Was it unripe when buried, then subsequently ripened? Probably not. No leaves were poking out of the pile, capturing the sun’s albeit weak rays for photosynthesis to make the sugars needed for ripening. A couple of nights of 25°F would have done in the leaves anyway.

Some fruits can actually ripen after harvest. These include apples, pears, bananas, avocados, and other so-called climacteric fruits. Just before ripening, respiration of climacteric fruits dramatically increases along with a burst in production of the plant hormone ethylene. Through a feedback mechanism, ethylene stimulates more respiration which in turn stimulates even more ethylene production and even quicker ripening. Hence, enclosing bananas in a bag stimulates ripening, and why one rotten apple — injury, whether mechanical or from pests, also elicits an ethylene response — can indeed “spoil the barrel.”

This burst in ethylene production occurs even after climacteric fruits have been harvested, as long as they were sufficiently mature at the time. You can’t pick a golfball-sized green apple and expect it to ripen off the plant.

Non-climacteric fruits lack that pre-ripening spike in respiration and ethylene production, and do not ripen after harvest. Or so the thinking, based on early experiments, went. According to more recent research, fruits show various degrees of ethylene production. Watermelon is not a climacteric fruit, but at a certain point the white flesh within does release a burst of ethylene some time after which it morphs from bland and unripe to sweet, red, and ripe. But that won’t happen off the vine.

(“Ripe” is open to some debate. Peach, for instance, is a climacteric fruit that, if picked sufficiently mature but underripe, will soften and become more edible. But it won’t develop the aromatics of a tree-ripened fruit or, until rotting changes starches to sugars, become at all sweeter after picking. I don’t call that “ripe.”)

So my watermelon must have been overlooked and ripe and evidently kept perfectly well in the moist warmth of the leaf pile.

Deb & Ethylene Take Credit for the Peppers

Ethylene, and not me, is going to take credit for the fresh, sweet red peppers in today’s salad. Peppers are a climacteric fruit. Green peppers are unripe peppers, but if the fruits have just a hint of red on them, they can ripen even after harvest to full red (or yellow, orange, or purple, depending on the variety of pepper) color and, at least to my taste buds, flavor.

Still eating fresh, red, ripe sweet, juicy, delicious peppers.

Skill is needed to ripen peppers off the plant. Cool, but not too cool, temperatures hold the fruits for storage and warmer temperatures then speed ripening. Just the right amount of humidity is also needed to, on the one hand, avoid drying, or, on the other hand, rotting. My wife, Deb, rather than I, plies these skills, so should probably get credit for the ripe, red peppers.

This season has been the best pepper season ever, both in quantity and in quality. King of the North peppers, large and blocky, with thick, juicy walls, now ripening in a basket taste as bland now as they did all summer. I won’t grow them again. In contrast, Carmen, Sweet Italia, and (slightly hot) Pepperocini peppers, also ripening in that basket, taste as good now as their siblings did snapped from plants basking in summer heat and sun a few months ago.

FIGS UP NORTH

November 7, 2014/16 Comments/in Design, Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Pruning/by Lee Reich

Who Says I Can’t Grow Figs? A Mouse?

Crisp weather notwithstanding, almost every day I can reach up into the branches of my fig trees and walk away clutching a handful of soft, dead-ripe fruits. That’s because the trees, the ones bearing fruit, are in the greenhouse, where nights are chilly but daytime temperatures, especially on sunny days, are balmy or hot.

I’m not gloating. Those greenhouse figs take some work beyond normal routines of keeping heating, cooling, and watering systems chugging along harmoniously in the greenhouse. Earlier in the season I battled cottony cushion scale insects with toothbrush and soapy water, with oil sprays, and with sticky band traps (for ants, which “farm” scale insects) on trunks. Now I see the insects are staging a comeback at a time when the trees are too big to scrub with a toothbrush and too big, too laden with fruit, and surrounded too closely by lettuce, celery, and other winter edibles to spray oil. I’m hoping natural conditions keep scale insects in check until cold weather and lack of leaves or fruit finally puts them asleep for a few months.

A few weeks ago, some creature — a mouse is my guess — discovered the figs, and liked them. He, or she, chewed the bottoms of some fruits as they hung from branches and gathered others to cache in shallow tunnels. Traps, poison bait, and wide girths of sticky Tangle-Trap returned fruits to their rightful owner, me.

All this effort is worthwhile. Especially on sunny days, the figs are delectable, soft and sweet like dollops of jam hanging from the branches.

So Many Varieties, So Little Space

A bowl of figs, Rabbi Samuel, Millrock, San Piero, & Black Bethlehem

Growing a few varieties of figs makes fig-eating even more pleasurable. People wonder, on hearing that I grow figs, whether I grow “brown figs or white figs,” at which point I bring attention to the fact that there are hundreds of varieties of figs, with many of each color.

I keep trying to pare down my collection to the best. Instead, I seem to be adding varieties either deliberately or gifted. It’s hard, virtually impossible, to tell what variety you have until it fruits. Figs have been cultivated for thousands of years, along the way of which an older variety may have picked up many names. For instance, I have a variety I purchased as Verte (syn. Green Ischia); with brown fruit, I knew it was mislabeled. Its bearing habit and the appearance of the fruit nailed it down as San Piero, also known as Negro Largo, Douro Black, Aubique Noir, Large Blue, Lee’s Perpetual, and California Brown Turkey, among other names. The name California Brown Turkey distinguishes it from Eastern Brown Turkey, a totally different variety that I also grow and which itself is also known as English Brown Turkey, Everbearing, and Texas Everbearing,.

Espalier fig in greenhouse in July

A few years ago, a woman on Millrock Road here in town, offered me her potted fig tree; she was moving and didn’t want to take it with her. (Understandable: I also didn’t take all my 35 varieties of fig from my garden in Maryland when I moved up here to the Hudson Valley.) Still hers was an offer I could not refuse; perhaps that potted plant would bear the best fig ever. In a pot in the greenhouse this year, the tree finally bore fruit, greenish yellow and round, with the insides bursting to split the skin. It’s a keeper, and I’m adding to the nomenclature confusion by calling it Millrock fig until I learn otherwise.

Another fig, this one named by Jack Algiere, the farmer at Stone Barns farm, is bearing heavily and looks to keep doing so for weeks to come. I have espaliered this tree, Rabbi Samuel, against a greenhouse wall in the form of a permanent, low T. Fruiting shoots rise vertically about 6 inches apart from the upper side of each arm. This variety bears best on new shoots so my plan is to each winter cut all vertical stems down near the arms and then thin out new growth so vertical shoots are no closer that 6 inches apart. The Rabbi’s fruits are humongous, as big as small apples.

Subtropical, But Thankfully Adaptable

What makes figs so popular a fruit, even in climates far removed from the hot summers and mild winters it calls home? Perhaps a love for this ancient fruit, whose provenance is in one cradle of civilization, is coded into our DNA. And, of course, the flavor, sweet and juicy without being cloying.

Espalier fig in October, with ripe fruits

Although a subtropical plant, fig is accommodating to colder climates. You can hack back its roots — useful when providing new potting soil for pot-grown plants. It’s deciduous, so doesn’t need light in winter — useful in northern climates when looking for a cold, but not too cold, place to store the dormant plant. Most varieties do not need pollination to set fruit. And figs bear quickly and propagate easily.

Most important, in contrast to most temperate-zone fruits, fig plants can bear on new wood. Some varieties bear on one-year-old wood and some bear on both old and new wood. Bearing on new wood — as does Rabbi Samuel — makes it convenient to cut back a potted plant when maneuvering it indoors for winter. Or if winter cold kills part of the top of an outdoor plant. In either case, a plant that loses too much of its top requires a longer growing season before fruits start ripening.

Fruits keep ripening along new shoots, as they grow, until arrested by cold. Hence, my prediction for a few more weeks of fruit from Rabbi Samuel in the greenhouse. Those fruits hang in stark contrast to the scene outdoors, where leaves of tomato, pepper, and other tender plants have been blackened by the first killing frost here of 25°F, on October 19th.

FIGS, POMEGRANATES, LETTUCE, BEDS: ALL READY

October 31, 2014/6 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Beds Ready for Spring Planting, Figs and Lettuces Readied for Cold

Much colder weather has been sneaking in and out of the garden but leaving traces of its presence with some blackened leaves on frost-sensitive plants and threatening to brazenly show itself in full force sometime soon. This fall I vow to put all in order before that event rather than, on some very cold night, running around, flashlight in hand, gathering and protecting plants.

Before even getting to the plants, drip irrigation must be readied for winter. Main lines and drip lines can remain outdoors but right near the spigot, the timer, the filter, and pressure reducer must be brought indoors where they won’t freeze. I plug the inlet for the drip’s main line to keep out curious insects. At the far end of the line is a cap that I loosen enough to let water drain out. Opening all other valves along the line leaves no dead ends in which freezing water could expand to break lines.

Begonia, amaryllis, Maid of Orleans jasmine (Jasminium sambac), and other topical plants are next in importance. Being near the radiating warmth of the house has spared them recent slightly frosty nights. Colder temperatures would not be so kind. I snap the stems off the begonias right at ground level and put the pots in the basement where cool temperatures will keep the tubers dormant to wait out winter. Amaryllis plants also go into the basement. Cool temperatures and lack of water for a couple of months give these plants the rest period they need so that, brought upstairs to a warm, sunny window, their blossoms can show off their bright, red color against the achromatic winter landscape beyond.

Maid of Orleans jasmine right away gets a prominent place in a sunny window to share its nonstop, sweet fragrant blossoms.

Figs, Pomegranates, & Subtropicals Readied for Cold, But Not Too Much

Fig, pineapple guava, Chilean guava, and pomegranate are subtropical plants that tolerate temperatures down into the ‘teens so can remain outdoors for weeks to come. Still, many of these plants are in large pots, not something I want to be lugging around following at last minute threat of frigid temperatures. So I’ll gather them together in a convenient location for quick dispatch indoors when needed.

Potted subtropical plants are getting ready for colder — but not too cold — weather

The guavas, as well as kumquat and common jasmine (Jasminium officinale), are evergreen subtropical plants. The leaves are important to these plants both for beauty and for function so they’ll make the move indoors before the other subtropicals to make sure their leaves go into winter undamaged.

Common jasmine stays out longest because some exposure to cold is needed to get blossoms in winter.

Cold Weather Vegetables for Weeks to Come

The vegetable garden is still green with endive, kale, lettuce, turnips, Brussels sprouts, arugula, and other cold-hardy vegetables. Soon, though, their cold tolerances will be tested. I’ll pre-empt that testing by covering some of the beds with tunnels of fabric (“fleece” to the Brits, “floating row covers” to us colonists) or clear plastic. No need yet to cover the plants but better to have the metal hoops which support the fleece or plastic in place and ready for the covering before that frigid night to come.

Metal hoops readied to support covers for lettuce.

Not all hardy vegetables get covered; just the leafy ones — lettuce, mustard, arugula, and endive — for fresh salads in the weeks to come. Brussels sprouts and kale are so cold hardy that they can go for weeks without protection, and, anyway, they’re too tall to cover. Leeks also can stay outdoors unprotected until December, or later, then get dug up and packed together in a box or large pot to store in the basement and use as needed.

Carrots, beets, turnips, and winter radishes enjoy the protection of the earth. With a deep mulch of leaves or straw, they could remain tender and unfrozen all winter. More convenient for eating is to dig them up just before really frigid weather descends on the garden and pack them in boxes with dry leaves to store in the cool temperatures of the basement. I’m putting off deciding which option to choose.

Fresh Lettuce ‘Til When?

Someone recently told me that they gardened maniacally all summer and now they are finished for the season . . . which reminds me of some more things that I still have to do. Plant garlic. I planted cloves back in early September; a second planting, now, will give some indication if early or late planting is better. Mulch blueberries as soon as their leaves all drop. Sift compost and garden soil into buckets to store for making potting soil in late winter. Cut down asparagus plants after the tops yellow, and mulch the bed. Clean up spent vegetable beds of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants and spread them with an inch depth of compost. Mow hayfield and lawn to expose rodents to predators and, in the hayfield, to keep blackberry, sumac, and autumn olive from taking over. Plant bulbs (a large, naturalized planting of alliums; more on that some other time).

Beds readied for spring, and lettuce readied for winter

I’d also like to divide older plants in a flower bed and dig out weeds that are starting to think they’re home. And build a rustic fence to hid the propane tank for the greenhouse.

I’m not yet ready to throw in the trowel for this season.

Fruit, Grain, & Vegetable

October 10, 2014/13 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pruning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Homegrown Persimmons, Popcorn, and Brussels Sprouts, All in Abundance

It’s raining persimmons! And every morning I go out to gather drops from beneath the trees. And every afternoon. And, depending on the wind and the temperature, sometimes early evenings also.

The fruits are delicate, their soft jelly-flesh ready to burst through their thin, translucent skins. Most fruits survive the trip from branch to ground unscathed because of the close shorn, soft, thick lawn landing pad that awaits them. I pop any that burst right into my mouth or else toss them beyond the temporary, fenced-in area as a treat to my the ducks or to Sammy, my dog who has developed a taste for the fruit. (The ducks, Indian Runners, hardly fly but Sammy, if he put two and two together, could easily hop the low fence and beat me to the fruits.) Repeatedly gathering fruit through the day is needed to keep ahead of scavenging insects.

Szukis persimmons, ready to eat even from leafless branches

American persimmons grow wild throughout much of the eastern part of our country, about as far north as the Hudson Valley. Wild trees bear either female or male flowers. Males, which never bear fruit, can each sire a few females, which are the ones that do bear fruit. Puckery flavor is the main problem with wild persimmons. They can make your mouth feel like a vacuum cleaner is at work within. All American persimmons elicit that unpleasant feeling until fully soft, colored, and ripe; some elicit the feeling, in some measure, even when ripe.

Planting a named variety can spell the difference between a fruit to spit out and a fruit to swoon over. Said variety needs to be one that, besides tasting good, ripens within the growing season, and isn’t harvested until dead ripe. (Many otherwise good varieties do not have time to ripen this far north.) Szukis and Mohler do particularly well here near the northern limit for persimmon growing, Mohler beginning its ripening at the end of August, and Szukis the end of September. Both varieties ripen fruits over a long period, for a month or more.

One more asset for Mohler, Szukis, and some other varieties is that they make males superfluous. They can set fruit parthenocarpically (without pollination) and/or by pollination from their own occasional male blossoms. Most Mohler and Szukis fruits are seedless, a sign of parthenocarpy, but occasional fruits have a seed or two, indicating that some pollination took place.

Once leaves drop from these trees, fruiting is not finished. Ripe, orange fruits will cling for weeks to bare branches like Christmas ornaments, although, with time, fruits shrivel and brown, losing their visual — but not gustatory — appeal. Not bad for a tree that needs nothing in the way of pruning or pest control, eh?

Popcorn’s Not Just for the Movies

With the fruit course out of the way, let’s move on to the grain course. I’ve tried growing wheat and rice on a (very small) garden scale, and yields were paltry and sometimes difficult to get at because of topheavy plants flopping to the ground. Flopping was probably due to too much fertility and moisture. Processing either grain was a project in itself, entailing removal of the grain from the stalks and then from their husks.

The easiest grain to grow and process on a backyard scale is popcorn, which revels in my soil’s good fertility and moisture. I grow popcorn the same way as sweet corn, in “hills” (which, horticulturally speaking, are stations or clusters rather than raised mounds) with 3 to 4 plants per hill and two rows of hills in each 3 foot wide bed, with two feet from hill to hill within each row.

The only downside to growing popcorn on a small scale is the need to keep it away from sweet corn, if you grow that also. Planting sweet corn and popcorn too close to each other lets them cross-pollinate, resulting in sweet corn that is less sweet and popcorn kernels than wanly split to exhale steam rather than blow apart till they’re inside out.

Even with popcorn grown in sufficient isolation, correct moisture level (20 percent) is what makes for good popping. I wait to harvest until the ears and husks are dry on the stalks. After harvest, I peel back the husk, leaving a few layers, pull off the browned silk, then tie 3 or 4 ears together by their pulled back husks and hang the bunch from the kitchen rafters to dry.

The ears hang from the rafters all year ready for popping. When I feel like eating some popcorn, I just twist the kernels off a cob; microwavers can put the cob, intact, into their microwave ovens. I find that poppability varies through the year, probably depending on the temperature and the humidity.

If I sought maximum poppability, I could measure the moisture level by accurately weighing out a portion of kernels and drying them in a 150°F. oven overnight, then re-weighing them. But how big the kernels can puff up isn’t nearly as important to me as the fact that popcorn is an easy-to-grow, nutritious, whole grain that’s tasty and fun to eat.

The Sprouts Responded to Being Pinched

Finally, moving on to the vegetable course. A few weeks ago I wrote about sizing up the sprouts of Brussels sprouts by pinching the tips of the plants. That stops the production of the hormone auxin, which had been suppressing sprout growth further down along the stem.

Pinched Brussels sprouts plants have larger sprouts

The suppression is only temporary. As uppermost buds start to grow, they, in turn, start pumping down auxin. Those 3 or 4 upper buds now threaten to expand to become stems. At this point they can do what they will because lower buds — the sprouts — have all puffed up to good size.

HOW GREEN, OR NOT, IS MY THUMB?

October 3, 2014/14 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

Apples a Bust, Pears a Success, Gooseberries a Bust, etc.

Early autumn is a good time for me to find a sunny spot on the terrace with a comfortable chair, pluck a bunch of grapes from the arbor overhead, and ponder the fruits of this year’s labors. And I mean “fruits,” literally: what were my successes, what were my failures, and what do future seasons hold?

In good years, my apples are very, very good; Hudson’s Golden Gem here.

To many people, to too many people, “fruit” means apples, the equivalence having deep roots since pomum is Latin for both apple and fruit. My apple crop this year, whether measured in pounds or number of fruits, is zero. Among my excuses are the wrong rootstock for the site, trees still recovering from last year’s onslaught of 17-year cicada egg-laying, apples’ pest problems making them among the most difficult fruits to grow east of the Rocky Mountains, and my low-lying valley location and surrounding forests further exacerbating pest problems.

Still, the rich flavor of the apples — when I do get some — keeps me trying. Next year I’m replanting with five new trees: Hudson’s Golden Gem, Macoun, Ashmead’s Kernel, Pitmaston Pineapple, and Liberty, all on Geneva 30 rootstocks. This year, I welcomed the time not needed in caring for the trees.

Pears did surprisingly well considering the extensive cicada damage they also endured. But pears always do well, especially the Asian pears. The challenge with European pears is ripening them to perfection. They need to be picked before they are ripe, chilled for a couple of weeks if they are an early maturing variety, then ripened in a cool room. As soon as the first fruits drop, I keep an eye out for a slight change in skin color for those fruits still hanging from branches, then take them if they separate with an easy snap when lifted and twisted from the branch.

Despite being relatively easy to grow, pears are underappreciated as garden fruit — these days, at least. One-hundred and fifty years ago, you might have perused 70 varieties in a nursery catalog; a hundred years ago, perhaps 30 varieties; in today’s catalogs, I count a dozen or so varieties. Not all my two dozen or so varieties are bearing yet. So far, the best of the lot are the buttery sweet Magness and spicy Seckel.

And More Failures

But let me get back to my failures; get them out of the way. Hardy kiwifruits, both Actinidia arguta and A. kolomikta had uncharacteristically light crops. The same goes for pawpaws, whose branches have, except for this fall, every year been weighted down with a heavy load of fruit, some branches even breaking. It’s most convenient to point my finger at the weather, the winter cold, for barren kiwi vines and pawpaw trees. Not that it was as cold as many past winters, but it did stay cold for longer periods.

The gooseberry crop looked very promising until late June, which is when my chickens discovered them (or remembered where they were). Gooseberries are usually very reliable so I’m optimistic about the future of eating berries from the two dozen or so dessert varieties I grow. I downsized my flock from seven to three chickens (and added two ducks), and plan to erect temporary fencing during the few weeks that the berries ripen in future years.

Big crops presented themselves, as usual, on various mulberry varieties and gumi. Birds swooped in to gobble them up. Last year, with all the cicadas to feed on, birds ignored both these fruits. Geraldi Dwarf mulberry grows only a few feet high so I’ll throw a net over it next year and let birds enjoy the other mulberry varieties, if they so choose.

The Very Sweet Taste of Success(es)

Enough talk about failures. On to successes . . . blueberries, my favorite and most reliable fruit, bore in abundance, as always. Sixteen bushes; about 150 quarts. Mmmmm.

Bagged grapes next to a bunch of grapes that weren’t bagged

Rain earlier in the season threatened grapes with disease. I enclosed about 75 bunches in white bakery bags, stapled shut, to fend off bees and wasps, diseases, and birds. The crop was in such abundance that harvest has been aplenty even from unbagged bunches. Actually, too “aplenty” from the variety Swenson’s Red, causing individual berries in bunches to ripen unevenly. Next year, I’ll prune more severely, sacrificing total yield while increasing quality and even ripening of fruits that remain.

Once unbagged grapes of a given variety have been harvested and eaten, we move on to the bagged grapes of that variety. Peeling back the white paper has generally revealed bunches that look perfect and taste delectable. Particularly tasty this year have been Glenora Seedless, Somerset Seedless, Mars, Swenson’s White, and Brianna.

Szukis American persimmon ripe on branches

And finally, another of my no-fail, no-spray, no-prune fruits: American persimmon, specifically the varieties Mohler and Szukis. Mohler has been ripening for about a month, dropping a dozen or so fruits daily, which I pick up from the ground. My ducks are especially fond of these fruits, and waddle, staring longingly within, around the outside perimeter of the low, temporary fence that keeps them at bay. (They do get to eat fruits that drop beyond the fence.)

Frustrated ducks admiring my persimmons.

The soft fruits taste like dried apricots that have been plumped in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice. Mohler and Szukis are almost totally lacking in the puckery astringency common to many American persimmons. To remove any last traces of astringency, I subject fruits to a treatment used in Japan with Asian persimmons: alcohol. Freshly harvest fruits go into a bowl with a tablespoon of rye (locally made Coppersea Raw Rye), covered, for a day. The alcohol finishes ripening the fruits, keeps fruit flies at bay, and adds a nice punch to the flavor.

Grow Fruit, Many Kinds!

Too many people shy away from growing fruits because they are perceived as too difficult to grow. They can be; or not. Success comes from choosing the right fruits to grow, looking beyond apples, peaches, cherries, and the other usual fare. Success also comes from growing a wide variety fruits. (All this is covered in my newest book, Grow Fruit Naturally.) This year’s apple and gooseberry failures are hardly noticed with the abundance of blueberries, persimmons, and pears. And did I mention European black currants, red currants, and strawberries?

Hormones Get Pumping

September 12, 2014/5 Comments/in Books, Fruit, Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

More Brussels Sprouts, Cabbages, & Pears with Hormones

It’s time to get the hormones pumping. No, not by me embarking on some testosterone-fueled, garden-related feat of strength or endurance. Not even my own hormones, but the ones in my plants, more specifically my brussels sprouts plants. And actually, quashing the action of one hormone so that other hormones can come to the fore.

Let me explain: Brussels sprouts are not only a member of the cabbage family but are the same genus and species as cabbage, as are broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and kale. Differences in these plants lie in the way growth of the stems and leaves are expressed. Cabbage has a single stem that’s been telescoped down to very short internodes, resulting in a tight head of overlapping leaves. With kale, internodes along the stem are further apart, allowing each leaf to unfold fully on its own. They also look different from those of cabbage.

In every plant, a shoot bud develops in the upper part of the crotch where a leaf joins a stem. Most brussels sprouts buds each start to develop enough to form a small, cabbage like head. But I — and probably you also — want large brussels sprouts sprouts (and more of them, so I also want tall brussels sprouts plants on which to attach the sprouts).

Pinching makes Brussels Sprouts sprouts bigger

The sprouts are retarded somewhat in their development by a hormone called auxin. Auxin is one of many plant hormones coursing about within leaves, fruits, shoots, and roots, their effect dependent on such variables as plant part, plant age, and what other hormones they are reacting with. One place of auxin synthesis is in the tips of stems, and their effect is to suppress growth of buds down along the stem, with more suppression the closer a bud is to the tip of the stem. I just looked at my brussels sprouts plants; yes, the largest sprouts are those nearest ground level. It’s still too early to harvest and too many of the upper sprouts, at present, are too small to be worth picking.

Suppressing auxin production in the tip of the stem releases their hold on the buds — that is, the sprouts — along the stem, so they can grow larger. Suppressing auxin production is simple, requiring only two fingers: Just snap off the tip of the stem. No tip, no auxin production, for a while, at least. The time to do this “operation” is the beginning of September. Done too soon, and a developing sprout might grow so bold as to grow out into, at worst, shoots or, less worse, loose heads. Plus, earlier in the season, I want to keep the stem elongating to provide real estate along which to hang more sprouts.

A Three-Headed Cabbage!

As I wrote, every plant develops buds in its leaf axils, and in every plant growth of those buds is mediated, in part, by auxin. Harvest the main head of broccoli and side shoots start to grow for eventual harvest.

Even tight heads of cabbage have those buds and they also respond to auxin’s influence. I used to plant cabbage in the spring for harvest in summer. Rather than pulling out the spent cabbage plants, as is usually done, I would leave the cut stump with a few bottom leaves for nourishment. Harvesting the cabbage dramatically removes the tip of the stem, which was buried within the head.

Cabbage plants left after harvest develop multiple heads

Cabbage left after harvest = multiple heads

Within a couple of weeks, new sprouts would develop in the crotches where leaves were or had been. In the ideal world, I’d get one to three new cabbage heads from each plant, ready for autumn harvest. A certain amount of art was needed to get it right. Depending on growing conditions and the number of new heads I allowed to develop, they might end up too small or too loose-leaved.

I’ve abandoned that chancy cabbage habit and now do a second sowing of cabbage in early June for a reliable autumn harvest of firm heads.

Pears — More, Please

I fiddled around with hormones earlier this season also, with longer term goals in mind. Auxin keeps the tip of a stem or the upper portions of a plant growing most vigorously. Vigorous growth, though, is at odds with making fruit. After all, both require a lot of a plant’s energy, so the plant has to partition the energy efficiently between growing and fruiting.

Pear trees are famous for growing vigorous shoots skyward. Yes, shoot growth is needed on which to hang fruit and for adequate leaves for photosynthesis. But enough is enough. Rather than pinch out shoot tips, which would likely just pass on the vigor to nearby lower buds, I bent ranches down and held them there with string. Changing stem orientation from vertical to at or near horizontal quells auxin production, slows growth, and promotes the formation of fruit buds along the stem. (Fruit buds form the year before flowers open.)

Fruits now dangle from some of the stems that I pulled down a year ago last spring. The response can take more than a year as energy reserves are redistributed within the stem. Response also depends on a tree’s inherent vigor, growing conditions for the season, the pear variety, the degree of stem bending, and other knowns and unknowns. It’s takes a mix of science, art, and experience, and that’s what makes gardening so interesting for me.

WESTWARD HO, FOR FRUIT MEETINGS AND EATINGS

August 29, 2014/3 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Fruit Nuts, Including Me, Nurseries, & Wild Blueberries

Are there organizations for people who make and eat cheese; build and ride motorcycles; write and read books; grow and savor fruits? All I know is that the answer to the existence of the last-named organization is a rowsing “yes!” I know because I recently returned from Oregon, where I converged with other fruit nuts for the annual meeting of North American Fruit Explorers (www.nafex.org, and nuts, incidentally, are also covered under the organization’s umbrella).

No need to don a pith helmet and traipse off to Borneo to be a fruit explorer. Not that you couldn’t, and be one. No, this fun meeting brought together everyone from backyard growers with a few fruit plants to AN 88-year-old guy who grows over 3,000 varieties of apples. Fruits represented ranged from apples and pears to pawpaws and persimmons and, even more rare, haskaps and gumis. These people, we, realize that there’s a lot more to enjoy in the world of nature’s desserts — fruits, that is — than what you see on display in the supermarket, even farmers’ market.

What appeared to be a roomful of normal people was actually a roomful of fruit nuts, among which I count myself. NAFEX members are as varied as the fruits they grow, with all ages, genders, home towns, and “real jobs” represented. Members can share their trials, tribulations, and rewards of fruit growing (the title of my lecture there), ask questions, and exchange plants in their quarterly publication.

Me, staring through espalier pear at Mt. Vernon, WA research station

Each year’s annual meeting is at a “fruitful” location. Last week’s meeting took in tours of the USDA germplasm repository, which houses the USDA collection of pears, gooseberries, currants, and bramble fruits, and of research centers on hazelnuts and brambles. All accompanied, of course, by tastings. If you love fruit, grow some . . . and join NAFEX.

Branching Off to Pakistani Mulberries, Delectable Crabs, and More

I branched off (pardon the pun) from the group to visit a few nurseries. First stop was Whitman Farms (www.whitmanfarms.com), at which I made a beeline to Lucille Whitman’s black mulberry (Morus nigra) tree, an offshoot of which I’ve grown for many years. I grow it in a pot because it’s a subtropical species, not cold-hardy here. It’s worth the effort because it is among the most delectable of fruits. It’s hard to imagine that such a small berry can pack such a wallop of rich, sweet-tart flavor, much better than the wild mulberries around here. Lucille also grows a slew of gooseberry and currant varieties, another group of fruits that worthy of wider attention.

Black Pakistani mulberry

From there it was on to Burnt Ridge Nursery (www.burntridgenursery.com), worth visiting also for its panoramic view of the Cascade Mountains, including Mount Saint Helens. I soon realized, driving down the gravel nursery road, that we were passing through a virtual Garden of Eatin’, with apples and pear trees, grapes, and hardy kiwi vines. The forest of large trees turned out to be a nursery owner Michael Dolan’s extensive collection of chestnuts. It was too early in the season to taste any chestnuts but I did get to taste his Black Pakistani mulberry, which had a chewy texture and perhaps even richer flavor than black mulberry. (Black Pakistani is a variety of M. alba, white mulberry.) Another plus for Black Pakistani is that its fruit is two or more inches long. (Lucille Whitman also sells Black Pakistani. Note to myself: Get a Black Pakistani tree to grow in a pot, like a fig.)

Finally, I motored along with Sam Benowitz north to Washington state, to his nursery, Raintree Nursery (www.raintreenursery.com). We were greeted at the nursery entrance by espaliered apple trees, then plum trees whose branches bowed

Centennial crabapple tastes good and looks good.

Centennial crab apple rates great; a crab is any small apple.

low from their load of fruit. A Centennial crabapple tree splayed out its small but ripe fruits, which were delicious, especially for a summer apple. Another note to myself: Purchase or make a Centennial crabapple. Pots of lingonberries were lush with their shiny evergreen leaves, the size of mouse ears; persimmons leaves hung languidly from the trees’ branches; and hardy kiwifruit brightened up the scene with silvery variegation, blushed with pink. Alas, these fruits were not yet ripe so for the time being provided only eye candy.

They Call Them Huckleberries

Fruit nuts are a friendly fraternity, ready to share experiences and fruit. Blueberries are among my favorite fruits, and my newfound, northwestern friends were anxious to introduce me to some western blueberry species. First was red huckleberry (V. parvifolium). Not to be an ingrate, but . . . yuk! A very small, very tart, red blueberry. Perhaps the red color threw me off. Next came evergreen huckleberry (V. ovatum), much tastier, and evergreen, but still not holding a candle to our eastern blueberry species.

Finally, though, I had a taste of mountain huckleberry (V. membranaceum). Delicious. Different but as good as our east coast species.

I was given some leafy stems of mountain huckleberry packed for travel with their bases in water tubes and their leaves wrapped in moist tissue. As soon as I got

Blueberry cuttings in my clear plastic propagator.

home I stripped all but the upper two leaves from the stems and inserted their bases into the mix of moist peat and perlite in my makeshift propagator. The propagator sits on the north side of my house, its clear plastic cover maintaining sufficient humidity while letting in sufficient light until the cuttings root — I hope. Blueberry species are not particularly easy to root, although one of the main ingredients needed is patience. I’ll also sow seeds of the few fruits I brought home.

In a few years, my memories of last week’s journey may also live on in my taste buds.

WEEDS, BIRDS, & PEST-FREE CURRANTS

August 15, 2014/0 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests/by Lee Reich

I Battle Weeds and Birds, but Currants are Care-free

Part of my weedless gardening technique (which I thoroughly fleshed out in my book Weedless Gardening) involves — sad to say, for some people — weeding. After all, no garden can ever be truly weedless. Even people who spray Roundup eventually get weeds as they inadvertently “breed” for Roundup-resistant weeds, which now exist. My techniques are weed-less rather than weedless.

Which brings me to hoeing. Most years my hoe rests on its designated hook in the garage. This year, it’s hardly made it back to garage, mostly just leaning up against the garden fence alongside the gate. “And why is this?” you might ask. The answer is rain. This season, rainfall has been dropping in sufficient amounts at regular intervals, all of which has coaxed good plant growth, including that of weeds.

More importantly, the rainfall has promoted plant growth in paths and between widely spaced plants. One leg of my 4-legged “weedless gardening” stool calls for drip irrigation, which pinpoints water near plants. In a normal year, or a dry year, there’s little moisture to spur on weed growth elsewhere. This year, rainfall has democratically spurred weed growth everywhere.

Hence the hoe. The best hoes to snuff out young weeds without unduly disturbing the ground are ones with thin, sharp blades that lie parallel to the ground. All that’s needed is to slide such hoes back and forth a quarter of an inch or so beneath the surface, cutting the stems of hopeful, young interlopers. The work, if can be called that, is quick and easy, not calling for the “iron back with a hinge in it” recommended for a gardener by Charles Dudley Warner in his 19th century classic My Summer in the Garden. Too many people use a pull or draw hoe, whose blade lies perpendicular to the handle, to try to conquer weeds.

The hoes I’m recommending are so-called push or thrust hoes. Some examples include the collinear hoe, the scuffle hoe, the stirrup hoe, and, my favorite, the wingèd weeder. With any of these hoes, roots aren’t damaged and lower depths of soil remain at lower depths so that inevitable weeds seeds buried there are not awakened as they are exposed to light. (Minimal soil disturbance is another leg of my 4-legged “weedless gardening” stool.)

Still, my wingèd weeder is not effective unless it is used — frequently this season, ideally once a week or within a couple of days after a rain. Used in a timely manner, the wingèd weeder does a quick, effective, and satisfying job.

Currants are an Old-Fashioned Fruit Easy to Grow

“The currant takes the same place among fruits that the mule occupies among draught animals—being modest in its demands as to feed, shelter, and care, yet doing good service,” wrote a nineteenth-century horticulturalist. Hoeing takes time, especially this year, so it’s nice to balance that with something — currants, in this case — that is “modest in its demands.”

One of my currant bushes, a Perfection (that’s the variety name) red currant, splays its stems upward and outward in an ornamental bed in front of my house. Sharing that bed, for beauty and for good eating, are huckleberries, lowbush blueberries, and lingonberries, and, for beauty alone, mountain laurels and dwarf rhododendrons.

The only care my currant gets is, anytime from November until late March, pruning. The plant bears best on 2- and 3-year-old stems so I cut away anything older than 3 years old and reduce the number of new, 1-year-old stems to the half dozen or so most vigorous ones. The whole bed gets a sprinkling of either soybean meal (1# per hundred square feet) or alfalfa meal (3# per hundred square feet) in late fall, topped with a mulch of leaves or wood chips.

The bush began bearing towards the end of June and a few clusters of the plump, jewel-like fruits still hang from the branches. Most people use red currant for jelly or sauce. I like to eat them straight up, with my morning cereal, for instance. The flavor is tart early on but has mellowed by now.

Currants were once a more popular fruit in America, and especially here in the Hudson Valley. They are one of the few fruits that tolerate shade (and deer!), and were often grown in the shade of large, old apple trees. Local folk, including children, would ride out to the orchards in hay wagons for communal picking.

Currant is, truly, among the uncommon fruits for every garden (good book title, that).

I Reluctantly Share Some Blueberries with Birds

Just a quick note about my blueberries, which are also relatively carefree. Last year’s abundance of cicadas may have upped bird populations, or at least made birds believe that lots of food would always be in the offing. Not so, birds. Perhaps, then, that’s why so many bird are fluttering all around my blueberries, mostly on the outside of the net that encloses my Blueberry Temple of 16 plants.

Right now a hawk — a cardboard one, swooping in breezes as it hangs from a string fixed to the end of an long, inclined bamboo pole — is meant to dissuade birds from even approaching the net. Calm mornings keep the hawk still enough so an occasional bird find their way through the net (where?) to venture into the Temple.

Plagues Come & Go, With Some Help, and Seattle-time

August 1, 2014/10 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests/by Lee Reich

Meet me in St. L . . . Seattle

Come hear me lecture on August 10, 2014 on “Luscious Landscaping, with Fruiting Trees, Shrubs, and Vines” at 1 pm in the Garden Room at Magnuson Park. For more information, go to http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/755459.

Plague again; keep calm

Every year it seems some new plague is ready to attack plants. A few years ago, late blight of tomato moved to the fore. Emerald ash borer, threatening ash trees, was first found on our shores in 2002. (Figuratively; literally, the insect, native to Asia, was first noted in Michigan.) What’s next?

Perhaps a calmer outlook is called for. A decade or so garlic mustard seemed ready to take over our world. Not so, now, perhaps because it’s being crowded out by Japanese stilt grass, which itself seems now ready to take over our world. Garlic mustard is native over much of the northern hemisphere, except North America, and was introduced here around 1860 as a culinary herb. As for stilt grass, it hitchhiked here from China about a century ago, as packing material for porcelain. It’s deer-resistant, for what that’s worth.

Plant problems come and go. The best approach is to keep calm and, in some cases, plant something different, something plague resistant.

Bean Beetle Management

Green beans are a mainstay of my garden, of just about every garden. More than 20 years ago, Mexican bean beetles (a species of ladybug!) found my bean plants and have plagued them every year since.

The adults, with eight black spots over a red or yellow background, wake up late from winter sleep to lay eggs on bean leaves. I’ve come to despise the yellow, balled up spiny larvae that gorge on leaves and other plant parts.

Still, I have managed to grow good crops of beans over the years, not by killing the beetles or their larvae, but by growing a different plant. Sort of. Rather than grow pole beans, which reside in the garden all season long to provide a constant source of beetle food, I have been planting successive crops of bush beans. Bush bean plants tend to bear quickly and for about 3 weeks, then peter out, so a new planting in a new bed goes into the ground every 3 weeks from mid-May until late July.

Yield from a planting tapers off just as its resident beetle population is beginning a feeding frenzy. Then it’s time to pull up the plants, thoroughly clear the bed of leaves and old pods, and rush it all to the compost pile. Chopping the debris with a machete and burying it beneath straw and manure, and watering the pile, as needed, sends the temperature soaring, killing most of the beetles. Bean beetles are good fliers, so cooking the beetles in the compost pile doesn’t solve the problem, just keeps it under control.

Death to the beetles, with restraint

Something strange happened this year: As of this writing, only one beetle larvae has been seen. Last year I doused the bean plants a few times with one of two organic sprays, which gave good beetle control. It also gave me the confidence to try growing pole beans, as I did in my pre-Mexican bean beetle days. They got some bean beetles but we did harvest pole beans.

The sprays were Entrust and Azamax, both approved for organic agriculture. The active ingredient in Entrust is spinosad, a compound found in bacteria, Saccharopolyspora spinosa, that was isolated from soil collected inside an old rum still in the Virgin Islands. Although toxic to a range of insects, it is otherwise relatively benign. Still, the label requires waiting at least 3 days to harvest after spraying.

Azamax is an extract of the seed of the tropical neem tree, native to the Indian subcontinent. In that part of the world, this one tree has been used as human food, insect repellant, bird repellant, and an ingredient of soap. It degrades rapidly in soil or in water, and is harmless to earthworms, honeybees, and insect predators. Food crops can be harvested right after spraying Azamax.

Still, Azamax and Entrust are pesticides. Perhaps the bean beetle cycle has been broken here and sprays can be forgone in the future. I’ll keep calm. No sprays this year, yet.

SWD, go away

The same two organic sprays might be called upon for another pest, the spotted wing drosophila, unaffectionately known as SWD. Also an Asian import, this one has moved east since being first spotted in 2008 in California. It is hard to keep calm with this pest because it attacks blueberries, my favorite and heretofore my most reliable and abundant fruit crop. The pest is also fond of blackberries, raspberries, and — not that it matters to you or me, because we don’t eat them — honeysuckle berries.

Again, there are management options. Because SWD seems to blow in from more southerly locations, a fine net could exclude them. Prompt refrigeration of harvested berries for 3 days kills larvae within. Thorough harvest of sound and unsound berries also keeps populations in check.

And then there’s Entrust and Azamax (or some other neem product), any of which I consider a last resort. I’m setting up traps to monitor if and when SWD arrives. (For information on monitoring, see http://www.fruit.cornell.edu/spottedwing/monitoring.html.) Till then, and after, I’ll try to remain calm. Om. Om. Ah-oh-om.