[tomato sdlg, small bulbs, cacao]

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Finally, after a couple of weeks of restraining myself, I’m sowing tomato seeds. Every bit of warm weather and bright sunshine made it harder to hold back, but the time has come.
 
The problem – if it could be called a problem – is that tomatoes grow pretty much like weeds. The seeds germinate quickly and the seedlings grow fast. So what typically happens is that seeds are sown too soon and the seedlings get too big for their pots before transplanting time. Too big, that is, unless you keep repotting them. Repotting becomes a space issue when you grow 50 or more tomato plants, as I do.
 
I grow my plants in my greenhouse but for anyone who raises tomato seedlings on a windowsill, plants seeded too early tend to get too leggy. It’s hard to grow nice, stocky seedlings in the limited light of even a sunny window. Not impossible, though, if the room is kept cool (mid 60s), if the plants are near the window, which is south-facing and unobstructed, and if you pet the plants daily.

 

 
Yes, pet the plants! Running your fingers or a short length of plastic pipe gently over the tops of the plants a dozen times or so daily does the same thing that wind does to plants on wind-swept, craggy, cliffs: It stimulates release of a plant hormone, ethylene, which inhibits stem elongation. Breezes from the ventilation fan and bright sunlight in my greenhouse keep my plants stocky; I still occasionally pet them.
 
April 1st is my tomato-seed-sowing date, which allows 6 to 7 weeks of growth before transplanting time. The plants start off slowly, then pick up steam quicker and quicker as temperatures warm and sunshine grows brighter. Last year, I grew 80 plants, which provided plenty of tomatoes for fresh eating, sauce, salsa, and ketchup (the last item a failure, but it did use up a lot of tomatoes). This year, 50 plants should suffice.
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What could be cheerier than the flowers of crocuses, dwarf irises, and other small bulbs popping up out of the ground now? These flowers, no matter how small, are really appreciated after a colorless winter.
 
Five years ago, I planted a slew of these small bulbs, also including species tulips, chionodoxa, muscari, puschkinia, galanthus, and scilla. Some went into mulched ground beneath the apple trees, others went into the soil in beds where I’ll soon be planting vegetables, and still others were planted right into lawn.
 
The bulbs that went into vegetable beds and mulched ground have, as expected, grown most vigorously and are now tight clumps of flowers. Plants “plugged” into lawngrass are less vigorous because of competition for nutrients. Water is not a factor because the soil stays plenty moist during the few weeks in spring that these small bulbs are flowering and then growing leaves to feed next year’s flowers.
 
A number of bulbs seeded in lawn have died out. Perhaps it was the competition. In the front yard, our annual floods, which have been deeper than usual over the past few years, probably snuffed out already weakened plants. Especially missed is the rectangular planting of Iris ‘George’ (a hybrid of Iris histrioides and I. reticulata) and crocus ‘Clothe of Gold’ (a variety of C. angustifolius dating back to 1587) that marked the grave of our old dog Stick.
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Turning to warmer thoughts . . . Joining me on my return from last week’s trip to Puerto Rico was a chocolate pod. The orange pod dangling from a branch at the USDA research station was too irresistable to leave hanging. After much effort climbing branches and whacking at the pod, I finally landed it on the ground.

 

 
I’ve cut the pod open to reveal the seeds, some of which I planned to sprout and others of which I planned to process into a primitive chocolate. Now I’m having second thoughts.

 
The trees are truly tropical, needing constant heat, ideally over 68° F. Neither my house nor my greenhouse temperatures remain consistently that high. The plants do, at least, tolerate some shade. Even if I got the seedlings to grow to their 5 foot fruiting height, making chocolate involves a rather complicated process of fermentation, drying, cleaning, roasting, and pressing. I think I’ll just buy some finished chocolate instead. But what to do with this intriguing pod and seeds?
 
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Night temperatures are still usually dropping well below freezing, as they will for the next few weeks. No matter, because where I am, it’s like summer. Puer-r-r-r-to Rico! Here day temperatures hover in the low 80s, night temperatures in the 70s. Gentle breezes rustle the leaves of palm trees and make these temperatures even more comfortable.


It’s the dry season, especially here in the southeastern portion of the the island, with daily chances of thundershowers meaning nothing more than brief cloudbursts after which beaches, roads, plants – everything – dries quickly. Still, grasses in pastures have that bluish, dry look. Majestic mango trees weighed down with unripe fruit await wet weather in coming months to burst into flowers in preparation for another load of fruit.
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This winter’s low of minus 20° F. killed off the tops of my bamboo so I expect this year’s growth from the roots, which do survive, won’t match the 20 foot culms that grew last year. Even at 20 feet, these tall culms don’t hold a candle to some of the tropical bamboos down here in Puerto Rico. A tour of the U. S. Department of Agriculture research station in Mayaguez let me see a number of tropical bamboo species all in one place.

Most dramatically impressive were a couple of the larger species. I’m happy with inch-thick culms from my Phyllostachis aureosculcata plants, a species that is among the hardiest of what I call “timber bamboos.” What a joke, my calling these “timber bamboos.” Bambus vulgaris and Guadua angustifolia culms reach about a half a foot across here in P.R. I would estimate their culm height at about 60 feet.

Ah, the things I could do with such plants. I use my P. aureosculcata canes for some building projects such as lightweight fencing and poles for climbing beans or tomatoes. With those tropical bamboos, I could build a whole house, or, at least, a very decorative garden hut. In fact, Guadua angustifolia is used for construction.


Bamboos generally are fast growing plants. A major difference between most tropical bamboos and most temperate bamboos is that the temperate species spread aggressively via underground runners that scoot along horizontally just a couple of inches or so beneath the ground. I’ve seen culms pop up from runners that have spread 5 feet away from my plants in just a few weeks. Thoroughly digging up these runners is not easy because they are as tough as the culms. I contain my bamboo with a plastic barrier that extends from a couple of inches above ground to 2 feet down into the ground. Still, the runners sometimes creep over the top of the barrier after which I have to pull and dig up the tough lacework that quickly develops just beneath the ground surface.

These topical species would be downright frightening if they spread like the temperate species. Instead of spreading, they grow in well behaved clumps. Clumping makes that impressive Bambus vulgaris even more impressive, the culms soaring skyward and then fanning out like a fountain. As if that wasn’t enough, the variety Vitatta that I saw has yellow culms with forest green lines seemingly brush-stroked – one, two, or three of them – vertically between some of the nodes.
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The U. S. Department of Agriculture research station here in Mayaguez also houses the collection of temperate zone bamboo species, including my own Phyllostachis aureosculcata. What a sorry site! The culms were 8 to 10 feet high and looked somewhat piqued. These bamboos, like most other temperate plants – perhaps even some people – don’t thrive with perennially hot weather. They (and we) need their (and our) dose of cold weather each year. Easy for me to say, down here in La Isla Encantada.
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PRUNING WORKSHOP, April 3rd, at my garden!!

Contact me thru my website for more details.
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Summer cole slaws, steaming plates of broccoli, and kale cooked and drizzled with some olive oil, lemon juice, and toasted sesame seeds are now on their way. Seeds are sown, sprouts should be up within a few days, and a few days after that I’ll lift enough sprouts from their mini-furrows in a seed flat to fill a 40 cell tray. By May 1st, the seedlings will be big enough and will be planted out in the garden.

An early start is important with most of these plants in the cabbage family, the so-called cole crops, or crucifers. (“Crucifer” because everyone in the family bears 4-petalled, cross – “cruc” – shaped flowers.) These are plants that thrive in and taste best with cool, moist weather. The one exception is kale, which to me has a rich, sweetish, nourishing flavor even in the heat of summer. I see some still out in the garden now that the snow is receding, and will harvest it the first chance I can get through the garden gate, which, as I write, is still locked close with snow.

The cabbages and broccolis I just sowed are for early summer; the kale for spring, summer, fall, and, as long as I can get to it, winter. Fortunately, I grow backup kale, a dozen plants that enjoy the cool temperatures of the greenhouse all winter long.

Kale for this year is Dwarf Blue Scotch and Winterbor. For cabbage, I’m growing the tasty, small and pointy-headed, heirloom variety Early Jersey Wakefield. With broccoli, I’m hedging my bets. I bought a packet of mixed seed, including varieties with different harvest times, some notable for making large main head, and some notable for prolific side shoots.
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Receding snow makes it easier to get to some low bushes and see what to prune. Like my currant and gooseberry bushes, which will be the first to get pruned. The reason they are first in line is because they are the first to begin growing. A few days of warm weather and their buds will all of a sudden turn green with nascent leaves about to unfold.


I prune most of these plants by a renewal method. Being shrubs, they’re always sending new sprouts, called suckers, up from ground level. Old stems do not stay virile very long, typically not bearing well after about 3 years. With renewal pruning, all stems more than 3 years old get lopped back to ground level or to low-growing vigorous, upright side branches. The stems that are the oldest are obvious because they are fattest and have the peelingest bark.

Next, I turn to the suckers. Each year, these bushes typically send up a lot of new suckers from ground level, too many, so many that they would crowd each other with age. So the other pruning needed is to reduce the number of new suckers to a half-dozen or so, saving those that are most vigorous, healthy, and upright. Finally, I shorten lanky stems that would otherwise droop to the ground, especially when loaded with a crop of berries.


What’s left after pruning, then, are a half-dozen new suckers, a half-dozen 1-year-old stems left from last year, a half-dozen 2-year-old stems form the year before last, and a half-dozen 3-year-old stems from the year before that. That’s about how the bush looks every year after being pruned, in theory, at least. Nothing’s too old and the young ‘uns have room to grow.

Pruning gooseberries is a thorny affair that demands use of leather gloves.
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Most people on this side of the Atlantic (excepting Canada) don’t really know gooseberries. If they’ve experienced the fruit, they consider them all to be small, green, and tart, which, unfortunately, those most commonly offered are. In fact, gooseberries come in a wide spectrum of flavors, colors, and size.

For starters, and most importantly, gooseberries can be divided into culinary and dessert varieties. Many dessert varieties can be used for cooking, for which use they’re harvested slightly underripe.


Dessert varieties have a sweet or sweet-tart flavor. My Hinnonmakis Yellow berries are small, yellow, and sweetly reminiscent of apricot. Black Satin gooseberries are wine-red in color with a flavor much like a sweet, rich wine. Colossal, which I’ll be planting again after a 15 year hiatus, has humongous fruits with a cracking texture: the skin is firm but explodes into your mouth with an ambrosial, sweet juice when you bite into it.

Generally, gooseberries are tough plants that are easy to grow. They’ll tolerate any amount of cold and deer leave them alone. I’m looking forward to enjoying fruits of the dozen varieties I grow in July.

[carnations]

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Don’t be surprised if you see me sporting a pink carnation in my buttonhole this summer. I want big, fat, fragrant, florists’ carnations, and I think I finally found one: Enfant de Nice. I’ve grown many “pinks,” another name for carnations, in the past, but they were always too demur. Enfant de Nice, from its descriptions, should have corpulent blooms in white and various shades of pastel pink. The fragrance, billed as “intoxicating spicy-sweet clove perfume,” sounds heady enough that it might have me unable to walk a straight line with one of those in my buttonhole.
 
For now, the practical must be dealt with: sowing seeds 1/2 inch deep in seed flats kept cool and moist, then moving sprouted seedlings to individual cells, and finally, after the last average frost date (mid-May), out to the garden. Pruning back stems after blossoming should keep me in boutonnières through July and August.
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I just checked my maple syrup buckets. They were all full.
 

[seaberry, wheat, spring indoors]

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The garden is winding down so I’ll look into the freezer and see what I’ve got. Hmmmm. A couple of jars of frozen, small, yellow-orange berries. Sea berries! I forgot all about them. I’ve had the bushes for a few years and each year nibble a few of the tart berries. This year I decided to use the berries in earnest.
 
Native to Russia, China, and northern Europe, sea berries are relative newcomers to this part of the world. And even then, they’re often planted strictly as ornamental shrubs. Their silvery leaves make the perfect backdrop for their bright and abundant orange, yellow, or red berries. As a fruiting or ornamental plant, sea berry is easy to grow, needing only abundant sunlight and well drained soil. A (nonfruiting) male plant is needed to get fruit on nearby female plants; each male can sire up to 8 females.
 
Years ago someone sent me some sea berry juice, the flavor of which was something like very rich orange and passionfruit juices. Some people liken the flavor to pineapple; hence “Siberian pineapple,” another common name for the fruit.
 
The reason I only nibbled on sea berries up to this year is because harvesting the small berries can be a problem. They press closely to the stems, and the stems are armed with intimidating thorns. Someone suggested freezing the branches and then shaking off the frozen berries. That’s what I tried back in September, cutting berry-laden branches into foot long sections and and putting them in a large, plastic tub with a tightly fitting lid. Once everything was well frozen, I shook the tub with the lid still on. A lot. The berries fell off and settled to the bottom of the tub and after winnowing what was left in front of a fan outdoors, I had a couple of quarts of clean berries.
 

The fruit allegedly makes excellent sauces, syrups, and jellies; my plan was to replicate that delicious Siberian pineapple juice. After heating the berries in a saucepan with a bit of water, mashing them with a potato masher, and straining, I had 3 cups of a beautiful, but nose wrinkling, tart, juice. I added about a half a cup of water along with a half a cup of sugar, mixed well, and was ready to try out the juice on some dinner guests. Served before dinner in apéritif glasses, the juice was a hit. Everyone asked for more.
 

 

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I next turned to the bowl of tawny stems and grains that’s been sitting on the kitchen table for a couple of months. That bowl represented the sum total of my wheat harvest, planted in spring into 3’ by 3’ of garden bed.
The cut stalks of wheat, with their fat heads of dry grain, had been hanging upside down from the kitchen ceiling up to a few weeks ago. The contents of the bowl — chaff, grain, and bits of stalk — represented the results of putting the stalks into a pillowcase and beating them up vigorously, and then removing long stems remaining. That was a couple of months ago.
 
Yesterday, as long as I had my winnowing fan set up outdoors for the sea berries, I thought I might as well also winnow the wheat grains. As with the sea berries, slowly pouring the grains and other debris in front of the fan sent most of the debris flying away, leaving with the crop, the grain in this case, settling into a waiting bowl below.
 

My crop was relatively paltry, about a half a cup of grain. This half a cup per 9 square feet translates to about 16 bushels per acre. Average wheat yields are 30 to 50 bushels per acre, with some farmers harvesting over 100 bushels per acre. I guess I’m not much of a wheat grower — yet. I’ll try again next year, perhaps planting more densely or earlier.
 
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With the shortest day of the year past, it’s time for hints of the sights and smells of spring — indoors. Paperwhite narcissus, potted up back in November, is already blooming and perfuming the air. And I’ve brought up a jasmine plant (poet’s jasmine, Jasminium officinale) from the basement. That jasmine plant, along with a few others, was outdoors this past fall through a few light frosts, then has sat in front of a sunny window in my cool basement. The cool temperatures, perhaps also short days and occasionally dry soil will contribute to abundant bloom in weeks ahead. I’ll extend the bloom by bringing up a new jasmine plant every few weeks.
 

[pomegranates, greenhouse lettuce, bad black walnuts]

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I oversee, in all probability, the biggest pomegranate farm in Ulster County, perhaps New York State, even the Northeast. My planting recently expanded by 200 percent with the 4 new plants that arrived at my doorstep a couple of days ago. My farm is biggest because so few people in this part of the world grow pomegranates and, if they do, they might have one plant.

 

Pomegranates are an up and coming plant. Their health benefits have been highly touted, perhaps with some hyperbole. They are beautiful shrubs or small trees with traffic-stopping red (sometimes white or pink) blossoms. Best of all is the fruit’s flavor, combining the richness of berries with the tang of citrus.

 

Unfortunately, pomegranates are not adapted to growing in this part of the world. They hail from the Mideast, much the same region as figs, where winters are mild and moist, and summers are hot, dry, and sunny. Yet, I, along with many other gardeners, do grow figs, coddling them through winter by growing them in pots brought indoors, in a greenhouse, or swaddled in the ground or, where winters aren’t bitterly cold, in various insulating blankets. Why not do the same with pomegranates? Stems of both plants tolerate temperatures down to about 15° F.

Well, not exactly the same. Figs bear fruit on new wood so you can harvest a crop even if the stems die back, as long as they don’t die back too much. Pomegranates bear fruit on older wood, which needs to survive winter to bear fruit. Pomegranates also need a long season to ripen. And they don’t like humidity, and especially rain near harvest, or the fruits burst open.

 

All of which is why 12 to 18 inch diameter pots are what my pomegranates call home. I move these pots to my cool basement for winter. I move them outside as soon as the weather warms in spring to get them started early, and inside temporarily if frost threatens. I can move them under cover when rains threaten.

 

Commercial pomegranates in the U.S. are of varieties from warmer parts of the Mideast. The varieties I am growing are from colder regions — central Asia and Russia — so should better tolerate colder winters. With global warming, I may eventually try overwintering some of these plants outdoors. These varieties also ripen their fruits in shorter seasons. My plants — with exotic names like Kazake, Salavatski, and Sverkhranniy — have yet to flower and fruit. I’m looking forward to harvesting a selection of pink, red, sweet-tart, and sweet pomegranates in the next couple of years.

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A few more years of greenhouse gardening and I may get the hang of it. Up to a few weeks ago, I was so proud of all those beautiful lettuce seedlings I had transplanted into the greenhouse in September, as they swelled up into beautiful buttery and crunchy heads. Now, though, a number of them have telescoped out their once-compact heads in preparation for flowering and going to seed.

 

Lettuce typically switches to this flowering mode when days are 12 hours, or more, long. Around here, daylight hours through most of September are a bit more than 12 hours long. Still, I couldn’t wait too long to plant because, planted after September, lettuce grows ver-r-r-r-r-y slowly.

 

And daylength isn’t the only player here; temperature also plays a role, with hotter temperatures coaxing forth those flower stalks, especially when coupled with long days. On sunny days in early autumn, temperatures in the greenhouse did soar to 90°.

 

There is consolation. When lettuce starts to flower outside during hot, long days of summer, the leaves take on a slightly bluish cast and turn tougher and bitter. Leaves of my bolting greenhouse lettuces are still deep green, succulent, and flavorful.

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Another disappointment, one without a saving grace, are the black walnuts. Back in September, we harvested as usual. Deb took off the husks, I laid the de-husked nuts out to dry, and then packed them away in baskets for a few months of curing. So far, just about all the nutmeats I’ve cracked out are thoroughly dried out or rotten, black, and inedible.

 

Why? Perhaps it was the summer’s drought. Perhaps the newly husked nuts stayed too wet before being packed away. Perhaps something’s amiss with our old tree. I’ll check some walnuts a friend harvested from a different tree to see if the problem is widespread. Perhaps the late frost affected early nut development. Next September, I’ll check a few nuts when we harvest them.

 

As consolation, I turn to the words of Charles Dudley Warner (My Summer in a Garden, 1871), “The principle value of the garden . . . is to teach . . . patience and philosophy, and the higher virtue – hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning.”

 

[cool bot]

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Man can’t live on greens alone. But I still have no need to go to a store to round out my vegetable fare. Much of what grew in last season’s garden is in storage, on tap for when I need it. Besides the usual frozen green beans, corn, okra, and edamame, steamed, cooled with a fan, then packed into freezer bags, and the usual canned tomatoes, a lot of vegetables are in cool storage.

That cool storage could have been my refrigerator, except that no refrigerator is spacious enough for a winter’s worth of turnips, winter radishes, beets, and leeks, and a few heads of cabbage. A couple of years ago I built a walk-in cooler. Saving money and energy, I cool this cooler with CoolBot (www.storeitcold.com), a nifty device that tricks a window type air conditioner in believing it has not reached its pre-set minimum temperature of 60°F. I set the indicator on my CoolBot to 40°F., and there it stays. I also have some boxes of apples and pears in there, as well as, up to a couple of weeks ago, pawpaws.

As temperatures continue to drop outdoors, the CoolBot will no longer be needed. Then I’ll move all the boxes to my unheated mudroom. As temperatures drop even more, the boxes will go down into my basement, the temperature of which should by then have dropped into the 40s.

It’s amazing, if you sleuth around your house with a thermometer, especially a house built more than 50 years ago, how many different temperature zones you find. Below 40°F but above freezing is ideal for most fruits and vegetables, except for tropical fruits, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes, which like slightly warmer temperatures.

 

[autumn olive, painting trees for winter, fritillaria propagation

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Okay, I’m braced for an attack. Imagine a fruit, ripe for the past few weeks, with a pleasantly aromatic, sweet-tart flavor. My informal “surveys” have shown very positive response to plates of the fruits brought to various gatherings; the fruits disappeared. The berries are small, yellow or red, with a silvery flecking on the outside and a soft, edible seed within.

 

The bush bearing these fruits is no slouch in appearance. It’s got silvery leaves and pale yellow flowers that individually don’t amount to much but together suffuse the plant with a soft haze in spring, a sweetly fragrant haze. Care needed for this bush is zip, nothing, rien, nada. And with that beauty, fragrance, and lack of trouble, I get oodles of fruit, much more than I could eat.

 

Now I’m ready to duck for attack . . . the plant is autumn olive. There, I’ve said it. Yes, the plant, a native of Asia, is invasive, readily colonizing roadsides and abandoned meadows. Native plant purists and invasive plant police scorn this bush for its fecundity. It was introduced into this country over a hundred years ago as a plant for wildlife food and cover, and to improve soils such as those covered with mine spoils. (Microorganisms associated with the roots take nitrogen from the air and put it in a form plants can use, like fertilizer.)

 

I am not advocating planting autumn olive. But, as long as it’s here, I am advocating enjoying it. The fruits are also very healthful, so says USDA research touting the fruit’s high lycopene levels, research evidently done by a different branch of the USDA than the one working on invasive plants. Just think, every berry I (or you) enjoy is one less berry eaten and seed spread by birds.

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On an even lighter note, I spent an hour or so over the last two days painting some of my trees. The goal was not for them to put on a better face for winter, but for them to better face winter. Cold and furry animals are what will threaten these trees in the coming months.

 

Cold per se is not the problem. The problem is warmth, then cold. The dark trunk of a tree, especially a young one, is warmed by direct sunlight on bright, crisp winter days. As the sun drops below the horizon, bark temperature plummets, to the chagrin of the tree.

 

Deer, rabbits, and mice are the furry threats, eating trees from, respectively, the top branches to the lower branches and bark to the trunk, again, especially young trees. Two dogs, a bit of fencing, and ‘Deerchaser’ (en effective electronic repellant) keep deer at bay.

 

The paint that I brushed onto trunks and the lower branches is for the cold (actually, the warmth), the rabbits, and the mice. I made my own concoction, starting with a goopy mix of old, unfired, porcelain clay from Deb’s studio, white latex paint, and enough water to make it all thick and creamy. The white color of the mix will reflect the sun’s rays to prevent bark warming.

 

I also put a few eggs into the mix to make painted trunks and lower branches unappealing to vegetarian rabbits and mice, which they all are. And finally, to further hit home the idea that these trunks and branches aren’t for eating, into the mix went some garlic powder, cinnamon, and cayenne. I’m hopeful that the clay, if the mix stays on through next summer, will also deter some boring (as in “hole making” rather than “uninteresting”) insects.

 

The trees don’t look at all bad with this cosmetic touch.

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I’m on my way to becoming the crown king of crown imperials. That’s a plant, Fritillaria imperialis, a plant of which I am a big fan. Problem is that crown imperials are very expensive, selling for anywhere from $10 to $30 for each bulb.

 

About 20 years ago my father grew tired of a crown imperial plant he had purchased just a couple of years earlier. So he offered it to me, and it’s been planted and flowering every April since then in a corner of the vegetable garden.

 

After enjoying that solitary bulb for a few years, I got to thinking that nurseries must multiply them, so why couldn’t I? And I did. And I did. And I did. And I still am.

 

Propagation of crown imperial starts with removing a piece of a scale from the bulb. The scale pieces go into a bag of slightly moist potting mix that’s kept warm for a few months, then cool for a few weeks. Little bulblets soon form on the scales, which can be potted up to grow until warm spring weather arrives.

 

I can just imagine looking out at my gardens some April years hence, the scene a sea of 2’ high heads of green stalks, each topped with a round, leafy crown below which dangles a ring of orange blossoms. End results notwithstanding, I’m always amazed — as I was this morning — to open the bag I filled last June 29th with amorphous scales and potting soil to be now filled with roots and bulblets.

 

[to do, persimmon, peppers]

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And I thought I was just about finished for the year. Ha! The long farmden “to do” list I made early this morning makes a mockery of such thinking. No particular rush for any one thing on the list although once snow falls almost everything will need to be pushed forward to next spring. Shudder the thought. I know what spring is like.

Perhaps today I’ll begin with the small meadow on the south side. It — or part of it — needs mowing, which I used to do with a scythe. That much mowing of the dense mix of grasses and perennials was a bit much for a scythe, resulting in tennis elbow (scythe elbow?) a few years ago. Nowadays a tractor and brush hog make quick work of the mowing.

People sometimes ask if I’m going to expand my plantings into the meadow, to which I reply with an emphatic, “No!” The meadow is already home to a row of dwarf apple trees, a row of hardy kiwis and grapes, a row of pawpaws and black currants, a row of filberts, and a few chestnut trees. Any more planting and this will be a farm rather than a farmden.

I’m also leaving most of the meadow intact because of a promise I made to my daughter when she was 8 years old and enthralled with Laura Ingalls Wilder. That meadow had to stay as Genevieve’s prairie.

Anyway, leaving a bit of wildness seems like a good thing, a foil for all the coaxing and manipulating of plants I cultivate. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” wrote Thoreau. I agree.

The meadow does get some care in the form of a once a year mowing. Mowing keeps vines and shrubs from invading, the first step to becoming a forest. Although it would be nice to have the mowing out of the way before spring, the tawny, old grasses and dried seed heads of goldenrods and bee balm are nice to look at through winter. So the portion in view from the dining table remains unmowed except for some welcoming paths I’ll cut through the chest high sea of dry stems.

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American persimmon fruits would never sell, especially this time of year when the golfball sized orbs hang shriveling on branches. Even their bright, persimmon orange color has faded on its way to an unappealing purplish gray. “Americans eat with their eyes,” bemoaned Cornell’s apple breeder to me many years ago.

The taste of American persimmons and the effort needed to grow them should put this tree near the top of anyone’s must-grow plant list. Southerners familiar with this native plant might turn their noses up at persimmons if they’ve tasted only wild ones. The secret to a delectable persimmon is to grow a named variety and, this far north, one that will reliably ripen its fruit within our growing season. My two choices are the varieties Szukis and Mohler. Mohler started ripening in August and Szukis, which began in September, will be good for a few more weeks. Neither variety needs the separate male pollinator tree that wild persimmons need in order to fruit.

These top-notch American persimmons are kin to Asian persimmons seen in markets, with a few notable differences. American persimmons are smaller, softer (much too soft to ship commercially), and richer in flavor. Imagine a dried apricot that’s been soaked in water, dipped in honey, then given a dash of spice. That’s American persimmon at its best. All this from a tree that’s pretty, doesn’t need pruning, and has no pests worth bothering about.

(For more about both Asian and American persimmons, their history, their cultivation, their propagation, their use, and their varieties, see my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” . . . this year in the garden for peppers (with apologies to Charles Dickens).

For best reliability and flavor, and early ripening to red, Sweet Italia has, for decades been the pepper to grow. This year, fruit set was poor and many peppers rotted before they ripened. Intense heat at critical moments this summer could have hampered fruit set. Sweet Italia is a floppy plant and, for the first time this year, I neglected to prop the plants upright in conical tomato cages. Flowers too hidden from insect pollinators and fruits close to or on the ground are also likely contributors to this year’s problems.

It was the best of times for a couple of new pepper varieties I grew: Big Red and Mariachi, both semi-hot peppers, the first one long and thin and the second one cone-shaped, both ripening to red. These two varieties did get staked.

Big Red was the big winner, ripening oodles of peppers, enough to eat, to freeze, to hang up indoors and dry, and to have ripe and “fresh,” even now, from almost ripe fruit brought indoors a couple of weeks ago. The same could be said for Mariachi, but yields were lower. Both taste very good and the hotness can be regulated by including more or less of the seeds and inner membrane, the seat of hotness, when eating or cooking them. Ar-r-r-r-iba.

 

[pitcher plant, cotton, last bagged grapes]

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In? Out? In? Out? I can’t decide where to grow the two pitcher plants that I got at Broken Arrow Nursery a few weeks ago. One of them, purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea), is quite cold hardy so could — should — survive outdoors in the ground. The other, Scarlet Belle (S. wrigleyana), is less cold hardy, but could probably rough it through our winters. Both plants, and especially Scarlet Belle, with pale white leaves having prominent, deep-purple veins, are so spectacular that I’d hate to lose either one.

These plants are as fascinating as they are attractive. Their leaves are long, vertical tubes that, with their purplish color and nectar, entice insects within. Once inside, insects can’t climb out because of the stiff, downward-pointing hairs on the sidewalls. Eventually the insects drown in the pool of water that collects inside the tube, to be digested by enzymes from the flower, helped along, especially as a leaf ages, by resident bacteria, rotifers, and other organisms. Once everything has been pre-digested, the plant can eat.

So, where to plant these gems? Indoors, in pots in a cool, sunny room? Or outdoors, in the ground?

I think my two plants will be happier outside as long as I long can find the proper spot for these rather site-finicky plants. Their needs: full to partial sunlight and a very acidic soil that is consistently wet, high in humus, and low in nutrients. Well, that turns out to be just the conditions in the bed along the east side of my house that is home to lowbush blueberry, lingonberry, mountain laurel, huckleberry. and rhododendron.

The bed is not quite wet enough for the pitcher plants so I’m going to bury a saucer, such as used beneath potted plants, a foot or so in the ground beneath each plant. The saucers will act as in-ground reservoirs to collect and hold water. The veined leaves of the pitcher plants should echo nicely the speckled flowers of hellebore that bloom further back in that bed. Both kinds of flowers are eerily beautiful.

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Call me a cotton pickin’ fool if you want. Yes, I did try to grow cotton in this cotton-unfriendly climate. I won’t admit to the “fool” part, but I surely am “cotton pickin”. Harvest has begun. Four plants, four ripe bolls. I could easily triple that yield if I brought the 18-inch-high plants indoors or into the greenhouse to finish ripening the rest of their bolls. And this is no fish story, of which cotton has had its share. In medieval Europe, cotton was imported but people had no idea from whence the fibers came. That was clarified in 1350 by John Mandeville, who explained: “There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungrie.”

To be of use, my cotton will need to be processed. First, I’ll pluck out the seeds, something that would be easier if I had a cotton gin. I can do without; four bolls won’t be too much trouble. Then comes carding, to clean and align the fibers. Card clothing, as the tool for carding is called, is made from closely spaced wire pins embedded in a sturdy rubber backing. I remember, as a child, seeing women in white cotton caps pulling cotton strands apart with such tools at historic colonial sites. The wire brushes I have for cleaning sheddings from my dogs might the perfect stand-in for card clothing.

(Even more authentic would be to card using teasel plants, which occasionally grow wild along sunny roadsides. The word “carding” comes from carduus, Latin for teasel.)

Once carded, the fibers can be twisted and pulled into one, continuous strand. Finally, weave. Sounds like a lot of work for an organic, home-grown handkerchief!

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Remember my bagged grapes, the ones in bags on which happens to be stamped the words “Fresh Delicious Wholesome Baked Goods?” Those bags have done their job well of fending off insects, diseases, and birds so the bunches can hang a really long time.

I thought the grapes were all eaten, but yesterday, discovered an overlooked, bagged bunch. The red Reliance grapes within didn’t have a lot of eye appeal, having started to shrivel and turned very dark. But their flavor was supreme, the result of being very ripe and, perhaps, exposure to a few frosts.

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