Gardening – Page 32

NOTHING TO DO? SEQUESTER CARBON?

January 22, 2015/2 Comments/in Gardening, Planning, Soil/by Lee Reich

Agriculture: Good or Bad for Our Planet?

I’m enjoying this farmdening interlude, with essentially nothing to do, farmdenwise, for a few weeks. No planting, no pruning, no weeding. Seeds have been ordered and the greenhouse, full of lettuce and kale and chard and other fresh stuff, is cold enough to require no more than weekly waterings, if that. Even then, watering involves nothing more than a quarter turn of the mechanical timer to start water running through the drip irrigation lines.
I’m going to use this lull as an opportunity to ruminate — on rumens and other relationships between agriculture and global warming.

Deb, first time herding some very big cattle

    Let’s get started right away with the rumen, that part of the digestive system of a cow, steer, or other ruminant where cellulose is fermented. With a capacity of more than 50 gallons, a cow’s rumen is a veritable factory, one whose byproduct is a lot of gas, more than 200 gallons a day, belched out by the cow. No small thing, that collective burp of agricultural ruminants. It’s good for the cow (when you consider the alternative) but not so good for the environment. A significant portion of the effluvia is methane, a carbon compound which is 20 times more heat-trapping in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
   Let’s leave the cows alone and drop down to the soil. Global warming from the agricultural soils? Yes. Harvest a crop, any crop, and you’re removing nutrients from the site. So those nutrients need to be replaced, and that’s usually done with fertilizer. Fertilizer, unlike money, does, or can, grow on trees (such as honeylocust and others in the pea family, which garner nitrogen from the air a put it in the soil) but most fertilizer is synthetic. Synthetic fertilizer must be cobbled together using energy derived from fossil fuels, which then release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
   That’s not all. The soil itself is a large reservoir of carbon tied up in complex, organic compounds as well as in living and dead organisms. Stir that soil up with a plow, a tiller, or a garden fork, and you charge it with oxygen, just what bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms are waiting for so that they can gobble up that carbon, grow and extract energy, then release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Of Tillage and Biochar

“Sequestration” isn’t only something done with our money by a bunch of mostly men in a big room (Congress) in Washington. It’s also done by farmers to save, not money, but carbon. The idea is to keep carbon in the soil rather than letting it “burn” to carbon dioxide, waft into the atmosphere, and contribute to global warming.

Me, a long time ago, burning carbon

Minimizing, or eliminating, tillage is one way to sequester carbon, something that can be done on a home or small farm scale, even on a large scale. I haven’t tilled my garden in over 20 years, and 22 percent of Midwestern farmland is no-till. Minimal tillage or no-till also brings other benefits, such as reduced weeds, a friendlier environment for earthworms and fungi, more efficient plant water use, more organic carbon in the soil for livelier biological activity and improved soil aeration, and, of course, the benefit of not having to till.
Biochar is another proposed savior in these carbon-burning times. Biochar is, basically, charcoal, which is mixed into the soil. Charcoal starts out as wood which, when left in or on the ground, rots, the carbon within turning to carbon dioxide. Charring the wood drives off much of what makes up wood, leaving only black carbon, a poor food for soil microorganisms, so it does not rot. The wood’s carbon has been locked up, sequestered, changed from organic carbon to inorganic, or elemental, carbon.

Hold that Carbon, But Not Too Tightly

   When it comes to agriculture, keeping too tight a grasp on carbon is not a good thing. Agriculture, whether farming or gardening, isn’t Nature, or else my garden and yours would be all weeds (some of which would be edible and, hence, technically not “weeds”).
   Carbon is energy, fueling growth of fungi, earthworms, and other creatures, and as it’s “burned,” nutrients associated with it are released into the soil in forms that plants can use. That’s a good thing, to a degree. Fermentation microorganisms within cattle rumen make cellulose available for energy and growth even as they release methane. That’s also a good thing, to a degree.
   Good gardeners and farmers strike a congenial balance, emulating Nature without giving her a free hand. Too many cows belching methane is not good for the planet. Too much tillage “burning” up soil organic matter and releasing carbon dioxide also is not a good thing.
———————————————————
   A final word, about radishes, for no reason except that I am enjoying them right now. Winter radishes are large, variable in shape and color, and store well. Today, as I’ve done every few days since late fall, I sink my hand into a cold, wooden box full of wood shavings to pull out yet another Watermelon radish. Sliced open, this variety of winter radish looks much like watermelon and tastes — no, not like watermelon — but crisp, sharp, and slightly sweet. Highly recommended; sow seeds July 15th.

FRESH-PICKED SALADS ALL WINTER

January 17, 2015/7 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Greenhouse, Coldframe, Hotbed = Fresh Lettuce, Mâche, & other Salad Fixings

You can’t beat the luxuriousness of entering a greenhouse on a sunny, cold winter day, and hitting that welcome wall of moist, warm air. Once you get through that soft wall, you drink in the redolence and visual vibrancy of green, growing plants. All this is possible even with a relatively inexpensive greenhouse, such as mine, which is, basically, 2 layers of plastic film supported by sturdy, steel hoops (plus thermostats, a propane heater, a cooling fan, and a “squirrel cage” fan to inflate the space between the layers of plastic for better insulating value).

Fresh greens in the greenhouse

Still, a greenhouse — my greenhouse, at least — isn’t for virtual trips to Puerto Rico; It’s for growing edible plants, mostly fresh lettuce, celery, mâche, claytonia, and arugula to fill the salad bowl every day from late fall through early spring.

This same benefit, though, can almost be achieved much more simply and much more cheaply with a coldframe. A coldframe, in its most basic incarnation, is a box frame covered with glass or some other transparent material and within which plants are grown or protected through the coldest months.

I have both a greenhouse and a coldframe. The coldframe came first. With a greenhouse full of greenery, I admit to usually neglecting the coldframe, which is unheated and only 25 square feet in contrast to the greenhouse’s heated 750 square feet. Still, last fall I had an extra 25 lettuce transplants and lacked even a square foot of extra space in which to plant them in the greenhouse. So I spread an inch of compost in the coldframe, firmed the transplants into holes there, and then gave the whole bed a good watering before replacing the cover.

Cold frame with cover closed, and Sammy

Except for one subsequent watering, I’ve pretty much ignored the coldframe. The polycarbonate (‘Exolite’) cover is translucent so the coldframe’s innards are hidden from view unless the cover is lifted. Today, mostly out of curiosity, I lifted the cover to see what was going on inside. The lettuce was alive and had grown. Fall weather was admittedly relatively mild although temperatures here did drop below 10°F at least one night — pretty good survival for plants growing in little more than a covered box outdoors.

With short days and cold weather, lettuce is growing very slowly. Individual leaves, perhaps whole heads, probably will not ready for harvest until towards the end of February. That’s if the lettuce survives that long, which it might not even in the coldframe, depending on the length and depth of winter cold. Spinach would more likely make it through winter; mâche and claytonia would definitely weather the coldest days and nights.

Beefing Up the Coldframe

In the absence of a greenhouse, I would beef up coldframe salad production to yield more and for more of the winter. I would, first of all, construct more coldframes because, with slow growth inside in winter, one harvest could decimate the crop, for a period at least, from just one coldframe.

Anything that helps the coldframe fend off cold and retain heat would also help increase the amount and duration of harvest. Insulating the sides helps, and said insulation need be nothing more than wood chips or straw piled up against the sides. Or make the box itself out of whole bales of straw!

Cover open, Sammy on guard

Heat rises and glass and plastic are poor insulators, so most of the heat is lost through the translucent or clear covering. The Exolite cover on my coldframe is actually 2 layers of polycarbonate plastic sandwiching polycarbonate ribs that hold the layers 1/4” apart, proving better insulating value than a single layer. On really cold nights, an insulating mat, even just a blanket could be thrown over the cover. In Europe a hundred years ago, cold frames were used extensively for commercial vegetable production, and mats of woven straw covered the glass to keep out the coldest weather.

A few feet down into the earth, temperatures remain constantly in the 50s. That earth is a source of heat, tapped into by sinking the floor of the coldframe a couple of feet deeper, which also allows head space for taller vegetables, such as Romaine lettuce. Too deep, of course, makes harvesting very inconvenient.

And finally, winter production can be beefed up by actually heating a coldframe, in which case it’s no longer a “coldframe” but what’s called a “hotbed.” The traditional heat source for a hotbed is horse manure, layered into the bottom of the bed after a foot or so of soil has been dug out. A certain art is involved in getting the right amount and moisture content of manure, packed in just right and then covered with soil for a steady even heat. I made my coldframe into a hot bed a couple of years ago, or, rather, tried to. I didn’t get it just right; will have to try again.

True, you can’t climb into a coldframe for a tropical junket, but the coldframe, with care, can become a hotbed of tasty, fresh, organic, very locally-grown vegetables from fall to spring.

To Every Thing There is a Season

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

Pruning is reduced to small steps, in time & process

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

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

Witch hazel is a shrub needing little or no pruning

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

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

All shrubs are pruned the same, sort of

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

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

Gooseberry bush, before & after pruning

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

A now I do it, prune currants & gooseberries

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

Black currant, before pruning

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

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

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

Black currant, after pruning

The why, how, and details of pruning any plant

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

Live, On Stage Now!!!

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

NOTES TO MESELF

January 2, 2015/9 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Planning/by Lee Reich

Of Mice, Disease, To Grow, and Not To Grow

Despite rain, some snow, and temperatures that dipped below 10°F, the whole bed of endive was lush and green. A low tunnel of porous, light fabric and clear plastic held aloft by wire hoops kept the worst of the weather at bay. As I reached in to harvest a head, no knife was necessary; the head lifted, unattached, off the ground. Mice have been at work again!

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. A timely sowing of endive seeds (early July) gave sturdy seedlings that were transplanted (early August) into compost enriched soil to present (by September) a beautiful bed of wall to wall greenery. The beds were covered for cold protection in November.

What a cozy home that bed became for mice. The tunnel provided not only food and lodging but also cover from the hungry eyes of local hawks. The mice ignored endive’s leaves, instead devouring the stout, fleshy portions of root and stem at the base of almost every plant.

Note to myself: Next fall pre-empt mice by getting a supplemental cat or two and/or setting traps within wooden boxes having mouse-sized entry doors.

Rip Out the Clem’s, Plant New Ones

Another note to myself: Replant clematis.

Over the years I’ve accumulated a number of varieties of clematis. The vines barrel up and over fences and trellises clothing them in sumptuous blooms. Blossoming has diminished over the years, the culprit being clematis wilt, a fungal disease that turns leaves and stems black. It doesn’t usually kill the plant but a clematis without flowers and with blackened leaves and stems is not a pretty site.

Clematis and I are not finished. In the next few weeks I must sit down and seek out sources for native clematis species and their hybrids. Their flowers are smaller but they are resistant to wilt. Scarlet Clematis (Clematis texensis) is definitely on my list, as is Rock Clematis (C. columbiana, sometimes listed as C. occidentalis var. columbiana), and the hybrids Betty Corning and Étoile Violette. The choices don’t stop there because two breeders on the other side of the Atlantic have come up with a whole series of wilt-resistant clematis, known as Evison-Poulsen series.

To Grow or Not To Grow, That is the Question(s)

More notes to myself on plants to grow and not to grow next year.

Zahara Yellow zinnias in last summer’s garden.

My zinnias looked a little unusual this year, unusually pretty, each flower with a single row of yellow petals radiating from a brown eye. Also unusual in being very compact, long lasting, and not marred by the powdery mildew of most zinnias. Last year I had just a few of these hybrid Zahara Yellow Improved zinnias in the vegetable garden; next year I’m planning for enough to make a bold, yellow line along each edge of the main path.

It was a great year for peppers, and the greatest, for flavor and production, were Carmen, Sweet Italia, and Pepperocini. Great for production but not so great for flavor was King of the North, which won’t be invited back. In its place, I’ll be inviting Bridge to Paris pepper, recommended by a knowledgable friend.

Cardoon, the variety Hunchback of Nice, was better than expected but not good enough to justify the growing again of last season’s 10 plants. Each plant is bold and striking with upright, to 3 feet or more, blue-green leaves, so my plan is to grow only 2 or 3 as ornamentals from which I’ll steal occasional leaves for eating.

Meserve holly bushes that I planted many years ago have grown large to create a solid wall of lustrous, spiny leaves. That’s nice. Even nicer would be red berries against that verdant backdrop. Close inspection of the flowers last spring indicated that all the plants, contrary to what was ordered, are females. One male, which I will order, can sire them all so that in a few (very few, I hope) years, red berries will liven up the scene in winter.

I completely forgot to plant ginger this year. Yes, ginger, that tropical plant which has captured the interest of many small farmers. I could never understand the big deal about ginger until I experienced the tenderness of freshly harvested, red blushed baby ginger. Not that mature ginger could anyway be harvested in the short growing season this far north. My plan is to buy a ginger root in March, divide it up and pot up each section, then keep the pots warm and moist to give the roots an early start for a good harvest of baby ginger.

Brussels Sprouts, the variety Gusto, were a rousing success, perhaps too rousing because we still have 6 stalks perched in a bucket in the cool mud room and awaiting dinners. Four to six plants will be plenty for next year.

Not every vegetable needs to be loved by everyone. Next year, and in years hence until I forget what they taste like, I will not be growing broccoli or beets.

NICE HIPS, BUT WHOSE?

December 26, 2014/4 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

2 Contenders for Hips and Rabbi Samuel Redux

As I walked along the beach, I took a look and my first thought was “Nice hips.” But what about the flowers? I’d have to return to the plant next summer to find out, a problem since I was 4 hours from home visiting a relative in Rhode Island.

Most of the roses you see growing seaside are Rosa rugosa. Common names for this plant are Japanese rose, indicating its origin, saltspray rose, indicating its tolerance to beach sand, and rugose rose. “Rugose” means “wrinkled,” which is what leaves of R. rugosa are.

The particular planting of nice-hipped roses staring back at me did not have rugose leaves. What’s more, the hips were about 3/4 of an inch across and bright red. Hips of rugose rose are usually an inch or more across and orangish-red. With this slightly different morphology and the fact that rugose rose is listed as an invasive plant, I assumed that the nice-hipped roses, recently installed as landscape plants, were another species.

Those are Rosa rugosa hips on the left, Rosa canine(?) hips on the right

With such nice hips, the plants could possibly be dog rose, R. canina, the other rose species valued for its hips. The lack of sepals on the hips also pointed the finger at dog rose. (Rugose rose hips have persistent sepals.) A even closer look would have nailed it; rugose rose’s stems have numerous prickles throughout their length while bold, large, wide, downward-facing thorns line dog rose stems. But I didn’t look closer.

Dog rose, although much less frequently seen, is also considered invasive in some places.

Sowing Seeds for More Hips (and Flowers)

As potentially invasive plants, rugose rose or dog rose should be easy to grow from seed. But no. I’ve propagated roses from seed, and it’s a slow process.

Last summer’s Rosa rugosa blossoms

Rose seeds, like those of most other fall-ripening seeds of temperate zone plants, have a physiological dormancy that prevents their immediate sprouting, the consequence of which would be death from cold. So they just sit in moist earth until they have experienced a number of hours of chilly temperatures — 30 to 45° F is ideal — before sprouting, at which time winter has presumably given way to spring weather. Instead of moist earth, that chilly habitat could be within the refrigerator in a plastic bag filled with peat moss and perlite.

But rose seeds have another impediment to germination: a tough seed coat. Plant the seed outdoors and shoots might not poke through the surface of the ground for 2 years. The first winter and summer are spent softening the seed coat, making it permeable to moisture. Beginning the second fall, chilling hours begin to accumulate so that by the second spring, the seed can awaken and grow.

I did pluck a few fruits from that Rhode Island, nice-hipped rose bush, and plan to make new bushes. But I’m too impatient to wait 2 years. “Scarifying” the seeds is a quick way to make the seed coats more permeable. Nicking them with a wire cutter does the trick but would be difficult with such small seeds. An hour or so in warm, concentrated sulfuric acid — followed by a thorough rinsing in water — is likewise effective but a bit dangerous. I’ll follow Mother Nature’s lead and soften the seed coats by keeping the seeds warm and moist. No matter how the seed coat is softened, subsequent cool, moist conditions are still needed before the seeds will sprout.

There’s barely time to get those seeds growing this spring. Two months in moist warmth followed by 2 to 3 months in moist peat and perlite in the refrigerator should awaken them. It’s exciting to check the bag in the refrigerator because, once mechanical and chemical barriers to germination have been overcome, a bag of seeds is usually transformed to a bag of white root sprouts, all at once, as if a switch had been turned on.

The Rabbi Multiplies

I’ll have to make up some extra peat-perlite mix. Cutting all the vertical shoots of Rabbi Samuel fig espalier back to the horizontal arms of the permanent “T” framework have yielded a pile of long stems. I can’t bear to throw them away because every foot-long section has the potential to make a whole new plant.

Rabbi Samuel fig, pruned

The rooting media for these hardwood cuttings? Peat and perlite again. A bunch of the stems in a deep pot with just their top buds up out of the peat mix should sprout and root by spring.

Not sure what I’ll do with all the resulting fig plants.

So Many Roses, I Hope

I’m also not sure what I’ll do with all the anticipated rose seedlings, especially since I’m not even sure of their species. I did telephone the public works department of the Rhode Island town where the roses were planted and was told that they were Rosa rugosa. I think they are wrong.

Fig cuttings

No matter: Rosa rugosa is one of the most fragrant roses with deep pink, sometimes white, flowers that are borne all summer long. Also, like dog rose, with nice, fleshy hips, good enough fresh and excellent for jam and tea.

STILL SOME FRESH FRUIT, and GENDER STEREOTYPING

December 18, 2014/3 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants, Planning/by Lee Reich

Fruit for My Mouth, Flowers for My Eyes

As I write this, on December 1st, the Rabbi — that’s the Rabbi Samuel fig — is still ripening fruit in my barely heated greenhouse. That’s commendable. Not so commendable, however, is the flavor; cooler temperatures and sparse sunlight have taken their toll. The drooping fruits look ripe and ready to eat, inside and out, but they are no longer worth eating.

End of the fruiting season for Rabbi Samuel fig.

On the other hand, another fruit, Szukis American persimmons, hardly look edible but still have rich, sweet flavor. Outdoors, fruits of this variety of American persimmon cling to bare branches. Their orange skins once stretched almost to the point of breaking over the soft flesh within. Now, alternate freezing and thawing temperatures and drier air have sucked moisture and temper from the flesh, so the skins have shriveled and barely cling. Their darkening does nothing to increase the fruits’ visual appeal.

Szukis persimmons, starting to look ugly, but still honey sweet

The ripe fruits are hard to distinguish, by eye, from the almost ripe fruits. The latter still retain some mouth-puckering astringency which has given American persimmons a bad name. An unripe persimmon “will draw a man’s mouth awrie with much torment” wrote Captain John Smith 400 years ago. I give Szukis’ branches a slight shake and only ripe fruits come raining to the ground, at which point the Captain’s further words ring true: “When [persimmon] is ripe, it is as delicious as an apricot.”

Can’t Help Wanting African Violets

New leaf cuttings

Man can’t live by bread alone; a feast for the eyes is also in order. Well, maybe not a feast, but an appetizer, some winter flowers. Probably the easiest and most longlasting of winter blossoms are those of African violet. Okay, okay, I know that African violets have been mostly associated with doilies, lace curtains, and other appurtenances of old ladies (nothing against old ladies).

Generally, I don’t even like the color violet. But African violet’s flowers do brighten up a windowsill that looks out upon a gray and brown landscape.

Plantlets forming at bases of leaf cuttings

Now that I’ve gotten my secret attraction to African violets off my chest, let’s talk horticulture. African violet’s whorl of leaves, like those of many low-growing perennial flowers, is actually a compressed stem, one that has been telescoped down so that each leaf and associated node originates just a fraction of an inch above the next lower leaf. But there is some distance between those nodes, so over time the stem does slowly elongate, rising higher and higher out of the ground. And side branches occasionally sprout forth from the leaf axils. The result of all this is that the potted plant becomes, over time, so overgrown with layer upon layer of leaves that the plant no longer can gather enough energy to flower well.

African Violet in all its glory.

The solution to this problem is to make new plants and then chuck the old ones. All that’s needed to make a new plant is a leaf from an old plant and patience. So a few weeks ago I plucked a few leaves (a few, for insurance) from my old, overgrown African violet and plunged their stalks into a moist mix of peat moss and perlite. A plastic bag covering and held above the leaf cuttings by some twigs provided the needed humidity until roots could develop to keep the leaves turgid. Bright but indirect sunlight fueled, via photosynthesis, new root growth, and within a few weeks, resistance to a gentle tug on the leaves told me that roots had developed.

I removed the cover and now little plants are poking up through the ground alongside the leaf stalks. I’m going to transplant my rooted cuttings into larger pots and should, in a few weeks, be enjoying flowers. By then, I’ll have my knitting also ready.

11th Hour Apple Tree Planting

On to less gender stereotyped gardening: tree planting. Picture the day before Thanksgiving, November 26th. A wet snow is falling and beginning to whiten the ground. In my garage are two sturdy, bare root apple trees, a Hudson’s Golden Gem and an Ashmead’s Kernel, recently arrived from Cummins Nursery and needing planting.

Fortunately, I prepared the plantings site a couple of weeks previously with a 4-inch-deep, broad circle of leaf compost, the most immediate purpose of which was to keep the ground from freezing. Rushing to beat out the snow, I pulled enough compost aside to make space to dig holes, spread tree roots out in each hole, backfilled the soil, sifting it around the roots by pressing with my fingers and bouncing the tree up and down, and then settled all into place with a couple of gallons of water per plant.

I like autumn for tree planting. Roots have opportunity to grow in still warm soil (especially if mulched) while stems won’t grow and need water until spring. The soil is crumbly and soft, in good condition for digging and planting. And autumn planting leaves one less thing to do in the flurry of spring gardening.

However, winter temperatures and furry creatures can be a hazard to autumn-planted trees. The first line of defense, to fend off mice and rabbits and moderate temperatures on the trunk, is a spiral plastic tree guard. An 18” high cylinder of 1/2” hardware cloth provides further defense against mice and rabbits. Beyond that, a higher and wider cylinder of 2×4 fencing should fend off deer and my puppy Sammy. (Past puppies considered newly planted trees as playthings, fun to tug out of the ground.) And finally, the well-furnished, new tree goes into winter with some perfume, a deer-repellant spray, any of which is effective if applied before the plant gets nibbled and renewed monthly.

I expect to harvest the first apples from the new apple trees expected in 3 years.

IT’S ALL ORGANIC, BUT NOT NECESSARILY ALL GOOD

December 11, 2014/7 Comments/in Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Hay, Grass Clippings, Manure, Leaves — Watch Out!

Organic materials — that is, things that are or were once living — are the core of “organic” agriculture, and right from the get go, many years ago, I set out pitchfork in hand to gather these materials. Into large garbage pails toted around in my van I loaded manure from nearby stables. Neighbors let me haul away their bags of autumn leaves.

I even convinced city workers to dump a truckload of harvested lake weeds onto the side lawn of my small rented house. (That was in Madison, Wisconsin, where fertilizer runoff from lawns was spurring growth of lake weeds which, besides making swimming hazardous, were, upon their death, causing oxygen depletion of the lakes.)

Me mulching, even as a beginning gardener

Mowings of roadside hay, which I stuffed into the back of the van, were another source of organic matter, used for mulch and for compost. That was before the days of lead-free gasoline, so lead contamination was some concern. Then again, high levels of organic matter in the soil mitigate lead hazards in soils.

More dramatically of concern were bags of grass clippings I once dragged across the yard from my neighbor’s freshly mowed lawn. Hours after I had spread the clippings around my potato’s lush, green vines, their stems twisted and contorted as if screaming in pain — the effect of weedkiller used on the lawn. Perhaps my neighbor was striving for a uniform greensward; perhaps he had inadvertently used a lawn fertilizer laced with weed killer. “Weed and feed” sounds so cheerful and labor-saving. Lawn weedkillers are toxic to broadleaf plants, which means anything but a grass.

The particular weedkiller was probably 2,4-D, also know as Agent Orange (less cheerful-sounding), which is a synthetic category of plant hormone called auxins. At the right concentration and at the right time, whether natural or synthetic, auxins do good things, such as bending plants towards light, initiating root growth in cuttings and in growing plants, and promoting upward growth Otherwise, they can wreak havoc.

I phoned the university extension specialist and was advised to remove the mulch and to adsorb any escaped 2,4-D by mixing activated charcoal into the soil. I did so and subsequent growth was normal.

Home-Grown vs. Imported Hay

I now have the luxury of scything much of the organic material I need from my own one acre field. Early season mowings are succulent and nitrogen-rich, just like grass clippings. Later mowings are hay, dry and carbon-rich. During the growing season, depending on what and when I mow, I can harvest either end of the spectrum, or anything in between.

Wood chips are another good source of organic material, one free of chemicals

I no longer rely on roadside mowings as organic material for my plantings. They are nowadays too finely chopped for easy and fast scooping up with a pitchfork. Even if that were not the case, I would have second thoughts about bringing such hay on-site. Again, weedkillers are the threat, more insidious these days because of use of more persistent ones. So-called pyridine carboxylic acid weedkillers might hang around in the soil or on sprayed vegetation for anywhere from less than 30 days to several years, even in the manure from animals that have eaten sprayed vegetation!

Caution, Testing, & Time to Avoid Problems

I do still occasionally supplement home-harvested organic materials with imported ones. One source is horse manure from a local stable.

A few weeks ago I was pitching forkful after forkful of manure into the bed of my pickup truck when I glanced over at the far side of the pile and noticed some discarded hay, much of it still pressed together in partial bales. “How convenient,” I thought, for mulching, compost, or bedding for my chickens and ducks.

On my drive home I started thinking about that hay riding behind me. Could it be laced with weedkiller?

For the most straightforward answer, I could just ask the stable owner. A stable hand told me that the hay had been shipped from a few hours away. Rather than cross examine my manure donor, I looked closely at the hay to see if any clover, alfalfa, or other broadleaf plants were mixed in. No. Of course, lack of broadleaf plants does not prove that weedkiller was used.

Well-formed leaves indicate that the hay is free of chemical residues

My final recourse was to do a bioassay of the hay, essentially, to plant seeds in it and observe their growth. Two 4-inch flowerpots, one with chopped up, homegrown hay and the other with the chopped up, imported hay, served as growth media, into which went 3 bean seeds each. Long story short: Growth seemed normal in the imported hay although germination was slower, probably because its texture lent itself to more readily drying out.

To put my mind thoroughly at ease about the hay, I’m going to let the pile sit for a few months, where rain, sun, and, eventually warmth, can do their job in splitting apart the insidious weedkiller molecules. The hay is not for my compost, in the dark innards of which weedkillers, if present, would be particularly persistent.

Autumn Leaves, Good Stuff

Just like the old days, I do still import organic materials in the form of bagged autumn leaves — except a lot more these days. They are both weed- and weedkiller-free.

New Video from Last Summer: Grape Training & Pruning

If you’d like to join me on a brief journey back into summer, see www.leereich.com/videos for a new video, I made last summer, about how to prune that quintessential summer vegetable, tomatoes, just like the Godfather.

A Harvest of Mediterranean Transplants

December 3, 2014/5 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Mediterranean Delectables & Not So Delectables

Figs thrive in heat and sunlight, nothing like the cold and frequently overcast days we now have, with only a few hours of sun when it does show itself. Still, my figs keep my attention.

In the greenhouse, heated only enough to keep temperatures above 35°F, the fig trees still have plenty of hard, unripe fruits splayed along their stems. Nothing odd about that. Figs, unlike apples and most other fruits which ripen during a narrow window in time, keep developing and ripening new fruits all along their growing stems.

But only one of my varieties, given the name Rabbi Samuel, seems able to tap into what little sunlight and heat are still at hand. The flavor of fruits that ripen on the heels of a spate of cold, rainy weather falls flat. But whenever sunlight fuels enough photosynthesis in the leaves and warmth in the greenhouse for at least a couple of days, a few fruits will swell and soften, their rosy insides then sweet and richly flavored.

Next Year’s Fig Crop is Readied

Next year’s fig crops are also on my mind.

Greenhouse figs no longer bearing good-tasting fruits get lopped back to 3 to 4 feet high. That dramatic pruning will coax vigorous growth next spring on which new fruits will be borne. More dramatic pruning would coax even more vigorous growth, but the figs on that new growth would begin ripening too late.

Potted figs have also been pruned and moved to my barely heated basement where temperatures below 50°F will restrain growth until outdoor temperatures in spring warm enough so that the pots can be moved back out. Figs are subtropical plants that, when dormant, tolerate temperatures down into the 20s, or lower. If kept too warm in winter, new growth begins indoors. That new growth is tender and easily burned by slight frost or even bright sunlight when moved outside.

Potted figs are difficult to muscle around; mine need to be carried through three doorways and then down narrow stairs to the basement. So a potted fig needs to be kept in a reasonably sized pot even though that allows for only a reasonable amount of growth which, in turn, allows for only a reasonably sized crop.

Kadota fig, dug up in November

I worked my way around this problem by taking one of my potted figs, a Kadota, out of its pot and planting it directly in the ground in spring. Theoretically, eager roots reach out into the surrounding soil, enough to support more growth — and larger crops — than if restricted within a pot. Another plus with this method is that no watering is needed beyond an initial drenching.

My success, thus far, has been limited. Kadota may requires too long a season to begin ripening any fruit outdoors here. Still, success might come once the plant gets used to its routine, or I’ll use this method with a shorter season variety such as Brown Turkey.

The time to dig up a planted out fig is anytime before temperatures dip below about 20°F. Or sooner, if the plant has lost its leaves and gone dormant.

Kadota fig stored in cold basement

The Hunchback of Nice Vindicates Cardoon

Continuing the Mediterranean theme (is this some primal attraction to a Garden of Eden?), I wrote back in May about growing, with reservations, Gobbo di Nizza (Hunchback of Nice) cardoon. In my garden many years ago, cardoon proved to be an enormous, spiny, bitter-tasting vegetable. But that wasn’t Gobbo di Nizza cardoon.

First off, Gobbo di Nizza is not spiny. It looks spiny but the soft “spines” don’t bite. This is an impressive-looking plant, something like a giant thistle (which it is, as is the closely related artichoke, botanically speaking), a whorl of gray-green leaves (very Mediterranean) soaring almost 4 feet high.

I tasted Gobbo di Nizza a month or so ago and was very unimpressed with its bitter flavor.

Blanching, which is blocking out sunlight, is a way that the flavor of vegetables such as endive and chicory is mellowed. Some folks blanche cardoon. So I gathered together Gobbo’s leaves, secured them in a tight bundle with a wrapping of twine, and waited a few weeks. Once I had harvested the leaves, removed the blades, and pared away the stringy flesh, I was left holding large, pale leaf stalks, the stalks looking much like celery on steroids.

Chopped into 1” pieces, and drained after being boiled for 15 minutes in salted water, Gobbo di Pizza had a smooth, artichoke-y flavor, quite good. Perhaps it was the olive oil and home-grown sun-dried tomatoes I drizzled over them.

Earthy Flavor: What am I, a Worm?

Beets are too earthy in flavor for my palette, and it’s not my imagination. That earthy flavor is from geosmin, a substance that is actually also present in soil! I like my earthiness in the soil, not my food.

Varieties differ in their geosmin concentration, with cylindrical varieties and the striped variety Chioggia being highest. This past season I was duped into growing beets again. I grew the old, low geosmin variety Detroit Dark Red, but still found it too earthy. Most were given away. The few left await vinegar, horseradish, or mustard to tone down their earthiness.

CITRUS IN NEW YORK

November 26, 2014/1 Comment/in Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

Paradise Under Glass, and I Take a Bit of it Home

Wandering in and out of the narrow alleys, I could barely squeeze past other, potential buyers. On my way back from a lecture and book selling, a wad of money was burning a hole in my pocket. I muttered to a young couple who glanced up to let me pass, “I feel like a drug addict.” A fleeting, sympathetic smile, and they, like others, were again intent on the offerings, hardly aware, like us other “addicts,” of other humanity.

I was lucky, able to leave Logee’s Greenhouses in Danielson, CT only $75 poorer. But richer in plants. Perched on the tray that I carried to my car were small plants of fragrant wax plant (Hoya odorata), Nordmann Seedless Nagami kumquat, and Golden Nugget mandarin (tangerine), all three promising to offer, for years to come, sweet fragrance, beauty, and good eating in the case of the mandarin and kumquat. By not allowing myself to dawdle, I was able to keep my trembling hand from grabbing at a Black Mission fig plant, a Dwarf Cavendish banana plant (“only 3 feet high!”), or a Hoya lauterbachii, with fragrant blooms the size of teacups.

Most of Logee’s plants are small and not cheap, understandable considering the wide array of plants they stock. Aside from my kumquat and mandarin, I could have chosen from among a dozen other citrus varieties, including some interesting oddities like Buddah’s Hand Citron, whose fruit does, in fact, look like the draped fingers on a hand. Instead of the fragrant wax plant, I could have driven home with any one of 15 other species or varieties of wax plant. Not that Logee’s is limited only to fragrant or fruiting plants. They stock almost a 100 different kinds of begonias, among other houseplants.

Part of the jasmine collection at Logee’s

Entering the greenhouses is an experience very unlike that of entering most commercial greenhouses, the latter with their soaring roofs of crystal-clear glass, their buoyant atmosphere, and scoured concrete floors. Logee’s is Paradise for plant lovers, with a mix of concrete and dirt paths so narrow that leaves and tendrils grab at you from either side. Fortunately, plants are more organized at Logee’s than in Paradise: collections of such plants as citrus, passionflower, orchids, and angel’s trumpets are each grouped together. Perhaps the star of the show is the Ponderosa lemon tree, shipped by train then horse and buggy to the greenhouse in 1900 and still bearing crops of grapefruit sized lemons (also called American Wonder lemon and thought to be a hybrid of lemon and citron, originating as a seedling the 1880s). Over the years, it’s given rise to numerous offspring, one of which you can purchase, growing in a 2.5” pot, for $11.95.

Citrus: New Plants from Old

New plants of Ponderosa lemon and other citrus varieties can be propagated one of three ways.

Lemons and limes tend to root easily from cuttings, which are leafy branches with their bases plunged into a moist rooting medium such as a 1:1 mix of perlite and peat moss. Because citrus are evergreen, air around the cuttings has to be kept humid enough so the still-rootless stems don’t dry out. A clear plastic or glass tent does the trick. The leaves need to photosynthesize so they have energy to make roots, so some light is needed. Not too much, though, or the cuttings cook in their tent.

Special rooting hormones, which are synthetic analogues of natural plant hormones, help cuttings to root. Synthetic hormones are used because they decompose more slowly than natural hormones (and in different concentrations, are used as herbicides, such as 2,4-D). Another possibility is to soak the cuttings in water in which have steeped stems of willow, a plant that roots very easily so presumably has some root-stimulating goodies to share. I avoid the hassle of natural or synthetic hormones in rooting cuttings and, instead, pay careful attention to which stems I select for rooting, the rooting medium, and light.

Some citrus varieties can be propagated by seed. Usually a seed-propagated fruit gives rise to a baby different from the mother plant, reflecting the jumbling around of chromosomes as pollen and egg cells united. However, a few plants, and many citrus, exhibit apomyxis, where the seeds, although they look like normal seeds, are formed from cells of only the mother plant.

My new plant acquisitions: hoya and 2 citrus.

All the seedlings, then, are clones of each other and their mother. Well, not all, because in a given fruit, some seeds may be apomyctic and others may be the product of pollination. The apomyctic seedlings show their presence by their greater vigor and more upright stature.

Downsides to propagation by seedlings, apomyctic or otherwise, are that plants must go through a juvenile phases of some years before they are old enough to flower and fruit. Also, most citrus tend to be very thorny in their youth.

Kumquats Roots for Tangerine Tops

One way I justified my purchases at Logee’s was with my plan to use my new citrus plants to make more plants — by grafting, the third way of propagating citrus. All that’s needed is any citrus rootstock; they all are graft compatible. Not being able to throw away seeds, I have a few kumquat rootstocks started from seeds I spit out from my Meiwa kumquat fruits as I ate them a couple of years ago.

I’ll graft in spring, taking stems from the Golden Nugget mandarin to make a whip graft, a particularly easy kind of graft that gives quick results. Basically, a smooth, sloping cut on the kumquat rootstock will be matched against a similarly smooth, sloping cut on the “scion,” which is the stem I cut from the mandarin stem, with both bound together with a wrap of tape or cut rubber band. After removing leaves from the scion, grafting compound (Tree-Kote) or Parafilm seals the graft and scion against dessication before the scion and rootstock knit together, and the scion piece begins to grow.

The final step will be deciding what to do with my growing citrus orchard in pots. Plants for my annual sale, perhaps? The largest citrus orchard (potted) in the Hudson Valley?

It’s Summertime, on a New Video

November 23, 2014/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Would you like to be transported back to summer, for 4 minutes at least? Check out my newest video post, at https://leereich.com/video