Gardening – Page 29

RATIONALITY CHALLENGED

May 6, 2016/4 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

New York Avocadoes!?!?

    I make no claim to be rational in my gardening — especially this time of year. This thought comes to mind as I look closely at two avocado plants sitting in a sunny window. “Nothing irrational about growing avocado plants in New York,” you might say. After all, the large seeds are fun and easy to sprout, and the resulting plant adds some tropical greenery indoors.
   My two plants were run-of-the-mill avocado houseplants until I took knife to them.
   Let’s backtrack . . . Among my regrets of not living 1,000 miles or so south of here is not being able to harvest my own citrus and avocados. (Also, no outdoor gardenia shrubs or southern magnolia trees here.) A few indoor citrus plants do call mi casa sus casa. But no avocados. Avocado grafts
   From seed, an avocado would take a long time before it bore its first fruit. And especially long under less-that-ideal northern conditions, including indoors in winter.
   And worse, when the plant does finally flower, it might not bear fruit. Avocados generally need cross-pollination because the pollen isn’t ripe at the same time that the female stigma is receptive. Avocado pollinators need to be fairly specific, so that one plant’s pollen is in synch with another plant’s stigmas.
   And even worse, after all that time and hoping for appropriate mates, fruits that do form might not taste good. They wouldn’t be selected clones, such as the delectable Haas or Mexicola, but seedlings. (Plant a seed from a good tasting apple and the resulting tree has only one in 10,000 chance of bearing a good-tasting fruit.)
   Which is why I took a knife to my two avocado seedlings, to graft them to known, good-tasting varieties that are pollination compatible. A friend in Florida overnighted me scions — pencil-thick stems, with leaves stripped — cut from his Marcus Pinkham and Lula avocado trees. One of my seedlings got a whip graft of Marcus Pinkham; the other got a side-veneer graft of Lulu.
   I coverWithed both grafts with plastic to maintain humidity, and every day peer at the scions hoping to see some swelling in preparation for growth.
   Rational gardening? No. After all, even if all goes as planned, how many avocados could I expect to harvest from two small trees? Still, it’s fun.

Warm. Plant.

Outdoors, it’s the weather that toys with my rationality. A spate of warm days and great restraint is needed not to plant vegetables. I keep referring to my notes (and the chart I made in my book Weedless Gardening) that tell me when to plant what.
Planting onions With yesterday’s 75 degree temperatures, urges to plant were satisfied — for that day, at least — by my poking holes into the ground into which I dropped onion plants sown indoors on February 1st. Three-hundred of them in a 20 foot long by 36 inch wide bed. (This was later than the April 21st onion planting date specified in my book, but the weather was cold so I forgot to look at my book.)

Planting Break. Turn Compost.

    When I get tired of planting, I can always turn to turning my compost piles.
   Not that compost piles have to be turned. In contrast to other fermentations, such as bread-making and wine-making, compost always comes out right. Pile up any mix of organic (living or once-living) materials, and eventually you get compost.
   I turn my compost piles so that materials on the outside of the pile get to be on the inside of the pile, second time around. This makes for a more homogeneous finished product. Turning compost
   I turn my compost piles to better monitor their progress, so adjustments can be made, as needed, and to get some idea when they’ll be ready for use. Occasionally, a pile will have a dry region; it gets watered. Occasionally, a mass of material needs to be broken up to better expose it to moisture and microorganisms.
   I also turn my compost piles because it’s good exercise and it’s interesting. But, like I wrote, turning a compost pile is not a must.

OLD ENEMIES RETURN

April 27, 2016/7 Comments/in Gardening, Pests, Soil/by Lee Reich

Damn Damping Off

    My first garden foe, which I haven’t seen for years, recently sneaked into the greenhouse. Damping-off sounds pretty bad but not as bad as its scientific names, probably Rhizoctonia or Pythium, which, along with a few other fungi, can cause damping off.
   My introduction to damping-off disease came before my first plants even made it out to my first adult garden. At the time, I was living in a relatively dark apartment, a converted motel room, and was eager to start seedlings. I sowed all sorts of seeds in peat pots, stood them in a little water, then crowded them together on all the shelf space that could be mustered. Damping off of cabbage
   Young sprouts never appeared in some of the pots. In others, seedling emerged, then toppled over, their “ankles” reduced to a withered string of rotted cells, unable to support the small plants physically or physiologically.
   Conditions created were perfect for any one of the damping-off culprits: overly wet soil, cool temperatures, low light, weak growth, stagnant air. How was I, a beginning gardener, to know? I soon learned to avoid the disease by, in addition to providing good light, providing sufficient fertility to promote strong growth that resists disease, paying careful attention to watering, and using a fan to keep air moving.
   My seeds now go into a potting mix containing sufficient perlite to help drain away excess water. Sterile potting mixes, such a those sold bagged, are presumably free of damping-off culprits. But sterile mixes also lack beneficial soil microorganisms so afford free rein to any culprits that make their way into a mix. My home made potting mix isn’t sterilized.
   A couple of other tricks also limit damping-off disease. Spreading a thin layer of dry material, such as perlite, vermiculite, sand, or kitty litter (calcined montmorillonite clay) on the surface of the potting mix keeps the stem area dry. And there is some evidence that chamomile tea (cooled) controls damping-disease if sprayed on plants and soil surface.
   I’m considering this most recent damping-off incident to be a fluke, so far affecting just a single cabbage plant in a whole flat of cabbages.

Second Garden, Second Foe

That first garden, my first garden, was short-lived. Not because of any horticultural trauma, but because it was begun on August 1st and, before the following year’s gardening season got underway, I had moved. My new site, home to my second adult garden, was also home to my second garden foe, which has been lurking in the wings of every garden ever since then.

Quackgrass with runner

That foe is and was quackgrass, also known as witchgrass, couchgrass, and, botanically, Elytrigia repens. It is small consolation that quackgrass isn’t only my problem; this native of Europe, north Africa, and parts of Asia and the Arctic, is now a worldwide weed.
Soon after turning over the soil to begin that second garden, quackgrass invaded. With vengeance. Long story short: I had read of the benefits of mulches in smothering weeds; in Wisconsin, where I lived, lakes were becoming clogged with water weeds, which municipalities harvested; I convinced a water weed crew to dump a truckload of water weeds on my front lawn; my quackgrass expired beneath a slurpy mulch of quackgrass laid atop the ground pitchfork by pitchfork.

Foe #2, Defeated (Sort Of)

    Quackgrass has always stalked the edges of my gardens, waiting for a chance to slink in. It spreads mostly by underground rhizomes, which are modified stems that creep just beneath the surface of the ground. Growing tips of quackgrass rhizomes are pointed and sharp enough to penetrate a potato. Given time, quackgrass develops an underground lacework of rhizomes.
   My current garden never had a quackgrass problem, mostly because I never tilled it or turned over the soil. Tilling or hand-digging it, as I did in my second garden, compounds quackgrass problems because each piece of rhizome can grow into a whole new plant.
   My current hotspot of quackgrass found a fortuitous opening, creeping in among a planting of coral bells beneath a very thorny rose bush along the edge of my vegetable garden. Quackgrass rhizomes must be removed or the quackgrass smothered, either difficult to do among the coral bells and the rose.
Concrete garden edge My plan is to sacrifice the coral bells and pull out every rhizome I can find. In soft soil this time of year, long pieces can be lifted with minimum breakage or soil disturbance. A mulch with a few layers of newspaper, topped with a wood chip mulch (part of weed management, as described in my book Weedless Gardening) will suffocate any overlooked rhizome pieces trying to sprout. In the absence of other plants among which the rhizomes could sprout, mulching alone can do in quackgrass, as it did in my second garden.
   Longer term, barriers around garden edges could prevent quackgrass rhizome entry. Barriers need to be deep or wide. A concrete strip, 6 inches wide and decoratively inlaid with handmade tiles, has been effective elsewhere along my garden edge.
   For now, I have to stop writing and get to work on the quackgrass. I have too, after all, because a wrote a book called Weedless Gardening!

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WEATHER

April 22, 2016/0 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Pruning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Snow!!

The talk of the town these days is the weather. In this town, at least, and other towns throughout the Northeast. After a relatively snowless winter punctuated with warm spells, spring knocked early at winter’s door and was let in. Even I, who try to be guided by the calendar rather than my gut, succumbed, planting peas a full two weeks earlier than my usual date of April 1st. Flowering trees and bushes — and more importantly, those whose flowers later morph into luscious fruits — similarly fell prey to spring weather’s apparent arrival.
As I write, snowflakes tumble down from a gray sky, adding to the three inches of snow already piled onto spring green grass. Temperatures tonight and tomorrow night are predicted to drop near 20 degrees F. We’ve all been duped!!

Nanking cherry flowers with snow

   I’m most concerned, and least able to do anything about, weather’s effect on my fruit trees and bushes. Nanking cherries were in full bloom a few days ago, a full two weeks earlier than average. Asian pear flower buds look about to pop open, blueberry buds have fattened in preparation for opening , and black currants and gooseberries have almost fully leafed out.
   Options available to commercial orchards are not feasible in backyards. Such as sprinkling plants with water so that the heat of fusion released as water freezes keeps buds warm; you can’t stop sprinkling until weather warms enough to melt all ice. On clear, cold nights, heavier, cold air sinks but can be warmed by mixing in warm air from higher up. Not many backyard gardeners have wind machines or are willing to have a helicopter hover overhead all night pushing down warmer air.
   What we backyard growers can do that orchardists cannot, feasibly, is to snug a few small plants — bushes and dwarf trees — beneath a blanket. (Except that I have a lot more than a few small fruit plants.) That’s about it. Besides keeping fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

Winter Cold!!

Peach flower buds, dead

Peaches are famous for their early blossoming, so I was especially worried for them. My peach tree spent its first few years in a large pot which could be conveniently lugged into the garage whenever cold weather threatened its blossoms.
No need to worry this year. I checked the fat, flower buds, and they are already dead. Winter’s cold and/or fluctuating temperatures evidently had already done them in.

(Too) Early Peas

    My early planted peas took advantage of the last couple of weeks of balmy weather and sprouted quickly. Temperatures near 20° will surely freeze those sprouts. They might resprout from protected buds below ground, or not.
   I nudged ol’ man winter aside and created a warmer microclimate over the sprouts by putting up metal hoops covered with row covers over them. They may have been better off with the blanket of snow tucked all around them. Then again, the snow cover might settle too much, or blow away.
   In a few days, I’ll see how the peas fared. Worst case scenario: replant.

Not Climate Change

“Climate change” is the battle cry for this whacky weather. But is it really so whacky?
As far as the cold, the average date for the last killing frost of spring in my garden is around the third week in May. The key word here is “average.” Looking at a tabulation of percent chance of cold temperatures on various spring dates (davesgarden.com), on average there’s a 50% chance of the thermometer hitting 24° on April 14th around here, a 10% chance on April 27th.

Peas under tunnels & snow

   “Frost” means 32°F. For that magic 32°, which is lethal to tomato and pepper seedlings but of no consequence to cabbage and onion transplants, there’s a 50% chance of that temperature on May 13th, even a 10% chance on May 27th.
   Of course, temperatures in my (or your) garden could be a few degrees different from those at nearby weather stations, which supply those averages. Still, looking back at my own records, while last year Nanking cherries blossomed here on May 2nd in 1999, they blossomed on April 18th in 2004, on April 26th in 2012, and on March 29th in 2015.
   So it seems like whacky weather is the norm. Except this year, it does still seem that the early warming was slightly earlier, and the later cold — 15°F, now, the day after the snowfall — more intense. Then again, Nanking cherries have never failed me.

HISTORIC PEAR AND NUTTY PINE

April 14, 2016/12 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

M’Lady’s Luscious Pear

    Gardening provides so many avenues of interest down which to wander. The broad avenue of history, for example, which comes to mind as I checked up on the Lady Petre pear I made.
   This pear’s most recent history traces back to last year when, after doing a grafting workshop with the Philadelphia Orchard Project at historic Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, I was offered a sprig from the Lady Petre pear tree there. I grow about two dozen varieties of pear, so the last thing I needed was another pear tree. But Lady Petre was special.
   John Bartram is often considered “America’s first botanist.” In addition to collecting plants and sharing them with others, mostly in England, he sometimes received plants. Such as the pear seed from England’s Lady Petre, in 1735.
   Quoting from the account published in John Loudon’s The Gardener’s Magazine of 1831, the seed was “planted by Mr. Bartram near one end of the dwelling-house, at the edge of a gravel walk, where It has never received any manure or rich earth . . . The tree has never been subject to blight, and has not once failed to bear In the last thirty years; some seasons producing 10 to 12 bushels of fine handsome fruit, which Is in good eating from the middle of September to Christmas. The fruit is always worth from three dollars to five dollars a bushel . . . It Is in the most perfect health, although near a century old.”
   Almost a hundred years after that, Ulysses P. Hedrick wrote, in his 1921 tome, The Pears of New York, that “the tree still stands, somewhat stricken with its two centuries, but withal a noble specimen seemingly capable of breasting large blows of age for many years to come.” Alas, the Lady Petre tree finally succumbed to old age in the latter half of the 20th century — but not before someone had the foresight to clip of some branches to graft and make new trees.
   As far as the fruit, Mr. Bartram wrote that “The Pear raised from her (Lady Petre’s) seed hath borne a number of the finest relished fruit. I think a better is not in the world.” More specifically, the fruit was described as having flesh that is “white, soft, juicy, melting, like a butter pear; delicious flavour, peculiar, very slightly musky, and vinous.”

Flowers already forming on young grafted tree

And now I have a clone of that original plant and can look forward to tasting the fruit, the first variety of pear to have originated in America. The stated resistance to blight is a plus because blight — fireblight — is still a problem in pear orchards. (And fireblight has its own history: First noted in Highland Falls, NY, and the first recognized bacterial disease of plants.)
Mr. Bartram did state that “the tree was about twenty years old before It produced fruit, and narrowly escaped being cut down as barren.” Pear and apple trees grown from seed will often take 10 or 20 years before bearing fruit — and then the fruits they bear, more often than not, aren’t worth eating. Grafted trees bear sooner, and especially those grafted on dwarfing rootstocks. I made my Lady Petre pear tree by grafting the sprig I got onto a dwarfing rootstock so I’m hoping to be able to report back on the fruit within 5 years.

Not One, But Two, Grafts

    My Lady Petre tree is special because not only is it the variety Lady Petre, and not only is it grafted on a dwarfing rootstock, but also because it’s an “interstem tree.”
   Dwarfing rootstocks having the advantages of making trees that can be pruned and picked with feet on the ground. Not as obvious is their yielding more fruit per square foot of land because they harvest sunlight so efficiently. They also tend to bear at a younger age.
   Many dwarfing rootstocks have restricted or brittle root systems. As a result, dwarf trees generally need first-class soil conditions as well as staking throughout their lifespans, which usually are shorter than full-size trees.
   My interstem tree began life as a seedling I grew from a pear seed. Seedling trees are full-size and slow to begin bearing, but have resilient and sturdy roots. A few inches above ground level, I grafted a foot-long stem from a dwarfing rootstock. Atop that dwarfing interstem went the sprig of Lady Petre I had brought home from Philadelphia. That foot-long piece of stem from a dwarfing rootstock is all that’s needed to graft whatever goes above it.
   Pears graft easily, so I was able to do both grafts at the same time last year, and have them take.

Many Pines are Nutty

Wandering down a different avenue, gardening can lead us into the future, or, at least, a vision of the future. Embodied, for example, in the 4 inch pot of soil sitting on my greenhouse bench. Poking up out of the soil are two small twigs. And I do mean small, each an inch or so high. Capping each is a small whorl of green needles.

Limber pine seedlings

These two twiggy thingies are limber pine (Pinus flexilis) trees that I’m growing from seed. The common and botanical name relate to the plants flexibility; branches can be tied into knots. Looking into the future, these seedlings could grow to 60 feet in height and under good conditions — which would be drier, mountainous regions of western North America — could live over 1,000 years!
I’m growing limber pine for its seeds: pine nuts. All pines’ nuts are edible but only those with large nuts are worth bothering with. This one’s can be 1/3 by 1/2 inches large, although it will be many years before I’ll get to gather these tasty morsels from the two plants.
I’m guessing limber twig pine nuts and Lady Petre pears, both ready for harvest in early fall, will be a tasty combination.

FAILURES, SUCCESSES

April 7, 2016/5 Comments/in Flowers, Gardening, Houseplants, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Can Anybody Tell Me How to Grow This?

Quotes about the rosy side of failure are not hard to find. ”Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently,” wrote Henry Ford. John Dewey wrote that “Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”
No, Mr. Dewey; in gardening, at least, failures are more instructive than successes. Put a seed into the ground and that seed has millions of years of evolution prompting it to grow. True, you can fail if starting with old seed, or soil so cold that the seed rots before it grows, or compacted clay soil that suffocates the seed. But generally, gardening is not that difficult. And generally, it’s hard to fail. So success is the norm, no matter — within reason — what you do.

Jasmine — no flowers, again

   For someone who pays particular attention to their gardening (and writes about it!), occasional failures are surely opportunities for learning and for success. Not so, for me! With my jasmine (Jasminium officinale) plant, at least.
   I’ve grown this jasmine for many years. In its early years, the plant was a snowball of sweet-smelling white blossoms in late winter. Over the years, flower production has petered out, to the point where the plant coughs forths just a few blossoms here and there.
   Many plants need a cold period to induce flower buds. Over the years, my jasmine has spent fall outdoors or in my cold basement (near a window) or in my cold greenhouse (minimum temperature 37°F).
   Many plants need a dry period to coax on flower buds. Over the years, the soil in which my jasmine grows has been kept through fall just moist enough to keep the plant from wilting.
   Some plants need a period of both cold and dryness for flowering. Check.
   Besides all these treatments, I have tried various suggestions from others, including professionals who sell jasmine plants awash in bloom from their commercial greenhouses. No pruning after August. No artificial light in autumn. Generally good growing conditions all through summer. High phosphorus fertilizer. Check. Check. Check. Mmm-check. (I’ll admit I neglected the high phosphorus fertilizer. With ample compost, my potting soil has ample phosphorus, or so I assume.)
   Now, in its thirteenth year here, jasmine has again not bloomed. I’ve learned nothing. Again, I’m threatening to walk it to the compost pile, counterbalanced by inklings of desire to give it one more try. (The phosphorus fertilizer, perhaps.)
   My one possible consolation comes from reading a quote by George Bernard Shaw, “My reputation grows with every failure.”

Cardoon Futures

Cardoon I saw in Oregon

    Enough self-flagellation. Let’s balance that out with a couple of successes, one the result of my doing, not driven by millions of years of evolution.
   I’ve written previously about cardoon, a so-so vegetable but a fine ornamental. (True, many other people sing passionate gustatory praise for cardoon.) As a perennial, cardoon grows only leaves its first year from seed, which is fine if your eating it, because the leaf stalks are the edible part. The tall, spiny, olive green stalks, like a Mediterranean celery on steroids, also are dramatically ornamental in their own right.
   The flowers, poised like cerulean bottlebrushes atop their tall — five feet high, or more — flower stalks are the real show, though. And, in that second year and beyond, you still get the whorls of giant leafstalks rising up from around the base of the plant.
   Cardoon can’t tolerate winter cold below about 10 or 15°F, so it’s not winter cold-hardy here. Too much moisture around the crown of the plant might also help do it in during winter.
   Last fall, after cold had settled into the ground, with about an inch depth of frost in the soil (towards the end of December) I cut back the top of the plant, then piled dry leaves over it. An overturned, 2-foot-diameter, plastic planter over the leaves kept them in place and added a bit more insulation and, also important, kept rain and snowfall off the plant. The drainage holes around the bottom (now the top) of the planter’s side allowed for some air movement within.
   A week or so ago I tipped off the planter and untucked the leaves from around the plant. It was important to get to the plant before warmth got it growing, in which case the once-shaded, tender leaves would burn in the sunlight and be susceptible to frost. The leaves, just starting to emerge from the decapitated plant, looked healthy and ready to stretch out and grow after their winter’s rest. I look forward to the flowers.

Really Red Deer Tongue

Winter lettuce in the greenhouse is my other success. While many lettuces have begun to go to seed, especially those sown earlier in fall, the variety Really Red Deer Tongue just keeps making new leaves in spite of it’s having been sown in early September of last year. The leaves, as the names says, are red and, I suppose, the shape of a deer’s tongue. I don’t normally eat deer tongues, but these leaves taste good. Lettuce, Really Red Deer Tongue

UPCOMING EVENTS

April 5, 2016/1 Comment/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

GRAFTING WORKSHOP, APRIL 9, 2016, Springtown Farmden, New Paltz, NY, www.leereich.com/workshops

LECTURE: LUSCIOUS LANDSCAPING, WITH FRUITS, APRIL 16, 2016, Hamilton College Arboretum, Clinton, NY

PRUNING WORKSHOP, MAY 6-8, 2016, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY

DRIP IRRIGATION WORKSHOP, MAY 14, 2016, Phillies Bridge Farm Project, New Palts, NY, register at www.leereich.com/workshops

PLANT SALE, MAY 21, 2016, Springtown Farmden, New Paltz, NY, 9:30-11:59 am

And a final note to anyone who has subscribed to my blog: A gremliin may have entered the system and messed with the subscriptions. So if you’re not getting blog post notifications but want them, either re-subscribe or else unsubscribe and then re-subscribe.

THE WEATHER CALLS THE SHOTS

March 31, 2016/0 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Pruning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

The Kindest Cuts

In years past, when I went outdoors this time of year, it was usually with skis strapped to my feet. Or wearing snow boots. Or snowshoes. With this snowless, warm winter, I’m mostly going outdoors these days armed with pruning shears, a lopper, and a pruning saw. Mostly, my feet trod a path to the hardy kiwifruit vines and the blueberry bushes.
At first glance, the blueberries seem nothing more than a jumbled mass of stems of various ages. How to make order out of this jumble? Quicker to answer is why go to the trouble of making order out of this jumble. The same could be asked for my lilac bush, mockorange, hazelnuts, gooseberries, and currants.

Sammy & me, pruning blueberries

Then I remind myself that my goal is to reduce the crop — yes! reduce the potential crop — so that more of the each fruit or nut bush’s resources get channeled into fewer fruits or nuts so those that remain taste better. I also prune for future years’ harvests or, for flowering bushes, future years’ flowers. And I prune to let the stems of all bushes bathe in light and air, which reduces pest problems.
Bushes are bushes because they are bushy, that is, they’re constantly growing new stems at or near ground level and never develop permanent trunks. (Except for daphne, fothergilla, witch hazel, PeeGee hydrangea, tree peony, and other plants of bushy stature with long-lived stems.) Blueberries and most other bushes, ornamental and fruiting, are pruned by a renewal method. As stems age, they grow decrepit, producing less flowers or fruits; pruning away these oldsters, right to the ground makes way for younger, replacement stems.

3 Steps, and Blueberries are Pruned

    My first cuts on any of my blueberry bushes are the most dramatic ones: I cut down a couple or so of the oldest stems using a lopper or pruning saw. Blueberry stems are typically worth keeping until they are about 7 years old, or about an inch in diameter. These most dramatic cuts also remove the tallest stems in one fell swoop, so the bushes never grow so tall that the berries are out of reach.
   The kind of shrub, the variety of shrub, and the previous season’s growing conditions all conspire to determine how many new stems, called suckers, grow from or near ground level. Often, it’s so many that as they mature, the bush becomes congested. So now I take pruning shears in hand, and reduce their numbers to, in the case of blueberry bushes, four or five.

Blueberry bush, before & after pruning

The finished bush then — in theory — has about 4 six-year-old stems, 4 five-year-old stems, and so on, down to 4 one-year-old stems. By this time next year, each of those stems will have moved up a year in age. I’ll remove the 4 now seven-year-old stems and excess one-year-old stems, which are those that will have grown this season.
Oh, one more step: I go over each bush with my pruning shears, removing small or dead twigs and shortening stems that are out of bounds. With 16 bushes cramped into 900 square feet, “out of bounds” is pretty close.

Early Cukes, One the Way

    As so often happens in late winter and early spring, and especially this year, weather is very variable. Today was sunny and, by winter standards, balmy — perfect for crawling in among the blueberry bushes to prune them. But no need to twiddle my thumbs on sunless days raw with cold. There are seeds to be sown.
   Some people spend the first part of summer hankering to bite into their first ripe tomato. Even more than tomato, I eagerly await my first fresh cucumbers and peppers. Like tomatoes, both get a head start indoors. Cucumber seedlings
   This year, after seeing the very early cucumber crop at Evolutionary Organics farm down the road from me, I thought I would give early cukes a try here at the farmden. On Kira, the farmer’s advice, I planted seeds a couple of weeks ago into potting soil in 4” plastic flower pots.
   Cucumbers revel in heat, both for seed germination and for growing. So, after being watered, the seeded pots went onto the greenhouse’s electrically heated seed mat that’ll keep the seeds at a cozy 80°F. Seedlings are up, their roots still still in pots and still being warmed by the heating mat.
   Within a couple of weeks, the cuke seedlings will start to outgrow their pots and need planting in the ground — not outdoors, though, but in the greenhouse. As I wrote, I’m hankering for a very early harvest. I’ll take the soil temperature which, I hope, will stay steadily above 65°F by then.

FLOWERS, ONE VERY, VERY SPECIAL

March 24, 2016/3 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

My Quest, Fulfilled

    For thirty years, I’ve longed to catch at least a glimpse of Himalayan poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia) in blossom; finally, yesterday, I achieved that goal. I wish I could say that I braved high seas to get to India, then traipsed across increasingly mountainous plains, and finally clawed my way up some jagged peak before coming face to face with the blossom. No, I was in Philadelphia, at the the Philadelphia Flower Show, when I remembered that nearby Longwood Gardens puts on a show of Himalayan poppies each year in early March. All that was needed was to brave traffic for the one hour drive (40 minutes without traffic) over to Longwood.
   It was thirty years ago that expert plantsman and orchid hunter Norman Kellar told me of his admiring the blue poppy’s sky blue blossoms, both in reality and in reflection, from across a pond in England. The flowers, he said, are the purest blue of any flower. Did Longwood’s show meet up to my thirty year buildup? Yes. The petals, delicate as tissue paper, are a sky blue, the bluest I’ve seen in any flower. The center of each nodding blossom is lighted by a bottlebrush of orange stamens.
   So why haven’t I, and why didn’t Norman, just plant Himalayan poppy to enjoy in our own backyards? The plant thrives — no, survives — only where summers remain cool. Above 70°F, the plant can’t photosynthesize, so it starves. I’ve tried growing blue poppy in the past. Each time it grew fine until July’s summer heat caused it to collapse, dead.
   Longwood’s plants avoid heat by starting life in Alaska, where the plant thrives. Young plants are shipped in from Alaska in the fall and kept dormant in cold storage. Brought into Longwood’s cool (50-60°F) conservatory in January, they slowly awaken and, finally, blossom in March.
   My plan is to sow seeds in potting soil in a seed flat in late summer, then water and chill the flat in a refrigerator for a few weeks. (Some seeds need that chilling to break their dormancy or speed germination. Whether or not blue poppy needs it, a few weeks of cool temperatures will do no harm.) By early fall, the seedlings should be up and growing, which they can do outdoors and then, if needed, in the greenhouse. When cold temperatures and low light slow the plants into dormancy, I’ll store the pots at a cool location in my basement.
   Finally, in January, I’ll move the plants to a sunny window to begin growth. That time of year, even sunny windows don’t get too hot. Come March, with luck, a green thumb, and clicking my heels together three times, the sky blue blossoms will be staring at me — or out the window.
   My first sighting of “our” bluebird was a week ago. Next year, looking at blue poppy plants blossoming at a window and bluebird outside the window would be a very nice prelude to spring.

Three Perennial Treats

    Flowers have never been a focus of my gardens, and less so as each year goes by and I pay more attention to more enduring elements of my yard, such as fences, arbors, hedges, trees, and walls. Still, some flowers, such as the blue poppy, are worth the effort.
   In years past, seed flat upon seed flat of all kinds of flowers would occupy growing space. This year: Just one flat of perennials, that one flat with four mini-furrows, one for dianthus, one for cardinal flower, one for foxglove, and one for purple coneflower. Each of those mini-furrows will yield enough seedlings, to be carefully separated then planted in individual cells of potting soil to grow into plants, for transplanting, for a nice show this summer and beyond.
   The main attraction of the dianthus, for me, is its fragrance. From descriptions, the Riesen Giant Superb Mix Dianthus I just sowed seems very similar to the Dianthus caryophyllus that I grow in the greenhouse except, in contract to its greenhouse cousin, this dianthus is allegedly cold-hardy outdoors in Zone 5. (I have the feeling that both dianthus’s may be the same; the “giant” and “superb” in the name hooked me.)

Cardinal flower

Cardinal flower is perennial, but not a long-lived one. It thrives in wet areas and, in congenial locations such as, I hope, here, will self-sow. This flower first caught my attention when its spike of fire engine red blossoms stared out at me from deep, deep shade. Deep shade is not home to many colorful flowers.
With spikes of pastel-colored blossoms, foxgloves have a charm evocative of blowsy cottage gardens. They also are only weakly perennial; but they self-sow readily. Their popping up willy-nilly around any garden from self-sown seeds adds to their blowsy effect.

Foxglove

One downside to foxgloves is that flowers all line up only on one side of the flower spike, facing the sun. Except for the Excelsior series of foxgloves, which is what I have sown this year. It will be interesting to see how thoroughly the blossoms embrace the spikes and then how future years’ blossoms, from self-sown seedlings, display themselves, especially since they’ll be mating with run-of-the-mill foxgloves already growing here.
Nothing special about coneflowers. They’re native, easy to grow, and common. They’re also pretty.

Back to Fruit

Enough with the frills! Back to pruning kiwifruit and grape vines, blueberry, gooseberry, and currant bushes, and the plum, pawpaw, mulberry, a pear trees. They are pretty, too, and give me fruit.
Fruit bowl with fig, grape, persimmon, nashi

Grafting Workshop

March 23, 2016/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

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GREENING UP

March 9, 2016/2 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Chickweed, Not for Me

    Warmish days come and go, but I’m not twiddling my thumbs waiting for spring to come early, late, or vacillate. True, I have a greenhouse. Even there, though, weather can be quite cool, down into the 30s at night and on overcast days.
   A few plants that are good for fresh, salad greens aren’t just surviving under these conditions; they’re thriving. And with very little effort on my part because rather than cultivating them, they grow so profusely that I have to weed out excess before they take over the greenhouse.
   Speaking of “weed,” one of them really is a weed, at the very least in name: chickweed (Stellaria media). This weed loves cool weather; it’s been sprouting in the greenhouse all winter. It’s also no stranger to the garden outside the greenhouse, where winter temperatures snuff it out so that each year it must return from seeds it sows. In the greenhouse, it might become — perhaps is now — perennial.
   Chickweed is tasty and nutritious. I don’t doubt the second adjective but disagree with the first. I wish I liked the flavor. Because I don’t, I’ll spend some time today in the greenhouse weeding it out.

Claytonia All Over the Place

    The greenhouse is also pleasantly indundated with claytonia (Claytonia perfoliata), another wilding cultivated for salads, perhaps soups(?), in cool weather. This green is native to California, where it drops its seeds in spring; cool, moist weather of fall induces sprouting whence it blankets Western ground in green all winter long.
   Claytonia in greenhouse Conditions in my greenhouse are very similar to those of norther California. (Claytonia is sometimes called miner’s lettuce because Gold Rush miners ate it to prevent scurvy.) Years ago I sowed some claytonia seeds in greenhouse beds. No longer is that necessary. Those first plants came up in the straight lines of my furrow. Nowadays, they blanket the ground as a lush edible groundcover, mostly near the sidewalls where rain washed down from the roof and into the ends of the beds when I rolled up the sidewalls in summer for ventilation.
   The plants make more than just an edible groundcover; they make an edible, ornamental groundcover. The tender stalks rising from ground level are capped by heart-shaped leaves, in the center of which eventually sits a cluster of small, white flowers. I’d use it as a winter groundcover if it could survive our winters; temperatures below about 10°F kill it.
   The flavor is nothing to write home about. It’s mild, to say the least. Perhaps its greatest contributions to cold weather salads are color and texture.

Make Mine Mâche, My Favorite

    Some people might say the same thing about mâche (Valerianella locusta), in my experience the most cold-hardy of all salad greens. It’s ready for harvest no matter how cold the weather in the greenhouse, or out, and will actually grow a little with the slightest degree of warmth whether natural or from the protection of a south wall or a cold frame. Mâche plant
   To me, mâche is the most delectable of salad greens. It also self-seeds both in the greenhouse and outdoors. What else can you ask for in a plant: tasty, available all winter, no need to plant.
   Like claytonia, mâche is a cool weather annual. Sow it in summer and nothing happens. Sow it under cool, moist conditions and it sprouts readily. This is another salad green that I planted years ago, but not since. Cultivation of mâche entails, mostly, pulling up wayward or excess plants before they expire and drop seed in late spring, in so doing preventing it from becoming weedy.
   Mâche is a European import, a centuries-old favorite only of the peasantry until the gardener to Louis XIV gave it street cred’. In English-speaking countries, it’s sometimes called “corn salad” because it’s a weed of grain fields, “corn” in the Queen’s English being any kind of grain, not necessarily and not usually corn, which they call maize. If I had a grain field, I’d welcome some corn salad for tender, tasty salads almost all winter long.