OUTDOOR MAPLES AND INDOOR KUMQUATS

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Sap Season

Get your taps in. It’s syrup weather. Maple syrup. At least here in New York’s Hudson Valley, the sunny days in the 40s with nights in the 20s that are predicted should get the sap flowing.

  I say “should” because I haven’t yet checked sap buckets that I hung out on the trees a few weeks ago when winter temperatures suddenly turned warm; it was sap weather back then. That day was hopeful: I drilled holes an inch and a half deep, lightly hammered in the spiles, hung buckets, and attached covers over the buckets. Frigid days and nights that descended soon after that kept sap flow in abeyance.

  My “sugar bush” amounts to only three sugar maple trees. I used to have four, but a large tree that was a truly magnificent representative of its species began an irreversible path to its death. My older sugar mapel“Maple decline” is a disease complex brought on by some combination of drought, soil compaction, road salt, root damage, and air pollution. Upper branches are usually the first to go, and once decline begins, secondary fungi and insects speed the process along.

  I’m not sure about my tree, though, because its lower branches were the first to go. Also, the tree grows along the back edge of my property, where it’s been shielded from those usual causes for decline.

  One more contributor to decline is overtapping. I plead not guilty. My fading tree was larger than the 8 or10 inch minimum diameter for tapping, and I only tapped it once, when the tree, it turned out, was already going downhill. The lack of sap flow was what prompted me to see all this. And then I noticed many rows of sapsucker holes in the bark.

Long story short: The tree became firewood.
Maple syrup buckets
My three other, healthy maples might yield me only a quart of finished syrup. The reasons? One quart is enough for me, so I’m tapping only one of them. Also, they’re relatively young. I planted those three trees about 25 years ago, and they’re now only about 8 inches in diameter.

I highly recommend planting trees, for their beauty, for what food they might offer, and for the mere satisfaction of watching the plants grow. Especially if they are small when planted. Small trees also establish quickly to require less aftercare, often soon outgrowing their initially larger compatriots. Those three maple trees? From one perspective, it seems like a long time ago that I dug holes and set the saplings in the ground; from another perspective, it seems like I planted them, walked away, then turned right around to find that these young ‘uns have grown into bona fide trees!

Birch Sap

I may end up with more sap than planned, but not maple sap. Along with the three sugar maples I planted way back when, I also planted three river birches (Betula nigra). They grow, appropriate to their name, in a wet area just out of a swale through which water runs in spring, each a clump of a half dozen or so sturdy trunks reaching skyward to about 35 feet.

Maple might be the heaviest sap producing tree, but it’s not the only kid on the block. Many people tap their black walnut trees. Call me provincial, but black walnut syrup, much as I love the nuts themselves, has no appeal me even though I’ve never tasted it.

Birch syrup though . . . mmm. Never tasted that one either, but it sounds good. Three birch taps should offer an ample amount for tasting.River birches

What a Funny Name

  I don’t need to see the small, pebbly-skinned, orange orbs on grocers’ shelves to know that it’s kumquat season. My own Meiwa kumquat is looking very pretty, with a good crop of fruit staring out from their backdrop of glossy, forest-green leaves. I’ve trained the plant as a “standard,” that is, as a miniature tree with a crown of branches perched atop a four foot trunk.
Kumquat houseplant
 The present crop is my best ever, and traces its success back to last spring. In previous years, I was too timid with pruning. And pruning is necessary, every year. Pruning keeps the plant from growing disproportionately large for its pot -– or my house — and coaxes growth of new, fruiting wood.

The roots also get pruned each year to make space for new potting soil for root growth and nutrients. I laid down the plant and pot to easily slide out the root ball. After slicing an inch or two of roots and potting soil from all around the outside of the root ball, back into the pot the plant went, with new potting soil packed in the space between the shaven root ball and the inside edge of the pot. The seemingly brutal treatment took place last year just as the garden awoke in yellow blossoms from daffodils.
Repotting kumquat
As soon as weather warmed, new sprouts began to grow. By midsummer, the plant was fragrant with blossoms. By late summer, little, green fruits were forming which, with careful watering, survived the environment change as the plant moved indoors in October. The plant stood at attention in a sunny window in the cool bedroom for weeks, and a couple of months ago, the fruits started turning orange. They are now ripe and delicious!

FROM GROCERS’ SHELVES TO MY FLOWER POTS

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Exotic, tropical fruits are turning up more and more frequently on grocers’ shelves these days: dates, papayas, guavas, and others. I look upon these fruits opportunistically, because within each lies dormant seeds that can be coaxed to become exotic, if not beautiful, indoor plants that might even provide a delicious fruit harvest. Such plants provide a break from the humdrum of spider plants, philodendrons, and Swedish ivies. 

Seeds of tropical fruits usually germinate best if planted as soon as the fruits are eaten. Cold-climate fruits, in contrast, have innate inhibitors that prevent seed germination until they feel that winter is over.

So all that’s necessary to grow most tropical fruits is to wash their seeds and sow them in potting soil, using the old rule of thumb of burying a seed to twice its depth. And then wait.

DELICIOUS, BUT HARD TO SAY

  I have harvested fruit grown from the seed of a grocery store bought pineapple guava, also known as the feijoa (pronounced FAY-HO’-A, from the generic part of its unwieldy Latin name, Feijoa sellowiana, recently change to Aca sellowiana). The fresh seeds, scooped from the fruit, germinated and grew.
Feijoa fruit
Feijoa seems to me an ideal plant to grow. Even outdoors where it’s native, the tree is small, so does not mind being kept five foot high in a pot which can be carried indoors during our frigid winters. The plant is subtropical rather than tropical, so can stand a bit of cold, down to about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Feijoa has leaves which are shiny and dark green on their upper surfaces, and felt-like and silvery on their lower surfaces. My plant spends winter decorating a sunny, south-facing window in a cool room in my house. The flowers’ stamens are arranged in a tuft like a red bottlebrush, and the petals are thick, purple and white. Those petals are very edible and very delicious, with a sweet, pineapple-minty flavor.
Feijoa flower
But best of all is the fruit itself. Beneath the thin skin is a gelatinous center with a spicy pineapple flavor. My feijoa plant hasn’t provided sufficient harvest to satisfy my feijoa-ish needs.

A LONG TIME TO WAIT FOR A DATE

The waiting period for a date fruit can be a long time, even a long time for the seed to germinate. But stop for a moment and think about deserts, where dates are native. Should a date seed send up a leafy shoot with the first hint of moisture? Of course not. The dry desert air would dehydrate the sprout in short order. When a date seed germinates, first its thick taproot grows straight downwards, seeking permanent moisture, long before even a small sprout appears aboveground.

I once planted some date seeds (first making sure they came from unpasteurized dates). Knowing that I would have a long wait before the first sprouts emerged, I planned to watch the roots grow to keep myself from becoming too impatient. I put an inch of water in the bottom of a peanut butter jar, slid a tube of rolled-up blotting paper (watercolor paining paper would probably also work well) into the jar, and then “planted” the date seeds halfway up the jar, pressed between the glass and the paper. 

As predicted, the roots appeared and thrust downwards before there was any sign of a shoot. When I eventually became bored watching the progress of the roots, I planted the seedlings in potting soil.

Leaves finally did poke up through the soil, an event that was far from dramatic. Each emerging seedling looked like a green toothpick stuck into the soil. In time, the “toothpicks” did unfurl into a succession of fan-like leaves which would match any ordinary houseplant for beauty and tolerance of neglect. 

Fruit production from a homegrown date palm is well-nigh impossible. The plant grows slowly. Climate here in northeastern U.S. is suboptimal, to say the least. And only female plants produce fruit, so enough plants would have to be grown to flowering size to ensure at least one male (for pollination) and one female (for fruit).
Date fruit on plant

Date palm orchard

Date palm orchard, Israel

PA-PA-PAPAYA

One winter day a number of years ago, I planted seeds from a papaya fruit I had just eaten. Having seen papayas growing wild throughout the tropics, I assumed they would not be hard to grow. I scooped the seeds from the fruit, washed them to remove their gelatinous coating, and sowed them immediately. 

Growing papayas proved as challenging as growing dates. In this case, not only were the seeds slow to germinate, but the young seedlings were extremely fragile and subject to damping-off. I nursed a single survivor beyond this wimpy initial stage, and, in time, it began to grow robustly.

Potted papaya at Chanticleer

Potted papaya at Chanticleer

In the tropics, papayas are short-lived trees that often bear their first fruits as early as eleven months after seed is sown. My papaya tree was outgrowing its one-foot-diameter pot when warm weather arrived, so I decided to plant it outside and hope for fruit. Imagine the astonishment of my neighbor, who grew up in Florida, when he saw a tropical papaya tree in my garden! 

Unfortunately, my plant succumbed to the first fall frost before it had a chance to fruit. Fruiting would have been chancy anyway, because papaya plants come in various combinations of sexes. Some plants have only male flowers; others only female flowers; and still others have bisexual flowers. Papaya have been known to switch their sex under certain conditions. To fruit, my single plant would have needed bisexual flowers, which remained so.

  The feijoa, date palm, and the papaya take their place in the long line of avocados, prickly pears, tree tomatoes, kumquats, lemons, tangerines and other forgotten grocery store plants that once were and, in some cases, still are part of my indoor jungle.

Lemon, Kumquat, Opuntia, Tree tomato

Lemon, Kumquat, Opuntia, Tree tomato

LOOK BEYOND POINSETTIA GLITZ

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A Harem of Males

Phew, what a year 2020 was! Well, it’s over and, at least at this writing, things look hopeful for the future, at least from my perspective. Except if you live in a tropical or subtropical climate, there’s not much distraction from anything gardenwise, for now, so let’s take a close look at a plant no doubt sitting on many coffee tables and windowsills. Poinsettia. I’m not a big fan of their appearance, but I do like them as botanical curiosities.

Let’s share some botanical lore of this plant by setting your holiday poinsettia on a table in good light for a close look at its flowers. I say “close  ” because the flowers are not those large, red, leaf-like structures. The large, red, leaf-like structures are just that — leaves, albeit modified leaves called bracts. The bracts attract pollinating insects to the plant.

The actual flowers of the poinsettia, which are not very showy at all, originate within the small, greenish, cup-shaped structures you see above the bracts. These cup-shaped structures are “cyathiums.”
poinsettia cyathiums
Each cyathium contains a single female flower surrounded by a harem of males. Pluck a cyathium from the plant, take a sharp knife or razor, and slice it in half from top to bottom. A magnifying glass helps now. You’ll see that the inner wall of the cyathium is lined with numerous tiny flowers which, when the flower is mature, protrude up through the opening of the cup. These are all male flowers.

Look very carefully and you’ll also see a stalk attached to the very bottom of the cyathium, protruding up through the cup opening, and capped by what looks like a turban. That is the single, female flower, which, to promote cross- rather than self-pollination, emerges from the cyathium after male flowers begin to shrivel. Cross-pollination promotes genetic diversity for healthier plants. 

In addition to the male and female flowers, on the outside of the cyanthium is a single yellow gland that looks like the mouth of a fish poised to ingest food.
Cyathium close up
Next time a friend comments on the beauty of your poinsettia flower, take out a magnifying glass and closely examine a few cyathiums before looking up and agreeing nonchalantly.

Fool the Plant

Have you ever wondered how stores always manage to have blooming poinsettias for the holiday season? 

Poinsettia, along with chrysanthemums and most strawberry varieties, is a “short-day” plant. Short-days induce “short-day” plants to form flower buds. (In reality, plants are responding to long nights, but the phenomenon was originally thought to be daylength dependent, and the term “short-day” plants has stuck with us.) Poinsettia can be fooled into blooming at any time of the year merely by exposing it to artificially shortened days. 

To secure blooming plants for this past holiday season, poinsettias grown in large commercial greenhouse ranges were covered with a shade cloth so that they experienced 14 hours of darkness each “night” beginning around September. After 8 weeks of this treatment, they formed flower buds which became fully developed just before the holiday season.

You Do It

You can do this at home to make this year’s poinsettias bloom again whenever you want. Your poinsettias first will need a rest period. Loss of leaves and fading flowers indicate that your plants are entering dormancy. (Even tropical plants, such as poinsettia, do take a short, mild annual rest.) When the plants become dormant, move them to where it is cool. Water them infrequently, just enough to keep their stems from shriveling.

About April, the plants will be ready to start growing again. Cut the stems back to a few strong shoots, each about 6 inches long. Give the plants sun, warmth, and water. New shoots will push forth from dormant buds. When warm weather has settled, you can put the plants outside.

As temperatures cool in late summer, bring the plants indoors to a sunny window. Keep them away from cold drafts, which would cause their leaves to drop.

Now for the photoperiod treatment. Beginning three months before you would like the plants to bloom, make sure the plants get 14 hours of darkness each night. Moving them into a dark closet or covering them with a paper bag are convenient ways to do this.

The dark period each night must be uninterrupted. Even peek at them with a flashlight at midnight will have them acting as if they had a short night, instead of the needed long night.

After 8 weeks of the above treatment, move the plants back to their sunny window. Flower buds should be evident, and you should have blooming poinsettias within a month. If you want bloom for the holiday season next year, start the photoperiod treatment about the middle of September.

Poisonous?

Poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, is a member of the Euphorbiaceae family, commonly called the Spurge family. A common characteristic of plants in this family — which includes Hevea braziliensis, tapped commercially to make rubber — is the milky sap they exude when cut. The sap has often been considered poisonous and was sometimes used medicinally as a purge (hence “spurge,” from the French word espugier, meaning to purge). But, as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, more commonly known as Paracelsus, wrote in the 15th century, “All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.”

In fact, the sap is only mildly poisonous to humans and other animals. It can cause a rash on the skin or mouth, and stomach upset. So go ahead and nick the stem of your poinsettia and see the milky sap exude. No need to touch it.

ALMOST LIKE SUMMER

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Fresh Veggies

When I was a child, it seemed that winter vegetables were mostly peas and diced carrots, conveniently poured frozen out of plastic bags into pots of boiling water. Yuk! Winter notwithstanding, my backyard garden still offers plenty of fresh winter vegetables. Let’s have a look. Kale, of course, looks unfazed by snow and plummeting temperatures. Not only does it look unfazed; it also tastes very delicious.

More surprising is the endive that I planted back in August, then covered beneath a “tunnel” of clear plastic and slightly insulating row cover held aloft by metal hoops in late October. Temperatures about a week ago went as low as -8° Fahrenheit! Thanks to the additional insulation from almost a foot of snow, now melted, the endive is still lush and tasty.

The rest of winter’s fresh garden vegetables are not in the garden. Most are in plywood boxes in cold storage, first in my mudroom, then moved out to my cooler. vegetables of winter(The cooler is an insulated room cooled with an air conditioner that has been tricked, with a device called CoolBot, into bringing the temperature down just below 40° F.) One box houses Hakurei turnips, Watermelon radishes, and Daikon radishes picked around the middle of December.

The same day I pulled the turnips and radishes, I also dug up leeks, now nestled into another box. With snow cover, both leeks and turnips probably would survive winter out in the garden, but reaching into a box is easier than chopping through ice and snow out in the garden to get at these vegetables.

Yet another box has a few heads of cabbage, also harvested that day in December. Lopping off the outer leaves, which anyway were looking ragged and slug-eaten, cuts water loss from the tight heads and keeps them fresh. One more box is packed full of napa type Chinese cabbages, good for “Asian slaw” or stir fry.

Most years I would have braids of onions also. Not this year. Crop failure. All the onions, both direct-seeded and grown from my transplants, didn’t grow large enough to bother storing. The problem was a clog, too long undetected, in the water line to the seasonal irrigation pump at, evidently, a critical time in onion bulb development.

(I also have a 400 square foot greenhouse packed full of fresh, growing lettuce, mustard greens, arugula, celery, claytonia, kale, chard, and mâche, with a little fresh dill, cilantro, and parsley. But that’s a whole other story.)

Summer Berries

I may be addicted to blueberries. I now eat them pretty much every morning year ‘round. That’s fresh blueberries beginning at the end of June, and frozen ones from mid-September on. I pace myself. The frozen blueberry season opens with about 70 bags (each bag about 5 cups) in the freezer, enough to keep us “berry happy” on into June.
Blueberries, frozen and defrosted
I highly recommend planting blueberries. They are easy to grow organically, the plants are beautiful, and the berries are very healthful and taste great. They’re also easy to freeze: Just spread them on a tray until frozen, then pack them into bags. Their two main requirements are suitable soil, easily made so, and protection from birds, with netting. Each bush will net you 8 pounds, or more, of berries.

Thawed in the refrigerator, the berries taste as good as fresh ones. Or maybe I believe that only because in late December it’s been so long since I’ve had a fresh blueberry.

Olfactory Romance

Man cannot, of course, live by bread alone. I could use some fragrance, some olfactory hint of spring — or summer, or fall. Years ago, I grew “many-flowered jasmine” (Jasminium polyantha). A misnomer for my plant. Its fragrance was heavenly but it only coughed up a few blossoms each winter, despite my subjecting it to a period of temperatures below 60 degrees F. and some drought to give it a rest before it (was supposed to) burst  into flowering abundance.

Gardenia was another one of my plants for winter fragrance. It did bloom in winter, late winter, and its fragrance was heavenly. But it proved to be a magnet for scale insects, one of the most difficult house plant pests to control organically. Both plants have long ago been composted.

I’m now eagerly awaiting blossoms on my Meyer lemon plant. The plant is easy to bring into bloom, and there’s the added bonus of delicious lemons. Being a hybrid of lemon and sweet orange, Meyer lemon has a slightly different flavor from that of lemons.
Meyer lemon tree in pot
The other plant to — reliably, I hope — blossom now, in early winter is sweet osmanthus (Osmanthus fragrans), specifically the variety Goshiki. Why Goshiki? Because it has variegated leaves, green and white with splashes of pink, spiny like those of holly. Sweet osmanthusIt’s cold-hardy to Zone 6. My plan is to grow it in a pot to bring indoors to a cool sunny window in late fall to spend the winter.

This is all a pipe dream so far because all I have is a spindly stem I cut to root from a plant beckoning me from a sidewalk near Philadelphia. The cutting doesn’t look hopeful. The quest begins.

GHOST OF A NOVEMBER PAST

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A Vine or a Bush?

Here’s a blast from the past, from my November 20, 2009 blog post, with current commentaries  on how things have changed — and not changed — over the past 11 years.

Dateline: New Paltz, NY, November 20, 2009, 5:30 am. New models of plants, like cars, are deemed necessary to keep consumers interested and spending money. My cars (actually trucks . . . you know, manure and all that) stay with me for as long as they keep rolling along, so it was with equal skepticism I looked upon a new “model” of mandevilla, called Crimson, that arrived at my doorstep early last summer.

I was first attracted and introduced to mandevilla about 20 years ago. The glossy leaves and the bright red, funnel shaped flowers, were part of the attraction. The Crimson Mandevillavining habit was also a big part of the draw, making the plant a stand-in for morning glory, but with prettier leaves and brighter flowers. Mandevilla is a perennial, tropical vine, so must winter indoors rather than be seeded outdoors each spring like morning glory. My vine’s leaves yellowed so much in winter that I tired of looking at it; one winter day I walked it over to the compost pile.

The variety Crimson is a new kind of mandevilla whose main selling point is its bushy growth habit. So yes, it is different and new, but wasn’t that vining habit one of the things I always liked about mandevilla?

Still, I have grown very fond of Crimson. It flowered continuously all summer and, since coming indoors in September, continues to do so, with new buds on the way (at every third leaf bud, according to the “manufacturer.”) I’m going to think of Crimson mandevilla as a very pretty, long blooming, bushy plant. Yes, it’s a worthy new model.

Dateline: New Paltz, NY, November 19, 2020: Well, Crimson evidently was not that worthy; it’s no longer with me. As I remember, that sickly look that eventually came on in winter didn’t justify its tenancy here.

With that said, someday I may still grow mandevilla again. But not Crimson or any other bushy variety. As I wrote 11 years ago, that vining habit was one of its main attractions. If I do grow it again, I’ll put it in the basement or somewhere where I’ll hardly see it, for it to sit out winter.

Are They Really Sickly?

(2009) Sickly-looking leaves of houseplants – such as my mandevilla of yore – can be traced to a number of causes. Already I’m seeing this yellow transformation creeping up on my gardenia, which just finished one of its many fragrant shows.
Yellowing leaves of gardenia
Both mandevilla and gardenia need soils that are quite acidic (pH 4-5.5) in order to thrive. Not enough acidity makes it hard for the plant to imbibe iron, resulting in iron deficiency and yellow leaves.

But wait! It’s not time yet for the “iron pills.” Looking more closely at my gardenia, I see that it is the OLDEST leaves that are yellowing. Hunger for iron causes the YOUNGEST leaves to yellow (and for their veins to remain green). Yellowing of older leaves most commonly means that the plant isn’t getting enough nitrogen. The nitrogen is being robbed from older leaves (which turn yellow because nitrogen is an important component of green chlorophyll) to feed the younger leaves.

The prescription? Add some soluble nitrogen fertilizer and pay more attention to watering. Too much water drives air out of the soil, and roots gasping for air have trouble doing their work to take up sufficient nutrients.

(2020) I mostly agree with my past diagnosis of and cure for yellowing leaves. But two other considerations are worthy of attention. 

First, temperatures in my home are on the cool side and roots are less functional as temperatures cool, especially the roots of warm climate plants. So roots might not be able to make efficient use of nitrogen even if it’s added to the soil.

And second, even evergreen plants go through periods of shedding their oldest leaves. Before these leaves drop, they lose their chlorophyll and turn yellow.

So under natural and under less than perfect conditions, mandevilla and gardenia are unavoidably going to look sickly in late fall and early winter.

Oh, the gardenia is also no longer a resident here. Too prone to scale insects.

Asparagus’ Leaves, Their Work Finished

(2009) Yellowing leaves are not always a bad thing. (Think of birch leaves a few weeks ago, or aspen leaves.) I’m happy that my asparagus’ leaves have yellowed. The plants have been growing vigorously all season, feeding their roots to fuel next year’s growth of the delicious young spears that I’ll be snapping off at ground level from late April to early July.

With this year’s work finished, the shoots and leaves, left to grow unfettered since early July, are yellowing and dying back. My short-bladed brush scythe was the perfect tool to make quick work of the plants, a fluffy addition to the compost pile.

With the asparagus shoots and leaves cleared away, I could get into that bed and weed it. The bed was pretty much weed-free until July, but then wet summer weather kept Weeding asparagus in past yearsweeds germinating and growing, and hard to reach among the 6-foot-high forest of feathery stalks. The bed is now weeded and soon to be fertilized (2#/100 square feet of soybean meal) and mulched (wood chips 2 inches deep).

(2020) Wow! Right on schedule, on the same date as 11 years ago, asparagus leaves have yellowed. They’ve pumped nutrients and fuel down to their roots to provide for next spring’s growth, and are no longer functional and could harbor pests. So, like 11 years ago, I’m going to cut them down and add them to the compost pile.
Asparagus cut with scythe
This year I did treat the ground differently from the past 11+ years. Right after this year’s harvest, at the end of June, when the whole bed was cut to the ground, I did a little weeding. And then, instead of soybean meal as a fertilizer, I spread an inch of compost. Compost adds organic matter to the soil, and supplies a wider slew of nutrients and is more sustainable than soybean meal, among other benefits. The compost would also smother some weeds that would try to emerge.

Then, just to further smother weeds, I topped the compost with a one inch layer of wood chips.

I’m proud to report that the asparagus bed has never been so weed-free. No doubt, the very dry summer weather also played a part in keeping weeds at bay. 
Asparagus, growing thru compost + chips
At any rate, I’m getting out the scythe now to cut down the stalks. And I look forward to a good crop of asparagus beginning at the end of April. I highly recommend growing asparagus: it’s perennial and is one of those vegetable whose flavor is markedly different, and much, much better, when eaten fresh-picked.
Asparagus spear

WINTER READINESS

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For anyone who missed my recent 90 minute webinar on GOURMET COMPOST, the webinar has been recorded and is available for $35 on-demand from Oct. 1st, 2020 until Oct. 8th for $35. The webinar covers options for compost bins, feeding your compost “pets, monitoring progress, what can go wrong and how to right it, when is compost “finished,” and making the best use of your compost. Click below to pay almost by any of a number of ways. Thank you.

Putting Summer in Jars

I’m hunkering down for winter, which includes capturing what I can of summer’s bounty in jars and dried and frozen garden produce. With this year’s hot, sunny weather, tomato plants yielded plenty of fruit — until cut short with a few nights of freezing temperatures about a week ago. Still, I have over two dozen shiny quart jars lined up on a shelf in the basement.

This year, San Marzano, which I (and most of Italy, where San Marzano canned tomatoes are labeled as such) consider to be the best-tasting canned tomato, got segregated into a number of jars all by itself. Other pluses for San Marzano is that it’s an heirloom variety, so I can save my own seed from ripe fruits, and it bears heavily over a long season on healthy, stocky vines.

A past neighbor of mine used to begin his process of canning tomatoes by alternating layers of tomatoes with salt in tall, half-bushel baskets. Other gardeners begin by peeling, perhaps seeding, their tomatoes.

Me? I opt for the quickest method possible, which is: Cut off any bad spots and drop the tomatoes into a large pot with just a half inch of water in the bottom. After being brought to a boil, the tomatoes get simmered until the volume is reduced by one-half, with less reduction for San Marzano’s because of their low water content. Then, a thorough blending with an immersion blender.

New guidelines call for keeping the acidity of canned tomatoes below pH 4.6 to prevent growth of Clostridium botulinum, aka botulis bacteria, by adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid per quart. This is because of lower acidity of some modern tomatoes. I do so just to make sure even though my tomatoes’ acidity measured below 4.6. Finally, the canning jars go into the pressure canner for processing for 10 minutes at 15 pounds pressure.

I figure that I can chop up and sprinkle in any flavorings for sauces or soups later, in winter, when I have more time and I know the jar’s end use.

(House) Plants on the Move

I’m a little late this year in readying my houseplants for winter. I know from seasons past that when they come indoors, so do occasional pests. The pests that are most troublesome, the only ones about which I need to do something, are scale insects.

Scale insects aren’t always in evidence now but I know they are there on my citrus, bay laurel, orchid, and staghorn fern plants. By early winter, the pest becomes more obvious as occasional, small brown nodules on stems and leaves. That’s the protective “scale,” beneath which the scale insect is happily sucking away plant sap. 

Scale insects have never killed my plants but do weaken them and – perhaps worse – exude a sugary “honeydew” as they suck sap. This sticky honeydew gets all over floors, furniture, or whatever is beneath the plant. And then a fungus arrives to feed on that honeydew, giving leaves a dark, smoky, haze.

Hard-shell scale on staghorn fern

Hard-shell scale on staghorn fern

My tack for scale insects is to line susceptible plants up in my driveway, then spray them with some relatively benign insecticide such as Ced-o-flora, horticultural oil, neem oil, or pyganic. I’ve been doing that for the past few weeks in an effort to get the young scales before they find shelter beneath their protective shells.

With the last spray finished, in come all my houseplants. Windows are still open at least some days so indoor air is not too different from outdoor air, easing the environmental transition for the plants.

Squirreling Away

Black walnuts are one of my favorite nuts and they’re conveniently abundant and free for the picking, at least around here. Perhaps too abundant. Once there are a couple trees, they beget more and more as squirrels start “planting” them everywhere. My vegetable garden, with it’s soft, rich soil is a favorite spot.

Admittedly, the nuts aren’s so convenient to eat. Their messy husks need to be removed. Then the nuts have to be cured in a dry, cool or cold, squirrel-proof space until around New Year’s Day, And finally, the very tough nuts need cracking. I recommend the ‘Master Nut Cracker’, in my opinion the best nut cracker for those tough shells.

Last year black walnuts were raining down all over the place here and in town. This year, probably because of last year’s overabundance, the crop is light everywhere. How are the walnuts doing where you are?

I’m lucky. One tree here on the farmden that provided most of our nuts in years past, is bearing heavily. Up to a few years ago it was useless, bearing nuts whose innards were almost always spoiled or shriveled. That  might have been because of hurricane Irene back in 2011, when the nearby Wallkill River flooded its banks to wash over here and rise about four feet up that tree’s trunk.
black walnuts in jar
I cracked a few of the nuts this year to see how the nutmeats look. They’re well-filled and a nice, white color inside. But not edible, as I wrote, until they’re cured. Until January, we can enjoy what’s left of last year’s nuts.

Inside and Outside

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Houseplant Envy

I wonder why my houseplants look so unattractive, at least compared to some other people’s houseplants. I was recently awed by the lushness and beauty of a friend’s orchid cactii, begonias, and ferns. I also grow orchid cactii and ferns, so what’s with mine?Houseplants at bedroom window

Perhaps the difference is that other’s houseplants have a cozy, overgrown look. Mine don’t. Most of my houseplants get repotted and pruned, as needed, for best growth. Every year, every two years at most, they get tipped out of their pots, their roots hacked back, then put back into their pots with new potting soil packed around their roots. In anticipation of lush growth, stems also get pruned to keep the plants from growing topheavy.

Rather than being scattered willy-nilly throughout the house or clustered cozily in corners, as in friends’ homes, my houseplants get carefully sited. For best growth, plants, especially flowering and fruiting plants, need abundant light, something that’s at a premium this time of year. So my houseplants huddle near south-facing windows like baby chicks near a heat lamp. And then in summer, when light, even indoors, becomes more adequate and the plants could move a bit back from the windows, I move them all outside so that summer sunlight, rain, and breezes can really get them growing.

What can I say? I’m too focussed on good growth, and that’s not necessarily what makes for the prettiest houseplant. It’s the difference between a lush plant packed into and overflowing its pot, along with elbow to elbow neighbors, versus one that’s had its soil refreshed frequently, its stems thinned out and pruned back, always with younger stems raring to grow. I can’t help myself.Houseplants, office window

Choice of houseplants also comes into play. Houseplants that are prettiest for the longest period of time — and need less light — are those valued for the shapes and colors of their leaves. I gravitate to houseplants with fragrant flowers or fruits, or — even better — fragrant flowers and fruits. Pumping out lots of flowers and, especially, fruits demands much more energy from a plant than just growing leaves. And that energy comes from sunlight and young leaves that are efficient at working with that light. Hence the repotting and clustering near sunny windows of my houseplants.Houseplants at living room window

Perhaps it’s also a matter of the “grass is greener,” to me, in someone else’s house. I’ll start looking at my houseplants more with the eye of an appreciative visitor.

Winter Cold: The Good and the Bad

The temperature was 9° and we were on our way to go cross-country skiing when a friend asked if there was any benefit to the cold weather. Plantwise, that is. We knew the weather was good for skiing. Interesting question, and the answer is “yes.”Vegetable garden in winter

The first benefit that comes to mind is the effect of cold on diseases, certain diseases, at least. The cold kills them. Peach leaf curl, for instance, is a disease that overwinters in peach buds, resulting in leaves that unfold thickened and twisted and eventually yellow and fall so fruiting and growth suffer. Except in cold winters. My winters are usually cold enough so this disease is rarely a problem.

A number of summers ago late blight disease of tomato went on the rampage here and throughout the Northeast. That disease can’t spend the winter this far north because it’s too cold. In that past summer and some other summers, the disease hitchhikes north on infected plants brought here or, when winds and humidity are just right, hopscotches along north from one infected field to the next.

Insect pests that overwinter in the soil are more damaged the colder the soil gets, and bare soil gets colder than mulched soil, all of which highlights the balancing acts necessary in gardening.

Pests notwithstanding, bare ground isn’t good for plants and soil. Plant roots are more likely to be damaged by the increased exposure and, especially evergreens, are more apt to dry out because more water will evaporate from bare ground and because roots have a hard time drinking in water from frozen ground. Bare ground is also subject to erosion and nitrogen loss.

On the other side of the coin, bare soil goes through more cycles of freezing and thawing, which breaks up and moves around soil particles, in effect tilling the soil. Back to the previous side of the coin, that freezing and thawing can move soil around enough to heave plants, especially small or newly rooted plants, up and out of the ground.

So, I like cold weather for my plants. But I mulch heavily. And I especially like it, as do the plants — and, admittedly, some pests — when there’s an additional blanket of snow over the ground. It also makes for good skiing.South field, winter view

Watering — in the Rain?

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Why Are Pots Thirsty?

With recent rains of more than 3 inches over the last couple of days, you’d think that the last thing on my mind would be having to water anything. But you’d be wrong. Plants in pots — and I have plenty of them, some ornamental and some tropical and subtropical fruits — don’t get the full benefit of all that water.

Potting soils are, and should be, more porous than any garden soil to maintain good aeration within the confines of a pot. About a one inch depth of water is needed if you’re going to thoroughly wet a 12 inch high column of potting soil. If a flower pot is, for example, only 6 inches high, only 1/2 inch depth of water would be needed; and so on.

A lot of my potted plants didn’t drink in that 3 inches of rain that fell over the past couple of days. Some of the plants are shielded from the sky by overhanging house eaves. And the leaves of other plants — excepting amaryllis and calla lily which have strappy, upright leaves — deflect water that could have fallen into the pot.

If you don’t believe me, tip a potted plant out of its pot following a heavy rain, and check how dry the soil is down deep within the pot. Even easier, purchase an inexpensive moisture meter whose metal probe, when slid into the soil, reports moisture deep down.

(Sort of) High Tech Solution

When I first started gardening, I knew I would eventually move from the cottage I was renting. My mini-orchard was in pots and travel-ready. I kept that “orchard” watered by hand, which wasn’t so bad. The problem was that in the heat of summer, some plants needed their thirst quenched twice a day, which kept me from leaving my home for more than a few hours.

These days, technology has come to the rescue.

The first techno-solution has been drip irrigation. A simple, battery-operated timer at a spigot sends out water on a twice daily schedule to banks of potted plants. Also at the spigot, following the water line right after the timer, are a filter and a pressure reducer. automatic watering, potsThe fittings for wending water through tubes around corners and up into pots are low pressure fittings; the pressure lowers water pressure to a mere 20 psi.

Once the 1/2 inch main line makes its way to a group of potted plants, a 1/4 inch plastic line, plugged into the main line with, of course, a low pressure fitting, carries the water up to the ground surface of each pot.

If the water merely exited at this point, pots closer to the water source would be under higher pressure and so get more water than those more distant. And pots that were shorter or at lower elevation would likewise get more water. So I slid an emitter, that reliably puts out 1/2 gallon of water per hour, no matter what the incoming water pressure, on the end of each 1/4 inch line.

Capillarity to the Rescue

I have a number of lowbush blueberry, lingonberry, hollyhock, carnation, and blazing star plants growing in pots 4-inches and smaller. I’ll eventually plant them out in the garden. Until then, the plants need regular watering Snaking 1/4 inch tubes to all these pots would create a tangled nightmare.

Enter capillary mat watering. All these smaller pots sit on a mat of absorbent fabric spread over a tray held a couple of inches above a pan of water. Irrigation, capillary matPart of the capillary mat dips into the reservoir of water, which gets sucked up into the mat and then sucked up into the potting soil through the drainage holes in each flat-bottomed plant pot.

I periodically have to remember to add water to the reservoirs. Or, rather, “had to” because I ran a few of those drip tubes into the reservoirs, enough to keep them topped up with water to keep pace with plant use.

And a Presentation of Interest

I’ll be doing a presentation on August 18th on THE SCIENCE, ART, FUN, AND TASTY FRUIT OF ESPALIER in Copake Falls, NY. The presentation will explore the theory and the practice behind the pruning and orienting of branches to create an espalier. This decorative, usually 2-dimensional form, offers high yields of high quality fruit on a plant or plants that can be free-standing, decorating a wall or fence, or even creating the fence itself! I’ll go over which fruit plants work best and the branch pruning and orienting techniques that create and maintain espaliers that look good and yield especially delectable fruit. For more information, go to https://awaytogarden.com/8-18-open-day-plant-sale-lee-reich-espalier-talk-drip-irrigation-workshop/Asian pear espalier flowering

Spring Inspires

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Even Bob Got the Bug

As I write, daily high temperatures are in the 30s and snow is predicted. Nonetheless, just a few warm, sunny days and almost everyone is going to be inspired to garden. Or at least do something plantwise. Even my friend Bob.

Bob’s non-interest in gardening was demonstrated decades ago as I was starting my first very own garden at a house I was renting. Bob was there as I pushed my shovel into the clay soil of the lawn to turn over spadeful after spadeful. Bob watched peacefully lying beyond the proposed plot with his head propped up on his hands. (Not so another friend, Hans, who grabbed another shovel, and dug. Now that I think of it, perhaps I owned only two shovels.)

Crown of thorns

A crown of thorns (not Bob’s)

Bob’s current interest centers around one plant, a potted crown of thorns plant (Euphorbia milii). Crown of thorns is very easy to grow because it’s a succulent. Like other succulents, crown of thorns can store water, in this case in both its thick stems and its fleshy leaves.

The stems, armed with stout thorns, are what give crown of thorns its common name. Legend has it that this plant was woven into the crown of thorns worn by Jesus. Although the plant is native to Madagascar, it had made its way to the Middle East by the time of Christ. But it probably was not the plant that made his crown of thorns.

I once had a crown of thorns plant, and, unlike Bob, with his plant, pretty much ignored it as far as care. Mine flowered occasionally, which was enough because I had a lot of other plants to entertain me. Bob, on the other hand, is becoming a crown of thorns maven, tweaking conditions to try to eke the most and best blooms from his one plant. We go back and forth on how much light they need (the more the better) and how frequently to water (I suggest infrequent but deep watering). The final word has not been said.

Differences of opinion may be traced to differences of plants. Crown of thorns became a popular plant in the 1970s and new varieties were being offered, among them hybrids between E. milii and E. lophogona. The latter species have long, leathery leaves and flower more freely than the former. Some varieties of these hybrids had stouter stems and thinner leaves; others had thinner stems and thicker leaves. Flower sizes increased and a range of shades, from white to pink to red, became available.

Not all hybrid crown of thorns plants enjoy the same growing conditions. Some of the hybrids prefer their soil consistently moist rather than cycling between bone dry and wet. More light is generally better for more flowers although some plants need long nights without any light at all for best flowering.

In a few weeks Bob is going to prune his plant so I’ll get a few cuttings to make plants of my own. The cuttings root in a month or two if their cut ends are dipped in cold water to prevent excess loss of the white sap, slid into a well drained mix, such as peat and perlite, and kept slightly moist.

Horticultural Evolution

So Bob has horticulturally evolved to lavish care on his one plant. He’s busy repotting it this time of year.

I’ve also horticulturally evolved. I would no longer begin a garden by turning over shovelful after shovelful of soil. Nowadays my method is to smother lawn grass beneath wetted paper topped with compost for planting areas and wood chips for paths, which avoids two problems with that first planting: having to wait a couple of weeks before planting, and then having to deal with the sea of quack grass and other weeds that result from turning over the soil.  More details on this in my book Weedless Gardening.

Here Kitty, Kitty

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To a Cat’s Delight

How does your cat like your houseplants? I don’t mean how they look. I mean for nibbling, a bad habit of some cats. Bad for them and bad for you because eating certain houseplants could sicken a cat, or worse, and, at the very least, leave the houseplant ragged.

One way to woo a feline away from houseplants would be to provide a better alternative. Now what could that be? Duh! Catnip, Nepeta cataria, a member of the mint family, admittedly not the prettiest of houseplants but, hey, you’re growing this for your cat, not yourself. (Other Nepeta species, such as N. x faasssennii and N. racemes, are less enticing to cats even if they are more attractive to us.)Catgrass and cat

Catnip is very easy to grow outdoors, and can be grown indoors through winter. The main ingredient that could be lacking in winter is light; six or more hours of sunlight beaming down on the plant through a window would be ideal. Other than that, needs are the same as most other plants: regular potting soil coupled with a watering regime that keeps said soil neither sodden nor bone dry, just moist.

Catnip plants are not hard to find. Growing from seed is easy, except the plants won’t be cat-ready for weeks and weeks.

Established plants are quick and easy to multiply so if you’ve got a friend with a potted plant, preferably overgrown so that you both benefit, you can make new plants by slicing the root ball into two or more new sections along with their above ground stems, and then repotting each of them. Or clip off stems each a few inches long, strip leaves from their bottom portions, and poke them into moist potting soil to root. Help these shocked plants or plant parts recover by keeping them in bright but indirect light for a couple of weeks — and protected from any cats!

Which brings me to perhaps the worst potential pest of your new catnip plant: cats! They’ll roll in it, releasing the strong aroma that drives them crazy, and nibble it to experience its narcotic effect. Outdoor plants tolerate such rambunctious playing; indoor plants, with less than perfect growing conditions, are more frail. You might want to limit playtimes to weekly visits.

Limiting playtimes might also keep the plant more enticing. Cats can habituate to catnip. And even then, only about fifty percent of cats fall under the spell of catnip, none of them as kittens.

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No reason to limit your cat’s botanical garden to catnip. Cats also like to nibble on grasses, which can be very pretty houseplants and lack the not very popular aroma (to most humans) of catnip.

It’s not clear why cats, which are carnivores, like that nibble. Perhaps, some say, to induce vomiting to get rid of undigested animal parts. Perhaps, others say, for vitamins and minerals.

“Grasses” is a term I use quite liberally, to mean not necessarily lawn grass but any plant in the grass family. Most convenient is to just mosey over to the local health food store and purchase some whole grain such as wheat (sold as “wheat berries) or rye. Soak a batch of these seeds in water for a few hours and then sow them in potting soil in a decorative container. Depending on the temperature, green sprouts should soon appear against the dark backdrop of soil. Grasses grow quickly, given light, warmth, and sufficient, but not too much, water.

The aforementioned grasses are annuals and at some point in their growth, what with cat nibbling and aging, will start looking ragged. Have another pot ready with already sprouting grass. And so on.

The grass serves well for us humans as well as our cats to enjoy. They’re very spring-like in their appearance even if confined to only a small pot, a microcosm of what’s to come.