Thanks(soil)giving, Chokes, & Rosemary

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As part of my Thanksgiving celebration, I’m thanking the soil. Soil, after all, is where it all starts. We’re thankful for the plants, but the plants got where they got because of the soil, offering plants support, water, air (which roots need), a friendly microbial environment, and nourishment.
Basically, I thank the soil with organic materials, that is, stuff that is or was living. Stuff like wood chips (dead), straw (dead), compost (living and dead), manure (living and dead), and autumn leaves (dead). Organic materials are what put the “organic” in organic gardening and farming. Organic materials are bulky, and are what chemical fertilizers have too often replaced. Compost, for instance, is about one percent nitrogen, so to supply the average 2 pounds per 1000 square feet of actual nitrogen needed would require 200 pounds of compost. Opt for 10-10-10 chemical fertilizer and a mere 20 pounds per 1000 square feet would do the trick.
Oh, but that 180 pound difference between compost and 10-10-10 offers so much more than just nitrogen. Compost serves up a smorgasboard of nutrients reflecting the diversity of what went into the compost pile. Just about everything goes into mine, including orange peels from California, olive pits from Peru, even my old Levi’s in addition to garden and kitchen waste, hay, and manure. 
That’s not all: Compost and, as they decompose, other organic materials, offer a witch’s brew of natural compounds that improve plant nutrition by unleashing nutrients from the soil’s rocky matrix and rendering nutrients already in the soil even more available to plants. As important, these organic materials help soils hold both water and air, and provide a congenial, nutritive environment for beneficial organisms that help plants fend off diseases and further abet plant growth. Whew! That’s a lot of goodness.
So I’m hauling cart after cart of organic materials. Vegetable beds get an inch depth of crumbly, dark, pleasantly fragrant compost from piles built last year. Paths in vegetable gardens get wood chips. I am mulching berry plantings with wood chips or leaves, according to what’s available and my whims. Leaves that drop from the chestnut trees will be supplemented with leaves that neighbors with leafier yards need to discard. Other trees get wood chips. Fruit trees get rotted leaves, which are very similar in composition to compost in addition to wood chips and, possibly, horse manure with wood shavings.
I hope to finish soil Thanksgiving before the first snow that stays.
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My gut reaction is to shy away from eating any plant with “choke” in its name. Chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) are not for me. I did once grow chokeberry (Aronia spp.), which lived up to its name; the plant is long gone. Chokeberry is said to make a tasty jam or juice, which I realized, anything can if given enough sweetener, dilution, and addition of other flavors. 
Artichoke is one “choke” worth growing; its “choke” comes not from the throat but from the Arab name for the plant, al-qarshuf. The problem is that artichoke is one choke that isn’t very happy here. It needs mild winters and summers not searing, which are conditions you  might find right along the coast in California or the Mediterranean. So, of course, I am growing it here in New York’s Hudson Valley.
I grew artichoke years ago and did harvest a few small buds; this year I was hoping for at least larger buds. Imperial Star is the variety recommended for northern gardens because it forms buds the first year so can be grown as an annual. Not mine. I sowed seeds early this spring after giving this perennial the cold treatment necessary to fool it into thinking it’s gone through a mild winter and can begin flowering. Imperial Star is more easily fooled than other varieties. Plants given to a friend did make a few small buds but my plants just grew. (Northern Star is another, newer possibility for northern gardens because it allegedly survives winter temperatures below zero degrees F.)
No need to throw in the towel in growing artichokes, though. Among my last activities in the vegetable garden is to dig up one artichoke plant, pot it up, and overwinter it in a bright window in my cool basement. I’ll give it a head start in the greenhouse in spring, then plant it outdoors again when the the weather warms. If the harvest is nonexistent or unreasonably small, I’ll abandon artichoke growing for another 15 years.
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Increasingly, my attention is turning indoors. It has to, with all the thirsty plants now sitting in sunny windows. One of the thirstiest, oddly enough, is rosemary. Too many rosemary plants towards the end of too many winters have surprised me by all of a sudden, when brushed against, shedding leaves, dried and dead, as were the plants.
As a Mediterranean plant, you’d assume it likes dryish condition. It does like its head dry, at least in summer. Stiff leaves make it hard to tell when rosemary is thirsty. They don’t wilt, they just dry up and die.
So now I err on the side of too much rather than too little water. With extra perlite, my potting mix is well-drained, making too much water hardly a problem as long as the saucer beneath the plant isn’t filling with water. The best way to tell whether or not a rosemary plant is thirsty is to feel the weight of the pot.
Except for one rosemary plant conveniently growing in the kitchen, the others are spending winter in the basement, along with the artichoke.

UNCOMMON FRUIT, COMMON FRUIT, CATERPILLAR HEDGE

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With the economy the way it is, forget about any hedges against inflation. Anyway, I’m more concerned about hedges against poor harvests, and that hedge is to grow a diversity fruits and vegetables. I’ve never had a year of poor harvests of everything. Cabbage and broccoli will revel in a cool summer during which peppers or melons hardly ripen. Bean beetles that might ravage green beans won’t touch tomatoes, okra, and other vegetables; they won’t even nibble soybeans.
Besides offering a hedge, that diversity also usually presents me with a spectrum of flavors and nutrition.
In fruits, 2011 was a particularly good year for pears and hardy and super-hardy kiwifruit. These kiwifruis are grape-sized, smooth-skinned cousins to the fuzzy kiwifruit of our markets. The flavor is similar, but better, and you pop the whole fruit into your mouth, skin and all. The plants are strong-growing vines, so pretty that they were for decades planted strictly as ornamentals, their gustatory treasures lying hidden behind leaves and ignored. In contrast to fuzzy kiwifruits, hardy and super-hardy kiwifruits can be grown just about everywhere.
Super-hardy kiwifruits, Actinidia kolomikta (“super-hardy” because they tolerate cold to minus 40°), ripened back in early August and hardy kiwifruit, A. arguta (hardy to minus 25°F.), started ripening in mid September. You know these fruits are ripe for picking when the first berries just begin to soften.
I harvested all my hardy kiwifruits once the first ones ripened. Some were firm and some were ready to eat. Kept under refrigeration, the firm ones slowly ripen; at room temperature, they ripen faster. Ripened berries have been, and will be, for a few more weeks, a colorful, sweet-tart, flavorful addition to morning cereal.
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Apple trees have never borne well here. The reason is because I am trying to grow them “organically.” That means giving special care to the soil, keeping it nourished with compost, leaf mold, wood chips, and seaweed. That means maintaining a diversity of flowering plants to attract beneficial insects. And it means minimum or no spraying of pesticides which, if needed have minimum impact on everything but the target pest(s).
Admittedly, my farmden is not ideal for apple growing. Six-thousand acres of woods (not mine, Mohonk’s), overwintering home to many pests, lie within 50 feet of my trees. And cold air settles into this floodplain of the Wallkill River, so morning fogs and dews linger longer than on higher ground to fester disease problems. So I do spray my trees, many times each season, with Surround (a commercial formulation of kaolin clay) and sulfur (a naturally mined mineral).
The apple trees looked so hopeful in the spring. No late frosts. Exuberant, new growth. Pea-sized fruitlets rapidly swelling to marble-size, then golfball-size, and larger. 
But something, some things, happened between those halcyon days of June and harvest. Fruits disappeared, dropped, became ugly with blotches and dimples. My farmden isn’t the only one to suffer such affronts. Basically, if you wanted to pick the hardest fruit to grow in eastern U.S., what fruit would that be? Apple! Why? Because of a  very few, but very serious insect and disease problems. Plum curculio, codling moth, apple maggot, apple scab, fire blight, cedar-apple rust, and powdery mildew are the culprits.)
Still, I haven’t thrown in the towel yet with apples. I noted this year that more attention is needed to late summer diseases, such as black rot and bitter rot. And the apples I do harvest might be few, but their flavors are supreme, in large part because of variety selection and perhaps due to terroir.
Apples are not the only fruit worth growing around here. Even if the apple crop is poor, this year I had and have plenty of, in addition to pears and kiwifruits, medlars, raspberries, and grapes. And every year seems to be a good one for pawpaws, persimmons, and blueberries. I’ll be digging into the 40 quarts of blueberries in the freezer just as soon as the last of the kiwifruits are finished.
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And speaking of hedges, green ones, my yew caterpillar is going into winter looking better than ever. This hedge started out as 4 boring yew bushes planted about 25 years ago and needing multiple prunings each growing season to prevent their overwhelming nearby windows, or even the whole house.
Inspired by Keith Buesing’s (of Gardiner, NY) fabulous green sculptures, a couple of years ago I began re-forming the yews. Yew is an adaptable plant, amenable to pretty much all manners of pruning, and the reformation is now pretty much complete. (The smiling mouth is still under construction.)
Multiple prunings are still needed each growing season, but they are mostly light cuts to polish and maintain the form.
 
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With the economy the way it is, forget about any hedges against inflation. Anyway, I’m more concerned about hedges against poor harvests, and that hedge is to grow a diversity fruits and vegetables. I’ve never had a year of poor harvests of everything. Cabbage and broccoli will revel in a cool summer during which peppers or melons hardly ripen. Bean beetles that might ravage green beans won’t touch tomatoes, okra, and other vegetables; they won’t even nibble soybeans.
One thing I like about my kiwis, besides great flavor, is that
they don’t have those obnoxious plastictags on them.


Besides offering a hedge, that diversity also usually presents me with a spectrum of flavors and nutrition.

In fruits, 2011 was a particularly good year for pears and hardy and super-hardy kiwifruit. These kiwifruis are grape-sized, smooth-skinned cousins to the fuzzy kiwifruit of our markets. The flavor is similar, but better, and you pop the whole fruit into your mouth, skin and all. The plants are strong-growing vines, so pretty that they were for decades planted strictly as ornamentals, their gustatory treasures lying hidden behind leaves and ignored. In contrast to fuzzy kiwifruits, hardy and super-hardy kiwifruits can be grown just about everywhere.

Super-hardy kiwifruits, Actinidia kolomikta (“super-hardy” because they tolerate cold to minus 40°), ripened back in early August and hardy kiwifruit, A. arguta (hardy to minus 25°F.), started ripening in mid September. You know these fruits are ripe for picking when the first berries just begin to soften.

I harvested all my hardy kiwifruits once the first ones ripened. Some were firm and some were ready to eat. Kept under refrigeration, the firm ones slowly ripen; at room temperature, they ripen faster. Ripened berries have been, and will be, for a few more weeks, a colorful, sweet-tart, flavorful addition to morning cereal.
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Apple trees have never borne well here. The reason is because I am trying to grow them “organically.” That means giving special care to the soil, keeping it nourished with compost, leaf mold, wood chips, and seaweed. That means maintaining a diversity of flowering plants to attract beneficial insects. And it means minimum or no spraying of pesticides which, if needed have minimum impact on everything but the target pest(s).

Admittedly, my farmden is not ideal for apple growing. Six-thousand acres of woods (not mine, Mohonk Preserve’s), overwintering home to many pests, lie within 50 feet of my trees. And cold air settles into this floodplain of the Wallkill River, so morning fogs and dews linger longer than on higher ground to fester disease problems. So I do spray my trees, many times each season, with Surround (a commercial formulation of kaolin clay) and sulfur (a naturally mined mineral).

The apple trees looked so hopeful in the spring. No late frosts. Exuberant, new growth. Pea-sized fruitlets rapidly swelling to marble-size, then golfball-size, and larger. 
But something, some things, happened between those halcyon days of June and harvest. Fruits disappeared, dropped, became ugly with blotches and dimples. My farmden isn’t the only one to suffer such affronts. Basically, if you wanted to pick the hardest fruit to grow in eastern U.S., what fruit would that be? Apple! Why? Because of a  very few, but very serious insect and disease problems. Plum curculio, codling moth, apple maggot, apple scab, fire blight, cedar-apple rust, and powdery mildew are the culprits.)

Still, I haven’t thrown in the towel yet with apples. I noted this year that more attention is needed to late summer diseases, such as black rot and bitter rot. And the apples I do harvest might be few, but their flavors are supreme, in large part because of variety selection and perhaps due to terroir.

Apples are not the only fruit worth growing around here. Even if the apple crop is poor, this year I had and have plenty of, in addition to pears and kiwifruits, medlars, raspberries, and grapes. And every year seems to be a good one for pawpaws, persimmons, and blueberries. I’ll be digging into the 40 quarts of blueberries in the freezer just as soon as the last of the kiwifruits are finished.
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And speaking of hedges, green ones, my yew caterpillar is going into winter looking better than ever. This hedge started out as 4 boring yew bushes planted about 25 years ago and needing multiple prunings each growing season to prevent their overwhelming nearby windows, or even the whole house.

Inspired by Keith Buesing’s (of Gardiner, NY) fabulous green sculptures, a couple of years ago I began re-forming the yews. Yew is an adaptable plant, amenable to pretty much all manners of pruning, and the reformation is now pretty much complete. (The smiling mouth is still under construction.)

Multiple prunings are still needed each growing season, but they are mostly light cuts to polish and maintain the form.

WINTER, ALREADY IT SEEMS

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Winter seemed to have begun all of a sudden on October 29th when, after weeks of balmy autumn weather, large flakes poured out of the sky to bury lush green lettuces, leeks, Chinese and Occidental cabbages, and radishes beneath a heavy, white blanket. The next night, temperatures plummeted to below 20°F.
Thanks to modern weather reporting, I was ready. Before the snow fell, I set arches of 5-foot-long wire at 4-foot intervals over some of the vegetable beds. On top of these wire hoops went a layer of row cover fabric, which lets in some light and affords a few extra degrees of cold protection, topped by clear plastic for even more protection from cold. More wire arches at the same locations as the first set of hoops sandwiched the plastic and row cover material to keep everything secure. Vegetables are accessible by merely sliding the plastic sides up.
As for lettuces, leeks, Chinese and Occidental cabbages, and radishes that remained open to the elements, they fared well also, remaining crisp and protected from freezing beneath a snowy blanket. 
Depending on the vegetable and what protection it’s afforded, the garden should provide salad fixings and greens at least through the end of this month. After that, it’s on to the 5 foot square cold frame that’s filled with almost 3 dozen heads of Romaine lettuce just waiting to be picked. And then it’s on into the greenhouse.
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So many plants, so little space. Potted plants, that is. Roots, which have evolved in the relative warmth of the earth, can’t tolerate as much cold as trunks and branches. So roots in pots experience colder temperatures than roots in the ground. Before the snow and cold weather descended, I began frantically moving all my potted plants to shelter.
My cold-hardy, potted plants, a miscellany that includes a flowering dogwood, a fantail willow, Japanese hollies, aborvitaes, some roses, and black currants, got shoved right up against the north wall of my brick house. With some mulch thrown up to the rims of the pots and snow cover that slides off the roof, plants there weather winter well. (The reason these hardy plants are in pots is because I haven’t yet figured out where to plant them; more homeless plants always seem to come my way every year.)
My subtropical plants need more protection because their trunks and branches don’t tolerate cold below about 25°F. I weeded and trimmed back some branches of potted figs, pomegranates, an olive tree, a couple of pineapple guavas, some black mulberries, and a che, and bound the remaining branches together with string. Stripping off any remaining leaves helped put the plants to sleep. 
A couple of rose plants also joined this mostly Mediterranean crowd. The roses are hardy but they are particularly luscious-looking David Austen varieties I need to have available in late winter to force blossoms for a very very special wedding at the end of May.
Finally, the roses and other plants each then had to be wrestled down the narrow stairs to my barely heated basement. The plants crowded in down there might be those you’d find along the Mediterranean, but the dank, dark scene there is decidedly non-Mediterranean.
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Mother Nature usually calls the shots. Fifteen years ago I transplanted a chestnut seedling into my south field. With time, I helped Mother Nature along, coaxed the tree with pruning shears and saws to develop a pleasing and sturdy form. 
Major limbs radiating out at wide angles indicate good anchorage to the trunk; I had selected these limbs as “keepers” in their youth. I had lopped off any young branches originating closer together vertically than a foot or two apart, even though, to the untrained eye, the developing tree then looked sparsely branched in its youth. This wide spacing allowed each limb to develop without interference as it swelled to 4 and then 6 inches in diameter. I also had favored keeping only those young shoots that originated in a spiral pattern up the trunk, again to minimize competition for nutrients pumped up from below and from sunlight falling from above.
The tree grew rapidly, after 15 years achieving a height and girth of 25 feet.
The recent snowfall made light of my efforts. Snow clinging to leafy branches bowed limbs towards the ground at angles beyond which early good training could sustain. They broke. Almost half of the once fully rounded crown ended up with a skirt of leafy branches ground level and, higher up, splintered stubs of broken limbs stared out.
The sight is not as upsetting to me as might be imagined. Chestnuts are fast growing trees. Within three years, the tree will be well on its way to symmetrical elegance again. 
Also, this past spring I had done myself more cleanly what Mother Nature chose to do: I had lopped back two sturdy limbs to within a foot of the trunk. On the remaining stubs I grafted stems of two named varieties of chestnut hybrids notable for their particularly large and flavorful nuts. The grafted stems spent the summer knitting to the stubs and growing out into long shoots. Because those shoots were shaded by overhanging limbs, my plan was to lop back some upper limbs next spring to let those young, grafted shoots bask in sunlight.
Mother Nature got the jump on me with an admittedly much freer hand. I’ll soon trim those splintered stubs back to well placed side branches so that the stubs heal quickly and cleanly to limit the possibility of diseases.

MULTIPLYING PLANTS

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It’s a quirk, but it’s benign: When a pretty or useful tree presents seed-laden branches to me, I start conjuring up visions of whole new trees. Whole new trees that I can grow. What amazing potential is contained in such small packages! I was presented with some of these packages on a recent hike.
The date was about three weeks ago, before fall color had peaked — except for that of black tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica), also known as black gum or sour gum. This native of eastern U.S. is often planted as an ornamental for its early and striking color. The fluorescent purple, red, and yellow leaves are the first harbingers of autumn color.
Walking along the top of a rocky ridge, I came upon a tupelo lit up for autumn and presenting, within easy reach, many small, dark purple fruits. Although native, tupelo isn’t all that common around here, and trees are either male or female, with only females, of course, bearing fruit. So here was an opportunity, one not all that common.
Six tupelo trees for the future
I could leave the flat outside, in which case the seeds will probably sprout around April. In the refrigerator, constantly chilly, the seeds would get off to an earlier start, probably sprouting in February. The seedlings will need transplanting into deeper containers or outdoors soon after sprouting because tupelo tends to develop deep tap roots.
Most trees are very easy to grow from seed. The hard part comes later: Figuring out what to do with all the seedlings.
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I recently contended that no one, or I, at least, would eat any other pear as long as ripe Magness pears were available. How foolish. Over 5000 varieties of pears exist. Could anyone really declare that just one of those would surpass so dramatically all others or that an occasional variation in pear flavor would not be welcome?
Fortunately, I had some other home-grown varieties waiting in the wings. Vermont Beauty — sweet and juicy, with a bit of spiciness — was just what was needed to relieve  week after week of sweet and juicy, smooth-flavored Magness. Almost as good was the variety Frederick Clapp although lack of top notch quality in this case could be due do less than perfect harvest timing or after-ripening.
Seckel is one variety that definitely would have measured up against Magness. Unfortunately, the last of the Seckel pears, which are small, sweet, and very spicy, are long gone. Triomphe de Viene pears are still to come, after a few more weeks of refrigeration; this is the trees’ first year bearing fruit in my garden.
And next year . . . Beurée d’Amanlis, Aurora, Warren, Tyson, Rescue, and more should bear fruit. I have it on good authority that Flemish Beauty is another pear variety worth adding to the collection.
Where to put all these pear trees? I have two approaches. I lop the top off any pear variety that’s not up to snuff and graft onto the remaining stump a new, better variety. Alternatively, I graft a branch of one of these better varieties on a branch of an existing pear tree, so the resulting tree then hosts two — or more — varieties. One old tree hosts about eight varieties.
I highly recommend pears as backyard trees for their spring blossoms, their glossy leaves in summer, their luscious fruits, and — in contrast to apples — their relative freedom from insect and disease problems.
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Tree seedlings and pear varieties aren’t the only things multiplying around here. Some orchid cactii grow too large so their fleshy stems need to be cut back occasionally. And, the fleshy stems are easy to root. So how could anyone resist making more plants?
All that’s needed is to stick the bottom ends of the stems in potting soil in bright light and then water thoroughly each time the soil gets bone dry. The upshot of this is that now I have many orchid cactii hanging around the house.
The one downside to orchid cactii is that they typically bloom only once a year, usually in early spring. As a capper to our very strange growing season (early warming in spring followed by alternating periods of excessively droughty and excessively rainy weather followed by the torrential rains of hurricane Irene followed by a long, warm autumn), one of my orchid cactii is now in bloom. Jumping on the bandwagon is another plant, a true orchid, Odontoglossum pulchellum. I notice a flower stalk developing. In its 20 years here, blooms always arrived in February.

SWEET POTATO FOOTBALL & PEARS GALORE

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Lance the Plumber is also quite a good gardener; I’ve seen his garden. So I had some faith in his recipe for growing sweet potatoes: Make a circle of fencing a couple of feet across, fill it with soil, and plant. The raised cylinder of soil, being warmer than soil at ground level, would be much to the plants’ liking.
I eat a lot of sweet potatoes but have never grown them because summer weather here in the Hudson Valley isn’t quite warm enough for best yields and because the trailing vines take up a lot of space. Still, Lance’s method seemed worth a try — with some “leafy” modifications.
Every autumn I get truckloads of leaves dumped at a holding area where they sit to let snow, rain, heat, and time reduce the volume and bring about decomposition to create an ideal mulch. I spread that mulch the following autumn. (Freshly fallen leaves are also a good mulch but tend to blow and are too fluffy for easy handling.) So, methinks, “That leaf pile just sits  there from spring through autumn; why not plant sweet potatoes right into the pile in spring?” It was worth a try even though sweet potatoes don’t like soils having abundant fresh organic matter. The leaf pile was pure organic matter!
I tried this on a small scale last year. Mice ate the potatoes which, anyway, were few because I got the plants in late and sweet potatoes are a long season crop. I did salvage cuttings from the vines, which root easily, and carried them over last winter on a window sill to make plants for this year.
This year’s leaf pile was further from the stone wall that mice evidently call home, and potted plants went into compost-filled holes hollowed out into the pile. All summer the vines grew, and grew, and grew. Frost, anathema to sweet potatoes, is imminent so yesterday I decided it was time to start grubbing into the pile to look for sweet potatoes. I found a few small and medium-sized tubers, one of which had been gnawed by mice. Not very encouraging. 
Wandering past the pile a couple of hours later, I spied what looked like a large butternut squash starting to emerge from the pile. It was, in fact, a giant sweet potato tuber, a couple of feet long and a few inches across, that had formed where the vine had rooted as it sped along atop the leaf pile. Then I found another humongous tuber. And another, as well as some rationally sized ones. Success. I can’t wait to show them to Lance.
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For a variety of known and unknown reasons, this year was good for pears. Not just here, but generally in the northeast, at least judging from reports from a number of people. Spring weather was ideal for pollination, with no late frosts once weather started to warm. I had a number of varieties in bloom so cross-pollination was good. And for some reason, despite alternating periods of rain and drought followed by too, too much rain, the crop developed and ripened nicely.

Of all the pears I grow, the best-tasting is the variety ‘Magness’. It takes awhile to begin fruiting and then doesn’t yield well or consistently, or keep very well. But when ‘Magness’ is available, there’s hardly reason to eat any other pear. (Except for ‘Comice’, which is the pear usually grown in the Pacific northwest and packed into fancy fruit gift boxes; ‘Comice’ allegedly doesn’t grow well in the northeast. ‘Comice’ is one parent of ‘Magness’.) My two ‘Magness’ trees bore abundantly this year, I harvested the fruits just as the first pear dropped, kept them refrigerated for about a month, and now eat them after a day at room temperature. The flesh is juicy, sweet, and perfumed.

Anyone planning to grow this excellent variety needs to provide for for cross-pollination. ‘Magness’ is pollen-sterile and can’t pollinate anything else so three different varieties are needed to be able to pick fruit from all three trees.
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What an honor it would be to have a plant named after you. I was fortunate, many years ago when I worked in the USDA Fruit Laboratory in Maryland, to meet Dr. Magness, for whom ‘Magness’ pear was named. He had retired as chief of the Fruit Laboratory. And there was the Canadian farmer, John McIntosh, who discovered the tree that became his namesake variety two hundred years ago. ‘Macoun’ apple was bred here in New York, a deliberate hybrid of ‘McIntosh’ and ‘Jersey Black’ that was named, in 1923, after Canadian fruit grower W. T. Macoun. And so on.
How about having a weed as your namesake? I’d even take that, with reservations. One weed that comes to mind because it’s still spreading as if it was high summer is Asiatic dayflower. Actually, it’s quite an attractive plant, with arrow-shaped, succulent leaves that clasp the decumbent, fleshy stems. The genus, Commelina, is characterized by flowers with two prominent, sky blue petals that pay homage to two similarly prominent brothers, 18th century Dutch botanists Johann and Caspar Commelin.
Look closely at the flowers, though, and you’ll see that in addition to the two prominent, blue petals, each flower also has an insignificant, minuscule, white petal. There was also a third brother.

 

PAWPAW TALK & GLICKSTER VISIT

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Deep in the hills of West Virginia, at the end of a steep, gravelly driveway, is where I found Glicksterus maximus. Sounds like a plant, doesn’t it? It’s not. It’s the self-ascribed nickname for Barry Glick of Sunshine Farm and Gardens (www.sunfarm.com), a mail-order nursery offering oodles of species and varieties of mostly herbaceous plants, many of them obscure and many of them native. I’d spoken with Barry, I’d planted his plants, and I’d sat on the receiving end of one of his entertaining and informative lectures, but I’d never visited his nursery/home. My own speaking engagement last week at the International Master Gardener’s Conference in Charleston, WV afforded me the opportunity for this visit.
Let’s cut right to the chase: Barry’s deepest affections go to one genus, Helleborus. And hellebores, as they are commonly called, were everywhere. (The plants are also called Christmas rose or Lenten rose although the blossoms do not really resemble roses and the plants do not necessarily bloom at Christmas or Lent.) Steep slopes beneath towering maples and oaks were blanketed with verdant carpets of thousands of hellebore plants. Many of these plants were seed plants for Barry’s breeding program. In addition to selling thousands of hellebores, Barry also has developed some new varieties.
I had fun trying to identify some of the other plants tucked here and there all over the place, or lined out by the hundreds in pots. Ligularia was easily identified by its tall, straight, upright flower stalk even though its yellow flowers were long past. Rather than the familiar Ligularia ‘The Rocket’, Barry grows Ligularia sachalinensis. Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), a small tree whose branches burst with fringed, white blooms in spring, gracefully spread its branches; I brought home a small plant. As we walked up and down the hilly landscape past myriad plants, Barry called out their botanical names
One particularly attractive tree that I found impossible to identify was a mature sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua). Rather than sweetgum’s characteristic, five-pointed, star-shaped leaves, Barry’s tree, the variety ‘Rotundifolia’, had leaves with friendly-looking, rounded lobes. This variety is sterile, so also couldn’t be identified by the species rounded, spikey fruits commonly known by such names as “gumballs,” “burr balls”, “bommyknockers”, or “conkleberrys.”
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We can’t just leave hellebores hanging a few paragraphs back. I also am a big fan of most of this genus, and am the proud grower, for 8 years now, of some of Barry’s creations. One asset of hellebores, mentioned previously, is their verdant foliage; I didn’t mention, though, that the leaves stay green all winter. This far north, I value anything green in our mostly achromatic winter landscape.
Another plus for this genus is that deer leave the plants alone. And that the plants thrive in partial shade. And that they self-sow to make new seedlings as well as spread vegetatively. They do so with enough restraint to never become a bother or, worse, invasive.
While the flowers do not look like rose blossoms, they are beautiful, in colors from white to white suffused with purple to purple, and sometimes pale green.Wait, that’s not all! The flowers start blooming very early in spring, typically in March in my garden, and then continue to bloom for weeks and weeks.
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One of my lecture topics at the master gardener conference was “Landscaping with Fruit,” and one of the premier dual-purpose plants that I touted was pawpaw (Asimina triloba). The tree has a neat, pyramidal form and all season long sports large, lush, healthy green leaves that lend a tropical air to the landscape. It’s a tree that you can plant (plant two, for cross-pollination), give some care to get it growing, and then year after year harvest fruit without giving a second thought to pests or pruning. Even deer usually leave mature trees alone. 
In addition to those lush leaves, pawpaw has other tropical aspirations. It is the northernmost member of the mostly tropical custard apple family. Each flower is a multiple ovary so can yield a cluster of up to nine fruits, similar to clusters of bananas except that pawpaws are shaped like and about the size of mangoes.
Most tropical is the flesh itself of this cold-hardy, native fruit. Pawpaw flesh is creamy and yellow, like banana. What’s more, it has flavor that also is similar to banana along with some mango, pineapple, and avocado mixed in; or vanilla custard; or creme brulee.
Pawpaw trees shed their tropical aspirations in autumn, about now, when the leaves turn a clear, bright yellow and then drop. That’s also when the fruit ripens; I’m presently inundated with this easy-to-grow “tropical” fruit.
(I devote a whole chapter to pawpaw in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)
 

GOODBYE TOMATOES, HELLO NASHI

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One more sandwich of sliced tomatoes laid on home-made bread and topped with cheddar cheese, warmed until melted, and I’ll close the garden gate on fresh tomatoes for the year. Tomato season used to end more dramatically: The four years that I gardened in Wisconsin, a heavy frost would descend on the garden some night about the third week in September. Morning would present a scene of blackened, dead tomato, cucumber, and pepper plants. The same thing used to happen here, only a little later in autumn.
For many years now, killing frosts have arrived late, so much so that cool weather and short days sap the vitality from summer vegetables before frost arrives. The plants peter out so I have no qualms about clearing them out of the garden before they are dead. As a matter of fact, they look so forlorn that I’m anxious to clear them away and neaten up the garden.
Cleanup is especially important with tomatoes because a few diseases, such as early blight and leaf spot diseases, wait out winter on plant residues to infect next year’s plants. I clean up every bit of stem, leaf, and fruit possible, hand picking to begin with and then finally giving each bed a light raking to gather up remaining debris. With a garden knife, I cut into the ground around the base of each plant to make it easy to remove the stem and largest roots. Small roots stay in the soil, decomposing to become humus and to leave behind large and small channels for air and water movement. All that spent tomato stuff goes into the compost pile where time and temperature do their job defusing pathogens and creating rich compost. 
Just to make sure that pest problems are minimized next year, and to enrich and protect the ground, I cover each bed with an inch depth of finished compost from piles built last year.  Disease spores can’t get up through the compost blanket. And then, to further limit pest problems, next year’s tomatoes go in a different bed than this year’s tomatoes.
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Even with the declining tomatoes and other summer vegetables, the garden generally doesn’t look forlorn. Beds of late green beans, sweet corn, and squash that were cleared, cleaned, and composted over the past few weeks look neat and weed-free. To me, something like the zen gardens at Ryōan-ji, except with compost and straight lines instead of neatly raked gravel. Grassy blades of oats are sprouting with all the youthful exuberance of spring in beds that were readied before the end of September. And long before summer vegetables started to wane, I snuck autumn vegetables into the garden, so some beds are now lush with radishes, arugula, lettuce, cabbage, and other greenery that thoroughly enjoys this cool, wet weather.
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Butterscotch on a tree, that’s what Chojuro pear tastes like. Juicy butterscotch, because an explosion of juice fills your mouth with each bite,
Chojuro is one of a few Asian pears, also called nashi, that I grow; it’s my favorite as far as productivity and flavor, my others being Yoinashi, Yakumo, and Seuri-Li. Because they are generally round and crunchy, Asian pears are also sometimes called apple pears or salad pears. They have a long history in Asia, and over a thousand varieties exist.
My pears were planted 10 years ago, actually not planted but grafted on existing rootstocks to replace other, less satisfactory varieties. The rootstocks are dwarfing and the plan was to train them as a row of espaliers en arcure, that is with successive tiers of branches gently arching in curves to meet those of neighboring pear plants, all sitting in a row atop a low wall. But deer soon discovered the plants, which became a smorgasbord for which the deer didn’t even have to bend down to enjoy. 
The deer problem was eventually solved but the plants were not en arcure anymore. I could have lopped everything back to just above the grafts and started again but lacked the heart to do it because the trees were, by then, bearing fruits. So now I have an arcure-esque espaliers laden with fruit. And especially laden is the Chojuro tree, every year.
Asian pears differ from the more common European pears in a number of ways. They are generally easier to grow. With large, healthy leaves, they tend to be more decorative. They bear more heavily and at a younger age, so much so that you have to be careful not to let plants on dwarfing rootstocks bear too much too young and runt out. And while European pears must be harvested before they are ripe, then ripened off the trees, Asian pears don’t taste at their best until they are dead ripe on the tree. 
Even then, they don’t taste at their very best if the trees overbear, which they are wont to do. So beginning in June, and a few more times through summer, I kept pinching off enough fruits so that eventually remaining fruits were a couple of inches apart. It was worth it for the crunchy, juice-laden, butterscotch-flavored Chojuros.

SQUIRREL BATTLES BUT FIGS ARE FINE

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It’s a tied score, 1 for the squirrels, 1 for me. At least since I started counting, which was last year. I had some squirrel issues in previous years, but last year is when all out war started. They cleaned out the raspberries and the gooseberries early in the season, and then started eyeing the blueberries. Anyone who reads “A Gardener’s Notebook” knows how I feel about blueberries, and the squirrels evidently picked up those vibes (with some ballistic coaxing) and left the blueberries alone. Not that they kept to their nearby forest homes; they scurried across the field in late summer to strip the hazelnut bushes of every single nut.
This year is different, very different. The squirrels didn’t eat even one raspberry or gooseberry, didn’t even eye the blueberries. And my harvest of hazelnuts is secure in bushel baskets.
In fact, I only saw a couple of squirrels the whole season. They were two young ones gamboling  in the tree tops, taunting me in full view from the back window of my bedroom.
A multifaceted approach is responsible for this year’s victory. Two excellent cats are one line of defense, although I can’t imagine how cats could keep squirrels at bay. Perhaps the squirrels also saw me practicing my marksmanship. And finally, I let the field in which I planted the hazelnuts grow up into an overgrown meadow. I’ve never seen squirrels in high grass and other herbaceous vegetation, probably because it slows them down too much. (Then again, perhaps I’ve never seen squirrels in unmown meadow because I can’t see them in unmown meadow.)
To reduce competition for water and nutrients to the hazelnut plants from the meadow, I kept vegetation scythed down in a circle around each hazelnut bush and accessed the plants via a mowed path that originates only 50 feet across mowed lawn from my deck. My two dogs, Leila and Scooter, spend a lot of time sleeping on that sunny deck, so it would take a bold squirrel indeed to make the journey across the lawn and then down that no-exit, mowed path in overgrown meadow. 
 
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As for anyone who pooh-poohs my obsession with squirrels, mark my words: In a few years you’ll consider them much, much worse problems than deer. Some people tell me that squirrels are even eating their tomatoes. Fencing is, obviously, useless against squirrels.
Squirrels have never eaten my tomatoes. I’ve never even seen them in my vegetable gardens although black walnut seedlings that sometimes pop up here and there are evidence of their occasional trespass.
I wonder if squirrels eat lettuce; I hope not, because I have some nice heads developing in the garden and in seed flats. This is the time of year that takes advance planning with lettuce because, although the plants enjoy the cooler weather, it, along with shorter days, drastically slows growth. 
I aim to grow enough lettuce for salads all winter so must have enough plants started to slowly mature in the weeks and months ahead. If the plants are too small, they won’t size up when it’s their turn to be eaten. If the plants are too large, they bolt, that is, make seedstalks and turn bitter. Right now, I have two rows of mature heads in the garden and over 150 seedlings of various sizes. All those seedlings take up only about 4 square feet of space. The smaller seedlings will get transplanted into the greenhouse sometime soon.
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Greenhouse lettuce can tolerate a little shade right now, but not in a few weeks. That works out perfectly, because right now the greenhouse is shaded by 3 large fig trees growing within. They are three different varieties, each loaded with fruit.
Kadota is the best-tasting of the three, with a sweet, rich flavor held in a chewy skin. The problem is that Kadota likes dry weather, as do all figs, to some degree. With the current humid weather and incessant rain, many of the Kadota fruits rot just as they are about to ripen.
My old standby, Brown Turkey, sweet, small, and dark purple, does better. The tree has been ripening fruits since about early September.
The best of the lot, in terms of flavor (not as good as Kadota but, still, very good) is Green Ischia, also known as Verte. This variety bears fruits on stems that grew last year as well as, like my other two varieties, stems that started growing this year. Green Ischia’s earliest figs ripen in July on last year’s stems, followed by more fruits, beginning in September, on this year’ stems. The figs are sweet and very large and juicy, so much so that they begin to burst open if harvest is delayed too long. My Green Ischia, by the way, is probably not Green Ischia; figs are notorious for having multiple names and for being mislabeled, as I think mine was in the nursery.
The fig crop will end in a few weeks, the plants’ leaves will fall, and I’ll cut back all stems, except for a few on Green Ischia for next year’s early crop, down to about 4 feet high. Greenhouse lettuce can then bask freely in whatever sunlight autumn and winter sun offers.
 

TREES OF JOY & LAWN NOUVEAU

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I didn’t need the house number to hone in on Bassem’s home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania last Saturday. The Asian persimmon, pawpaw, and fig trees rising above the front hedge distinguished the landscape from those of the neighbors’ more conventional — and much less luscious — home grounds. Over the years, I have corresponded with Bassem, a fellow member of North American Fruit Explorers (www.nafex.org), and had planned to sometime stop by on one of my frequent trips to Philadelphia. Finally, I took that fruitful side step.
And what a fruitfully timely fruit step I hoped it to be: Fig season! Figs are a main interest of Bassem (http://www.treesofjoy.com/), who grew up in Lebanon. His quarter acre house lot, crammed with all sizes and varieties of fig trees, makes the collection of 35 varieties that I once grew in Maryland look like child’s play.
But figs were not all of it. Everywhere I looked was an interesting fruit plant. Hardy passionfruits (Passiflora incarnata), which I also grow, covered the ground among his foundation plantings, even sprouted up in the lawn. Did I write “foundation plantings?” Lest that conjure up an image of your standard junipers and yews, Bassem’s foundation plantings were more diverse and, of course, fruitful. There was the edible cactii (Opuntia spp.), a pomegranate with ripening fruit (the fruits on my potted pomegranates, which I mentioned early in summer, fell off), and, of course, many varieties of figs.
The backyard is home to a small greenhouse, in which Bassem overwinters some tropical fruits, and more fruit plants. A few large banana trees rose right next to the greenhouse — very decorative but not able, of course, to ripen fruit. They die to the ground each year and then sprout from overwintered roots each spring. An eight-foot-tall papaya plant, grown from seeds sown in spring, was expectantly flowering but likewise won’t have time to ripen fruits. Fruiting trees in the ground included quince (Cydonia oblonga), jujube (Ziziphus jujuba, yes, the original jujube candy was made from candied jujube fruits), and, in the back, more Asian persimmons and pawpaws.
It’s too cold here in the Wallkill River valley to plant outdoors much of what Bassem plants right in the ground even though our homes are separated by only about 80 miles of latitude. My extra few degree of cold are the result of my more rural setting, with less heat-trapping concrete, and my valley, into which cold air settles. Still, I couldn’t resist going home with 2 new fig varieties (Black Bethlehem and Pontlican) and a strawberry guava, both in pots that I’ll move indoors for winter. If the figs prove especially tasty, they might get planted in the ground in my cool temperature greenhouse.
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Goldenrod in the south field has turned the landscape a glorious yellow color. The plants have been blooming there for weeks and weeks but the intensity has recently ratcheted up.
The reason for the increased color isn’t the weather; it’s the plants. There are dozens of goldenrod species not easily distinguished from each other, even by botanists. My field is, no doubt, home to a few species and the one now blooming seems to be the one in greatest abundance.
I mow most of the south field once a year, in spring, a schedule that suits the goldenrods well. Other parts of the field that I used to mow more frequently than once a year (for a volleyball court) are mostly grasses, Queen-Anne’s-lace, and chicory, but I see some goldenrod now finally creeping in. I keep a path mowed through the field that each year follows a different trajectory. The ghost of last year’s path is high with vegetation, but not goldenrod — yet. There’s even a tropical-looking patch in the field where the large leaves of sumac seedlings shoot skyward above the surrounding goldenrods. That sumac is the legacy of a brush pile that I burned there over 10 years ago. 
It’s all very interesting and pretty.
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And, for a little more fall color: Persimmons. The orange fruits — persimmon orange fruits — are ripening on my trees and dropping to the ground. (Isn’t it odd that a color should be named “persimmon orange” when so few people know this relatively uncommon fruit? I helped remedy that situation by devoting a chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden to persimmons.)
The persimmon fruits, as usual, are delectable, with a taste and texture of dried apricots that have been softened in water, dipped in honey, then given a dash of spice. Something like Oriental persimmons but with richer flavor and texture.
The trees, as usual, are bearing an abundant crop. In over two decades of growing this fruit, the trees have failed me only 2 years, both from a very late frost that didn’t allow time for ripening. Few fruits are easier to grow: no notable pests; no pruning; just plant and pick.
Ripening is important with American persimmon because few gustatory experiences are as horrendous as biting into an unripe persimmon. The feeling is akin to having a vacuum cleaner in your mouth, and spitting out the fruit doesn’t help. Unfortunately, fruits from some wild trees of this native plant never fully lose that awful flavor, which is why I grow named varieties that are known to have excellent flavor. Over two dozen such varieties exist. 
This far north, we’re restricted to growing ones that taste good and will ripen within our relatively short growing season. Which is fine, because my two favorite varieties, Mohler and Szukis, are both cold hardy, ripen within our growing season, and taste as good as I would hope from any persimmon. Any fruit, perhaps. Persimmon’s botanical name, Diospyros, translates to “food of the gods.