Gardening

A few months ago I wrote that I once saw eye to eye with ex-President Bush – that was H. W. Bush, and we saw eye to eye about broccoli. Neither of us thought much of broccoli, in my case, it was my own, home-grown broccoli that failed to please.

This year I thought I’d make a real effort to grow good broccoli to see if perhaps I could effect an about face. The crop from my first planting was awful. I persevered with a second planting, sown in seed flats in June, for a fall crop. I gave each plant adequate spacing (2 feet apart in the row, 2 rows per 3 foot wide bed), planted them in soil enriched with soybean meal and an inch depth of compost, and kept an eye out for cabbage worms. The heads have been ripening in this cooler weather, and I’ve been making sure to harvest while the buds are still tight.

All this effort has paid off: The broccoli is delicious. Bush, you’re wrong.

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Home-grown apples can be quite delicious. That is, if you get to harvest any decent fruits, which you likely will not do if you grow apples east of the Rocky Mountains. Over much of the eastern U.S., apples have a few but very serious pest problems. If you don’t spray appropriate materials at just the right moments (note the plural), you usually do not get anything worth eating.

Which brings me to the workshop I held last weekend on backyard fruits. I suggested growing fruits that have few or no pest problems, preferably those that don’t even need the precise, annual pruning demanded by apple trees. To whit: For some easy to grow tree fruits, consider pawpaw, American persimmon, and/or medlar. They all have unique flavors reminiscent of, respectively, banana, apricot, and applesauce. Plus, they require no spraying and little or no pruning. All are quite ornamental, so do double duty as landscape plants also.

A couple of other fruits were also ripe for discussion and tasting. Hardy kiwifruits, everyone agreed, were delicious, similar to but sweeter and more flavorful than the fuzzy kiwifruits of the market. They’re grape-sized with smooth skins and you just pop them, whole, into your mouth. They are also easy to grow except that they must be pruned religiously unless you don’t mind them smothering an arbor or trellis, with the subsequent fruit becoming hard to pick.

Another tasty fruit now ripe, this one on a shrub, is – dare I mention it – autumn olive. Yes, I know it’s very invasive. On some bushes, the pea-sized fruits have lost their astringency and are very tasty. With silvery leaves, autumn olive is also quite ornamental.

All these fruits are among those dual purpose “luscious landscape” plants I describe in my book Landscaping with Fruit.

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We also saw some beautiful nuts – trees and shrubs, that is – at the workshop. First were filberts, also known as hazelnuts. I’ve grown both the American and European types. I no longer grow the American types, which are native to eastern U.S., because, although resistant to filbert blight, the nuts are small and somewhat bitter. However, their leaves turn a beautiful color in autumn.

European filberts bear large, tasty nuts. Blight resistant varieties of European filberts were recently developed, and they grow to make large shrubs whose stems arch out from the base of the plant like a fountain of water. I grow the varieties Santiam, Hall’s Giant, Lewis, and Clark, all bearing within 3 years of planting.

And finally we came to chestnuts, another nut with its own blight. This blight was introduced from Asia. American chestnuts are killed back by chestnut blight but resistance and tasty nuts are found in Asian chestnut species. I grow a few varieties of Asian hybrids, including the variety Colossal and a seedling, both of which bore within 5 years of planting, and the varieties Peach and Eaton, which are still young.

Chestnuts are beautiful, spreading trees with healthy looking, glossy green leaves that will soon turn a rich, golden color. Every day now I pick up golfball-sized, buffed brown nuts that drop from Colossal’s branches.

Yesterday, September 2^nd, I picked my first fig of the season, a big, fat, juicy, sweet Green Ischia, also known as Verte. For days, I’d been watching it swell in the tree in the greenhouse. Finally, it was drooping from its stem and the skin gave in readily to my touch, so I picked it and took a bite. Delicious.

Figs have unique bearing habits, which is why I am usually able to harvest those first Green Ischias a few weeks earlier than I did this year. Some fig trees, Green Ischia being one of them, bear fruit on both last year’s stems and on new, growing shoots. The previous year’s stems bear the earlier crop, the current shoots bear the later crop. (With some fig varieties, each of these crops looks and tastes different.)

Last winter, a propane glitch let greenhouse temperatures drop well below freezing. A lot of the old stems suffered damage so there was no early crop this year.

Most temperate zone fruits, such as apple, pear, and blueberry, as well as some varieties of figs, bear only on older stems. And still other fig varieties bear only, or mostly, on currently growing shoots.

These accommodating fruiting habits are what make it possible to grow figs, a subtropical fruit, where climates are quite cold. You choose whether you’re going to protect the stems by burying them, by wrapping them, by growing the plants in pots which are brought indoors for winter, or by growing the plants in a greenhouse. Then you choose the varieties to grow depending on whether you’re going to try to preserve old stems or go for a crop on new shoots.

I’ve tried all these methods. A greenhouse kept cool, but not frigid, in winter (35 degree) is ideal because you can preserve older stems and you can get a lot of growth, which translates to a lot of figs.

The three other fig varieties in my greenhouse, Brown Turkey, Celeste, and Kadota, bear only on new shoots. So each winter I cut these trees back to stimulate a lot of new, fruit-bearing shoots for the following year. Not too severely, though, or the fruit ripens too late. This pruning works out well because the cut back, leafless plants don’t shade the rest of the greenhouse in winter, when lettuce, kale, and other greens growing beneath the dormant trees need all the light they can get.

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One of the most exciting things in this year’s gardening is a mere tuft of greenery that sprouted in a 4 inch, square pot. That tuft of greenery originated from some dust-like seeds that I sprinkled on the potting mix early this spring. Those dust-like seeds originated from seed pods of my Mandalay Mandarin hybrid begonia.

I’ve never grown begonias from seed before, and find it incredible that a whole plant can actually grow from a seed not much larger than a speck of dust. Hence, the special treatment I gave these seeds, beginning with sterilizing the potting mix to kill any weed seeds that would germinate more quickly and inundate the begonias even before they could sprout. After watering the pot, I set it on a capillary mat whose end dipped in a water reservoir. The water gets absorbed into the mat and then into the pot via capillary action, avoiding the need to water from above which would dislodge the tiny seeds.

Finally, I set the pot in dappled shade. I wanted to cover the pot to keep moisture from evaporating too quickly from the surface of the potting mix, where I’d sprinkled the seeds. I also wanted to cover it to keep out weed seeds. A pane of glass would be ideal because begonia, like most small seeds, needs light to germinate. On the other hand, I didn’t want the seeds to cook in their mini-greenhouse, so I propped the glass up ¼ of an inch or so above the pot with some wooden spacers.

Lo and behold, what first looked like a green haze has developed into a mound of green sprouts. The next step is to separate them and put each one into its own “cell.”

Then things get more exciting, as I wait for blossoms. Mandalay Mandarin is a beauty. Will any of her offspring match the parent? Will any surpass their parent?

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On October 4^th, from 2-5 pm, I’ll be conducting a “Backyard Fruit Growing and Tasting” workshop in my garden. This workshop will cover what fruits are best and easiest to grow, and how to grow them. Everyone will also get to taste delectable fruits such as pawpaws, persimmons, and hardy kiwifruit. Space is limited, and the cost is $30 per person with pre-registration before October 2^nd, $40 otherwise. Email, or call 845-255-0417, for more information.

Elegance doesn’t generally wow me in the garden (or in architecture or home furnishings); lack of elegance often does. A most inelegant, cheerful flower is now in bloom. The plant is hibiscus, not the tropical one with glossy leaves and coaster-sized flowers, but the hardy, herbaceous perennial ones now sporting dinnerplate-size, red-bordering-on-hot-pink blossoms. What fun!

Looking at my plant more closely, I see that chewed up leaves are making the plants look . . . okay, perhaps a bit too inelegant. The culprit is the hibiscus sawfly, which looks something like a housefly as an adult, except the body section right behind its head is orange-brown in color. The real culprits, though, are the young, the small green caterpillars, who do the feeding.

So here’s my reminder, for next year, to pick the caterpillars off the plants early in the growing season. The caterpillars are also susceptible to most pesticides, which could be a last resort option. The moms keep laying eggs during the growing season so handpicking or spraying has to continue throughout the season. I’ll also keep an eye out for the caterpillars on my hollyhocks, of which I have 20 seedlings that will be ready to plant out next spring.

Thankfully the sawfly doesn’t attack some other important members of the hibiscus (mallow) family, such as okra, rose-of-sharon, and the tropical hibiscus I rescued from the Smith & Hawkens dumpster a few weeks ago.

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Incessant rain. Never-ending rain. Day after day of rain. And with it comes mosquitoes and weeds. If there were going to be one theme for this year’s garden, it would be “weeds” (particularly troublesome for the author—me — of a book boldly titled Weedless Gardening).

I do have weeds pretty much under control. In previous years that control, using techniques I describe in my book, required perhaps 5 minutes each week weed. Control this summer has required perhaps a half an hour per week.

Each season brings changes in the makeup of garden weeds, depending on the season’s weather patterns and changes, over time, in soil. This year’s most prominent weed is woodsorrel, a weed with yellow flowers and with leaves that resemble those of clover. There are two closely related species, an upright, bright green species, common yellow woodsorrel (Oxalis stricta), and a creeping form, called – you guessed it – creeping yellow woodsorrel (O. corniculata).

Both wood sorrels are having a field day in my garden this year. The upright woodsorrel is easy and very satisfying to pull out. I just grab the top and the whole plant pops out of the ground. The creeping woodsorrel is more problematic because roots sprout from the stems as they creep along the ground and the purplish brown leaves make the plant hard to see against the soil.

I’m careful and diligent about grubbing out woodsorrels because seedpods of both species readily pop open to actually shoot their seeds. I envelop as much of each plant in my hand as much as possible then keep my fist closed around what I’ve grabbed until I’ve shoved the offender down inside my weed bucket.

As with other plants named sorrel, woodsorrels are edible, with a lemony flavor. I don’t like them that much.

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All is not caterpillars, weeds, and other pests in the garden. This week the garden offered up a bumper crop of hardy kiwifruits (Actinidia kolomikta), a cold-hardy relative of our markets’ fuzzy kiwifruits, which are not cold-hardy here. Hardy kiwifruits have the same emerald green flesh as their cold-tender cousins, but the fruits are grape-sized and, with their smooth, edible skin, can be popped whole into your mouth. The flavor is also sweeter and more aromatic than the fuzzies.

Now is not the first time this year that hardy kiwifruits have wowed me. The vine itself is quite a beauty with variegated, luminescent leaves that are especially so all through spring. The leaves are brushed with areas of silvery pink, sometimes leaving circles of green that seem to have been painted on with an artist’s brush (something I jokingly assert to visiting children).

Hardy kiwifruit is an uncommon fruit that’s ideal excellent for “luscious landscaping,” that is, the use of fruit plants a for their beauty and their bounty. Besides beauty and good flavor, the only care the plant needs is annual pruning. If you are willing to sacrifice some yield of fruit and convenience in harvesting, the plants hardly even need that.

You do need at least two plants to reap a harvest of berries, one female for fruit and one male to provide pollen so that the female (or up to 8 females) can fruit. The males aren’t useless except for their pollen, though. They have the showiest leaves.

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Smith & Hawkens’ loss is my gain. That’s Smith & Hawkens, the upscale gardening store that sells . . . actually, I’m not exactly sure just what they do sell. They used to sell some very high quality, or at least very expensive, gardening tools, such as stainless steel digging forks and spades that were very decorative on garage walls even if never used. They also used to publish some excellent gardening books, such as Carolyn Mayle’s 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden and Elvin McDonald’s 100 Orchids for the American Garden. And then they sold gardening clothes. And then they sold furniture for the garden. And then they sold “flaming pots” for decorating your terrace.

Which is why I ended up poking my head in at a Smith & Hawkens retail store last weekend. Smith & Hawkens is going out of business and signs proclaimed that everything was discounted by 25 to 30%. No, I didn’t return home with a fire pot for my terrace. My sole purchase was 4 packets of “Renées Garden” seeds for a total of $6.13.

The real find, though, was a tree-form hibiscus with a braided trunk, an almost leafless specimen spotted by my wife as it was being walked out to the dumpster by an S & H employee. I retrieved the plant, noted its dearth of leaves and thirsty state, and walked it to our car for the trip to its new home.

Repotting and timely watering will, I am confident, bring that hibiscus back to its former glory. As for S & H’s fate, perhaps it was the economy, perhaps they wandered too far afield.

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She really is the doyen, or most respected member, the dean, of the group. I refer to Doyenné de Juillet pear, also known as Summer Doyonné, and the group of which she is dean is, of course, July (Juillet, in French) pears. I picked over my tree just after the middle of the July and the fruit should be ready to ripen when I get it out of the refrigerator, soon.

(European-type pears, such as Summer Doyonné, ripen from the inside out, so if picked when fully ripe, they taste “sleepy” inside; they taste best if picked fully mature then allowed to finally ripen off the tree, preferably at cool temperatures. A short cold period gets ripening started.)

As described in U. P. Hedrick’s 1921 classic The Pears of New York, Doyonné de Juillet pears are “extremely early and highly flavored . . . borne in prodigious quantities . . . small . . . unattractive . . . do not keep well . . . as free as most of its orchard associates from blight.” All of which makes it a good backyard variety but an awful commercial variety. Mr. Hedrick did go on to say that the quality is variable, which is why I picked all the fruits and whisked them into the refrigerator as soon as I saw the first one on the ground.

This pear is perhaps the Doyonné de Juillet because it’s the only pear that ripens in July. Mine haven’t been particularly tasty. I still grow it, in part, for its history: It represents the handiwork of Belgian plantsman Jean-Baptiste Van Mons, who lived 200 years ago and was the most prolific pear breeder known. Van Mons was responsible for the now familiar pear varieties Bosc and d’Anjou. Doyonné de Juillet originated around 1800.

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For me, berries are the essence of summer. So summer has officially begun: Just before the end of June I began eating blueberries and blackcurrants, and now there are plenty.

Blueberries are familiar, blackcurrants are not, but deserve to be better known. With a strong, distinctive flavor and not a whole lot of sweetness, blackcurrants are a fruit that only some of us enjoy fresh. Apply a little heat and some sweetener, perhaps a pastry shell (or not), or just squeeze the berries to make juice, sweetened or mixed with other juices, and you have a fruit that just about everyone enjoys. I’m much more adept at growing fruits than cooking fruits, but I’ll bet blackcurrants would be heavenly paired in various ways with dark chocolate.

Blackcurrants are very easy to grow. They fruit well even in shade and pretty much the only care they need is relatively straightforward annual pruning. Deer are not particularly fond of the bushes and birds are not fond of the fruits.

Lest anyone thinks I’m talking about those dried fruits sold as “dried currants,” those are totally different creatures. They are dried “Black Corinthe” grapes whose name has been bastardized to “black currant.”

Ever since I started growing berries, blackcurrants have been among my favorites. These berries are generally unknown in this country because they can host a disease of white pines, a valuable timber crop, so were banned until recently, when disease-resistant varieties where developed. Consort is one such variety, which I liked fine, but a few years ago I got my hands on some Russian varieties, which are disease resistant and have much finer flavor. Eating fruits of the varieties Kirovchanka, Belaruskaja, and Minaj Shmyrev moved blackcurrant up the scale to my favorite fruits, along with blueberries.

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“What about strawberries?” you might ask. They’ve been ripe for weeks now. They’re berries also.

I like strawberries but they are not among my favorite fruits. I don’t like crawling on the ground to harvest fruits, and, although strawberries are technically perennial plants, a bed starts to decline after 5 years or so due to encroachment of weeds and diseases. Even before that 5-year mark, a bed needs annual renovation if it’s going to remain healthy and productive.

Take a look at my strawberry bed today and you’d think that I didn’t like the fruits at all. I renovated the bed, something that looks brutal and is needed every year soon after the harvest is over. Step one is to go through the bed and thin out the plants so that each has almost a square foot of space all to itself, with preference given to younger plants. Two rows of plants run the length of each 3-foot-wide bed. While thinning plants is also an opportune time for thorough weeding and pulling off runners.

Next, I used grass shears to shear all leaves from all the plants, then gathered up all the cut leaves to cart off to the compost pile. This step lessens disease buildup.

And finally, the bed got blanketed with an inch-thick icing of compost or, alternatively, some organic mulch such as straw, pine needles, or wood shavings along with a bit of fertilizer. This mulch feeds the soil, enriches it with humus, conserves soil moisture (not needed this year! – yet), and keeps roots cool.

There are other ways to manage a strawberry bed but the system described, called the “hill system,” works well in intensive, closely managed gardens. No matter what growing system is used, though, any strawberry bed needs weeding, thinning, periodic rejuvenation, and eventual replanting.

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We can’t forget about vegetables in our (very) local harvest backyard harvesting. Looking ahead to autumn, I sowed seeds of endive and radicchio along with more broccoli and cabbage, recently sown seedlings of which got flattened during a recent deluge. I also sowed my biweekly pinch of lettuce seeds to keep us in big salads right through summer.

Once up, all these seedlings can grow in self-watering APS seed flats (from Gardener’s Supply Company) for about a month before being planted out in the garden. Then there will be space available from which peas and early beans and corn have been harvested and cleared away. Later, harvested onions will free up more space.

Looking ahead to two springs hence, small spears are now appearing in the flat in which I sowed asparagus seed a couple of weeks ago. They’re so cute; they look like miniature asparagii.