Happy Birthday Ficus

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Another Year, Another Pruning and Re-potting

I’d like to say it was the birthday of my baby ficus except I don’t know when it was actually born. And since it was propagated by a cutting, not by me, and not from a seed, I’m not sure what “born” would actually mean. No matter, I’m having its biannual celebration marking its age and its growth.

Just for reference, baby ficus is a weeping fig tree (Ficus benjamina), a tree that with age and tropical growing conditions rapidly soars to similar majestic proportions as our sugar maples. That is, if unrestrained in its development.

Baby ficus (FIGH-kus) began life here as one of three small plants rooted together in a 3 inch pot and purchased from a discount store. (Weeping figs are common houseplants because of their beauty and ability to tolerate dry air and low light indoors.) Eight years later, it’s about 4 inches tall with a wizened trunk and side branches that belie its youth. Bonsai, Ficus, at 8 yearsMoss carpeting the soil beneath it and creeping up the trunk complete the picture. I’ve made and am making baby ficus into a bonsai.

The biannual celebration begins with my clipping all the leaves from the plant. Baby ficus’ diminutive proportions keep this job from being tedious.Lear pruning Clipping the leaves accomplishes two goals. First, plants lose water through their leaves so removing leaves reduces water loss (important in consideration of the next celebratory step).

And second, clipping the leaves reduces the size of leaves in the next flush of growth, keeping the in proportion to the size of the plant. Leaves on an unrestrained weeping fig grow anywhere from 2 to 5 inches long, which would look top heavy on a plant 4 inches tall.

The next step is to tip the plant out of its pot so I can get to work on its roots. The pot is only an inch deep and 4 inches long by 3 inches wide, so obviously can’t hold much soil. Bonsai root pruningBaby ficus gets all water and its nourishment from this amount of soil. Within 6 months or so, roots thoroughly fill the pot of soil and have extracted much of the nourishment contained within.

So the roots need new soil to explore, and space has to be made for that new soil. That space is made by cutting back the roots. (Less roots means less water up into the plant, which is why I began by reducing water loss by clipping off all the leaves). I tease old soil out from between the roots and with a scissors shear some of them back.

Next, I put new potting mix into the bottom of the pot, just enough so the plant can sit at the same height as it did previously. Any space near the edges of the pot gets soil packed in place with a blunt stick. Throughout this repotting, I manage to preserve more or less intact the moss growing at the base of the plant.

Now the plant needs its stems pruned. After all, I don’t want the plant growing larger each year, just more decorative as the trunk and stems thicken and age. Pruning involves some melding of art and science. As far as art, I’m aiming for the look of a mature, picturesque tree. Bonsai stem pruningAs far as science, I shorten stems where I want branching, usually just below the cut. Where I don’t want branching but want to decongest stems, I remove a stem or stems right to their base. I also remove any broken, dead, or crossing branches unless, of course, leaving them would be picturesque.

Finally, a thorough watering settles the plant into its refurbished home. Until new leaves unfold and new roots begin to explore new ground, water needs for baby ficus are minimal.

Oh, one more step. I stand back and take an admiringly look at baby ficus in its eighth year.Bonsai ready for another year

Fahrenheit Obsession

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A Pillbox Relaxes Me

A little blue pillbox has solved my sleep problems.

I’ve touted the abundance of fresh figs I gather in summer and fall from my greenhouse, and the salad greens in winter. Not to mention the transplants for the garden in spring and summer.

All this has come at a price: sleep. In winter I often worry that something will go awry with the heater that keeps greenhouse temperatures from dropping below freezing, threatening the life of the in-ground fig trees and the salad greens.

And things have occasionally gone awry. One winter, the gas company didn’t deliver the gas for the propane heater on time. Another winter the pilot light kept going out on the heater. Another winter there was an interruption in electrical service, just a small amount of which is needed for the thermostat.

From the warmth of my home, how could I know if my plants were suffering so that I could take action? I set up a remote monitor with a secondary thermostat and a light bulb; if the greenhouse temperature drops below 35° F., I know it because the light goes on. Of course, I have to look outside at the greenhouse occasionally. And if I’m in bed on some cold winter night . . . a bicycle mirror mounted on the window lets me know if the light is on without my even having to lift my head. Of course, all bets if I am asleep, or if electrical service is interrupted.

Which brings me back to the blue pillbox. It’s filled with electronics, not pills.

SensorPush in greenhouse

SensorPush in greenhouse

This device, sold as SensorPush, hangs on a nail in my greenhouse and continuously records temperature and humidity therein. No need for me to go to the greenhouse to communicate with it, though. It beams the information via bluetooth to my smartphone.

Better still, I can retrieve the information if my phone is beyond the approximately 325 foot bluetooth range with the help of the SensorPush Gateway.SensorPush readout The Gateway connects via wi-fi to put the temperature and humidity information on the web and then on to my smartphone. From anywhere that I have cell service. 

And even better, SensorPush can also alert my smartphone (and, hence, me) should the greenhouse temperature ever drop below (or above) whatever low (or high point) I set it at. The Gateway does require electricity. But Central Hudson has an alert feature to notify me, again via my increasingly smart smartphone, if the electrical service has been interrupted.

Checking Out the Weather, Continuously

I’m going to get another SensorPush to hang outdoors on one of the garden fenceposts. Knowing temperatures and humidity out in the garden is very useful to anyone who grows tree fruits.

Spring frosts threaten blossoms of fruit trees that bloom early in the season. Most threatened are apricots and peaches, but a season’s crop of apples, pears, cherries, or plums could also be snuffed out by a dramatic drop temperature. SensorPush outsideJust how much cold kills these blossoms depends on the kind of fruit and the stage of blossoming. For instance, when apricot flower buds have just begun to swell and separate, they’ll laugh off cold down to zero degrees F. Once the petals begin to spread, the buds are killed at 19°F. When petals fall, 24° is lethal.

So a SensorPush out in the garden would at the very least tell me whether to expect a crop from any of these tree fruits. Or to take action, like running outside to drape a blanket over a tree.

Knowing temperature and humidity can also predict the likelihood of disease. The spores of brown rot disease of plums, for instance, grow best in rainy weather with temperatures in the mid-70s during bloom or as fruit is ripening. Longer periods of wetness are needed at lower temperatures. Once again, such information can be used for prediction or action, in the latter case a preventative spray of sulfur, for example. (Sulfur, a naturally mined mineral, is an organically approved fungicide.) 

A final nice feature of SensorPush is that it keeps records of the data it collects. The graphs it generates can be viewed on my smartphone or downloaded to a computer.

Now . . .  if only I had an expensive art collection, a wine cellar, a reptile cage, or something else that needed close monitoring of temperature and humidity, I could justify another SensorPush.

Okay, now I’m going back to sleep, soundly.

Orchid Intimidation

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Fear Not

I used to find orchids intimidating to grow. Their dust-sized seeds are fairly unique in not having any food reserves so — in the wild, at least — need the help of a fungus partner to get growing. And some orchids (epiphytes) spend their lives nestled in trees so need a special potting mix when grown in a pot. Orchids have above-ground structures called pseudobulbs. And many, especially those that call humid, tropical forests their homes, demand exacting environmental conditions that are very different from that found in most homes. Whew!

So I steered clear of growing any orchid for many years — until a local orchid enthusiast gave me a plant. After a couple of years, that plant, around this time of year, sent up a slender stalk which was soon punctuated with eight waxy, white flowers, each an inch across. For two months, those flowers greeted me each morning with their beauty and their delicious fragrance. Every year since, that plant has greeted me for weeks in midwinter.

Odontogl . . . a Mouthful

My orchid has no common name so needs to be referred to by its botanical mouthful, Odontoglossum pulchellum. (Even orchid names are intimidating, especially so because different genera have often been hybridized, and the resulting hybrid combines the generic names of the parents. So a hybrid with Brassavola, Laelia, and Cattleya in its parentage would have the name Brassolaeliocattleya. Now that’s a mouthful!)

Name notwithstanding, my Odontoglossum pulchellum has been easy to grow and get to flower. Odontoglossum pulchellum orchidThe plant spends summers outdoors in semi-shade near the north wall of my house, and winters indoors on a sunny windowsill. I water it perhaps twice a week, unless I forget.

Sounds like your run-of-the-mill houseplant, doesn’t it? So much for orchids being difficult.

The only special treatment my plant gets is a special potting mix. Odontoglossum pulchellum is an epiphytic orchard. Commercial potting mixes are available for epiphytic orchards but I make my own by mixing equal parts of my standard (home made) potting mix with equal parts wood chips. Nothing special about the chips; I just scoop them up from the pile that I use mostly for mulch that an arborist kindly dumps next to my woodshed every year.

Every spring I divide my orchid plant into 2 or 3 new plants, potting each new plant into its own pot with fresh potting mix.

More Orchids?

Odontoglossum pulchellum is an orchid that tolerates being treated like your average houseplant. And this is one of the most important points in growing orchids in a house: choose a sort that thrives in such an environment. Other orchids that will grow in the average home include phalaenopsis, paphiopedilums, and mini-catts, which are dwarf hybrids involving Cattleya (the corsage orchid).

Ideally, for flowering at least, certain conditions must be met. Most orchids enjoy bright light, which means setting the plant at an east, west, or south windowsill. From spring through autumn, light from a south window is too intense and may scorch foliage, so plants need to be protected with a thin gauze curtain, or moved to other windows or semi-shade outdoors.

Most orchids — again, for flowering — enjoy a ten to fifteen degree temperature difference from day to night, which is no problem in winter if you heat with a wood stove or already turn the thermostat down at night to conserve fuel. In the summer, the plant needs to be outdoors or else in a room that is not air-conditioned.

Even those orchids adapted to a home environment benefit from increased humidity. I raise the humidity around my plants by perching the flowerpot above a water-filled tray. Clustering plants together is another way to raise the humidity near plants, and also creates a visual lushness.

Once correctly sited, many orchids do not require inordinate amounts of care. Water requirements vary, but species with thickened pseudobulbs (bulbous stems), such as my Odontoglossum, get by with the least frequent watering. Orchid roots are susceptible to fertilizer burn, so the rule in feeding is to do it frequently and lightly. As with other houseplants, some orchid species take an annual rest, and at such times watering and feeding should commensurately diminish.

Since “mastering” the growing of one orchid, I have acquired another kind.Pink rock orchid This orchid is Dendrobium kingianum, which does go under the more user-friendly common name of pink rock orchid. I have also gotten this one to flower — but not every year.

The Best Winter Herbs

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Mini-Trees for Flavor

Second best to fresh-picked vegetables in winter, which are not within most gardener’s grasp with temperatures in the single digits, are fresh-picked herbs. Fresh-picked herbs — indoors — in winter are within the grasp of most gardeners, even non-gardeners.

Flowering and fruiting demand lots of light energy, but it is the leaves of most herbs that provide us with flavoring, so most herbs do fine in any reasonably bright window. The same goes for normal household temperatures and humidity.

So make space near your windows for herb plants!

Let’s look below ground now. Any potting mix suitable for houseplants will also be to the liking of herb plants. The mix should hold some moisture between waterings while at the same time drain well so that roots, which need to breathe, don’t suffocate. My own mix, made  from equal parts compost, perlite, peat moss, and soil, provides air and moisture as well as nutrients and beneficial microorganisms that keep plants healthy. Soil dug from the garden and used straight up is never suitable; in the confines of a flowerpot, it holds too much moisture.

Now for the plants. Many people, perhaps most, choose basil as their number one herb to grow. Nix on that, indoors. Think of a Mediterranean summer with bright sunlight beaming down on warm soil. That’s what basil needs and what you can’t provide in winter except with supplemental light and, depending on your thermostat setting, supplemental heat. Not in my house.

I’d also suggest against parsley or chives. The problem is that neither grows fast enough to keep up with periodic clipping of the amounts normally harvested.

The best herbs for indoor growing are perennial, woody, subtropical plants. Before you bemoan my nixing of basil, chives, and parsley, consider these perennials: bay, rosemary, sage, and thyme. 

Small, indoor rosemary "tree"

Small, indoor rosemary “tree”

Bay, rosemary, sage, and thyme are also good choices for indoor growing because they do double duty: They’re pretty as well as flavorful, can stand repeated harvest, and live for years and years. My bay tree started life here as a small plant carried back in my backpack from California over 25 years ago. Fresh bay tastes quite different from the dried leaf, and much, much better. My rosemary plants are each a few years old and show no signs of decline.

Both bay and rosemary are happy to be trained as bushes, as topiaries, or as miniature trees. Mine are miniature trees, each plant with a short length of trunk capped by a mop head of leaves (and flowers, now, in the case of rosemary). Their training began early, when I selected a single vigorous shoot for each plant, staked it upright, and removed all other shoots. Once shoots achieved head-height (the height of THEIR proposed head, an artistic rather than horticultural decision), I pinched out their growing tips to induce side shoots to grow. I pinched the tips of side shoots to induce them, in turn, also to branch. All this pinching induced a dense mop head of stems and leaves atop each trunk. Small, lollipop trees.

Maintenance of the bay and rosemary is easy. Both are as large as I’d like them to be so every year or two, they get tipped out of their pots and and inch or two shaved off the outside of their root balls. After returning to their pots, potting soil gets packed into the space beyond the periphery of the root balls, giving new roots access to fresh soil and nutrients.

Their heads also get trimmed periodically to maintain their neat shape. The annual trimming provides a bumper harvest, but a few leaves or stems can be clipped for seasoning any time of year.

Bay laurel tree

Bay laurel

I’m not enough of a fan of sage or thyme to grow them through winter indoors. But sage could be grown as a small, decorative shrub, especially varieties such as Tricolor, with white-edged leaves, Purpurascens, with purplish leaves, or Aurea, with some gold in its leaves. Thyme, which comes in various colors and flavors (lemon or caraway, for example), is a subshrub, or ground cover. How about a thyme ground cover carpeting the ground at the feet of a potted miniature bay tree?

Ongoing care for any of these herbs is watering, which can spell the difference between success or failure. Neither rosemary, bay, sage, nor thyme readily show their thirst with wilting leaves. Years ago, as I brushed past the little rosemary tree I was growing at the time, all the leaves dropped off. The plant was dead.

The potting soil for any of these plants needs to be kept just moist. Scheduled watering won’t do because watering needs changes through the season with growing conditions. A $10 “moisture meter” is an easy way to tell whether a plant is thirsty, as is, with practice, lifting a pot to feel how heavy it is.

Carrying the Sky on Their Backs

I saw two bluebirds a few days ago, but am not ascribing any significance to the sighting. They’re just pretty.

The Green Faerie

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In a Smoke-Filled Café . . . 

What you are about to read might have been improved upon if I had been writing with la fée verde (the green fairy) looking over my shoulder. Or better yet, if I also was writing from a smoke-filled cafe in Paris.

The Green Faerie, Viktor Oliva

The Green Faerie, Viktor Oliva

Or even better, from a smoke filled cafe at the turn of the 19th century, hanging out with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Lord Byron.

There’s a certain mystique with drinking absinthe, la fée verde, a distilled spirit concocted from various herbs which might include tansy, fennel, green anise, and bee balm. The most important ingredient is, of course, Artemisia absinthe, absinthe, the plant. Absinthe is one of many plants in the genus Artemisia, commonly referred to as mugwarts or wormwoods.

Full disclosure: I generally am not fond of this genus because it’s one of my worst weeds. My artemisiac nemesis is not absinthe, though, but common wormwood (Artimesia vulgaris). This ugly, perennial weed perennially keeps poking up through the leafy mulch beneath a clump of delphiniums in one corner fo the garden.

Whence the Green Faerie?

But back to absinthe, the drink. It’s been accused of being an addictive, psychoactive drug and hallucinogen, which led to its being banned in the early 1900s almost everywhere except the United Kingdom.

Artemisias all contain potent chemicals, and the chemical of potency of absinthe is thujone. Not that absinthe has cornered the market on thujone; it’s also found in some junipers, tansy, some mints, and arborvitae, whose generic name is Thuja.

As it turns out, the concentration of thujone in absinthe is too low to invite visits from the green fairy.

The Absinthe Drinker, Picasso

The Absinthe Drinker, Picasso

That invite comes from alcohol, 45-74%, that’s responsible — duh — for absinthe’s bringing on hallucinations and other psychological changes. And its addictiveness.

Still, thujone can be toxic, which is perhaps why absinthe sold in the U.S. must contain less than 10 ppm thujone. Which has led to some rumors that American absinthe isn’t “real” absinthe. Not true because, first of all, absinthe is not a well defined alcoholic drink. And secondly, less thujone does not mean less absinthe, the plant, in the bottle. Particular absinthe plants vary in their thujone concentration. And thirdly, thujone concentration in the absinthe poured out of the bottle will vary also with length and method of storage; it decomposes over time.

Most artemisias are very bitter, so enjoying absinthe, the drink, is an acquired taste. (I’ve never tasted absinthe, nor, with my aversion to bitter flavors, do I intend to.) And even then, absinthe is not a liquid anyone would drink straight up.

The Absinthe Drinker, Degas

The Absinthe Drinker, Degas

All of the various methods of imbibing it involve sweetening it with sugar and diluting it with some iced water. Well, perhaps not all methods in this era of craft cocktails.

Absinthe, the plant, is not hard to grow. It’s a perennial that’s native to Europe but has naturalized in the U.S. and Canada. (Uh oh.) It enjoys a dry, fertile soil, especially one rich in nitrogen. Artemisias generally have relatively inconspicuous flowers but sometimes attractive, hoary leaves; absinthe’s leaves are gray-green on their upper sides and white on their undersides. Dusty Miller is the showiest of the artemisias, with powdery, white leaves.

My experience with common wormwood makes the ease of propagating absinthe somewhat frightening. Cuttings root readily and the plant self-seeds generously.

One Artemesia I Do Like

Now that I think of it, there is one artemesia that I do especially like, despite its potential weedy nature. Sweet Annie (A. annua) is a self-seeding annual whose tiny seeds sprout every spring to grow into 2 to 5 foot tall sweetly fragrant plants. Sweet AnnieThe sweet, resiny aroma is retained in air-dried plants for years. I keep a clump hanging upside down near my front door so that the aroma can waft into the air when the door is opened or someone brushes past.

When l’heure verte (the green hour, as 5 pm was called among absinthe enthusiasts (or addicts) in late 19th century France arrives, you won’t see me sitting at a table peering down into my glass of absinthe. The only artemesia that I might imbibe would be Sweet Annie, not because it tastes good. If I ever contract malaria, Sweet Annie is the ticket. It’s a traditional Chinese treatment and has in recent decades been incorporated into modern treatments also. So that’s another reason to like Sweet Annie, but not absinthe.

Some Fruits and a Ornamental Veggie

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Happy Blueberries, Happy Me

My sixteen blueberry plants make me happy, so I make them happy. (They made me happy this year to the tune of 190 quarts of berries, half of which are in the freezer.) I don’t know how much work bearing all those berries was for them, but I just finished my annual fall ritual of lugging bag upon bag of leaves over to the berry patch to spread beneath the whole 750 square foot planted area.Blueberry fruit cluster

I don’t begin this ritual spreading until the blueberries’ leaves drop. Then, old leaves and dried up, old fruits are on the ground and get buried beneath the mulch, preventing any disease spores lurking in these fallen leaves or fruits from lofting back up into the plants next spring. Rainy, overcast summers or hot, dry summers or any weather in between — my bushes have never had any disease problems.

In past years, I did do two things before spreading that mulch. First, I spread some nitrogen fertilizer: my universal pabulum, soybean meal, at the rate of 2 pounds per hundred square feet. And second, I spread some sulfur, at about the same rate, to keep the soil acidic. After many years of mulching, the soil has built up an ample reserve of organic nitrogen — evidenced by the plants’ 2 to 4 feet of new stem growth each year. So I no longer add extra nitrogen.

With all those years of mulching, levels of decomposed and decomposing soil organic matter have greatly increased the soil’s buffering capacity for acidity. That means that I no longer have to pay such close attention to acidity, so I rarely add sulfur anymore.
Sammy also likes the mulch

Sammy also likes the mulch


Besides all these other benefit, the mulch has created a soft root run that retains moisture, just what blueberries’ thin roots really like. Fruit is borne on shoots that grew the previous season, so each year’s vigorous new growth translates into a good crop in the offing for the next year.

New York Bananas

Although the crop seemed paltry at first this year, by the time autumn came around, pawpaws were in abundance. This uncommon fruit is the northernmost member of the tropical custard apple family, and the fruit does indeed taste very tropical — a flavor mix of banana, mango, avocado, and vanilla custard — even though it’s easy to grow and native throughout much of the eastern U.S..Pawpaw, like crème brûlée

Two trees would be adequate for most households; I have about 20, just so I can learn more about them and their individual differences. That makes for a lot of pawpaws! (I test market most of them.)Row of pawpaw & black currant

Pawpaw fruits are very variable in both size and flavor even among the branches of a single tree. One year, I tried thinning the fruits to see if that would increase size of remaining fruits, as it does with apples and peaches. Pawpaw has a multiple ovary so each blossom can give rise to as many as 9 fruits. The small fruits are hard to see because they match so closely the green color of the leaves, so I didn’t thin as many as I had hoped. That said, at season’s end, fruits on thinned clusters seemed no larger than fruits on unthinned clusters.

Beginning around the middle of September, I began harvesting the first fruits. I picked some up from the ground and picked some softening ones from the trees, all of which continued through October. By putting them immediately in a cooler at 40°F, I still had good fruit into the middle of November.

Scarlet Runners

Every year I fear that at season’s end I’ll remember something I forgot to plant. This year it was scarlet runner beans.Scarlet runner bean flower

Despite the “bean” in the name, I’ve grown this vining bean, as do most people, primarily as an ornamental, for its scarlet blossoms. I occasionally eat the fat, hairy, yet delectable green beans.

Every year I collect some of the matured black and pale purple, calico seeds for replanting the following year. One year, I decided to cook up some of these seeds and taste them. Scarlet runner bean seeds are quite tasty (and, I learned prior to eating, nonpoisonous). Scarlet runner beans
 
Next year I’ll remember the scarlet runners. My yard will be aflame in scarlet flowers and, because the plant is pest-free  —  even to Mexican bean beetles — I expect to reap a bumper crop of beans.

Giving Thanks

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Share the Bounty

Thanksgiving is a holiday that really touches the gardener, this gardener, me, at least. If nothing more, it’s a harvest festival, a celebration of the bounty of the season’s efforts. And the season has been bountiful, as is every season if a variety of crops are grown.

Like most home gardeners, I grow a slew of different vegetables and fruits in my gardens. This year’s poor crops of okra, lima beans, and tomatoes was counterbalanced by especially bounteous crops of peppers, cabbages (Asian and European), and various kinds of corn (sweet corn, popcorn, polenta corn) and beans (green, cannelloni).

More than just give thanks, why not give back? One way would be to share the bounty with others who either don’t garden or can’t afford to purchase enough produce. Ample Harvest (www.ampleharvest.org), Angel Food Ministries (www.AngelFoodMinistries.org), and Feeding America (www.feedingamerica.org) are three organizations that can direct your vegetables and fruits to local pantries. Some gardeners take inspiration from the suggestion of Garden Writers Association to “Plant a Row for the Hungry.”

Thank You, Soil

This Thanksgiving, actually all through autumn (and every autumn), I’m thankful to the soil. Much of life is supported by the thin skin of earth that envelops the earth’s surface. (The skin of an apple is, relatively speaking, proportionally the same to the size of the fruit as the skin of soil is to the size of our planet.)Mulched apple trees

That earthy skin also plays an important role in recycling water and organic materials.  Soil stores and purifies water, and is host to 10,000-50,000 species of microorganisms in every teaspoon that break down and recycle waste leaves, tree trunks, dead animals and other organic materials.

I offer thanks to the soil by feeding soil organisms organic materials. I haul in materials that people elsewhere have too much of: bagged leaves; manure mixed with wood shavings and hay from a local horse farm; wood shavings from a sawmill. On site, I feed soil creatures kitchen trimmings, hay mowed from my meadow, old cotton, wool or leather clothing, shredded paper, and anything else derived from what is or was living. Some of the stuff gets spread on the ground as mulch. Some gets composted before being spread on the ground.Mulching chestnuts

When all is said and done, my ground each years is better, in terms of fertility, soil life, water holding and drainage, than it was the previous year. On the practical side, there’s no need for me to purchase fertilizer.

Good, crumbly soil structure

Good, crumbly soil structure

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That’s not all with this thankfulness. How about the environment generally, not just the soil? Nothing to do this time of year except to carry on as usual. That includes eliminating or minimizing the use of various -icides. Fungicides to kill fungi, insecticide to kill insects, herbicides to kill weeds, acaricides to kill mites, bactericides to kill bacteria . . .  did I leave any out?

True, gardening isn’t Nature, and even good gardens get occasional pest problems. But, as I wrote above, most gardens easily yield an abundance of vegetables, fruits, or flowers, so some could be sacrificed to (shared with?) pests.

And there’s something to be said for ignoring a certain amount of damage, especially if it is only cosmetic. After all, plants tolerate the damage. The remaining parts of a leaf that has been chewed away by and insect, for example, then step up to bat with beefed up  photosynthesis.

On the rare occasions when it’s necessary to reach for some -icide to do in a pest has gotten sufficiently out of control to seriously threatens a plant, I opt for environmentally-friendly alternatives. I’ll use the pest-specific bacterial fungicide Bacillus thurengiensis (sold under such trade names as Thuricide and Dipel) to kill the various cabbage worms (they’re actually not “worms” but “caterpillars”). And insecticidal soap or horticultural oil to kill scale insects and mealybugs, and certain fungi, and pans of beer to attract and kill slugs.

Mostly, though, I let Nature take care of itself, within reason. I decide what plants to put in my gardens and what plants to weed out (weeds). Severe pest outbreaks require a decision on whether action is necessary or whether the particular crop can be sacrificed. (That’s the advantage of home gardens: financial decisions don’t rule and diversity means there’s always plenty of other vegetables or fruits to harvest.) I regularly “feed” the little guys in the soil who, in turn, feed the plants to replenish nutrients they take from the soil, and then are moved further offsite into my kitchen.

Thanksgiving harvest

Thanksgiving harvest

Leafy Exercises

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A New Exercise: Un-Rei-King

A few years ago I wrote that, among the many benefits of gardening is the opportunity it offers for varied, productive exercise. At that time I highlighted rei-king (ray-KING). Now, let’s add un-rei-king to join rei-king, zumba, cardiofunk, and other ways modern humans build and maintain sleek, fit bodies.Leaf bags with pawpaws

In fact, many people, including couch potatoes and nongardeners, practice rei-king this time of year. You can see them practicing this sweeping motion on their lawn amidst gathering piles of leaves.

Un-rei-king is a more rare form of exercise, of which I am a practitioner. Rei-kingers gather those piles of leaves that are a byproduct of their exercise into large bags, then muscle them curbside. I gather said bags, muscle them gardenside, and launch into un-rei-king. That is, I employ a similar motion to rei-king, except more jagged and with a pitchfork, spreading the leaves once I have freed them from their baggy confines.

Feeding the Soil to Feed the Plants

Exercise aside, my goal is to blanket the ground beneath one row of pear trees, a large bed of gooseberry bushes and grapes, and another long row of pawpaw trees and blackcurrant bushes with 6 to 12 inches of autumn leaves. That fluffy blanket will hold autumn’s warmth in the soil long after bare soil has frozen solid to a few inches depth.

I have to practice un-rei-king every year in November because by this time next year, that leafy blanket will have pretty much evanesced into thin air, literally. Leaves are composed mostly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen which becomes, over the course of the year, carbon dioxide and water vapor.

All this may seem like wasted effort (except for the exercise), but it’s not. The transmutation of leaves to carbon dioxide and water happens as bacteria, fungi, worms, and other soil organisms gobble up the leaves. Mostly, these creatures are beneficial, helping plants to fight off pests.

Leaves are mostly, but not only carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; also contained therein are a slew of minerals needed by plants. In addition to feeding soil life, as the leaves decompose they’re also fertilizing the ground. More than that, natural, organic compounds are being formed that help make minerals already in the soil more accessible to plants.

All this living activity also releases into the ground other natural, organic compounds that aggregate soil particles to create pores for good aeration as well as to act spongy to help the ground, at the same time, hold moisture.

All of which is to say that after years of un-rei-king, my soil is soft, fluffy, moist, and very much alive. The pear trees, gooseberry bushes, etc. love it.

Uh-Oh, Mice

Meadow mice also enjoy the fluffy blanket, beneath which they can nest — and feed on plant roots and bark! So as I lay down that blanket, I’m also putting an 18-inch high cylinder of hardware cloth or some commercial wrap around the bottom of the tree trunks to fend off the mice.

I’ll also keep the leaves a few inches back off the trunks to keep mice at bay and avoid rotting of the trunk. Such precautions are unnecessary for shrubs, whose fresh supplies of stems that grow each spring at ground level can replace any chewed ones. (That’s why they are shrubby.)Tree protected with plastic spiral

And Some Leaves — For Next Year

Not yet finished with leaves. Every autumn a local landscaper dumps a truckload of vacuumed-up leaves here. On that pile I grow watermelons all summer long. By now, the leaf pile has about half-decomposed into “leaf mold” which is pretty much the same thing as compost. Except rougher, because it’s not yet in the final stages of decomposition.Leaf pile

Being richer in nutrients than freshly fallen leaves, leaf mold is just the ticket for loading into a cart for mulching some special plants: a young chestnut tree, filbert bushes, and semi-dwarf apple trees. Plus, it brings along all the aforementioned benefits of raw leaf mulch.Mulch, leaf mold on pear
Spreading leaf mold

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Winter’s Comin’

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Ready of Ol’ Man Winter

October 31st, was slated to be the first hard frost of the season, later than ever. That afternoon, I went down my checklist of things to do in preparation for the cold.

Drip irrigation needed to be shut down so that ice wouldn’t damage the lines. I opened up the drains at the ends and at the low points of the main lines. I also  opened up the valves on all the drip lines so water wouldn’t get trapped anywhere. Some people blow out all the lines with compressed air.

The only parts of the drip system that ever need to be brought indoors are the parts near the spigot: the battery-powered timer, the pressure reducer, and the filter.

But I wasn’t yet finished with water. All hoses got drained, with any sprayers or hose wands removed from their ends. Hoses were also removed from frost-free hydrants to let the water drain freely out their valves. (The hydrants are frost free because water drains and enters the hydrant’s pipe four feet below ground, where temperatures, even in winter, remain at a balmy 50° F. or so.)

Tropical plants indoors

Tropical plants indoors

Moving on to plants . . . Tropical houseplants had all been brought inside, but outside still remained subtropicals, including some potted figs, pomegranates, bay laurel, olive, and an angel’s trumpet (Brugsmansia). Subtropical plants can tolerate, even enjoy, temperatures below freezing, even down as low as 10°F. for some of them. My pomegranates, the varieties Kazake and Salavatski, both from western Asia, are reputedly cold-hardy to below 0°F! All these subropicals will enjoy the great outdoors for a few more weeks, barring a drastic change in the weather.

Some vegetables remaining out in the garden can likewise weather cold weather well. Just to make sure, though, I laid “floating row covers” over beds of endive, mustard greens, and lettuce. These diaphanous coverings keep plants beneath them a few degrees warmer while letting light and water filter through. The soil retains enough heat to protect roots of turnip and winter radishes, which are further protected beneath their leafy canopies.

I forgot to pick and eat Sungold tomatoes, which would be done for after a freezing night. Any red peppers still left on the plants had been harvested; those plants would also be dead on the morrow. I can’t complain; the Sungolds and the peppers bore well and for a longer time than ever before.

The final cold prep was to check the greenhouse, making sure window, sidewalls, and doors are closed up tight, and the heater is functional.

I’m ready for Ol’ Man Winter.

Not So Cold

The morning after: The cold turned out to be not nearly as dramatic as expected. A little before sunrise a cloud cover crept over the sky, tucking in the earth’s warmth rather than letting it radiate out to a clear sky. The low temperature for the night was 28°F. Even the pepper and tomato plants had toughened up enough by then to tolerate that amount of cold. Not to keep ripening good-tasting fruit, though.

Temperatures aren’t predicted to drop near freezing for many days after that night, but I didn’t consider my scurrying around to move or cover plants, and drain water lines, to be wasted effort. Endives and other greens still out in the vegetable garden transpire very little water in cool weather, and even less so when covered with floating row covers.

The only watering needed from then on would be of the compost pile, easily accessible from one of the frost-free hydrants and a short length of hose, connected as needed.

“Trip” to the Mediterranean

Greenhouse temperatures dropped only to 40°F, the temperature at which I set the thermostat. Cloudy days in there are like today are akin to winter days along the Mediterranean: Very cool and somewhat dreary. On sunny days, I open the greenhouse door to bathe in a tropical paradise of sunlight, heat, and high humidity, with lush plants of lettuce, mustard, arugula, celery, chard, claytonia, and parsley blanketing the ground. Greenhouse fig and greens

Fig trees in the greenhouse have slowly eased their way into dormancy. I hurried them along by lopping them back — except for the few branches still ripening a few fruits. Those figs, ripening in low sun and cooler weather (even in the greenhouse), aren’t as tasty as those of summer and early autumn. I wonder how tasty November figs are in Italy and Greece?

 

The Morning After

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Endive Galore

I don’t know if was a case of green thumbness or the weather, but my bed of endive is now almost as frightening as a zucchini planting in summer. The bed, 3 feet wide by 20 feet long, is solid green with endive plants, each and every plant looking as if it’s been pumped up on steroids.Endive bed

I sowed seeds in 4 by 6 inch seed trays around August 1st, “pricked out” the seedlings into individual growing cells filled with homemade potting soil about a week later, and  transplanted them into the garden in the beginning of September. The bed had been home to one of this summer’s planting of sweet corn (Golden Bantam), a heavy feeder, so after clearing the corn I slathered the bed with an inch depth of pure compost.

Perhaps the vigor of these plants also reflects the extra space I gave them. In years past I would cram 3 rows into a 3-foot-wide bed. Because we never can eat all the endive I plant, this year I planted only 2 rows down the bed. Hating to see any wasted space in the garden, I set a row of lettuce transplants, now eaten, up the middle of the bed. The endive plants have opportunistically expanded to fill whatever space they can.

Fortunately, there’s no rush to eat all that greenery. The bigger they get, the more the endives’ leaves fold in on themselves to create blanched, succulent leaves of a loose head. Upcoming cooler weather also brings out the best flavor in these plants. After being covered with clear plastic, which I’ll support with a series of metal hoops, the endive should remain flavorful for weeks to come. That’s assuming the muscular plants can be fit beneath the hoops and plastic.

I do have a Plan B: Just as zucchini bread was invented as a way to deal with zucchini excess, white bean and escarole soup might be just the ticket for my escarole “problem.”

Floating Row Cover

Another bed, planted from seed sown on August 15th, is also full of greenery. Not nearly as dense, though, which is okay because the bed is planted for its roots. Up the bed run 2 rows of turnips and one row of winter radishes.

One year I couldn’t see the turnip and radish bed because I had hidden it beneath a “floating row cover.” Floating row covers, which let water, light, and air pass through, are so lightweight that they can be just laid on top of the ground to be pushed up by growing plants. That year, I made it even easier on my plants by propping the covers up with the same kinds of metal hoops that will hold the clear plastic over the endive bed once the weather turns cold.  The row of hoops propping up the plastic creates a tunnel that, every year, looks like a sleeping, giant, white caterpillar. Garden view, the morning after

The purpose of the floating row cover was to block the root maggots that typically tunnel into many — too many — of my turnip and radish roots. Beneficial nematodes are supposed to help deal with that problem, but have been — in my experience, at least — ineffectual.

This year, for no apparent reason, most of the turnips and radishes are free of maggot attack.

A View From Above

Every morning I look down from my second story bedroom window at the garden. Closest in view is the bed of endive; looking further back, my eyes come to the back of the garden, where a row of tall, thin evergreens stand sentry to block the view of the compost piles. Those evergreens, spires of the Emerald (also known as Smaragd and Emerald Green) variety of arborvitae, are among the commonest of landscape plants. I like them.Garden view from bedroom window

The trees are at their upper limit of 15 feet high and 5 feet wide, and create a perfect screen without needing too much elbow room. They’re also perfect for injecting a bit of civility to the more frowsy gooseberry bushes and overgrown (at least till I prune them) grapevines in the foreground. Some arborvitaes turn a muddy green in winter but Emerald keeps its vibrant green color.

To the north, just beyond the garden is another row of spires, five plants of a juniper variety called Gold Cone. Each plant will mature to 10 feet tall with a spread of a mere 3 feet, just enough to hide my Cool Bot walk-in cooler, now home to boxes of apples, pears, pawpaws, cabbages, carrots, and persimmons. Livening things up is the gold coloration at the tips of Gold Cone branches.