Gardening – Page 7

EVOLUTION AT WORK

March 30, 2022/6 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Green Thumb Not Needed

Anybody out there now sprinkling seeds into mini-furrows in seed flats, flowerpots, or repurposed yogurt cups? How many of us are then disappointed when, a few days later, there’s no sign of green sprouts poking up through the brown soil? Or not enough of them.

A green thumb isn’t a prerequisite for growing seedlings indoors to give plants a head start for earlier ripening of tomatoes and peppers or earlier blooms of zinnias or marigolds. Backing up every seed is 350 million years of trial and error; seeds have evolved to sprout. So why, sometimes, don’t they, and how do to right any wrongs? Healthy tomato transplant

Good Seeds and Good (Potting) Soil a Must

Seeds are living, breathing creatures, and don’t live forever. How long a seed remains viable depends on the kind of seed. Longevity of vegetable seeds under good storage conditions goes from just a year for onion, parsnip, and parsley seed to more than four years for seeds of cucumber, lettuce, and cabbage and its kin. Most annual flower seeds are good for one to three years, most perennials two to four years.

But don’t take any reports of seed longevities too much at face value. Storage conditions play an important role, with the best conditions being cold and dry. I store my seeds in an airtight tub along with packets of silica gel that I weigh and refresh, if needed, in a microwave oven. The tub winters in my unheated garage and summers in my cool basement, or freezer. Seed storage, in tub

Next, turn to the soil or, more correctly, the potting mix or potting soil. Don’t sow seeds in garden soil, even good garden soil. Garden soil becomes too sodden in the confines of a container. Purchase or make your own mix (both of which I wrote about my March 15, 2022 blog post).

Gather up some bona fide or makeshift containers, and you’re ready to plant. Any container that’s a couple of inches deep with drainage hole in its bottom is suitable. Fill it with the potting mix and gently firm it.

What Next?

A guideline that I don’t follow rigorously is to plant seeds at a depth approximately four times their thickness. A lighter, airier mix warrants deeper planting or seeds will dry out too quickly. Still, bigger seeds do warrant deeper planting than smaller seeds. With really tiny seeds, like foxglove or portulaca, I just sprinkle them on the surface, perhaps with a smidgen of potting mix for a very light cover. Tiny seeds have tiny energy reserves, and if planted too deep, they burn up all their energy before peering aboveground to drink in energy-giving light. No matter the depth, right after sowing I firm the seedbed for good contact between seeds and mix. Sowing lettuce seeds in flats

And then I water. I could water from above with a gentle “rain” from the fine rose of my watering can or hose wand, but prefer to minimize washing around the potting mix and seeds, especially small seeds, by watering from below. I set the seed flat or container in a pan with an inch or so of water and let it sit for a few hours. By then the potting mix is saturated with water; lifting the container out of the water and then tipping it at an angle drains excess (gravitational water) from the mix. A pane of glass over the top of the container prevents evaporation to lock in moisture.

All the seeds now need to coax them out of the slumber is warmth. Each kind of seed has a minimum, a maximum, and an optimum temperature for germination. Unfortunately, it’s not the same for all seeds. Between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit (21-27° C.) strikes a nice balance for all of them.

Armed with a thermometer, check out warm spots around your home: perhaps it’s a warm room, the top of a refrigerator, an insulated container along with a periodically refreshed hot water bottle, or near a furnace. Electric seed heating mats are available, some raising the temperature 10° F above ambient, more expensive ones raising the temperature to whatever amount you dial in.

I made my own germination chamber from a styrofoam cooler along the bottom of which I wired two sockets each with a 15 watt lightbulb. Above the bulbs sits a rack for the seed flats. The bulbs are wired into a thermostat on which I can dial the desired temperature set, always, in my case, set to 80° F. Seed incubator

One Final Ingredient and You’re Good to Grow

That’s it, except for one final ingredient: patience. Even with ideal conditions, seeds vary in how long they take to germinate.

I check the containers every day and as soon as sprouts appear, I uncover and whisk the container to bright light. From then on, cooler temperatures — about 10° F. less than germination temperatures — and bright light are ideal. Tomato seeds sprouted 2

BREWING UP BATCH OF POTTING SOIL

March 16, 2022/16 Comments/in Gardening, Soil/by Lee Reich

Prime Ingredients for Any Potting Mix

Many years, my gardening season begins on my garage floor. That’s where I mix the potting soil that will nourish seedlings for the upcoming season’s garden and replace worn out soil around the roots of houseplants. Why do I make potting soil? Why does one bake bread?

There is no magic to making potting soil. When I first began gardening, I combed through book after book for direction, and ended up with a mind-boggling number of recipes. The air cleared when I realized what was needed in a potting soil, and what ingredients could fulfill these needs. A good potting soil needs to be able to hold plants up, to drain well but also be able to hold water, and to be able to feed plants. The key ingredients in my potting mix are: garden soil for fertility and bulk; perlite for drainage; and a mix of peat moss and compost for water retention.
Components of potting soil
Why not just dig up some good garden soil? Because a flower pot or whatever container a plant is growing in unavoidably creates “perched water table” at its bottom. Garden soil, even good garden soil, is so dense that it will wick too much water up from that perched water table. Waterlogging is apt to result, and waterlogged soil lacks air, which roots need in order to function. (More about perched water tables and lots of other stuff about soil, propagation, plant stresses, and more can be found in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.)

Coarse mineral aggregates — perlite, in my mix — make potting soils less dense, so water percolates more readily into the mix, through it, and out the bottom of the container. Other aggregates include vermiculite, sand, and calcined montmorillonite clay (aka kitty litter). I chose perlite because vermiculite breaks down with time and can contain asbestos. Sand is heavy, although this can be an effective counterbalance for top heavy cactii.

The peat moss and compost in my mix are organic materials that slurp up water like a sponge; plants can draw on this “water bank” between waterings. One peat to avoid is “peat humus,” a peat that is so decomposed that it has little water-holding capacity. Organic materials also buffers soil against drastic pH changes and cling to nutrients which are slowly re-released to plant roots. Otherwise these nutrients run out through the bottom of seedling flats and flower pots.

Peat is relatively devoid of nutrients but the compost provides a rich smorgasbord of nutrients. And I can brew it myself. Just letting piles of autumn leaves decompose for a couple of years produces “leaf mold,” which has roughly the same properties as compost.

Potting soils made with garden soil and compost might need to be pasteurized to eliminate pests especially weeds. Too much heat should be avoided, however, because toxins which injure plants will form and beneficial organisms will be eliminated. When I am going to pasteurize, I do so only to the garden soil in the mix; my composts get to above 150°F all on their own.

To pasteurize potting soil, put it in a baking pan, bury a potato in it, and bake it in a medium oven. When the potato is baked, the soil is ready. Pasteurization is not absolutely necessary; I pasteurize to kill weed seeds. Begonia, Mandarin & cats

What You Buy Isn’t . . .

Go out and buy a potting mix and, in all likelihood, that mix will be devoid of any real garden soil. You can mix up a so-called “soil-less” potting mix by sieving together equal volumes of peat moss and perlite. Since the mix has no garden soil or compost to supply nutrients, add 1/2 cup of dolomitic limestone, 2 tablespoons of bone meal, and 1/2 cup of soybean meal to each bushel of final mix. This mix has enough fertility for about a month and a half of growth without additional fertilizer.

I favor traditional potting mixes, which contain real garden soil. Real soil adds a certain amount of bulk to the mix, as well as a slew of nutrients and microorganisms. Real soil provides buffering capacity, which allows for some wiggle room in soil acidity.

The Magic Happens

I wrote early on, “There is no magic to making potting soil.” I could toy with ratios and make a potting mix from perlite plus compost, perlite plus compost plus garden soil, even straight compost, depending on the texture of the compost.

Going forward, I’m going to experiment with coir and/or PitMoss, both possible substitutes for peat moss, the harvest of which is environmentally questionable.

For my first batch of potting mix for this season, I’ll stick with my usual recipe. Step one is to give the garage floor a clean sweep. potting soil, piling ingredients Then I pile up on the floor two gallons each of garden soil, peat moss, perlite, and compost. On top of the mound I sprinkle a cup of lime (except if I’ve sprinkled limestone on the compost piles as I build them), a half cup soybean, perhaps some kelp flakes.

This is a mixed bag of ingredients, but I reason that plants, just as humans, benefit from a varied diet. I slide my garden shovel underneath the pile and turn it over, working around the perimeter, until the whole mass is thoroughly mixed. potting soil, mixing I moisten it slightly if it seems dry. When all mixed, the potting soil gets rubbed through a 1/2″ sieve, 1/4” if it’s going to be home for seedlings. potting soil, sifting

I end by clicking click my heels together three times and reciting a few incantations to complete this brew that has worked its magic on my seedlings, houseplants, and potted fruits each season.

GETTING TO THE ROOT OF GARDENING

March 1, 2022/2 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Etymological Wanderings

Sure, I’ve been dropping seeds into mini-furrows in some seed flats, and prunings are starting to litter the ground outdoors. But there’s a lot of nongardening activity going on here. What better time to ponder etymology? (Etymology, not entomology, the latter of which is the study of insects; aphids, mealybugs and whiteflies, all of which will be crawling around soon enough.) What exactly do we mean when we talk about a “garden” or “gardening?”

Garden(?) in Italy

The word “gardening” is pretty much synonymous with “horticulture,” which comes from the Latin hortus meaning a garden, and cultura, to culture. According to Webster, horticulture is the “art or science of cultivating fruits, flowers, and vegetables.” The word “horticulture” was given official recognition in The New World of English Words in 1678 by E. Phillips, although though the Latin form, horticultura, first appeared as the title of a treatise of 1631.

Horticulture, then, is about growing fruits, flowers, and vegetables; nothing is said about cultivating a field of cotton or wheat. These latter crops are in the ken of agronomy, from the Latin root ager meaning field. Once again quoting Webster, agronomy is the “science or art of crop production; the management of farm land.” Horticultural crops are more intensively cultivated than farm crops — and more apt to be threatened by neglect.

In fact, “gardening” and “horticulture” are not exactly synonymous. Horticulture is usually associated with growing plants for a livelihood, and is broken down into pomology (fruits), olericulture (vegetables), floriculture (flowers) and landscaping. Gardening usually implies something more homey and intimate.

Gardyne Styles

Over the centuries, the word “garden” has been penned in many spellings. A chronicler of the 13th century wrote “gardynes,” in the next century Chaucer wrote the word a bit differently: “Yif me a plante of thilke blessed tre And in my gardyn planted it shall be.” We see yet another spelling early in the sixteenth century: “My lord you have very good strawberries at your gardayne in Holberne.” Finally, by the time of Shakespeare, we have: “Ile fetch a turne about the Garden.” Here, “garden” at least, is spelt [sic] the moderne [sic] way.

The root of the word “garden” comes from the Old English geard, meaning fence, enclosure, or courtyard, and the Old Saxon gyrdan, meaning to enclose or gird.

Walled garden

These words are closely related to our modern words “yard,” “girth,” and “guard.” Medieval gardens were physically enclosed. My vegetable garden is too, but mostly as protection against rabbits that love my peas and beans, not against knights practicing their jousting or wild pigs roaming the fields. The medieval garden was against the house and protected by a high wall, or, perhaps a wattle fence. Fenced garden

Over the centuries, “garden” and “gardening” have come to mean more than the fenced medieval garden. The archetypal Persian garden is dominated by refreshing pools or fountains of water. In the Italian garden, we find trees and shrubs, and stone stairways, balustrades, and porticos.

Classic Italian garden

Grand parterres characterize the French style of gardening.

Parterres in French garden

About a hundred years ago, the increasingly grand style of gardening fell from favor as an Englishwoman, Gertrude Jekyll, came forward to laud and design gardens that emulated intimate, colorful, and informal cottage gardens. She wrote that the ” . . . first purpose of a garden is to give happiness and repose of mind, which is more often enjoyed in the contemplation of the homely border . . . than in any of the great gardens where the flowers lose their identity, and with it their hold on the human heart.” Cottage garden

And Today . . . ?

What does “garden” and “gardening” mean today? A few tomato and marigold plants, separated from the dwelling by an expanse of lawn? A woodland glen of ferns and bleeding hearts? More recently, “forest gardens” have incorporated edible plants in forest-ish settings.

A forest garden?

How about a knot garden of herbs within a white picket fence — in the medieval style, one might say?

The World Was My Garden, the title of the book by early 20th century plant explorer and botanist David Fairchild offers another perspective on “garden.” (I’ll change the “was” to “is,” though.) I’m not sure where my garden ends and whatever else grows within my property boundaries begins.

What’s the boundary of this garden?

I pick strawberries in my vegetable garden and grow Caucasian mountain spinach among my gooseberries. Grapevines clamber on the arbor over my terrace, and a stewartia tree, mountain laurels, and lowbush blueberries snuggle near the east side of my home.

And why stop at property boundaries?

Mountains “in” this garden

Buildings as part of this garden, NYC HIghline

A row of eighty foot tall pine trees peer over the tops of my pear trees from the far end of my neighbor’s property two houses away to the north. Pines at neighbor's house To the south my meadow ends at a sweep of another neighbor’s field, the more frequently mown grass of which undulate like waves in summer sunshine in contrast to the more upright asters, fleabanes, goldenrods, and monardas that stand upright among the grasses in my meadow. View of meadow, October

Further extending the boundary are gardens revisited in my memory and those I have yet to see.

My boundless garden

FIGS: WAIT, DON’T GROW!

February 24, 2022/17 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Stay Asleep Please

If you garden in a cold winter climate, as do I, I hope you’re growing figs. Despite being tropical plants, figs are relatively easy for us to grow, as attested to by other gardeners, from Moscow to Montreal, Minneapolis and beyond.

San Piero fig, ripe

If you garden in a cold winter climate, I also hope that your fig plant is NOT growing now (unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere). The way we cold-climate fig growers help our plants face winter cold is by protecting them from it. A usual method is to grow a plant in a pot that gets moved to a sheltered location to wait out winter. (Growing in pots plus four other methods of overwintering figs are described in my recent book Growing Figs in Cold Climates.)

Sometimes — too often — a fig jumps the gun on spring and starts growing in its sheltered location. Figs shed their leaves when they feel cold is just around the corner, so don’t need bright light in winter. But once buds awaken, they need all the light it can get.

Fig starting to wake up

Don’t fool yourself that a sunny window is sufficient light. The light there typically ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 foot-candles, while full sunlight outdoors is over 10,000 foot-candles. With insufficient light, growth becomes etiolated, that is, stretched out and pale as if reaching for light. And when the time comes for the plant to move outdoors, strong sunlight and drying winds will burn those etiolated stems.

Sleep Recipes

So the goal is to retard growth until outdoor conditions are more fig-friendly. If fully dormant, the plant can tolerate temperatures down into the low 20s Fahrenheit, even colder in a large enough pot. (Cold penetrates more deeply into smaller pots, and fig roots, like those of all temperate-zone plants, can’t tolerate as much cold as stems.)

Fig stems, dormant

The ideal situation is to be able to move a fully dormant fig plant outdoors while temperatures are still cold, but not cold enough to injure the stems or roots. Then buds gradually unfurl in synch with warming temperatures and increasingly intense sunlight.

My potted plants are fully dormant, the result, all winter, of keeping the pots in a cold room with minimal watering. Ideal winter temperatures for a fig are between the high 20s and low 40s. A barely or unheated garage, a cold basement, an unheated mudroom or attic, perhaps even a shed can all keep a fig asleep long enough.

Most of my plants get watered just once in winter. I lift the pots and can tell by experience from their weight whether water is needed. A soil moisture meter probe also works. They are in humid locations, either in my basement or in a walk-in cooler. Sealing each pot and soil, not the stems, in a plastic bag could cut down or eliminate any need for water.

Only one of my potted figs has already started growing. (I let it do so for this photograph.) My one growing fig is actually doing quite well, with new growth expanding slowly and robustly. Fig stem beginning growth Besides having its thirst quenched just enough to prevent wilting, it sits in front of a large, unobstructed window facing due south in a room whose temperatures range from the 50s and 60s. (That’s why I’m writing while sitting here in a down jacket!)

Shock Treatment

Okay, so you can’t provide ideal enough conditions, and your plant is overenthusiastic about winter’s end. Give it a little shock. Potted figs do need repotting every year or two to refresh soil nutrients and give roots new room to grow. If the plant is in as large a pot as you wish, the root ball needs to be slid out of the pots and sliced back to afford space for fresh potting soil. The larger the plant, the more roots can be removed. I go around the edge of the root ball with a kitchen knife slicing an inch or two off around the edge of the root ball. That should tell Ms. Fig to chillax!

Stem pruning is another way to put the brakes on growth. And figs anyway benefit from annual pruning. How much to prune depends on the bearing habit of the fig, some varieties bearing best on new growth, some on one-year-old growth, and still others on both types of growth. (I refer you to my book for details about pruning figs.)

Fig fruits developing on new growth

Not to Worry

Perhaps you haven’t provided ideal winter conditions, you have no sun drenched windows, your home is warm, and you already repotted and pruned last fall. Don’t give up. Worst case scenario is that sappy, etiolated stems have emerged on your fig plant. Once outdoor temperatures moderate, you have three choices.

Gradually acclimate the plant to the great outdoors in much the same way as is done with tomato seedlings. Start the plant with a week or so in an outdoor location protected from full sunlight, wind, and freezing temperatures, moving it periodically indoors if conditions make it necessary. Gradually move it to the more exposed location of its summer home.

Second choice. Move the plant immediately to its summer home, but prune back growing stems, which, anyway, will likely burn.

Third, and easiest, choice, is to move the plant immediately to its summer home. Period. You’ll see some dieback and burning, but the plant should survive unless it’s very young or very weak.

The nice thing about growing figs, and one of the thinks that makes it possible to grow them in cold climates, is that they are very forgiving plants. More so than you might imagine. Bowl of ripe figs

SOWING PEARS AND LETTUCES

January 26, 2022/19 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

For the Long Haul

Among the must-have tools for any good gardener are hope, optimism, and patience. I thought of all three last week as I was planting some seeds.
Asian pear, Korean Giant
The first of these seeds especially emphasizes patience. They were a few pear seeds I saved from pears I had eaten. After being soaked for a couple of days in water, the cores were soft enough for the seeds to be squeezed out, after which they were rinsed, and then planted in potting soil.

I put the planted seeds near a bright window in my basement where the cool (about 40°) temperatures would, in a couple of months, fool the seeds into feeling that winter was over. They would sprout.

Given time, those seeds would grow to become pear trees and, given more time (ten years, possibly more) go on to bear fruit. Those seeds came from Bosc and Passe Crassane pears. The genetics of the resulting trees will represent the sexual union of egg cells within the flowers with whatever male pollen happened to fertilize those eggs. As a result, said trees would bear fruits different, and probably worse, than the fruits from which they were taken. (There’s less than 1 in 10,000 chance of a seedling apple tree bearing fruit as good or better than the fruit from the mother tree; the ratio for pears should be similar.)

Shortening the Long Haul, and Other Benefits

Grafted tree, this one NOT interstem

So why will I be wasting all that time nurturing these plants? Because they’re not for fruit. They’re for rootstocks, for grafting. Pears and most other tree fruits are very hard to root from cuttings, so are propagated by grafting a stem of a good-tasting pear low on a rootstock.
Whip graft of stem to rootstock
So-called “seedling” rootstocks make for very sturdy trees, well anchored and genetically diverse so some scourge can’t wipe out a whole bunch of equally susceptible, genetically identical trees. On the other hand, seedling rootstocks make for very large trees that are very slow to induce bearing in their grafted portions.

Enter from stage right: clonal rootstocks, that is, plants reproduced asexually (cuttings are one example of asexual plant propagation) so that all members of the clone are genetically identical. Some clonal pear rootstocks — with such unalluring names as Pyrodwarf and OH x F 87 — have been developed that make smaller grafted trees that also are quicker to come into bearing. (I delve more deeply into the nitty gritty of grafting in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.)

My plan is to make interstem trees, each one by grafting a 9 inch stem of one of the clonal rootstocks near the base of a seedling rootstock, and then some variety for eating, such as Passe Crassane, atop the clonal interstem. That 9 inch clonal interstem has the same good effects as if it was used as a rootstock, except that the interstem trees also have sturdy root systems and genetic diversity at their roots. Because plants grow from the tips of stems, the heights of the grafts above ground remain the same even as the tree grows.

Parts of interstem tree

I’ll do both grafts at the same time, next spring. I’m hopeful, optimistic, and have patience that I’ll be biting my first pears from these trees within 5 years.

Lettuce be Hopeful, Patient, and Optimistic

The other seeds for this week’s sowing were four varieties of lettuce. No, not for eventual outdoor planting, but for planting in the greenhouse in spaces that will open up where some of last autumn’s lettuce will have been harvested.

It’s chilly in the greenhouse, where temperatures drop into the 30’s at night and on cloudy days, too chilly for good sprouting of lettuce seeds. Sowing lettuce seeds in flats So I sowed them in a 4×6 inch seed flat filled with potting soil, then moved the flat in front of a sun-drenched, living room window. Once the lettuce seeds sprouted, which was in a few days, I moved them to the greenhouse. Warmer temperatures are needed to sprout a seed than to grow a plant.
Lettuce sprouting in flat
The seedlings should not, of course, remained crowded in their mini-furrows in the flat. So once the seedlings grow a little larger, I’ll gently lift each one by its leaves, coaxing it up and out of the flat, and then lower the roots into a dibbled hole in one potting-soil-filled-cell of GrowEase. And so on, until each of the 24 cells has a small plant in it.

Moving small lettuce seedlings I use this same method to keep up a steady supply of lettuce and other seedlings all through summer, the plants typically needing about a month in the GrowEase before they’re ready to transplant into the ground. Not so in winter, with the sun still hanging low in the sky and greenhouse temperature still cool. I estimate that it won’t be until early March before the lettuces will be ready to plant in the ground in the greenhouse.

No matter; I’m hopeful, optimistic, and patient. And I’ll still be harvesting some of last autumn’s lettuce beyond that date.

A PEAR, 170 YEARS LATER

January 6, 2022/10 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

A Luscious Fruit in Winter

All fruits did well this past season but it was especially a banner year for pears. Why do I mention this now? Because we’re still eating them and they are delicious. “Them” is actually just one variety — Passe Crassane, not a variety you’d find on a supermarket shelf, but which is available as a tree. Passe Crassane pear sliced
Timely harvest, storage, and ripening of pears melds art and science; since this was my first crop from Passe Crassane, I was wary as I sliced off a taste. It was like slicing through butter, a good omen. The flesh was “white, fine. melting, [sugary], perfumed, and agreeably sprightly,” to quote from The Pears of New York, U. P. Hedrick’s 1921 classic. Delicious.

The seed for this pear was sown, literally, by one Louis Boisbunel in Rouen, France in 1845. Ten years later, the tree showed its worth and the fruit made its debut. Passe Crassane is a winter pear that needs to be harvested mature — here, in early November — and then kept in cold storage for a couple of months to ripen to full flavor. Under ideal storage conditions, fruits keep well for months.

This variety was very popular in its century of origin, and its cultivation spread to Italy, Spain, Germany, and England. Commercially, stems were dipped in a red wax to prevent water loss during storage; those red-tipped stems became a signature of Passe Crassane. By the 20th century, Passe Crassane had fallen out of favor because of its susceptibility to diseases, including dreaded fireblight.

(My tree was struck by what I thought might be fireblight a year and a half ago, so I had drastically lopped it back well below what might have been blighted portions, planning to graft the stump to another variety. Fortunately, one older branch remained below the lopping and that branch, for the first time this past season, bore fruit, heavily. I’ll let the tree re-develop from one of the few watersprouts that shot skyward where the tree was lopped.) Passe Crassane lopped

The Hard Part of Growing Pears

Apple, cherry, and other common tree fruits are usually beset with pest problems that make them hard to grow. Not so for pears. The hard part about growing pears is knowing when to harvest them and then ripening them to perfection.

Yeh, yeh, I’ve read all about various indicators that show pears are ready for harvest: 1) When the fruit stalk separates easily from the stem as you lift and twist; 2) When the skin color lightens slightly; 3) When the small lenticels on the skin turn from white to brown; 4) When the first fruits start to drop. And, my favorite, recording the harvest date, once you get it right, and then harvesting on about that date every year.

Picking Seckel pear

No matter what the method, a pear should be firm, not at all soft, once ready for harvest. Pears ripen from the inside out. So fruit left on tree to thoroughly ripen is mostly brown mush on the inside by then.

All those indicators notwithstanding, I am much better at timely harvesting of pear varieties I’ve grown and harvested for a number of years.

So much for harvest; now for storage. On or near freezing is ideal. Cold temperatures slow ripening, and, for all except very early varieties, primes the fruit to begin ripening.

Ethylene, a natural, gaseous plant hormone can unduly speed ripening. Mature pears give off very little ethylene; not so for harvested apples and many other fruits, so keep these other fruits away from the pears unless a whole lot of pears are needed ready for eating soon. (I cover ethylene more thoroughly in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.)

Finally, on to ripening, which occurs as fruits are brought into warmth, ideally a cool room, 60-70 degrees F. I press a finger against the stem end of the fruit, and if there is any give at all, the fruit is ready for eating.

All this finickiness with harvest, storage, and ripening is unnecessary with Asian pears, which are different species from European pears. Let Asian varieties ripen thoroughly on the tree, meaning they remove easily with a lift and twist, and are fully colored. Then eat. Or keep them refrigerated, and get them out to eat whenever you’re so inclined.

Asian pear, Korean Giant

THERE ARE LOTS OF NUTS OUT THERE

December 22, 2021/10 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

I’ve written recently about how bountiful this past season has been with fruits. Well, botanically, at least, “fruits” includes “nuts.” More on this later.* The nut harvest was also abundant.

Except for last year, just about every year has been a good year for black walnuts. But this year, it didn’t take long to pick up and fill baskets quickly. After being husked, cleaned, and then left to cure in a squirrel-proof loft, I’ve started cracking them (with my ‘Master Nutcracker’). Large, plum, tasty nutmeats drop free from the shells. Black walnuts and Master Nutcracker

A Surprise Nut

What surprised me most was the harvest of English walnuts, botanically Juglans regia and also known as Persian walnuts. (The moniker “English” may be because of the significant role played by English sailors in distributing the nuts around the world.) Persia, or Eastern Europe is where this plant originated. Early on, humans introduced it to other parts of the world, including England, where Romans brought them 2,000 years ago. In the seventeenth century, the nuts and the wood of these trees was held in such high esteem in parts of Europe that a certificate of having planted a certain number of trees was needed before a man was allowed to marry.

Walnuts arrived in my garden in 2006, from seed from cold-hardy trees handed out at the Saratoga, New York meeting of the New York Nut Growers Association. I planted six of the walnut seeds. Because I have limited space and did not have high hopes for success, I arranged them in two stations of three plants each, with about 30 feet between the stations. In contrast to plants propagated asexually, such as by grafting or cuttings, plants grown from seed have some genetic diversity, in the same way you and your siblings are diverse from each other. I figured that eventually I would remove all but the one best tree at each station.

Despite the threat of frost killing blossoms in spring, walnut blight, defoliation by anthracnose disease in summer, and squirrels robbing all the nuts in fall, I was able to harvest plenty. Earlier in the season, I did notice that not all trees were bearing, or bearing well, so I cut down two of the slackers, one from each station.

English walnut trees, 15 years ol

As far as differences in the nuts from tree to tree, it’s hard to say for sure at this point except to say the nuts on one of the trees may have been smaller. I’ll take a more quantitative look next year.

Walnut trees are known to be slow to come into bearing. There’s a Flanders folk saying that goes, “By the time the tree is big, the planter surely will be dead.” Well, I planted the trees from seed, they have borne and grown fairly big, and I’m not dead.

Still Waiting

Two nut trees whose first fruits I’m eagerly awaiting are both shellbark hickories (Carya laciniosa). Shagbark hickory (C. ovata) is very common around here and throughout eastern U.S., and is notable for its — duh! — very shaggy bark and tasty but small and hard to crack nuts. Shellbark hickory’s native range doesn’t extend as far east and south as shagbark’s. It’s found mostly along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and bordering regions; nowhere, though, is it common. Also, the bark is less shaggy. The clincher is that shellbark nuts are much larger, around two inches long, and with thinner shells, so you get more bang for your buck with each nut you crack.

I planted the varieties Simpson and Grainger, both of which were selected for easy shelling. (Nut alert! I have since learned that Grainger is, in fact, a shagbark hickory, albeit a variety selected for large shells that crack out well.)

But how about some nuts! Simpson was planted in 2014 and Grainger in 2015, and both grow very slowly, about twelve inches per year. Bearing age is reputedly only a few years with a grafted trees, which, being named varieties, both were.

Nuts or no nuts, the trees are beautiful, their leaves turning a rich, golden yellow in autumn and, in winter, the stout branches punctuated and capped by fat buds. Shellbark hickory buds

Botanical Nuts, and Not

*Back to fruits: A fruit, botanically, is any seed-bearing structure of a flowering plant formed from a ripened ovary along with seeds and other structures. A nut is a kind of fruit, in this case with a kernel surrounded by a hard nutshell. A nut’s shell does not open to release the kernel. So all nuts are fruits but all fruits aren’t nuts. Botanically speaking.

Some fruits commonly called nuts, such as almond, pistachio, Brazil nut, walnut, pecan, and macadamia, are not true nuts; they are dry drupes (which doesn’t sound very complimentary, does it?). A nut is a dry drupe whose kernel is enclosed within a stony pit surrounded by flesh and a skin. Think of a peach. That’s a (non)dry drupe.

Chestnut, hazelnut, oak, and birch are examples of true nuts.

That’s all botany. Out on the street, we call lots of things nuts. Peanuts, for example, which are actually legumes, just like peas and beans.

STUFFED

November 24, 2021/6 Comments/in Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Breadcrumb Seeds?

Who’s getting stuffed for Thanksgiving this year, you or your turkey, or your tofurkey? A good stuffing (of the real or faux bird) is good enough to eat sans bird. And, for best quality, you can grow it yourself. Not by dropping seeds of a “stuffing plant” in the soil, but by planting all the ingredients you need.

The bread and butter of any stuffing is some starchy food, often bread and butter itself, the bread usually as crumbs. There’s no breadcrumb plant, so forget about growing breadcrumbs. Not that you couldn’t buy some wheat berries, plant them next spring, harvest the grain when the plants dry down, thresh and winnow out the berries, grind them into flour, make the flour into bread, then let the bread go stale and pound it into bread crumbs. Whew! Most of us are not going to do this.

“The Bread Tree”

As an alternative to bread crumbs, might I suggest chestnuts (Castanea spp.)? Chestnut falling from its burr They’re often billed as the “bread tree” because in contrast to other nuts, which are high in fats and protein, chestnuts are high in starch. Obviously, you’re not going to be eating home-grown chestnut stuffing this year, or next, or the next; it takes awhile for a chestnut tree to start bearing. Not that long though. I’ve had plants grown from seed begin to bear within six years, and a grafted tree from a nursery should bear even sooner than that.

(Although their nuts look similar, chestnuts should not be confused with horse chestnuts, Hippocastanum spp.. The latter are toxic. Horse chestnuts have compound leaves, very showy flowers, and their nuts are encased in a spiky capsule. Edible chestnuts have simple leaves, nonshowy flowers, and the nuts are encased in a cupule riddled with very sharp spines.)

The North American, native and majestic American chestnut (C. dentata) has been decimated by chestnut blight but there are, fortunately other species that resist the blight. A good choice for nut production would be species or hybrids of Chinese chestnut (C. mollisima). Two different varieties are needed for cross-pollination. Chestnuts in a basket

The only caution in planting chestnut trees is to avoid planting them near where people frequently walk. Each fall the ground beneath the trees is littered with the opened, spiny cupules.
Chestnut tree in summer
Chestnut tree in autumn

More Crumby Alternatives

While you are waiting to harvest chestnuts, make stuffing based on one of the more quickly grown starchy vegetables. Potatoes, for instance. The best potatoes for making stuffing will be those that are dry and mealy, russet varieties such as Goldrush, Burbank, and Idaho.

“Dry and mealy” is also the mantra to use when choosing a winter squash variety to grow as a base for stuffing. The phrase “squash stuffing” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? My recommendation for a dry, mealy squash is a buttercup type called Chestnut or Sweet Mama.

If you really want a truly authentic starchy base for stuffing, the plant to grow is nu nu, a golfball-sized, starchy tuber also called makoosit or groundnut (Apios americana). Groundnut tubers Native Americans harvested and ate nu nu, and this was one of the foods crucial in helping the Pilgrims survive their first winters in Massachusetts.

Be careful planting nu nu because it can spread like a weed to give you more stuff for stuffing than you would ever need. I planted it in a perennial flower bed decades ago. That was the wrong place for it, and I’ve spent decades trying to weed it out, unsuccessfully.

On the plus side, the plants do sport decorative and sweetly fragrant, lilac colored flowers, so it is worth growing where it can be regimented. Nu nu tubers grow attached a few inches apart along underground stems. Groundnut flowers

Seasonal Seasonings

Stuffing isn’t only about the bread-y ingredient. It also needs some seasoning. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, summer savory, sweet marjoram — they’re all very easy to grow. Sage and thyme are perennials, each also available in designer flavors. Pineapple sage, caraway thyme, and lemon thyme, for instance.

Potted rosemary tree in winter

Rosemary is also a perennial, cold hardy to zone 7, possibly even zone 6. It’s is not hardy here but I grow it as a “standard” (trained as a small tree) in a pot that summers outdoors and lives indoors at a sunny kitchen window in winter to provide pretty greenery, piney fragrance, and savory snippings.

Some vegetables from the garden round out and make more interesting a stuffing. Onion, celery, and carrots are mainstays, but vegetables such as parsnips and garlic can make special — and powerful — flavor contributions.

Have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

PREPARING FIGS FOR A COLD WINTER

November 16, 2021/29 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

They’re Not Tropical

Too many people think fig trees are tropical plants. They’re not. They’re subtropical plants and that’s one reason those of us living in cold winter climates can harvest fresh, ripe figs. In fact, fig trees like that little rest that cold weather offers them. Fig fruits in plate

Here in Zone 5 (average winter lows of minus 10 to minus 20° F), I grow figs a number of ways. Figs are cold hardy to the low ‘teens, too cold for even subtropical plants to grow outdoors in the ground, their stems splayed to cold winter air like my apples and pears. Their roots, especially if mulched, generally will survive winters here in the relatively warmer temperatures underground. But then new shoot growth must originate at ground level, and the growing season isn’t long enough for figs that develop on those shoots to ripen.

Potted

Some of my figs, like many of yours, are in pots.

With nighttime temperatures now often below freezing, there’s an urge to grab the potted fig and carry it indoors. Don’t! As I wrote, fig trees like a little cold weather. Experiencing some cold weather also toughens them to be more able to withstand even colder weather. My goal is to get these potted plants into a deep sleep, and to maintain that state as long as possible through winter, ideally until they’re ready to be carried outdoors again in spring.

My friend Sara’s fig last summer

If temperatures are going to be super cold, below the low ‘teens, move the plant to a temporary, but cool, location such as an unheated garage or mudroom, or garden shed.

Plants might still sport some leaves this time of year. Perhaps some of those leaves have been frosted. Not to worry.

Eventually, a potted fig needs to be moved to a winter home. Around here, at least, not yet. Typically, I leave my potted fig trees outside — in a slightly sheltered spot near a wall of my home where temperatures are modulated — until sometime in December. A fully dormant fig tree sheds its leaves so won’t need light in winter. If any of my plants are still holding onto their leaves, I just pull them off before the plants move to their winter home.

The winter home should be cold, but not frigid, ideally 30 to 45°F. That previously mentioned unheated garage or mudroom, or garden shed might be suitable. A minimum-maximum thermometer is an inexpensive way to know just how cold a site gets during winter even when you’re not in there or looking — at 2 AM, for example.

Some of my potted figs retire to my basement for winter, where winter temperatures are usually 40 to 45°F.

Kadota fig stored in cold basement

More recently, I’ve set up an insulated, walk-in cooler, mostly for storing fruits and vegetables. There’s also plenty of space for some potted fig trees. The cooler, which needs a little heat in the dead of winter, maintains a pretty consistent temperature of 39° F.

To help the plants remain asleep, I keep them on the dry side, perhaps watering them once or twice during this period.

To a point, the more stem growth on a fig tree, the more fruit it bears. So a potted fig can only bear so much fruit. I want more figs from some of my trees.

Innovations for Greater Yields

Years ago, I built a greenhouse in which to grow cool-weather-loving salad stuff and greens such as lettuce, celery, kale, chard, arugula, mustard, mâche, and claytonia through winter. I soon realized that the hot summers and the cool (never below about 35°F) winters in the greenhouse mimicked the Mediterranean climate that figs call home. So I planted four fig trees right in the ground in the greenhouse. The vegetables don’t mind their figgy neighbors because they’re leafless in winter.

Those fig trees are more than just leafless in winter; they’re also pretty much stemless. Each tree is trained to have a short trunk off which grows one or two permanent, horizontal arms. (This method of training is called espalier.) Espalier fig tree

Fig trees in greenhouse

Fig fruits on branches Fruits are borne on shoots that grow vertically from these arms. Tomorrow I’ll lop all those vertical shoots back to the arms. Next year, new shoots will bear fruits and be cut back next fall, and the year after that, new shoots . . . and so on. Pruned greenhouse fig

I’ve even used this method, this time with the horizontal arm trained just a few inches above ground level, for a fig tree I have growing outside. That low-growing arm is easily covered with a blanket of leaves, straw, or some other insulating material, how much depends on the depth of wither cold expected. Espalier fig outdoors

Once again, I’ll delay covering the plant until colder temperatures arrive so that the plant is hardened more against cold and goes into winter as dormant as possible.

Over the years, other figs of mine have weathered cold winters also by such methods as being bent over and covered to keep them warm and outdoors, by being grown in pots sunk into the ground then lifted, before the arrival of frigid weather. etc., etc. You want to harvest fresh figs in summer? There are many paths to this mountaintop.

The takeaway today is: Don’t protect your fig tree from too much cold too soon. Let the plant experience and benefit from the sleep-inducing and hardiness that some exposure brings.

And if you want to know more about growing figs in cold climate — varieties, method details, pruning, accelerating ripening, potting mixes, and more — see my book with the eponymous title GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES (available from the usual sources as well as, signed, from my website).Here’s a very short video I made back in October about some methods of growing figs in cold climates and my new book: Fig video

CATS ON A COOL, GREEN ROOF

November 3, 2021/5 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Why and How to Build

I’ve got to learn to look up more, you know, the way tourists do; natives generally fix their gazes straight ahead to a destination or downwards, in thought. I am reminded of this when a visitor (a “tourist” in this context) walks up my front path, smiles, and tells me, “I like your green roof.” So then I (the “native” in this context) look up and join in the appreciation. Two cats on my green roof

My green roof was born about twenty years ago. After fumbling too many times with packages or keys in the rain at the front door, the time had come build protection from the elements. Rather than cover just the area around the door, this cover would extend over a small patio. And rather than just shingle the roof, why not make it a planted roof, a “green roof?”

So my friend Bill and I built a sturdy, shallowly sloped roof supported on three corners by the walls of my house, and by an 8 x 8 white oak post in its fourth corner. Roof, ledger up The roof had enough slope so plants could be seen from the path, yet not so steep that a hard rain would wash the soil away. Roof completed

To keep the wooden structure dry, it was covered with EPDM roofing material and flashed with copper. A two-inch high lip of copper flashing along the low edge keeps plants and soil from sliding down off the roof. To prevent water from puddling at this lower end, I drilled holes and soldered short lengths of copper tubing at intervals into the lip, figuring that excess water would stream decoratively from each tube during rains. Roof drains (It streamed, but not so decoratively, because some tubes kept getting clogged and the bottom edge of the roof was not exactly horizontal so the flow burden was taken up by only a few tubes.)

How and What to Plant

Next was the gardening part of the roof. To keep the weight down, for low fertility to suppress weeds, and for good moisture retention I made a planting mix of equal parts peat moss and calcined montmorillonite clay (often sold as kitty litter).

The root environment on the roof was going to be harsh for plants. Only a two-inch depth of root run. And, in contrast to the moderated temperatures within soil out in open ground, roots on this shallow roof would experience mad swings in temperature that would closely mirror that of the air. And even though peat moss sucks up and holds moisture, there’s not much peat moss moisture to draw from in 2 inches of rooting.

The plant choice, given the conditions, became obvious: some kind of hardy, succulent plant. I chose hens-and-chicks. After filling enough 24 x 10 inch planting trays with the planting mix, I plugged in hens-and-chicks plants every 4 inches in each direction. Hens-and-chicks in trays All this planting took place almost a year before the roof was readied for the plants, important so the hen-and-chicks could make enough “chicks” to spread and pretty much cover the planting trays, which otherwise would have left too much planting mix exposed to washing from rainfall.

Up the trays eventually went on sloping roof, laid down like tiles on a tile floor. Everything looked very neat and trim. Green roof, early on

Nature Collaborates

Despite very little intervention from me, the years have brought some changes to that green roof. This was not a garden area that I ever planned to weed, and I stuck to my plan. I figured that a green roof with a weed-free planting mix, sheltered on two sides by walls, and eight to ten feet off the ground would not harbor weeds.

I was wrong. Some weeds have moved in. Well, not weeds per se, because a “weed” is plant in the wrong place, and the roof is welcome to pretty much any plant.

Gazing up on my roof now, I see, in addition to the original hens-and-chicks, plenty of foxtail grass, quite decorative through the year with green shoots in spring and tawny, fuzzy foxtails in fall and winter. Also a single cedar tree about two feet high. Roof with weeds
More weeds on roof

I had a hand in introducing another sedum, Angelina. This sedum has borne small, yellow flowers and, just as decorative, its fleshy leaves turn a deep red color in winter. Angelina started out as a single plant I set in a nearby stone wall; over time a few plants of it appeared up on the roof. Angelina on roof

She looked good up there, especially when draped over the front lip. She also multiplied rapidly both on the wall and on the roof. To further encourage her, I grab bunches wherever in excess on the wall and toss them up on the roof to root.

One year I also planted oats left over from cover cropping in the vegetable garden. Oats’ extensive roots would be good to further knit together the rooting mix and lessen chances of rain washing it down. Planting involved nothing more than grabbing handfuls of oat seed, tossing them up on the roof, then waiting for rain.

Writing about my green roof has encouraged me to more frequently look up at it. It does bring a smile. Is that because there’s something anomalous about an aerial garden?

Urban farm high in the sky at Brooklyn Grange