Fruit – Page 6 – Lee Reich

UNCOMMON BERRIES, FOR SOME

June 30, 2021/16 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Note: If you live in a very hot summer climate, skip Part A and proceed to Part B.

Part A. Perfect for Ambulant Consumption

Part A. It’s about time that gooseberries got some respect. The plants are easy to grow, they tolerate shade, are usually ignored by deer and birds, except my ducks, and they can have excellent flavor. They don’t do very well or yield the tastiest fruits in hot summer climates, hence “Skip to Part B,” although the coolness of shade can somewhat overcome that deficiency.
A bowl of fresh gooseberries
Gooseberry flavor is what eludes most people. And with good reason; relatively few of you have tasted gooseberries, let alone good-tasting varieties. The reason is that gooseberries belong to the Ribes genus, many plants of which are susceptible to a disease called white pine blister rust. This disease, also attacking white pines, need both white pines and susceptible Ribes plants to complete its life cycle.

When the rust showed up on American shores about 100 years ago, white pine was an important lumber crop so the U.S. government sought to control the rust be getting rid of all Ribes plants. Not only were gooseberries illegal to plant but if you already had gooseberries or currants, another Ribes species, in your garden, fellas from the Civilian Conservation Corps were apt to descent out of the woods into you garden to rip them out.

Long story short: Before the rust, gooseberries were an up and coming fruit, just like blueberries, which were relatively unknown except near where they grew wild. The ban was not as effective as was hoped. Disease could spread from the many wild Ribes haunt that our woodlands, and under the right conditions infective spores can be carried for hundreds of miles. On top of that, gooseberries and redcurrants are not very susceptible to the fungus.

The federal ban was lifted in 1966 and put under state mandate, but two generations of farmers and gardeners had forgotten about gooseberries. Relatively few states nowadays ban gooseberries.

Dessert (vs Culinary) Gooseberries

I once nurtured my own gooseberry variety collection of almost 50 varieties, a collection that now has been pared down to the most desirable dozen or so. I only grow what are known as “dessert” varieties of gooseberry, ones that have great flavor straight off the bushes. As Edward Bunyard wrote in his 1929 classic The Anatomy of Dessert, “The gooseberry is the fruit of course par excellence for ambulant consumption.”
Gooseberry varieties on bench
This growing season has, so far, been one of the best fruit years ever, so I’m taking particular note of ripening time and flavor of my gooseberries. (Like a fine wine, though, they do seem to have vintage years.) First to ripen here is the variety Canada 0-273; its main qualities are that the plant is always productive and yielding large and early fruit.

Canada 0-273 gooseberry

Next comes Poorman, an unfortunate name for a very delectable berry. Almost ripe now is Captivator, the variety I would grow if I were to grow only one variety. It’s delicious and pretty much thornless.

Poorman gooseberry

Soon to ripen are Red Jacket, very reliable and productive, with good flavor, and Welcome. Welcome is still with me for sentimental reasons; it was one of the first fruits I ever planted, decades ago, and has traveled with me to my gardens from Wisconsin to Delaware to Maryland to New York. It’s flavor is very similar to “SweeTart” candies.

Following the above varieties is another variety that would be on a must have list. Hinnonmakis Yellow is yellowish-green when ripe and has a flavor that hints of apricot. Some people confuse it with Hinnonmakis Red, which has poor flavor, and whose real name is, I believe, Lepaa Red. Also soon to ripen is Black Satin which has a rich, wine-y flavor.

That’s not all of them but does give you an inkling of the merits of the most significant ones. There are literally hundreds of varieties of gooseberries, spurred in part beginning in 18th century England, by gooseberry competitions, held usually in local inns, to see who could grow the largest fruits. The gaiety of singing and refreshments at these shows was offset by the solemn weighing of fruits.

Those gooseberries were bred strictly for size. I plant for flavor. Did I mention, pest problems of gooseberry? Powdery mildew and leaf spot diseases are potential problems but all the varieties I mentions are resistant to these diseases.

For more about the growing, the varieties, etc. of gooseberries, see my book Grow Fruit Naturally.

Part B. Some Mulberries are Better than Others

Part B. Some kind of mulberry can be grown just about everywhere. Here in the Hudson Valley, we have wild or cultivated red mulberries, which are native, white mulberries, most of which were imported from Asia in the early 1800s, and hybrids of the two. Don’t expect the color of a tree’s fruit, despite even the botanical names, Morus rubra and M. alba, to tell you what species you have before you. Many “white” (M. alba) mulberries or their hybrids bear black fruit.

To throw yet another wrench into the nomenclature, there’s yet another species, M. nigra or black mulberry, with black fruits. I consider black mulberry to be among the best-flavored of all fruits, not just mulberries. Unfortunately, it’s not hardy here. I grow it in a pot.

Black mulberry, M. nigra

Most years birds get just about all my mulberries; not this year, perhaps because of an abundance of other fruits. So I’ve been getting a good taste of them.

I find the flavor of most wild mulberries cloying. Not so for the two varieties I grow.

I, along with many others, have lent high praise to the variety Illinois Everbearing, often likening its flavor to that of black mulberries. This year I’ve reconsidered; Illinois Everbearing fruits are better than the average mulberry you might see growing in Eastern North America, but not nearly as good as black mulberry. Illinois Everbearing does live up to the “everbearing” in its name, yielding berry after berry for weeks on end.

Illinois Everbearing mulberry

My other variety is Oscar. It’s delicious, with a nice balance of acidity and sweetness.

Oscar mulberry

Other years my impression of the two varieties has been different. Perhaps mulberries and gooseberries have vintage years that influence the flavors of particular varieties.

I actually grow one more variety of mulberry, Pakistani. This is yet another species, M. Macloura, that was once considered a kind of white mulberry. Pakistani, like black mulberry isn’t hardy here (probably hardy to Zone 7, perhaps colder) so I grow it in a pot. The fruit is delicious and large, sometimes as much as five inches long! My potted tree’s fruits are only an inch and a half long, but they’re as delicious as black mulberries. Different flavor though.

Black Pakistani

SOMETHINGS FOR THE NOSE, THE EYES, AND THE TASTEBUDS

June 24, 2021/3 Comments/in Fruit, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Makes a Lot of Scents

Many years ago, at this time of the year, I was hiking in the nearby Shawangunk Mountains, in Minnewaska State Park, when a most delectable, spicy-sweet aroma wafted past my nose. I followed my nose off the trail and into the woods. After stepping over and around fallen stumps in boggy soil and ducking under low-hanging branches, I came upon the source of that aroma: the white flowers of a large swamp azalea (Rhododendron viscosum).

Last night as I lay in the comfort of my bed and was about to drift off to sleep, that very same scent drifted into the open bedroom window. I immediately knew the source of that aroma: a swamp azalea that I had planted in a bed along the north side of my home back in 2006.

My yard is obviously quite a different habitat from that of Minnewaska woods, and especially where that wild swamp azalea grew. Besides shade and moist ground, that forested site‘s soil is very acidic, relatively poor in nutrients, and rich in humus.

The bed near my window emulates those conditions. It’s on the north side of the house, so it’s partially shaded. I added sulfur, a naturally mined mineral, to bring the pH down to about 5. I dug in abundant sawdust to build up humus in the soil, and mulch each year with more sawdust or autumn leaves to maintain it. Drip irrigation tubes running through the bed automatically provide daily watering to maintain a moist soil.

Besides aroma, swamp azalea doesn’t have much going for it. The plant is deciduous, so fades out of view in winter. I’ve read that fall leaf color can be very nice, but never noticed it. The white flowers are nice enough, but nothing spectacular to look at. For me, this plant is all about scent.

The Family is Invited

Scent alone from one swamp azalea plant wouldn’t justify drip irrigation, annual mulching, and periodic additions of sulfur. So that bed near my bedroom window was developed as a home also for other plants that enjoy the same special soil conditions as swamp azalea. Mostly, these are plants in the heath family (Ericaceae), which includes blueberry, lingonberry, mountain laurel, rhododendron, other kinds of azaleas, and, of course, heath and heather.
Heath bed
Most of the above family members are growing in that bed. Right after the swamp azalea blossoms wave goodbye for the season, lowbush blueberries begin ripening, then huckleberries, and then lingonberries. Earlier in the season, rich red or lily white ornamental rhododendron blossoms were followed by mountain laurel blossoms, which finished blooming a couple of weeks ago.

Even beyond blossoms and fruits, this bed offers a visual symphony of harmonies and contrasts. The rhododendrons and mountain laurels are mostly dwarf varieties that are 3 foot high mounds of glossy greenery year-round. The lingonberries and lowbush blueberries knit together everything right at ground level, both plants spreading via underground runners to intertwine for a dense ground cover. In fall, blueberry’s crimson leaves and then, through winter, its reddish stems, contrast pleasantly with lingonberry’s mouse-ear-sized, evergreen leaves and red, pea-sized berries.

Lingonberry and lowbush blueberry in fall

The lingonberries need not be picked as soon as they ripen because they’ll hang in good visual and gustatory condition for many months.

Lingonberry I’ve invited a few non-family members into the bed. Most notable are a witchhazel that’s covered in fragrant, yellow blossoms in late winter and a stewartia that is now spreading open the white petals of its camellia-like blossoms.

Still Planting Vegetables

A friend has a new vegetable garden which she has been planting all spring. She has two beds not yet planted and asked me if and what she could still plant there for this season. “Plenty,” I told her.

For starters, how about a late crop of bush beans and/or zucchini? Bush beans start to peter out after bearing for a couple of weeks, which is why I make 3 plantings each season, the first in the middle of May.
My garden's beds
The same goes for cucumbers, which in a few weeks usually succumb to bacterial wilt. Two plantings, the second sown about now, often do the trick to keep the cukes a comin’. Here on the farmden, the varieties Shintokiwa and Little Leaf H-19 seem better able to fend off pests than other varieties I’ve grown. Also, to a lesser extent, the variety Suhyo (sometimes spelt Suyo).

And, of course, zucchini or any other summer squash. Zucchini typically succumbs to borers or mildew by midsummer; a fresh planting keeps zucchini coming on all season long. One caution is not to plant too much zucchini! Any more than a few plants and you’ll be forced to come up with concoctions such as zucchini bread to use up the excess.
north vegetable garden from the south

FRUITS AND NUTS

June 16, 2021/5 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

After about twenty years of waiting, I happened to look at the ground and see a pine cone. The only pine tree nearby is a Korean pine (Pinus koreanensis) that I planted that many years ago, a tree that liked its new home and has soared, in that time, to fifty feet in height. My problem with the tree is that all it has done is grow; I planted the tree for its pine nuts.

A few years ago I did see a few cones way up near the top of the tree. Would the cones fall, carrying down the nuts, or would the nuts fall out, to be lost in the high grass? Would squirrels make all this moot?

I picked up the cone and clawed back its scales to see if any nuts were hiding within. Zut alors! Nuts! Most nuts need some curing before tasting good so I laid the cone in the sun for a few days.
Pinus koreansis cone and nuts
Tasting was next. First they needed to be cracked out of their shells, which was surprisingly easy with a pair of pliers. The first two nuts cracked were well filled and yielded delicious nuts. The next ten nuts, which comprised the rest of the harvest, when cracked, yielded nothing.

Many Nut Pines

The pine nuts you see for sale are generally one of the piñon pines native to the Southwest, the pignolia native to Italy and other Mediterranean countries, or Chinese white pine (Pinus armandii). In fact, though, a number of pine species provide edible nuts.

One of my favorites, the Digger pine (P. sabiniana), yields nuts the size of lima beans and is native to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Driving west down those mountains many years ago, I came to a screeching stop (well, not really screeching) upon seeing the giant cone of this tree on the ground. I picked it up and must have provided entertainment, perhaps elicited fear, in passerbys seeing some guy smashing open a pine cone on the guard rail.

My Korean pine is a dead ringer for our native white pine, the latter of which does not yield edible nuts. Korean pine is only one of a number of nut pines that grows well in cold winter climates, such as Zone 5 here in this part of New York’s Hudson Valley. Swiss Stone pine (P. cembra) and Siberian pine (P. sibirico) are also reliable nut-producers for cold climates, but are very slow growing.

Many other pine species potentially could produce pine nuts outside their native range, though their adaptability to very cold winters climate is not thoroughly tested. The closely related Colorado Pinyon (P. edulis) and Singleleaf Pinyon (P. monophylla) pines are bushy trees that become flat-topped with age. I planted a Singleleaf pine years ago and though it tolerated the cold winters here, it’s annual growth measured in inches. With the slow growth and lack of nuts, I eventually tired of it.

Over the years, my pinetum (yes, that is a word) has expanded. A Lacebark pine ((P. bungeana), after five years or so in the ground, has finally taken off and is growing over a foot a year. This species is especially worth growing also for its decorative bark, which is a patchwork of muted colors.
Pinus bungeana, bark

Blanks

Back to the blank shells borne by my Korean pine. One possibility is that this pine needs cross-pollination from another tree of the same species to bear nuts or, at least, to bear them well. The cone that I found lying on the ground was pretty soggy and might have been lying there for a year or more. Perhaps nuts within dried up and/or rotted away. I subsequently found three more soggy cones, all devoid even of nut shells.

I recently planted pollinators for the pine. They’re small, but after a couple of years of nurturing are finally growing well, the largest of the two now two feet tall. I’ll report back, hopefully in less than 20 years.
Pinus koreansis, young

Survival of Fittest and Tastiest

On the bountiful side of the fruit and nut ledger this year are my tree fruits, especially the more common tree fruits. (Berries and uncommon tree fruits such as persimmon, mulberry, and cornelian cherry always do well here.) Winter and then spring weather were all perfect for a good set of fruit. Once that usually fraught time in fruit growing was passed, Mother Nature took over and the trees naturally shed fruits that had been poorly pollinated or insect ridden. That lets a tree channel its energies into making bigger and more flavorful the fruits that remained hanging on branches.
Pear fruitlets before thinning
Nature’s aim in growing fruit is to make it appealing to all sorts of animals that incidentally spread the seeds as they eat the fruit. We humans are more discerning (would “finicky” be a better word?) when it comes to fruit quality. So once that natural fruit drop, “June drop” as it is appropriately called, is finished, we step in to remove even more fruit.

Pruning branches, on which some fruit would have been borne, in late winter and early spring already did some of that work. This week it was time to finish the job, by hand. This means putting some distance between each fruit and its neighbor, about five inches, always saving the largest and most pest free of the lot. Hand thinning would be tedious with smaller fruits, such as cherries and plums, so fortunately is unnecessary with them.

I ended up with a bucketful of cute apple and pear fruitlets. Cute, but into the compost they went where heat and time would cook any insect or disease pests lurking within that might have awakened to attack next year’s crop.
Apple and pear fruitlets on compost pile

ROSES AND STRAWBERRIES AND — OH NO! — HONEYBERRIES

June 10, 2021/23 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Roses, Oh Yes

I bake really good bread, but “man can’t live by bread alone.” Sometimes, you’ve got to “stop to smell the roses.” Enough with the quotations! But back to the roses.
Roses in a vase
A love of roses has crept up on me over the years, due mostly to changes in kinds of roses available. Up until about 30 years ago, hybrid teas were pretty much the only roses on the block. These plants’ gangly stems are each capped by a vividly colored, fairly stiff, formal blossom whose petals wrap together into a pointy peak. You see where I’m going: hybrid teas are ugly, to me at least.

Also available were grandiflora and floribunda roses. Grandifloras are like hybrid teas, except their stems end with clusters of a few, but smaller, blossoms. Floribunda roses have even larger flower clusters of even smaller flowers. Despite being bushes more full with flowers than hybrid teas, grandiflora and floribunda flowers are still rather prim and proper except for their traffic-stopping colors.

Then so-called species and old-fashioned roses entered the scene, roses that are as nature made them or only slightly hybridized. These roses constitute broad groups, but generally, what they have going for them are more subdued — think pastel — colors and more blowsy blossoms on more heavily branching, fuller-bodied, shrubs.

The downside to species and old-fashioned roses, even if you like their blossoms and their growth habits, is that many bloom only in the spring. Hybrid teas pump out blossom after blossom all summer long.

Rose d’Ipsahan

Enter Rose de Rescht, my first old-fashioned rose, given to me by a local, fellow gardener. Ann told me that this rose variety had soft pink flowers and heavenly scent. She was right about the appearance and fragrance, wrong about the name. After years of sleuthing, I’ve identified the rose as Rose d’Ispahan, probably originating in Persia but first discovered in a garden in Isfahan, Iran, renowned for its gardens and roses.

If I had to grow only one variety of rose, Rose d’Ispahan would be the one, for the beauty of its flowers, for its intense fragrance, for its cold-hardiness, for its lack of large thorns, and for its pest resistance. And that’s even though it blossoms only in spring. (It does so over a long period, though.)

Rose d’Ipsahan

But I don’t have to grow only one variety of rose. My other favorites are some of rose breeder David Austin’s varieties which combine the pest resistance and repeat blooming of modern roses with the blowsy, fragrant, pastel colored blossoms and full-bodied shrubs of old fashioned roses. My currant, and perhaps all-time, favorites are Lady of Shallot and, in my opinion needing a more euphonious name, Golden Celebration.

Golden Celebration rose

Both sport yellow — no, Golden! — blossoms, some apricot in those of Lady of Shallot, and a rich yellow, all contained in a petal-filled cup-shape in those of Golden Celebration. Another of my favorites, Lady Judi Dench, never woke up in spring a year ago; perhaps it was the cold, perhaps something else.

Lady of Shallot rose

I also grow another David Austin Rose, LD Braithewaite, with deep red blossoms and dark green, slightly reddish leaves. Not my favorite as far as appearance but this rose is very cold hardy and pumps out tons of blossoms almost all season long.

LD Braithewaite rose

And Strawberries, Oh Yes

Strawberries and roses On to strawberries. I’m growing three kinds: the Pineapple Crush variety of white alpine strawberries; the Earliglow variety of garden strawberry; and a few varieties of vescana strawberries, which are hybrids of garden and alpine strawberries. This also is the order, starting with the best, of flavor for the three types.

Why do I grow anything but the best? Because alpines are so small that it’s hard to fill a bowl with them. I grow vescanas, for the first time this year, because I never grew them before.

The Earliglow berries taste good and do quickly fill a bowl, ideally yielding one quart of berries per plant over the course of the season. Except this year, a problem has surfaced. Leather rot is a fungal disease (Phytophthora cactorum) that rears its ugly head — infected berries that taste bitter and have white patches that turn brown — usually following excessively wet periods from late spring to early summer, which is odd because weather has been on the dry side. Also odd because I’ve never seen the problem here before.
Strawberry leather rot1
Which brings me back to vescana and Pineapple Crush. Both are very disease resistant, and vescana berries are almost as big as garden strawberries, so I’m thankful to have them, even if they do taste like canned strawberries.

And Honeyberries, Oh NO!

After three weeks of hanging on (the berries, not me), honeyberries, which are edible honeysuckles, are ready for a fair tasting. I wrote previously about the awful flavor of this new fruit and was instructed to let the berries hang till dead ripe.

The berries sampled this year were so ripe that each had to be plucked from the branch with my palm facing upwards beneath the berry; a mere touch would cause ripe ones to drop.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat (a drum roll). First to be tasted was the variety Solo. Reaction: spit it out quickly. Tart with bad flavor. Second fruit tasted was Sugar Mountain Blue. Also spit out, but not quite as quickly. And finally, Sugar Mountain Eisbär. Although retained in the mouth and having a hint of sweetness, this one, like the others, had bad flavor.

The flavor of honeyberries is allegedly like a mix of blueberry and raspberry. Not so! If you have space, plant blueberries or raspberries instead.

GOD’S BEST BERRY?

June 3, 2021/16 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

First Good-Tasting Berries of the Season

Strawberries, the aptly named variety Earliglow, are ripe, which means it’s time to start crawling for fruit. That’s one thing I don’t like about strawberries.

Strawberries, clockwise from left, vescana, garden, and alpine

Strawberries, garden, vescana, and alpine

Another thing I don’t like about strawberries is that, although they’re perennial plants, a bed needs replanting after about 5 years. By then, viruses, fungal diseases, weeds, and just plain aging have finally taken their toll. The decline creeps up slowly so is not all that obvious. And no, you shouldn’t replant in the same spot where the now pest-ridden bed was, but in a new location. And don’t replant with rooted runners from those old plants, but with new, certified disease free plants.

Any bad feelings I had dissolved away as I tasted my first berry of the season. I almost agreed with Izaak Walton, in the 16th century, “Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.” (He had never tasted our native highbush blueberries.) Aside from good flavor, strawberries bear quickly, their first or second season in the ground, and are the first good-tasting, fresh berries of the season.

I planned ahead, this being my planting’s fifth year, ordering plants for spring planting and setting them in a relatively weed free bed in my vegetable garden, two rows running up and down a three-foot-wide bed with a foot between plants in the rows. Right after harvest, out goes the old bed, to be given an inch dressing of compost and then in go leek and/or fall cabbage and cauliflower plants.

Strawberries, new and old bed

I’ll keep the new bed productive for its five years with annual renovation, a brutal affair that begins with, right after berries have been harvested, lopping off and raking up all the leaves, etc., etc. No need to dwell on this now, while enjoying berries from the old bed.

A Strawberry Better than a Strawberry

Conventional garden strawberries (Fragaria X ananassa) aren’t the only strawberries on the block. I’ve written previously about another kind of strawberry, alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which is a totally different species than garden strawberries. Sure, they also have their downsides: they’re small, typically dime size; they’re very soft and perishable; and after two or three years, plants get old at their center so either need to be divided, or chucked, and new plants started.

Pineapple Crush alpine strawberries

On the plus side, new plants are fairly easy to start from seed, similar to growing tomato transplants except needing more patience. And the plants bear their first season. Not only bear their first season, but bear more or less continuously all season long.

Alpine strawberries are very resistant to pest problems. And birds? No problem if you grow Pineapple Crush, the white ones. The birds ignore them. Pineapple Crush berries also have the best flavor, with more than a hint of pineapple.

I’ve been testing people’s reactions to tasting my white alpine strawberries. Without fail, within seconds of putting one in their mouth, a person’s eyes light up and they exclaim “Wow.”

Trying for the Best of Both Worlds

Okay, alpine strawberries are small. You’re not going to fill your freezer with these strawberries. Hmm, how about combining the best of garden strawberries and the best of alpine strawberries? It’s been done. The hybrids are called vescanas, botanically Fragaria X vescana, a combining of their parents’ botanical names.

As a fan of alpine strawberries, how could I resist searching for these hybrids? I found some and, last spring, planted them, the varieties Annelie, Rebecka, Sara, Florika, and, not sounding very appetizing in name, S-228. The alpine genes express themselves in disease resistance and bearing fruit more or less continuously through summer and into fall. Garden strawberry struts its genes in the hybrids’ fruit size which, for the hybrids is much larger than the alpine strawberries but smaller than the garden strawberries.

The fruits are red but red alpine strawberries, which are more common than white alpine strawberries, might have been used in the breeding.

Most evident in coming upon my small patch of these vescanas is how fast they are spreading. There are runners all over the place! I usually frown on such a habit because keeping my strawberry bed from becoming overcrowded necessitates pinching off all runners except for those needed to put rooted plants in place to replace old plants.

Vescana strawberries

Making lots of runners is billed as an asset for the vescanas, allowing them to be grown as so-called meadow strawberries, the meadow needing neither renovation nor mulching. I’ll let my plants wander off somewhere by themselves and see how they fare.

You may have noticed that there’s an elephant in the room; up till now there’s been no mention of flavor. I was saving that. Quoting from a journal article by the breeders of Rebecka, this variety has “fine aroma.” Perhaps in Sweden where that variety was bred. Or, quoting from the patent for Florika, “The variety is a vescana-type strawberry plant characterized by its capability of developing exceptionally rich and fine flavor of medium sized fruits.” Perhaps in Germany, where this variety was bred.

Here in New York’s Hudson Valley, I thought the fruits were good, but nothing special, and surely not as especially good as my Pineapple Crush white alpine strawberries.

Now that I think of it, Izaak Walton’s very high praise of strawberries might have been more warranted than I first noted. So-called garden strawberries are relative newcomers on the garden scene, originating as a chance hybrid in the 18th century. Prior to its arrival, the strawberries that were grown or harvested from the wild were mostly the musk strawberries (Fragaria moschata, very delicious) and alpine strawberries.

I haven’t said “wow” upon tasting any of my vescana strawberries.

Earliglow strawberries

(For more about growing strawberries, see my book Grow Fruit Naturally).

A BRIGHT FUTURE

May 27, 2021/15 Comments/in Fruit, Pests/by Lee Reich

As Good As It Gets

You might think that writing about good weather would tempt the fates. I’ll thumb my nose at the fates and go ahead and write that this spring is the best spring, gardenwise, ever in all the decades since I’ve been gardening. The flowers have been more vibrant with color and, it seems, also in greater profusion. The air has been particularly fragrant, especially now with the intoxicating aroma of black locust blooms following closely on the heels of autumn olive’s sweet scent.
Apple tree in bloom
My fruit trees are most thankful for this spring’s beneficence. In all the years of growing fruit here on the farmden, never has the landscape been so brightened by snowballs of white blooms of plum and pear trees, pinkish blossoms of apples, and peaches’ pure pink blossoms.
Apple blossoms
Peach blossoms
The now-fallen petals are no cause for wistfulness, because those clusters of flowers have now morphed into clusters of fruits

Why this Year?

What makes for such a glorious spring? The weather, of course, both this spring’s in addition to last winter’s and even last spring’s. Let’s first go back to last spring’s weather effects.

During spring 2020 the weather warmed going into April, coaxing flower buds on fruit trees to swell. Then, towards the end of that month and into May, a number of nights saw temperatures that nipped life from many flowers, then open, especially the 22° temperature on April 23rd and then subfreezing temperatures on May 9th, 13th, and 14th. (All this information handily recorded and passed onto my computer via Sensorpush sensors I have at two locations outdoors and one location in the greenhouse.)
Peach fruitlets
Prelude to the present season began with a relatively mild winter, for which peach flower buds, which suffer damage at around minus 15°, were especially appreciative. And this spring has seen more or less gradually warming temperatures with — and this is most important — no late, damaging frosts. Buds for a current spring’s blossoms develop the summer of the previous year. Seeds in developing fruits produce a hormone that suppresses flower bud formation, so a heavy crop one year means a lighter crop the following year, and vice versa, all other things being equal. Last year’s late frosts knocked out much of the potential fruit crop so this year the trees did what they do, compensating for last year’s loss with more blooms.
Asian pear espalier
Fruit trees can afford to lose a certain number of flowers to cold each year. For instance, each flower bud of an apple tree unfolds to five flowers, and only 5 percent of those flowers need to set fruit for a full crop of apples. Furthermore, a temperature below 32° doesn’t always cause damage; just how much damage ensues depends on the the growth stage of flower buds and how cold it gets. Using apples, again, as an example, when their buds have expanded just enough to hint at the five flowers within (the “tight cluster” stage), 27° will kill 10 percent of them, 21° will kill 90 percent of them. More details for apples and other fruits can be found here.

Another variable is that temperatures can vary a little at various points within a tree, which can be important at these critical temperatures.

Not Yet Home Free

This auspicious spring is not a call for me to just sit back and wait for the delicious bounty to hang on the branches awaiting my picking. My work is cut out for me.

One job, to begin soon, will be thinning the fruit, that is, removing lots of them. In addition to upping the chances for a good return bloom and harvest next year (remember the seeds and the hormones), fruit thinning lets the trees channel more of their energy resources into fewer fruits. The result: Fruits that remain are larger and more flavorful. Fruit thinning also lessens the chance of limbs breaking under the the load of too many fruits, and lessens pest problems. Two apples touching each other provide good cover for the larvae of codling moths to burrow into the fruits to become the classic “worm in the apple.”

Apple fruitlets Commercially, tree fruits are thinned with chemical sprays but I’ll be thinning by hand. The plan is to reduce the number of fruits to one per bud, leaving the largest and most pest-free, and allowing remaining fruits to sit no closer than about a half a foot apart along branches. Larger kinds of fruits are the ones that need thinning, which is nice because it would be very tedious to thin small fruits, such as cherries. Winter pruning removes some branches with fruit buds, so also contributes to reducing the load, as does trees’ natural shedding of some excess fruits.
Pear fruitlets
Another job, which began a few weeks ago, is keeping an eye out for and protecting fruits from insects and diseases — particularly problematic on a less than perfect site such as here on the farmden. All of the common tree fruits, except for pear, are very prone to these problems throughout much of eastern North America.

On a backyard scale, the problems are few but serious, in some cases serious enough to eliminate almost the whole crop or render it inedible. The major culprits are plum curculio, codling moth, apple maggot, oriental fruit moth, brown rot, apple scab, fire blight, and cedar apple rust. Not to mention deer and squirrels.

My tack is to take a multi-pronged approach, with some spraying (mostly organic), nurturing the soil (lots of mulch and compost) and the plants (pruning and fruit thinning), fostering beneficial insects with plantings that encourage their presence and with careful choice and limited amount of sprays, trapping pests (hanging fake apples, Red Delicious, with sticky Tanglefoot in trees), and possibly bagging individual fruits. See Grow Fruit Naturally for more about these approaches.

Even if there is “many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip,” every fruit grower has to be an optimist.

Plant Sale Reminder

This is the last week of my annual plant sale. For more information, go to https://leereich.com/2021/05/last-week-of-2021-plant-sale.html

And, A Free Webinar, “Weedless Gardening”

For more information, go to www.leereich.com/workshops.

LAST WEEK OF 2021 PLANT SALE

May 25, 2021/2 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Lee Reich’s 13TH (?) ANNUAL PLANT SALE
(of mostly lesser grown but delectable fruits)

Because of covid, the sale is now online, with scheduled pickups here at the farmden in New Paltz, NY.

Limited quantities of plants are still available (September Sun female kiwiberry, various varieties of fig, Blue Sunset lowbush blueberry, and Pineapple Crush white alpine strawberry). All are truly delectable fruits on truly beautiful planats. So order soon.

To see plant list, order, pay, and — VERY IMPORTANT — schedule a pickup time (May 29-31 and June 2, 2021) when you order, go to https://leesannualplantsale.squarespace.com

FRUITFUL FUTURES

April 15, 2021/10 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Making the Best of It

Eek! Mice (or rabbits)! Not the animals but the damage they have wrought. The bark on virtually all my pear grafts of last year has been nibbled off enough to kill the grafts.

Once I calmed down, I realized that all was not lost. All the chewing was above ground level, leaving a small amount of intact bark still in place. The plants aren’t dead, just their portions above the chewing. The near-ground portions could be grafted again.

Daisy showered with petals (more on this later)

(Most fruit trees neither come true from seed nor root readily from cuttings, so are propagated by grafting a scion — a short length of one-year-old stem — of the desired variety onto a rootstock. The rootstock is the same kind of plant as the scion variety and could be a seedling or a variety developed for special rootstock purposes. My nibbled trees are pear trees, Highland, Blake’s Pride, and other varieties, each grafted on a rootstock named Old Home X Farmingdale 87, which dwarfs the trees’ final height to about half that of a full-size pear tree, as well as induces it to yield its first fruits sooner.)

Damaged rootstock

Crouched way down at ground level would be a tough position for grafting, not to mention trying to keep dirt and debris off the cut surfaces. So I dug up each plant for “bench grafting,” so named because it’s done at a bench or, more generally, upright and in the comfort and better light of indoors.

My graft of choice for these wounded plants is the whip graft. It’s a simple graft, especially for apple and pear; I typically expect 95+ percent “takes.” With a well-honed, preferably straight-edged (and preferably single-bevelled) knife, I make a smooth, sloping cut about 3/4-inch long on the rootstock. Typically, I would make the cut longer but there’s not that much viable stem above-ground.

Making the cuts on rootstock and scion

Next, I take a scion of similar thickness to the rootstock, although this is not all-important, and make a similarly smooth, sloping 3/4-inch long cut.

If the cuts are secured face to face and then sealed against moisture loss, cells at the cuts start to multiply, eventually knitting the two pieces together and joining their vascular tissue. If the two plant pieces are not matching in thickness, success can still be achieved if just one side of the two of them is aligned. A piece of rubber, either a cut open rubber band or a bona fide grafting rubber, keeps cut edges of scion and rootstock intimate, and then the wound is sealed with Tree-Kote or similar tree wound material, or Parafilm tape.
Cuts on stock and scion in place
Wrapping the graft

Sealing the graft with Parafilm

Keeping the roots moist and the plants indoors for a couple of weeks speeds growth of new cells. After that, the plants will go outdoors, either potted up or planted in the ground.

The Downside to Low Grafting

Grafting so low on the plant does have its downsides. For one thing, a certain amount of rootstock stem above ground level is needed for the dwarfing effect. For full effect, grafts are usually made 6 to 12 inches above ground level.

Also, if a graft is very low on a plant so that over the years it gets covered with soil, the scion is could eventually root. At which point the dwarfing and other benefits of the rootstock are lost.

On the plus side, if any of my grafts fail, the still viable rootstock will undoubtedly send up a new shoot, which can be grafted next spring — and done well above ground level.

So How Do You Get a Rootstock?

The way to get a rootstock is to buy one (ha, ha). But how does as nursery make, for instance, an Old Home X Farmingdale 87 pear rootstock if pears (and most other tree fruits) are so hard to root and don’t come true from seed.

Rootstocks are bred or selected to impart special characteristics to the tree for which they provide roots and a short length of stem — very short stems in the case of this week’s pear grafts. Another characteristic that might be sought in a rootstock is ease of propagation, perhaps even by cuttings.

Whereas a pear variety such as Blake’s Pride is propagated from mature, fruiting wood, a rootstock might be propagated from juvenile wood, that is, wood that that has never grow to maturity. All plants are easier to multiply from juvenile wood. Near the base of a plant that has been raised from seed, the wood retains its juvenility, so a seed-propagated rootstock variety that was repeatedly cut back would provide stems that were juvenile and could be rooted as cuttings.

And there are other ways to coax new plants from an existing plant, such as tissue culture and stool layering. Maybe something about these methods at another time.

Fruitful Near Futures

Even grafted higher atop a rootstock that imparts precocity, my pear grafts aren’t apt to yield their first crop for a few years. My Nanking cherry bushes (Prunus tomentosa), on the other hand, are slated to have bright red cherries arching their stems to the ground in a couple of months or so.

A profusion of Nanking cherries!

The cherries are small, but are very juicy with a refreshing flavor that combines that of sweet and tart cherries. Another plus for these plants is that they are more or less free of pest problems, requiring no care on my part beyond picking the fruit. Read more about them in my book Landscaping with Fruit.

No need to ignore the bushes until payday because payday is also right now, visually. Along the length of my driveway, the hedge of Nanking cherries has turned into a cloud of dense, slightly pink, white flowers. This time of year it’s not uncommon for a biker or walker to stop and ask the name of the plants. “Nanking cherry!”

Nanking cherry hedge

OUTDOOR MAPLES AND INDOOR KUMQUATS

February 24, 2021/23 Comments/in Fruit, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

Sap Season

Get your taps in. It’s syrup weather. Maple syrup. At least here in New York’s Hudson Valley, the sunny days in the 40s with nights in the 20s that are predicted should get the sap flowing.

I say “should” because I haven’t yet checked sap buckets that I hung out on the trees a few weeks ago when winter temperatures suddenly turned warm; it was sap weather back then. That day was hopeful: I drilled holes an inch and a half deep, lightly hammered in the spiles, hung buckets, and attached covers over the buckets. Frigid days and nights that descended soon after that kept sap flow in abeyance.

My “sugar bush” amounts to only three sugar maple trees. I used to have four, but a large tree that was a truly magnificent representative of its species began an irreversible path to its death. “Maple decline” is a disease complex brought on by some combination of drought, soil compaction, road salt, root damage, and air pollution. Upper branches are usually the first to go, and once decline begins, secondary fungi and insects speed the process along.

I’m not sure about my tree, though, because its lower branches were the first to go. Also, the tree grows along the back edge of my property, where it’s been shielded from those usual causes for decline.

One more contributor to decline is overtapping. I plead not guilty. My fading tree was larger than the 8 or10 inch minimum diameter for tapping, and I only tapped it once, when the tree, it turned out, was already going downhill. The lack of sap flow was what prompted me to see all this. And then I noticed many rows of sapsucker holes in the bark.

Long story short: The tree became firewood.

My three other, healthy maples might yield me only a quart of finished syrup. The reasons? One quart is enough for me, so I’m tapping only one of them. Also, they’re relatively young. I planted those three trees about 25 years ago, and they’re now only about 8 inches in diameter.

I highly recommend planting trees, for their beauty, for what food they might offer, and for the mere satisfaction of watching the plants grow. Especially if they are small when planted. Small trees also establish quickly to require less aftercare, often soon outgrowing their initially larger compatriots. Those three maple trees? From one perspective, it seems like a long time ago that I dug holes and set the saplings in the ground; from another perspective, it seems like I planted them, walked away, then turned right around to find that these young ‘uns have grown into bona fide trees!

Birch Sap

I may end up with more sap than planned, but not maple sap. Along with the three sugar maples I planted way back when, I also planted three river birches (Betula nigra). They grow, appropriate to their name, in a wet area just out of a swale through which water runs in spring, each a clump of a half dozen or so sturdy trunks reaching skyward to about 35 feet.

Maple might be the heaviest sap producing tree, but it’s not the only kid on the block. Many people tap their black walnut trees. Call me provincial, but black walnut syrup, much as I love the nuts themselves, has no appeal me even though I’ve never tasted it.

Birch syrup though . . . mmm. Never tasted that one either, but it sounds good. Three birch taps should offer an ample amount for tasting.

What a Funny Name

I don’t need to see the small, pebbly-skinned, orange orbs on grocers’ shelves to know that it’s kumquat season. My own Meiwa kumquat is looking very pretty, with a good crop of fruit staring out from their backdrop of glossy, forest-green leaves. I’ve trained the plant as a “standard,” that is, as a miniature tree with a crown of branches perched atop a four foot trunk.

The present crop is my best ever, and traces its success back to last spring. In previous years, I was too timid with pruning. And pruning is necessary, every year. Pruning keeps the plant from growing disproportionately large for its pot -– or my house — and coaxes growth of new, fruiting wood.

The roots also get pruned each year to make space for new potting soil for root growth and nutrients. I laid down the plant and pot to easily slide out the root ball. After slicing an inch or two of roots and potting soil from all around the outside of the root ball, back into the pot the plant went, with new potting soil packed in the space between the shaven root ball and the inside edge of the pot. The seemingly brutal treatment took place last year just as the garden awoke in yellow blossoms from daffodils.

As soon as weather warmed, new sprouts began to grow. By midsummer, the plant was fragrant with blossoms. By late summer, little, green fruits were forming which, with careful watering, survived the environment change as the plant moved indoors in October. The plant stood at attention in a sunny window in the cool bedroom for weeks, and a couple of months ago, the fruits started turning orange. They are now ripe and delicious!

THANKS

February 17, 2021/11 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

I’d like to highlight, today, what makes this blog possible.

First of all, it’s you, readers. The positive feedback I get is very rewarding. I’ve had great opportunities — academically and “in the field” — to learn about growing plants and caring for the soil, and have put all this into practice for decades. My hope is that in entertaining you with all this, your tomatoes, apples, zinnias, and all the rest grow healthier and tastier or prettier. I appreciate the positive (even the sometimes negative) comments from you all.

Second, if you’ll look at the bottom right corner of my blog posts (or scroll way down near the end on a mobile device), you’ll see some banner ads. Nothing flashy or moving or obnoxious in any other way. Just simple links to a few advertisers.

These seven advertisers are special; these are companies whose products I stand behind. I’ve used them and can attest to their quality.

Fruit Plants Galore

Uncommon Fruits of Fall

Uncommon fruits of summer

Take, for instance, Raintree Nursery and Cummins Nursery. I’m a “fruit nut” (and a “nut nut”) and, except when I propagate my own plants, these two nurseries are my go-to nurseries for fruiting trees and shrubs.

Raintree Nursery stands out for the wide variety of common and uncommon fruits they offer, everything from apples to jujubes to musk strawberries to wintergreen to hardy passionfruits. All top quality plants.

Heirloom apples

Cummins Nursery also offers top quality plants, trees in this case. Steve Cummins, the present owner, started the nursery with his dad, Jim, and other family members. Back in the 20th century, when I worked in research for Cornell University, Dr. Jim Cummins also worked there. For many years, he was the rootstock breeder. (A rootstock, on which a Honeycrisp, Mutsu, or other variety of fruit is grafted in order to propagate it, can impart special qualities to the resultant tree, such as early production, eventual tree size, pest resistance, and tolerance to poor soil conditions.)

So I turn to Cummins Nursery if I’m interested in a common (vs. uncommon) fruit tree on a special rootstock, with many, many varieties of fruit to pick from. Or if I want to purchase a rootstock to graft myself. Or if I want a scion of any one of the many, many different varieties of fruits grown at Indian Creek Farm, the pick-your-own farm they run adjacent to the nursery.

You’ll note that Raintree Nursery is in Washington state and Cummins Nursery is in New York state. No matter. These nurseries are selling named varieties of fruit plants. A McIntosh apple grown in Washington state is genetically identical to that variety grown in New York state, so will have the same cold-hardiness, pest resistance, and other characteristics. Of course, a particular season’s weather, wherever the tree is planted, could influence flavor and texture.

Essential, Quality Tools

If you grow fruit plants — or vegetables or ornamentals or houseplants — you’re going to need certain tools. Glance down, then, to my next three advertisers: OESCO (“Oesco” is the acronym for “orchard equipment supply company)”, ARS (the exclusive agent for ARS pruning tools), and Scythe Supply Co.

Whether it’s pole pruners, pruning saws, or most other pruning tools, ARS are among my favorites, and especially for hand shears. The ARS website shows the complete line of ARS tools, as well as where you can purchase them.
ARS web page
One place for many of those pruning tools, ARS or otherwise, is OESCO. And much more. Trowels, all sorts of shovels, hedgers, sharpeners, grafting knives and sealants, stuff for making trellises, and, of course, many kinds of hand pruning shears.
OESCO web page
Scythe Supply Co is where I purchase all my scythe blades, sharpening stones, peening tools, and, originally, my snath and grips (I’ve since made these last two parts myself, when needed). You might think a scythe to be an archaic tools. Not so; it works even early mornings without waking the neighbors and in ground too wet or grass too high for a mower. Swinging a scythe is a meditative, first-class exercise.
Scythe Supply Co, webpage
My property was originally a mere 3/4 of an acre. Besides my home, vegetable garden, and fruit trees, I was able to dedicate a portion of that property to a mini-hay field, where I let the grass grow high and then periodically scythed it as food for my compost pile. It was decorative and functional. (Okay I did encroach on the actual hayfield bordering my 3/4 of an acre; I eventually bought it and now have a bona fide hayfield, portions of which I scythe.)

Two More Essentials

You might wonder, “What’s with Bobbex and Sensorpush?”, the last two ads on these blog pages?”

Bobbex webpage

In the past couple of winters as Daisy and, especially Sammy, matured beyond their super energetic puppy stages,

deer have taken note and become bolder. My initial testing of Bobbex, a deer repellent, seemed promising. I’ve since become amazed at its effectiveness. Deer are here, but not feeding on any of my sprayed plants. And spraying is only needed once a month.

I’ve waxed enthusiastic about Sensorpush many times here on this blog. Basically, it’s a one inch square by 1/2 inch device that you place wherever you want to know the current and historical temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, dewpoint, and vapor pressure deficit. There’s one in my greenhouse, and it can alert me if the temperature goes above or below whatever temperature specified. The one on my garden gate is especially useful in spring and fall, when frosts threaten. As soon as the snow melts, my third Sensorpush will go beneath the pile of leaves protecting a fig tree I planted outdoors to monitor winter temperatures there. (Much more about this at a later date.)

So there you have it: seven companies whose products, in my opinion, make for better gardening or farming.

Get Ready for Spring

Are you interested in having a weedless garden this season? Learn how, at my upcoming WEEDLESS GARDENING webinar. The system I’ll talk about also makes more efficient use of water, conserves valuable soil organic matter, allows earlier planting in spring, and doesn’t disrupt beneficial fungi and other friendly soil organisms. Starting a new garden? Here’s the fastest way to get the soil prepared and plants growing.

I’ll cover all this, and more, in the webinar, and allow plenty of time for questions. The webinar costs $35 and runs from 7-8:30 pm on Monday, February 22, 2021.

Space is limited so registration is necess ary.Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WqSCBtOGTqqjGgbOHOuxfg.
Garden view