Longwood Revisited

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Witchhazel blossoms on February 5th! Not here, but down in Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, a public botanical and pleasure garden around which I had some time to wander before giving a lecture. One little grove was particularly fragrant and comely, with a few witchhazels shrubs with yellow blossoms, some with bright orange blossoms, and some with brownish orange blossoms.
February 5th is early for witchhazel even down there, reflecting what has been the mildest winter in memory. While many people prefer mild winters, this weather worries a lot of gardeners. Are plants going to become “soft?” Is possible cold weather in the weeks ahead going to do them in?
Call me a pollyanna, but I have a lot of faith in Mother Nature (or, put another way, natural systems) to adapt and protect against calamities. Not that everything will necessarily keep chugging along the way we humans like it, but that forests will remain forests, perhaps with some changes in species, and that garden plants should, in general, survive.
A few odd things are going on this winter here in the Northeast and over much of the rest of the country. First is the mild temperatures. People worry that plants might begin to grow too soon. But today’s and tomorrow’s temperatures aren’t the only things that shake plants awake this time of year. Daylength also comes into play, and no matter what the winter is like, daylength is the same on any given date from year to year. 
Temperatures over the past weeks and months also come into play: Plants won’t begin growth until they’ve experienced a certain number of hours of cool — not cold — temperatures, signaling for them that winter is over and it’s safe to grow. Some winters, those hours begin to accumulate in autumn and then finish accumulating in late winter, when temperatures turn cool, not frigid, again. In the South and perhaps this far north, this winter at least, those hours could have accumulated sufficiently through winter to cause an early awakening of plants.
The first sign that many trees and shrubs show of awakening is the appearance of their flowers. These early blossoms could, in fact, succumb to subsequent cold weather. That cold could snuff out developing fruits, snuffing out this year’s crop. Or that cold weather could turn, say, an early tulip blossom from a handsome red cup to a wet dishrag on a stalk. In either case, the plants themselves, except for the blossoms and fruits should not be harmed. 
The second odd thing about this winter is the lack of snow cover. Snow reflects light and heat from winter sun. Evergreens don’t like this at a time when their roots are cold and not especially active. The result is scorched leaves. Bark also can scorch, except this time it’s called scalding, when winter sun heats up dark bark by day and then bark temperatures plummet as the sun drops below the horizon.
On the plus side, snow is a great insulator. It helps modulate soil temperatures to minimize alternate freezing and thawing, which can heave plants up and out of the soil. Heaving is especially a problem with young or new plants, as yet hardly rooted. That insulating, white blanket also lessens roots’ exposure to cold. Without snow, less cold-hardy plants (and we gardeners are always pushing the limits) might show more winter damage.
Then again, snow isn’t the only insulator. Any good gardener mulches plants to provide nutrients, to conserve water, to build up humus, and to feed beneficial soil life. I’m banking on those layers of wood chips, leaves, straw, and other organic materials I spread through autumn to protect my roots — plants’ roots, that is.
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No question about it: Temperatures, on average, have warmed in recent years. Plants are responding. But how? Trees, for example.
To help answer such questions, the Smithsonian Institute recently began a citizen science program to track tree growth throughout the world. The way it works is that, after signing up to become a “citizen scientist,” you’re sent a tree banding kit along with instructions for attaching the tree band, selecting study trees, and gathering and reporting data. Information, including a video, is available at https://treebanding.si.edu.
It’s all free, it’s all interesting, and your data, along with that of citizen scientists worldwide, will help us better understand tree growth, and what’s affecting it, over the years.
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Turning my thoughts back to Kennett Square and Longwood Gardens . . . I’m jealous. Not of their awesome, main conservatory fragrant with citrus trees and lilies in bloom. (I have a small greenhouse, and a kumquat, a citrus relative, that blooms in summer.) Not of their small greenhouse that is home to espaliered peach and nectarine trees and to a dozen or so potted fig trees. (Three fig trees grow in my greenhouse.) Not of their grove of witchhazels in various shades of yellows and reds. (I have one yellow witchhazel.)
What I am jealous of is the care that each of their plants receive; each one is perfect. If an old leaf or spent flower drops on the ground, someone picks it up. Each stem of their peach and nectarine espaliers is tied neatly to its trellis, as are the high vines clambering up pillars in the greenhouse. Outdoors, each tree is pruned to perfection, with none of their branches crowding, with any diseased or dead limbs lopped off cleanly. Looking closely enough, I did, at least, see some evidence of scale insects on their large potted grapefruit plants in the conservatory. (My large potted bay laurel also shows evidence of scale.)
My gardens, indoors and out, would be much improved with their knowledgeable crew of helpers.

ADMIRING THE GARDEN, NOW? & COLD PLANS

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        See previous post, below, about my new book, just out!! GROW FRUIT NATURALLY: A HANDS-ON GUIDE TO LUSCIOUS, HOMEGROWN FRUIT.
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Every time I walk out the back door on the way to the greenhouse, chicken coop, or compost pile, I take a look at my vegetable gardens. No, I’m not checking out what’s growing. Nothing’ growing, except for a few stalks of kale and some green tufts of mâche.
My real interest is how the vegetable garden looks, now, in midwinter. Too many people plant their vegetables in “vegetable prisons:” undersized gardens with oversized fencing relegated to a distant corner of the yard. 
A vegetable garden needn’t be an eyesore, even in winter when nothing is growing in it. Consider the fence, which endures year ‘round. How about white pickets, rustic cedar or locust, or fanciful arches of rebar filled in with mesh? And no need to segregate plants, banning ornamentals from the vegetable garden. How about dwarf boxwood as accent or edging within the garden and shrubs outside the fence to soften its transition to lawn? How about some cover crops in the vegetable beds for a verdant cover, turned tawny this time of year, which also improves the soil? How about an arching arbor as an invitation to enter the garden, the arbor perhaps dressed up with clematis, whose fuzzy seedheads persist long after the flowers fade.
Once a vegetable garden becomes inviting, there’s no longer the need to relegate it to that distant corner of the yard. Move it closer to the house or, even better, the back door or, better still, right against the house, linked to it with eyes and feet. (Brick house, brick paths; white clapboard house, white picket fencing; etc.) Now you have a garden that not only looks prettier, but one that also will get more care and use because of its proximity and visual draw, ad looks good even in winter.
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My two vegetable gardens are hardly eyesores, but as I look upon them now, I see that they could be prettier. And one of them could be even closer to the house. (It’s now about 25 feet distant.) 
I originally rented my house and the closer vegetable garden still stands where the original one was once differentiated from the then-weedy, tall grassy field by a rickety chicken-wire fence. The fence has been re-built twice, most recently with locust posts and cross-pieces, and welded wire fencing. I have dressed up its outside perimeter with billowing outpourings of trees and shrubs, including some red currant bushes which ripen tasty, brightly-colored, jeweled fruits in early summer, and a cornelian cherry tree, also with tasty, bright red fruits later in summer. In a month and a half, that cornelian cherry tree will be showered in yellow blossoms. (More on all this in my book Landscaping with Fruit.)
Although I am loathe to move the vegetable garden, with its 30 years of compost-enriched soil, closer to the house physically, I have attempted to do so visually with a series of gateways and arches. Standing in my kitchen and looking out a glass, sliding door towards the garden carries your eyes under the grape arbor over the terrace attached to the house, across a small patch of lawn, and thence through a rustic, locust arbor into the garden. The path through the garden carries you further, across the garden and then out through another arbor, the path extending into a berry patch. Further along, that path ends in yet another, arbor, this one simpler, and finally outside the planted areas to a short path that meanders mysteriously out of sight into a patch of bamboo.
Still, my landscape seems too disjunct. The gardens aren’t sufficiently tied to each other or to the surrounding landscape and house.
The vegetable garden also is now too gray and brown. The evergreen white cedars, boxwoods, and Meserve hollies around and near the gardens cheer and warm up the landscape, but more is needed.
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The traditionally coldest part of winter is past and it hasn’t been very cold, so I may risk expanding the outdoor evergreen palette, which is somewhat limited this far north. Temperatures did drop to about 5°F a few weeks ago, but nighttime lows at the end of January were only in the 20s, nothing like the lows of minus 25° experienced many years ago.
The USDA, recognizing the shift to warmer winter temperatures, recently updated their cold hardiness zone map, available at http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/. Wavy lines overrunning this map bracket each zone, from 1 through 11, delineating the average annual minimum temperature within each zone. (My garden, over the years, has been re-classified  from 4b to 5b.) Nursery catalogs and tags on plants in local nurseries spell out, among other bits of information, the hardiness zone limits for specific plants and varieties.
Helping me out on my search for new evergreens will be Michael Dirr’s new book, Encyclopedia of Trees & Shrubs, a weighty and informative tome in all respects. In a few years, with continued warming, I may try planting two southern evergreens that I long for here in the north: southern magnolia and camellia.
 

NEW FRUIT BOOK HOT OFF THE PRESS!

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Hot off the press!!!! My new book, Grow Fruit Naturally: A Hands-On Guide to Luscious, Homegrown Fruit (The Taunton Press). Grow Fruit Naturally is THE book for you if you want to pick luscious fruit right from your own sunny balcony, suburban lot, or farmden. Sure, growing your own fruit will save money but — even better — your home-grown apples, blueberries, peaches, or oranges will be the best you’ve ever tasted and won’t be doused with toxic sprays. 
 
Grow Fruit Naturally shows you the way to successfully harvest fruits that are delicious and healthy, with information on over 30 fruits, from temperate to tropical, and how to reap the most of their bounty. Natural growing begins with creating a healthy soil environment for roots and their microbial friends, and choosing the best kinds and varieties of fruits to plant both for top-notch flavor and for pest and disease resistance. Grow Fruit Naturally will lead you from those first steps right through harvesting for peak flavor and storing any excess. Some topics include:
 
• Planning for growing fruit
• Choosing plants for flavor and pest 
     and disease resistance
• Propagating fruit plants
• Pruning a fruit tree, bush, or vine
• Growing fruit plants in containers
• Avoiding or controlling common pests 
     and diseases naturally
• Storing your bounty
 
The emphasis here is also on simplicity, guiding you through pruning and other care needed to make growing everything from apples to figs to oranges to pawpaws to strawberries feasible within any constraints of time and space. Grow Fruit Naturally will soon have you harvesting luscious, wholesome fruits outside your own back (or front) door.
 
 Grow Fruit Naturally is not available through the usual outlets until mid-March. If you’re anxious to get started to heavenly fruitdom, the book is available RIGHT NOW from me, signed, through my website, listed at right.

WELCOMING IN SPRING & ODD HOUSEPLANT

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The first sign that spring is around the corner — well, perhaps around the block — is the aphids clustering on lettuce leaves in the greenhouse. For organically-grown lettuce, eradication of these pests isn’t reasonably feasible or probably even possible. So I try to strike a balance: As long as aphid populations don’t get too high, plants suffer but little. It’s also a balance between my tolerance for having to wash lettuce leaves to rid them of aphids and the number of aphids  I would tolerate eating. (They’re really not that noticeable or bad to eat; sort of tasty, in fact.)
You know those ladybugs that appear on the insides of south-facing windows this time of year? They used to be my first line of defense against aphids. I would vacuum them up with my Dustbuster, which made the ladybugs dizzy but otherwise caused little harm, and then sprinkle the stunned bugs around the greenhouse in late afternoon or early evening. Next morning, as temperatures warmed in the greenhouse, the ladybugs would go to work like little tractors, methodically crawling up and down leaves gobbling up aphids.
The problem is that the ladybugs can’t get past the new windows I installed a year ago in my house. But no need to resort to pesticides. 
A blast of water from the hose in the greenhouse is sufficient to knock many aphids off the leaves. It’s important to get both sides of the leaves. And it is important to keep up with burgeoning populations. Aphids are amazingly fecund, under ideal conditions their populations doubling every couple of days. They reproduce by mating, like most other animals, and also by parthenocarpy, that is, without mating. Sometimes they lay eggs and sometimes they give birth to live young. I’ll also keep an eye on other greenery in the greenhouse because a single aphid species can attack many different host plants.
Natural controls, including other insects, rain, and cold, help keep aphid problems in check. But natural controls are not as effective in the greenhouse as outdoors, where I rarely encounter aphid problems worth bothering about. So I’ll be regularly blasting the greenhouse plants with water in the coming months. And, no doubt, eating some aphids.
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Staghorn fern is among my weirdest houseplants, especially as it grows larger and larger. About 1990, I bought the plant, a cute little thing in a 3 inch flowerpot. I also bought a softball-sized chunk of tree fern fibre on which to grow this normally epiphytic plants. The plant went into a hole gouged into the fibre, then was held in place with wrappings of fishing line. An eyebolt screwed into the fibre offered a convenient way to hang the plant.
Staghorn fern grows two kinds of fronds. The fertile fronds are green and are the ones that resemble stag horns in shape. Infertile fronds are tan and hug the soil, tree fern fibre, or — the usual support for an epiphyte — organic duff accumulated in the crotch of a tree.
Over the course of the 20 some odd years the plant has called that fibre block home, it’s grown many fertile and infertile fronds. The infertile fronds have totally enveloped the fibre block  to hide it, and the fertile fronds now appear at various places around the tawny mass. 
Most growth is in summer, when seedlings of other plants, including cedar trees and other kinds of ferns, sometimes take root in the moist mass. In winter, when the plant is indoors and hardly ever watered, these interlopers usually die off. The staghorn fern tolerates some drying out in winter, which is a good thing because watering it entails putting it in the bathtub and then giving it a shower long enough to let the water penetrate through all the layers of sterile fronds to wet the tree fern fibre. I let the plant set a couple of hours to let excess water drain away, then return it, now weighing about 10 pounds, to its east-facing window.
The wild fern interloper that established itself in some crevice in the sterile staghorn ferns last summer seems to be thriving along with the staghorn fern this winter, which should make for an even more interesting hanging plant in years to come.
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Today is a big day, the first seed sowing of the 2012 gardening season. Lettuce and onions. The lettuce for the greenhouse. The onions for eventual transplanting outdoors.
Some of the lettuce seeds will go right into the ground in the greenhouse and some of the seeds will be sown in seed flats for later transplanting in the greenhouse. The seeds sprout sooner in seed flats but the plants are more resilient, less apt to dry out or go to seed, when started right in the ground.
The plan is for these new lettuce plants to come into their own just as the last of last autumn’s lettuce plantings are harvested.

BONSAI GOOD, JASMINE BAD

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At almost a year old, my bonsai is looking, if not wizened, at least tree-like and a welcome sight in winter. This bonsai began life in a big box store, a weeping fig in a 4 inch pot. Weeping figs are so easy to root from cuttings that the propagators of these plants evidently don’t even bother with individual cuttings, instead just sticking clumps of them together. Or maybe they’re sold in clumps to make the plants look bushier. At any rate, I divided the clump as soon as I got home and then had 4 weeping figs.
In the tropics, I’ve seen weeping figs as large as our sugar maples. In large pots indoors, I’ve seen — and once had — weeping figs 6 feet high. I planned for one of my new weeping figs to call home a rectangular pot 1 inch deep by 6 by 4 inches long and wide — for its whole life! Another of the weeping figs was destined for a round pot just a bit over 2 inches wide and deep, also for life.
To fit these small plants into even smaller pots, each got its roots and tops clipped back, the roots for a good fit into its future pot and the tops to balance root loss and to give the “tree” an attractive form. All this began last summer, and the plants spent a few weeks in light shade to recover from the butchering.
Once recovered, the plants began to grow, which is good and bad. Growth is needed to keep any plant alive but the goal was, and is, to keep the plants small and in proportion to the dimensions of their pots, all the time maintaining good form, of course. One way to keep a plant small is to periodically cut back shoots. Another way to keep a plant small is to periodically cut off its leaves. As I wrote in my book, The Pruning Book, “Timed correctly . . . leaf pruning forces a second flush of leaves that are smaller and hence better proportioned to the size of the plant.” 
I also wrote that “leaf pruning is not for every bonsai. Do not do it to evergreens . . .” Weeping fig is evergreen. Oh well, I’m going to try it anyway.
This is the bonsai last summer, after I snipped off all its leaves.
As the plants age and their trunks thicken, I’ll help them along on their way to wizened gnarliness, creating dead stubs, gouging out wood where branches are removed, and, if necessary, using temporary wires to direct branches.
Plants need to be healthy to tolerate such treatments. In a few weeks, and every late winter or spring thereafter, I’ll tip the plants out of their pots, cut back some roots, and then snuggle the roots back into the pot refreshed with new potting soil. Branches also will get pruned at least yearly for health and beauty. 
I hope these trees thrive not only for my viewing pleasure but also because I devoted a whole chapter to bonsai in The Pruning Book. (This book also covers other special pruning techniques, such as espalier and pollarding, as well as standard pruning techniques for all kinds of plants.)
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It doesn’t seem premature to state that I’ve failed again: Three jasmine plants are, once again, all leaf and no flowers. Jasmine (Jasminium polyanthum) is a plant that is easy to grow and easy to propagate; hence all the greenery and the number of plants I’ve had over the years.
The main reason to grow jasmine, though, is for the sweet perfume with which it fills the air when in bloom. At least I think it’s a sweet perfume because I can hardly remember the aroma. I got the original plant 11 years ago and remember how proud I was getting it to rebloom for the first couple of winters.
So what makes your typical tropical or subtropical winter blooming plants — Christmas cactii, poinsettias, amaryllises, and the like —  bloom when they do, or at all? A period of cool temperatures, short days (long nights, actually), or dryish conditions. Any or all of these changes for a period of time in autumn triggers flower buds for winter. 
My three jasmine plants have received the requisite treatments yet, as I stare at the plants, I see no hint of a flower. Just lanky stems grabbing at other plants or sprawling on the floor.
A friend suggested that my jasmines have grown old. They did all originate as cuttings from my original plant of 11 years ago. It’s not a good explanation but the only one left. I’m buying a new plant.
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No, I’ve decided not to buy a new jasmine plant. I’ll give my plants one more chance (as I have every year for the past 9 years). White Flower Farm nursery, which has sold jasmines for years, offers some more exacting instructions on growing the plants: “Prune as necessary to control size or to maintain shape, but stop pruning by August 1, because the plant sets flower buds in late summer. To encourage the formation of flower buds for next winter, be sure your plant experiences the cooler temperatures and shorter days of early autumn. The plant needs 4-5 weeks of nighttime temperatures between 40° and 50°F, plenty of sunlight, and the complete absence of artificial light after sundown. Bring the plant indoors before frost. Then give it cool temperatures [below 65°] and indirect [but bright] light until it blooms again in late winter.”  I will follow these instructions to the letter. Wish me luck.
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Last post I mentioned battling scale insects on house plants with sprays of horticultural oil in autumn. A reader wrote to offer another remedy: soap sprays. I’ve also used soap at various times, and it is effective, especially specially formulated “insecticidal soaps.” You do have to be a little careful because some soaps at some concentrations can damage some plants. (That’s a lot of “somes.”) The reader mentioned the especially environmentally friendly tack of saving shower water in a bucket, which, the reader wrote, results in a perfect soap concentration for insect control. Whatever works.

KEEPING MULCH SIMPLE

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Dryish and cold, but not frigid, weather: What else is there to do outdoors, gardenwise, but mulch? (Pruning is best left until after the coldest nights of winter have passed, in late February.) Arborists dumped a large pile of wood chips near my neighbor’s garden and he spread all he could in paths and among berry bushes. What’s left is for me.
 
Not that I hadn’t myself been spreading mulches all through autumn. Compost went on the vegetable beds, wood chips from my own pile (long gone) beneath my berry bushes and around trees, and horse manure mixed with wood shavings beneath the young row of dwarf apple trees.
 
Mulch is one of those things in life that you can’t have too much of — if you’re a gardener — so I forked the neighbor’s wood chips into my garden cart and hauled five loads over to my apple trees. The apples would be thankful because, as dwarf trees, they need the best possible soil conditions to keep them growing vigorously, vigorously for dwarfs, that is. Also, manure left on top of the ground in winter, especially manure left exposed to the elements, loses some its goodness as its nitrogen evaporates into thin air. Barring snow, not in the offing as of this writing, the wood chips blanket should minimize that loss.
 
One other benefit of wood chips are that they look nice. They are dark brown, similar to dirt. Unfortunately, the five cart loads was enough to cover only half of the 150 foot row of apples.
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I like to get on top of any gardening fad as it comes down the pike, although not necessarily to embrace it. One such fad concerns wood chips, not any old wood chips, but “ramial wood chips,” defined as wood chips made from wood no larger than about 3 inches in diameter.
 
Is there anything magical about ramial wood chips? These chips are surely better than the chunks of bark or wood mulch, some of it dyed red, sold in plastic bags. Ramial wood chips are cheaper, often free and, having smaller pieces, are more biologically active and better at smothering weeds and maintaining soil moisture than chunks. As compared with local, arborists’ chips that would include chips from from larger diameter wood, ramial wood chips, with their  higher proportion of bark and living tissue, would be higher in nutrients.
 
Still, no reason to snub your nose at any and all wood chips (except for those bagged chunks). When used as mulch, a dynamic interface of decomposition develops where the bottom layer of raw chips meets the top layer of decomposed material. Nutrients are concentrated as microbes gobble up the materials and carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are breathed away as carbon dioxide and water, so the nutritional advantage of ramial wood chips over run-of-the-mill arborists’ chips is lost.
 
Some people tout ramial wood chips as promoting beneficial fungi in soils, allegedly to the liking of trees — such as apples — naturally found in forests. But when any old kind of wood chips — any organic materials, for that matter — is laid atop the ground, it is worked upon by a naturally orchestrated sequence of microorganisms, fungi included. Yes, fungi are promoted, but so are bacteria and other organisms, standing ready to gobble up the more readily accessible foodstuffs after fungi have finished with them. No need to use special kinds of woods chips for special effect.
 
So, enough about ramial wood chips! Wood chips of every stripe are available free or cheap as a waste product. They’re all beneficial. I use any and all that are offered, and that’s what went on the ground beneath my apple trees.
To quote Thoreau: “Simplify, simplify.”
 

SALAD TUNNELS & COLDFRAMES, AND INDOOR “PINE”

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Cold has yet to throw a wrench into salads fresh from the garden — even though December 16th saw a night-time low of 12°F. Yes, the lettuce would be mush if unprotected but under the sheltering clear plastic and wooden sides of my 5 foot square cold frame, the plants are barely scathed. Just a few leaves wilted at their edges. Spinach that I sowed between the lettuce plants, for harvest after the lettuce is finished is still looking spry.
Plastic tunnels supported by wire hoops are offering almost as much cold protection over 3 garden beds. Beneath them, mustard greens, endive, and arugula don’t exactly thrive, but do survive.
A few fresh greens are even surviving out in the garden without any sort of protection whatsoever. That would include some arugula that was never covered as well as kale, what’s left of it, and mâche, the most cold-hardy of all salad greens.
Once temperatures plummet or the ground is blanketed with snow, fresh salads will come from the greenhouse, which, with night temperatures never allowed to drop below 37°F., is packed with lush greenery as if it were May.
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Update: Lettuce in the cold frame is flagging after a night-time low of 8° a few days after that 12° low. Unprotected out in the garden, only mâche and kale survive.
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The holiday tree, only a half a foot tall and ornamented with 3 silver balls, is cute as a button. It’s a Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla), a free gift I received a couple of weeks ago from a mail-order nursery. This tree will green up the darkest days of the year for year after year because it’s a tropical species that does well in the eternal warmth and somewhat dry air, in winter at least, of any home.
Over the years, the tree will lose its impishness and develop a straight, upright trunk off of which will grow relatively widely spaced, whorled tiers of horizontal branches, all clothed in green needles. With age, the plant becomes quite majestic. Too majestic, in fact, for any home. I have seen the spreading branches of this tree towering 40 feet or more over the tiled roofs of homes in tropical climates.
So what’s a gardener to do with such a plant, after years of nurturing it and watching it grow? One option, of course, is to bite the bullet and walk it over to the compost pile. Or it could be gifted to a friend with a higher ceiling, but that just shifts responsibility and puts off the inevitable. How about giving it to grandma for her front lawn in Florida?
A natural inclination for any real gardener in this situation would be to try to keep the plant going, not as its original self but in the form of a cutting. The rooted cutting, then, is genetically the same as the original plant, only a smaller version. Norfolk Island pine does root from cuttings especially, as with many conifers, if the cuttings are taken from young growth.
This plan has one problem: fixed plagiotropism. This botanical mouthful signifies the tendency for a horizontal shoot of certain plants to always retain its horizontal growth habit. Put more simply, if a cutting is rooted from one of Norfolk Island pine’s horizontal stems, that stem will always grow sideways to creep along a windowsill or wherever else the plant is growing. 
The solution to this problem is to take a cutting from the leading, upright stem. It the mother plant isn’t destined for composting, though, cutting out that leading stem does ruin its form. Also, because young cuttings root best, you might end up with only one cutting, perhaps two, from that short length of young, leading stem. Not much insurance for a plant that doesn’t root all that easily.
The leading, upright stem, of a plant can have the opposite inclination: fixed orthotropism, a permanent, upright growth habit. With other plants, their plagiotropism or orthotropism may be temporary.
Not so for Norfolk Island pine’s plagiotropism. I’ll figure out how to cross that plagiotropic bridge, or not, when I come to it.
(For further discussion of topophysis, which encompasses plagiotropism an orthotropism, and related topics on plant growth, see Plant Form: An Illustrated Guide to Flowering Plant Morphology by Adrian Bell and Alan Bryan.)

WHOSE NUTS?

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Nuts are underrated as a food and in the garden. After all, how many gardeners plant nuts? In the landscape, nut plants range from majestic trees to graceful shrubs. As a food, nuts are an excellent source of protein, heart-friendly fats, and all sorts of other nutritional goodies known and unknown. Did you ever see a fat or tired squirrel? (True, we wouldn’t see those couch potato squirrels as they lounged in their den.)
Right now, I am enjoying the fruits of my nutty labors. Some nuts — most nuts that grow around here, in fact — need to be cured before they taste their best. Hazelnuts, ready in September, were good as soon as harvested but even better after resting a couple of weeks. Chestnuts, likewise ready in September, were likewise pretty good immediately, but sweetened after a few weeks in storage. The hazelnuts grow on arching shrubs that could instead be trained to small trees. The chestnuts are picturesque, spreading trees. Both hazelnuts and chestnuts are fast-growing and begin to bear within 5 years or less after planting.
The improvement in flavor from curing is dramatic when it comes to black walnuts and their kin. They were harvested (from the ground) in October, hulled (a messy job), and left outdoors in the sun a few days to dry before being moved to a loft area above the garage. The loft area was cool, airy, and — very important — squirrel-proof. Now they are ready to crack and eat.
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Black walnuts are, in my opinion, the best-tasting of the nutty lot. And the trees grow wild throughout much of eastern U.S. This is one nut that I have not planted because I inherited a large tree right on my property. Over the years, new trees have also sprung up to bear nuts. Growth is fast and the trees become quite large. The downside to growing black walnuts for eating is that they are a hard nut to crack. After years of banged thumbs from cracking black walnuts on a concrete floor with a hammer, I purchased the Master Nutcracker, which is elegantly designed, somewhat pricey, but very effective. Separating the nutmeats and picking them out from their cracked shells makes for a convivial accompaniment to after-dinner conversation in winter.
Butternuts, also native to eastern U.S., but not as widespread and currently threatened with a blight, need the same treatment as black walnut and are equally tough nuts to crack. I don’t bother with them because the trees, in contrast to black walnut, are hard to find. Their flavor also has less appeal.
Butternut has naturally and been deliberately hybridized with heartnut, a Japanese-type walnut, to yield what’s known as a buartnut. Many trees thought to be butternuts are actually buartnuts, such as the gigantic, spreading tree I “discovered” in Rosendale a couple of years ago. My young tree, only a few years old, is very fast growing and already shows inklings of future grandeur — and nuts, in the form a few flowers last spring (that, unfortunately, failed to develop into nuts).
Here’s the Rosendale tree in summer.
I did revisit the Rosendale buartnut in September and rushed to gather up as many nuts as I could ahead of squirrels, who were also working the tree. Those nuts are now cured. Heartnuts are known for their ease of cracking, a trait also borne out in the buartnut offspring. With the Master Nutcracker, the shells popped open to reveal whole nutmeats. The flavor was mild and a little dry, good for variety and ease of access but not nearly as tasty as black walnuts.
The nut menu needn’t end there. The season here is too short to ripen pecan nuts, although the trees will survive. Enter hicans, hybrids of hickory and pecan with a shorter ripening season. I’ll report back in a few years. Hickories are a native nut that is delicious although small, hard to crack, and yielding little nutmeat. Still, there are some named varieties that improve in all respects. I planted two in the spring of 2011 and hope for some nuts to try within five years.  I also have some young Persian walnut trees, the one nut among this bowl of nuts for which I am not hopeful. Persian walnuts blossom early, so the flowers often succumb to subsequent spring frosts, are susceptible to some serious diseases, and — mine, at least — are on a squirrel highway (beneath power lines).
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Have I been mentioning squirrels? Ah, squirrels, once the bane of my nutty endeavors. In years past, these “tree rats,” as they are sometimes nonaffectionately referred to by gardeners, have stripped my hazelnut shrubs bare. 
For now, I have the creatures under control. They won’t wander into the high grass that I let rise up through the summer around the hazelnuts. Chestnut burrs are too spiny for them — until the nuts drop out, by which time I’ve gathered them up. My hickories and buartnuts have not yet begun to bear, but the trees are isolated so a temporary squirrel guard of a cylinder of sheet metal should keep the squirrels from climbing. And black walnuts? There are plenty for everyone. The squirrels and I gather them and I still see plenty left on the ground.
Wreath materials

HOMEGROWN WREATH

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The dark green wreath was tied with red ribbons and gliding towards me, in its progress stirring up snowflakes gently floating out of the grey sky. No, the wreath was not hanging from a horse-drawn sled, but was plowing through the frigid air affixed to the chrome grille of a gleaming white Cadillac! Here we are in the twenty-first century, still infusing a breath of life into our winters with cut evergreen boughs, just as did the ancient Egyptians, Persians, Jews, Christians, and Druids.
And it’s true: a few evergreen boughs tied together and accented with a red ribbon do make a doorway more inviting, or a room more cozy in winter. (I’m still undecided about what greenery does for a Cadillac grill.) But going one step further with the greenery, to a bona fide wreath, creates something special. And the actual making of a wreath can be an end in itself this time of year, particularly to the accompaniment of a warm fire and friends and children.
To make a wreath, start with a base. The base might be a sturdy ring of wire (from a coat hanger, for example), or straw that has been bound into a bulky circle with string. Either of these bases can be made from scratch or purchased. For a more natural base, one which might be part of the final design, use a vine such as grape, honeysuckle, wisteria, or bower actinidia. Weave the vine into a circle of triple thickness, tucking in a new piece of vine as an old one ends.
The base might be all, or just about all, that is needed for a simple wreath. I have seen a very attractive wreath that was nothing more than a thick ring of wild rose sprigs showing off a profusion of pastel red fruits. Carefully overlapped sprigs of lavender or rosemary, bound with thin wire to a heavier wire frame, make a dainty, fragrant, blue-green wreath. Thyme is another good plant for this purpose, also fragrant. Keep thyme’s wiry stems somewhat loose, though, because they are as important in adding body to the wreath as are the tiny leaves.
This time of year my penchant is for wreaths that are rich green in color, and almost gaudy with ornamentation. The base for such wreaths is some evergreen plant. Not all evergreens are suitable, because some drop their leaves too readily indoors (and in the brisk wind riding on the front of a car!). Amongst needle-leaf evergreens, juniper, white pine, mugho pine, red pine, and spruce are good choices. Or, for something brighter, needled evergreens with yellow-tipped leaves, such as Gold Star and Kuriwao Sunburst junipers. Mahonia, holly, leucothoe, rhododendron, boxwood, lingonberry, and English ivy are suitable broad-leaf evergreens for a wreath, but none of the broadleaf evergreens will hold their leaves indoors as long as the needle-leaved evergreens.
Wire, glue or tuck small bunches of evergreens onto the base, with all the bunches facing the same direction. Don’t be stingy, because this mass of green color is what is going to calm down and visually hold together the whole wreath.
Next, add accent. Ornaments that are darker shades, and blue or green, make a quieter wreath than ornaments that are lighter shades, and red or yellow. As I said, this time of year I prefer spirited ornamentation, perhaps due to the impending dead of winter. Lively ornaments might include chains of shiny red cranberries or popcorn threaded together, bunches of bright red peppers and garlic clove.
Fruits, like evergreen leaves, flaunt winter’s cold darkness to celebrate the continuity of life from one year to the next. Some brightly colored fruits still clinging to vines and shrubs include mountainash, bittersweet, winterberry, barberry, and, of course, holly. Deck the halls.

XMAS TREE PLANTATION ON MINI-PLOT

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A living Christmas tree seems the “right” thing to do: You get a holiday tree decorating your living room for a couple weeks; the planet gets a tree to soak up carbon dioxide, provide a playground for wildlife, and contribute to the landscape greenery. The problem is that yearly planting out of living Christmas trees in most yards pretty soon leads to a small-scale version of the Black Forest. A lugubrious and mysterious landscape is not for everyone.
But there is a way to enjoy living Christmas trees, and keep the scene sunny and winsome: Plant very young trees, then harvest them when they reach the size to cut for Christmas. Essentially, have your own tree farm. The tree lives — and you enjoy it as such — until you cut it.
You may imagine that a tree farm big enough to supply you with one tree a year would take up too much space. Not so. A Christmas tree needs about eight years to grow to a harvestable size of about six feet tall. If you have enough space for eight trees, you can cut one and plant a new one every year, for an endless supply. At five foot spacing, all you need is about 200 square feet of area — perhaps a forty foot row, perhaps a rectangular plot ten by twenty feet. This spacing gives each plant enough sun to grow into a well-shaped tree, and allows you plenty of room to mow around each tree. If you prefer smaller Christmas trees, you can plant even closer.
Your tree farm need not be in an out-of-the-way place. A row of trees might make a nice, evergreen hedge. With the wide spacing and variation in tree sizes, the hedge will be somewhat informal. But at least you do not have to worry about the hedge becoming too tall, because trees get removed as soon as they are about head height. The trees also might make a nice screen for your compost bin or dog’s house. How about a miniature forest for your child?
Growing your own trees gives you the option of choosing whatever type of  Christmas tree you want. Most commonly cut nowadays for Christmas trees is Scotch pine, a tree that is very cold-hardy, fast growing, and tolerant of many different soil types. And, the plant holds its needles very well indoors.
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Scotch pine has been popular only since the 1930s, and over the years many other species have been in favor. In the middle of the 19th century, cedar was a favorite. But it dropped its needles too easily indoors. Then hemlock, one of the fastest growing evergreens, became popular. Its main defect is that its flexible branches bow too far to the ground under the weight of ornaments. Nowadays it’s also beset by a serious insect pest, the woolly adelgid. By the end of the 19th century, balsam fir became popular. This tree, still popular for Christmas in New England, makes up for its deficiencies — slow growth, less than ideal shape, and some needle drop — with its woodsy aroma that is rightly reminiscent of northern or mountaintop forests.
If you grow balsam fir — and I planted a half-dozen of them almost 20 years ago — make sure to give it a cool, moist soil. The climate around here is warmer than usually enjoyed by balsam fir, but I figured that the fragrance made balsam fir worth a try. My dog Stick, then a leashed puppy, soon chewed up 5 of my young trees, which were all that he could reach when he was young and leashed. One survived, and the survivor is now a towering, fragrant beauty about 25 feet tall and so wide that I had to cut an opening in its lower limbs to allow passage past it along the back portion of the garden.
I never could bring myself to cut that sole survivor to bring indoors for the holidays. The tree is so kind as to keep making two leading stems. Cutting one of them lets the other grow and gives me a manageable holiday tree that leaves the remaining tree healthier. If both leading stems were allowed to grow, they would be apt to split apart at their origin.
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Nowadays, besides Scotch pine, other popular Christmas trees include eastern white pine, Norway spruce, white and Colorado spruces, Douglas fir, and Fraser fir. White pine is fast growing, with an open form that you may or may not prefer in a Christmas tree. This native plant tolerates almost any soil, and even a bit of shade. Norway spruce is almost as fast growing, and is a graceful tree with arching limbs along the bottoms of which dangle short, needled branchlets. Norway spruce needs well-drained soil and full sun.
White and Colorado spruce, and Douglas and Fraser firs, are slow-growing trees. (The two firs are unrelated: Douglas is Pseudotsuga menziesii; Fraser is Abies fraserii.) The two spruces require moist, yet well-drained soil, in full sun. Douglas fir needs full sunlight, but cannot tolerate a windy site or dry soil. Douglas fir holds its needles indoors almost as well as does Scotch pine. Fraser fir needs wet soils in full sun or part shade.
A miniature tree farm requires very little time for maintenance. A thick mulch of straw or leaves will conserve soil moisture and smother weeds. Grow grass between the trees and mow it regularly to prevent competition for nutrients and moisture, especially when the trees are very small. If you prefer a tighter growth habit to your trees, and have the time and inclination, prune them once a year, shortening by half the “candles” of new growth before they expand in early summer. And finally, keep teething, playful puppies at bay from any trees for their first couple of years.