[irene]
/3 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee A. ReichThe nice thing about living in a flood plain is its fertile, rock-free soil. Here on the flood plains of the Wallkill River, I can dig a 3-foot-deep post hole in about 5 minutes. The soil here also drains well, allowing me to plant even during heavy rains.
The combination of heavy rains and winds loosened the grip of tree roots onto the soil. Some trees blew over. Some are wobbly in the soil. It may be possible to right and stake the former, and just stake the latter, if the trees are not too big. After a year or more, new roots will grow to provide sufficient support without the stakes.
Think of all the detritus carried along by that floodwater. And then try to imagine some of the stuff you didn’t think of. The major problems I see are floating gasoline and diesel cans and the major problem I smell is of the stuff in those cans. What I don’t see or smell is whatever is running off farm fields and the overflow from sewage treatment plants, not to mention harmful chemicals and bacteria.
[kelp, nofa debate, nofa, hurricane irene]
/1 Comment/in Gardening/by Lee A. Reich
[privet, hedge shears, blackberry pruning]
/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee A. Reich
The sweep of privet has been years in the making. The reason is because dense growth is needed to create a mass of greenery, and dense growth comes from many heading cuts, that is, cuts that shorten, rather than remove stems. The response to heading cuts is increased branching of the remaining portions of stem. Rather than let just a few stems make their way across each arch, I shorten all stems. This slows their progress but makes them denser with branches. For now, the swoop is in place, and the branching stems are still reaching across the arches.
Good tools or a skilled staff of gardeners are at least part of what help make gardens productive and attractive. I lack the staff but have a few good tools.
Take that privet hedge, for example. I used to maintain it with a set of hand operated hedge shears. They are Sandvik, very high quality and make a satisfying slicing sound as the two sharp blades clipped stems. And that’s all I did with them: For years, the hedge was just a long, rectangular box. Trimming it took too long to bother with anything more fanciful.
A few years ago, I graduated again, this time to Black & Decker cordless electric shears. This is the tool that makes the present privet swoop. I merely walk from one end of the hedge to the other holding the shears against the hedge at the desired level. The cuts are more uniform and now I can focus on the details of the desired shape. Five passes up and down the hedge plus some ladder work on the arch at either end, all taking no more than a half hour a few times each summer, keeps the form alive and growing.
If only the Black & Decker cordless electric shears could be used on more plants, such as my blackberries. This year, they — Doyle Thornless and Chester Thornless — are growing like gangbusters. Both need detailed pruning with fingernails or hand-held pruning shears in summer and again early next spring.
Summer pruning for Chester Thornless entails clipping or pinching off the tips of all new canes when they reach a height of about 4 feet. This pruning (a heading cut, just like with the privet) induces branches on which fruits are borne next summer.
[act, onions]
/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee A. Reich[barnyard grass. purslane, dodder]
/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee A. Reich Hot weather and rampant plant growth prompt me to add a word to the traditional English round, “Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!” My new version is “Sumer weeds is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!” (“Summer weeds have arrived, Loudly sing, Cuckoo!”)
[squash and melon vines, same on compost, cucumber tp]
/1 Comment/in Gardening/by Lee A. ReichGrowing winter squashes and melons has always been an iffy proposition for me. I try to keep my vegetable garden intensively planted and neat, so the question is where to direct these plants’ long, wandering vines.
Deb suggested planting melons and squashes right into the compost bins. Perfect! Just like a mini-garden with the roots of each squash or melon plant in moist, very rich soil — compost, actually. Elevated above the ground, the young vines would be safe from rabbits and, over time, could ramble to their hearts’ content over the tops of the bins, even down to the ground and beyond.
With inevitable invasions of yellow-striped cucumber beetles and bacterial wilt, cucumbers will soon peter out. They do so every year, so I always start some new plants in early July. This week I had second-crop cucumber transplants as more compost garden candidates, and I’m wondering if the new piles are still too hot for planting. I’ll find out soon enough because I did transplant a few of the seedlings into two of the piles. The plants’ roots will perhaps find temperatures to their liking in the surface layers of the pile, dipping lower as temperatures cool over the next few weeks. Or the plants might just get cooked.
The plant is sometimes billed as an annual, blooming from “planting until hard frost,” yet last fall, my plant kept blooming until temperatures dropped to 24° F. Sometimes the plant is billed as a warm climate perennial, hardy to 30° F., yet temperatures dipped to -18° F. in my garden last January. For one reason another, the plant returned without my doing. Snow cover may have kept the plant warm enough to act like a perennial that overwintered from last fall. Or new plants sprouted from self-sown seeds. In the latter case, which is more likely, I will add Goldilocks Rocks to my list – along with mache, dill, cilantro, breadseed poppy, dame’s rocket, cleome, and bush balsam – of friendly volunteers that annually show up in my garden.

[inter and succession planting, nasturtium, mulberries]
/3 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee A. ReichIn 1810, English essayist Charles Lamb wrote: “Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think of them.” Obviously, Charles was not a gardener. I spend a lot of time thinking about time and space in the garden, and out there this morning was particularly proud of one result of that “trouble.”
