Houseplants – Page 5

DRIP, DRIP, DRIP, WHERE’S THE AGUA?

June 12, 2015/8 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

I’m Dripping, So Why Am I Watering?

Up to a couple of weeks ago, little water had dropped from the sky this spring here in the Hudson Valley. But a drip irrigation system automatically waters many of my plants. So why have I been spending so much time with hose in hand?
   Not all my plants drink in the drips. Trees and shrubs are on their own except their first year in the ground when I religiously hand water them every few days initially, and then once a week throughout the season. These plants get 3/4 gallon per week for every square foot spread (estimated) of their root systems. That’s equivalent to an inch of rainfall which, if it does fall, exempts me from a few days of watering.
   A couple of inches depth of hay, leaf, or wood chip mulch around the trees and shrubs seals in moisture to make best use of my efforts. Also, I start with smaller plants — less than 4 feet tall — which become independent of my watering sooner because a larger proportion of their roots are soon foraging around in surrounding soil that those of larger plants.
   My flower beds also don’t get dripped. Although the soil surface is dry, moisture carried over from winter still sits in lower depths, into which established perennial flowers’ roots can tap. Annuals and newly planted perennials need to be watered on the same schedule as young trees until their roots reach that moisture.

My blueberries are my only dripped shrubs

It is my garden vegetables that drink in the benefits of my drip system. But even here some hand watering is needed these days. Down each bed runs 1 or 2 drip lines, with emitters along the lines spaced 6 inches apart. As water enters the soil, capillary pull from small spaces between the soil particles draws water sideways and, along with gravity, downward. The resulting wetting fronts have the shape, if you could look at a cross-section of the soil, of an ice cream cone. In clay soils, with small particles and, hence, a lot of capillary draw, that ice cream cone is very fat; in sandy soils, it’s narrow, a couple of feet wide at its broadest as compared with the 6 foot spread in a clay soil.
The wetting fronts start their sideways spread below the soil surface, deeper in sandy soils, more shallow in clay soils. In either case, the soil surface remains dry except right at the point of drip. So any vegetable transplants or seeds I set in the ground need to be hand watered until their roots reach the wetting front — except for seeds or transplants set right under or along the drip line.

Drip Irrigation Workshop June 20th; see “Workshops“, at this site, for more information.

A Statue of David

    My friend David was wondering why the leaves of his Romaine lettuce plants flopped down. I gave my usual response to most gardening questions: “Too little water.” (My other usual response is “Too much water,” often following my first response if the questioner tells of watering all the time.)
   So I asked David how much he watered, and he said he thoroughly soaked the ground by spraying it with water. Busted! It really was a water problem, too little in this case.
   In fact, thoroughly wetting the soil with the usual 4-foot-diameter, hand held spray is almost impossible. “Thoroughly wet” means soaking the ground to at least a 6-inch depth. For his hand held sprayer to do that, David would have to stand in place like a statue, sprayer in hand, unmoving, for about an hour to wet one 4-foot-diameter part of the garden before moving on to the next 4-foot-diameter area.
   When I’m watering plants in the ground by hand, I’m wetting only the small area beneath an individual plant, just enough to soak its roots as they establish themselves in the surrounding soil.

Probe the Soil

People find it hard to believe that that statuesque watering posture is really necessary. All you have to do is scratch the soil surface after a David-esque spraying of plants to see how deeply the water percolated, and you’d find only a thin layer of wet soil, at the surface.

Digital moisture probe.

Digging a hole in the ground is a good way to tell if watering was sufficient. But it’s also inconvenient.
For just a few dollars, I invested, years ago, in an electronic gizmo that bypasses all that hole digging. This soil moisture sensor has a metal probe that you plunge into the soil. Atop the probe is a dial or digital readout that tells whether the soil is “DRY,” “WET,” or something in between. More accurate sensors cost over a hundred dollars, but the cheap ones are fairly accurate and work well if coupled with observation.

Good for Pot(s) Also

The soil moisture meter is especially useful with potted plants, which might need watering every day when the weather is warm, sunny, and breezy. (With experience, lifting a pot to feel its weight is also a good measure of moisture level, as is just getting to know your plants better.)
I’m still hand watering the pots because I haven’t yet connected the drip tubes that will direct water to each of the pots.

LUSTING FOR AVOCADOS, HOME GROWN, OF COURSE

February 6, 2015/4 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

A Long Journey to Avocado-dom

This far north, an avocado plant provides reliable entertainment and, less reliably, the makings of guacamole. The entertainment doesn’t compare with the excitement of a car chase on the silver screen; it’s slower but very engaging.

To whit: I’ve been watching roots on two avocado pits elongate and branch. I spend a lot of time with plants; here is my opportunity to spend quality time with their roots. That’s all possible because avocado pits, suspended in water, will sprout roots whose growth can be watched. (Odd, since wet soils are the nemesis of avocado trees planted outdoors in tropical and subtropical climates, and you can’t get much wetter than water.)

Despite being plants of warm climates, avocados are frequently raised by us northerners, as houseplants. I could have planted the pits in potting soil in a pot, but would have missed out on root entertainment. So I stuck three toothpicks into and spaced evenly around each pit so that the pits could be suspended in a beaker with their bottoms — their fatter ends — sitting in water. Taking a thin slice off the top and bottom of the seed, which I did, reputedly speeds germination.

Roots typically sprout before the tops show any sign of growth.

Whoops, Things Don’t Look So Good

Avocado houseplants are so common that probably none of the above is new information to most readers. I’m embarrassed, then, to admit that my two plants have faltered in their growth.

One of them sent a sprout upwards after its roots were a couple of inches long. That sprout has dried out and, of course, ceased growth.

I noticed a slime surrounding the root of the other pit. This pit was very slow to sprout, and my guess is that there’s some bacteria attacking the weak growth.

I ascribe both failures to growing conditions which, here, indoors, are a far cry from the mostly warm, humid climes avocados call home. Mine sit near a window, experiencing wide swings in temperature in a room heated with a wood stove. Starting new plants in spring should bring better luck.

Entertained by Apical Dominance

I did get to effect and observe apical dominance on one of the plants. More benign than it sounds, apical dominance is the tendency for most vigorous growth from a plant’s uppermost buds, those either at the ends of branches or spatially at the highest points.

That vigor comes from suppression of buds lower down by auxin, a plant hormone that is produced in the uppermost buds and transported down the stem. Lopping off the top of a stem stops hormone production (temporarily, until the new higher buds start making it) so lower buds grow as they let go of their inhibitions.

The taproot growing from one of the avocado pits was threatening to bump into the bottom of the beaker so I pinched off a half inch of its tip. The effect was a mirror image to what happens with branches: within a few days, branch roots began to develop. Very entertaining.

An avocado sprout typically shows strong apical dominance, developing into a gawky plant with a single, upright shoot. Cutting the growing top back by a few inches induces branching and makes for a prettier plant.

Flowers, But No Fruit

More than beauty, I’d like fruit from my avocado plant. Under good conditions, such as in the ground in Florida, a pit would need 8 years or more before it became old enough to bear fruit. And then, said fruit might not be of best quality because the seedling would reflect whatever jumbling around of chromosomes occurred when the female flower that gave rise to the fruit that begot the seed got dusted with pollen from a male flower.

For quicker bearing and more reliable good taste, cloning is needed, in this case grafting a branch from a tree known to bear good-tasting fruits onto the young seedling. Bearing, then, occurs within 3 or 4 years, and the fruit should be identical to the mother plant from which the stem for grafting was taken.

Not so fast, though. You need two varieties for cross-pollination, and avocado has some pollination quirks. Still, my plan is to get new pits sprouting, and once their stems are large enough to graft, to get scions for grafting. Years ago, I did all this and got flowers but no fruit. I’m hopeful, this time around, to be making guacamole within 6 years.

Outside Now, For More Apical Dominance

The time is drawing near for some real gardening, which could start with pruning. I’ll be putting apical dominance to work on some young fruit trees — each a mere “whip,” single, vertical stem — planted last year. Shortening the main stem will induce side branches that will eventually become the permanent scaffold limbs of these plants. The more severely any stem is shortened, the fewer and the more enthusiastic the sprouts from the buds lower down.

STILL SOME FRESH FRUIT, and GENDER STEREOTYPING

December 18, 2014/3 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants, Planning/by Lee Reich

Fruit for My Mouth, Flowers for My Eyes

As I write this, on December 1st, the Rabbi — that’s the Rabbi Samuel fig — is still ripening fruit in my barely heated greenhouse. That’s commendable. Not so commendable, however, is the flavor; cooler temperatures and sparse sunlight have taken their toll. The drooping fruits look ripe and ready to eat, inside and out, but they are no longer worth eating.

End of the fruiting season for Rabbi Samuel fig.

On the other hand, another fruit, Szukis American persimmons, hardly look edible but still have rich, sweet flavor. Outdoors, fruits of this variety of American persimmon cling to bare branches. Their orange skins once stretched almost to the point of breaking over the soft flesh within. Now, alternate freezing and thawing temperatures and drier air have sucked moisture and temper from the flesh, so the skins have shriveled and barely cling. Their darkening does nothing to increase the fruits’ visual appeal.

Szukis persimmons, starting to look ugly, but still honey sweet

The ripe fruits are hard to distinguish, by eye, from the almost ripe fruits. The latter still retain some mouth-puckering astringency which has given American persimmons a bad name. An unripe persimmon “will draw a man’s mouth awrie with much torment” wrote Captain John Smith 400 years ago. I give Szukis’ branches a slight shake and only ripe fruits come raining to the ground, at which point the Captain’s further words ring true: “When [persimmon] is ripe, it is as delicious as an apricot.”

Can’t Help Wanting African Violets

New leaf cuttings

Man can’t live by bread alone; a feast for the eyes is also in order. Well, maybe not a feast, but an appetizer, some winter flowers. Probably the easiest and most longlasting of winter blossoms are those of African violet. Okay, okay, I know that African violets have been mostly associated with doilies, lace curtains, and other appurtenances of old ladies (nothing against old ladies).

Generally, I don’t even like the color violet. But African violet’s flowers do brighten up a windowsill that looks out upon a gray and brown landscape.

Plantlets forming at bases of leaf cuttings

Now that I’ve gotten my secret attraction to African violets off my chest, let’s talk horticulture. African violet’s whorl of leaves, like those of many low-growing perennial flowers, is actually a compressed stem, one that has been telescoped down so that each leaf and associated node originates just a fraction of an inch above the next lower leaf. But there is some distance between those nodes, so over time the stem does slowly elongate, rising higher and higher out of the ground. And side branches occasionally sprout forth from the leaf axils. The result of all this is that the potted plant becomes, over time, so overgrown with layer upon layer of leaves that the plant no longer can gather enough energy to flower well.

African Violet in all its glory.

The solution to this problem is to make new plants and then chuck the old ones. All that’s needed to make a new plant is a leaf from an old plant and patience. So a few weeks ago I plucked a few leaves (a few, for insurance) from my old, overgrown African violet and plunged their stalks into a moist mix of peat moss and perlite. A plastic bag covering and held above the leaf cuttings by some twigs provided the needed humidity until roots could develop to keep the leaves turgid. Bright but indirect sunlight fueled, via photosynthesis, new root growth, and within a few weeks, resistance to a gentle tug on the leaves told me that roots had developed.

I removed the cover and now little plants are poking up through the ground alongside the leaf stalks. I’m going to transplant my rooted cuttings into larger pots and should, in a few weeks, be enjoying flowers. By then, I’ll have my knitting also ready.

11th Hour Apple Tree Planting

On to less gender stereotyped gardening: tree planting. Picture the day before Thanksgiving, November 26th. A wet snow is falling and beginning to whiten the ground. In my garage are two sturdy, bare root apple trees, a Hudson’s Golden Gem and an Ashmead’s Kernel, recently arrived from Cummins Nursery and needing planting.

Fortunately, I prepared the plantings site a couple of weeks previously with a 4-inch-deep, broad circle of leaf compost, the most immediate purpose of which was to keep the ground from freezing. Rushing to beat out the snow, I pulled enough compost aside to make space to dig holes, spread tree roots out in each hole, backfilled the soil, sifting it around the roots by pressing with my fingers and bouncing the tree up and down, and then settled all into place with a couple of gallons of water per plant.

I like autumn for tree planting. Roots have opportunity to grow in still warm soil (especially if mulched) while stems won’t grow and need water until spring. The soil is crumbly and soft, in good condition for digging and planting. And autumn planting leaves one less thing to do in the flurry of spring gardening.

However, winter temperatures and furry creatures can be a hazard to autumn-planted trees. The first line of defense, to fend off mice and rabbits and moderate temperatures on the trunk, is a spiral plastic tree guard. An 18” high cylinder of 1/2” hardware cloth provides further defense against mice and rabbits. Beyond that, a higher and wider cylinder of 2×4 fencing should fend off deer and my puppy Sammy. (Past puppies considered newly planted trees as playthings, fun to tug out of the ground.) And finally, the well-furnished, new tree goes into winter with some perfume, a deer-repellant spray, any of which is effective if applied before the plant gets nibbled and renewed monthly.

I expect to harvest the first apples from the new apple trees expected in 3 years.

CITRUS IN NEW YORK

November 26, 2014/1 Comment/in Fruit, Gardening, Houseplants/by Lee Reich

Paradise Under Glass, and I Take a Bit of it Home

Wandering in and out of the narrow alleys, I could barely squeeze past other, potential buyers. On my way back from a lecture and book selling, a wad of money was burning a hole in my pocket. I muttered to a young couple who glanced up to let me pass, “I feel like a drug addict.” A fleeting, sympathetic smile, and they, like others, were again intent on the offerings, hardly aware, like us other “addicts,” of other humanity.

I was lucky, able to leave Logee’s Greenhouses in Danielson, CT only $75 poorer. But richer in plants. Perched on the tray that I carried to my car were small plants of fragrant wax plant (Hoya odorata), Nordmann Seedless Nagami kumquat, and Golden Nugget mandarin (tangerine), all three promising to offer, for years to come, sweet fragrance, beauty, and good eating in the case of the mandarin and kumquat. By not allowing myself to dawdle, I was able to keep my trembling hand from grabbing at a Black Mission fig plant, a Dwarf Cavendish banana plant (“only 3 feet high!”), or a Hoya lauterbachii, with fragrant blooms the size of teacups.

Most of Logee’s plants are small and not cheap, understandable considering the wide array of plants they stock. Aside from my kumquat and mandarin, I could have chosen from among a dozen other citrus varieties, including some interesting oddities like Buddah’s Hand Citron, whose fruit does, in fact, look like the draped fingers on a hand. Instead of the fragrant wax plant, I could have driven home with any one of 15 other species or varieties of wax plant. Not that Logee’s is limited only to fragrant or fruiting plants. They stock almost a 100 different kinds of begonias, among other houseplants.

Part of the jasmine collection at Logee’s

Entering the greenhouses is an experience very unlike that of entering most commercial greenhouses, the latter with their soaring roofs of crystal-clear glass, their buoyant atmosphere, and scoured concrete floors. Logee’s is Paradise for plant lovers, with a mix of concrete and dirt paths so narrow that leaves and tendrils grab at you from either side. Fortunately, plants are more organized at Logee’s than in Paradise: collections of such plants as citrus, passionflower, orchids, and angel’s trumpets are each grouped together. Perhaps the star of the show is the Ponderosa lemon tree, shipped by train then horse and buggy to the greenhouse in 1900 and still bearing crops of grapefruit sized lemons (also called American Wonder lemon and thought to be a hybrid of lemon and citron, originating as a seedling the 1880s). Over the years, it’s given rise to numerous offspring, one of which you can purchase, growing in a 2.5” pot, for $11.95.

Citrus: New Plants from Old

New plants of Ponderosa lemon and other citrus varieties can be propagated one of three ways.

Lemons and limes tend to root easily from cuttings, which are leafy branches with their bases plunged into a moist rooting medium such as a 1:1 mix of perlite and peat moss. Because citrus are evergreen, air around the cuttings has to be kept humid enough so the still-rootless stems don’t dry out. A clear plastic or glass tent does the trick. The leaves need to photosynthesize so they have energy to make roots, so some light is needed. Not too much, though, or the cuttings cook in their tent.

Special rooting hormones, which are synthetic analogues of natural plant hormones, help cuttings to root. Synthetic hormones are used because they decompose more slowly than natural hormones (and in different concentrations, are used as herbicides, such as 2,4-D). Another possibility is to soak the cuttings in water in which have steeped stems of willow, a plant that roots very easily so presumably has some root-stimulating goodies to share. I avoid the hassle of natural or synthetic hormones in rooting cuttings and, instead, pay careful attention to which stems I select for rooting, the rooting medium, and light.

Some citrus varieties can be propagated by seed. Usually a seed-propagated fruit gives rise to a baby different from the mother plant, reflecting the jumbling around of chromosomes as pollen and egg cells united. However, a few plants, and many citrus, exhibit apomyxis, where the seeds, although they look like normal seeds, are formed from cells of only the mother plant.

My new plant acquisitions: hoya and 2 citrus.

All the seedlings, then, are clones of each other and their mother. Well, not all, because in a given fruit, some seeds may be apomyctic and others may be the product of pollination. The apomyctic seedlings show their presence by their greater vigor and more upright stature.

Downsides to propagation by seedlings, apomyctic or otherwise, are that plants must go through a juvenile phases of some years before they are old enough to flower and fruit. Also, most citrus tend to be very thorny in their youth.

Kumquats Roots for Tangerine Tops

One way I justified my purchases at Logee’s was with my plan to use my new citrus plants to make more plants — by grafting, the third way of propagating citrus. All that’s needed is any citrus rootstock; they all are graft compatible. Not being able to throw away seeds, I have a few kumquat rootstocks started from seeds I spit out from my Meiwa kumquat fruits as I ate them a couple of years ago.

I’ll graft in spring, taking stems from the Golden Nugget mandarin to make a whip graft, a particularly easy kind of graft that gives quick results. Basically, a smooth, sloping cut on the kumquat rootstock will be matched against a similarly smooth, sloping cut on the “scion,” which is the stem I cut from the mandarin stem, with both bound together with a wrap of tape or cut rubber band. After removing leaves from the scion, grafting compound (Tree-Kote) or Parafilm seals the graft and scion against dessication before the scion and rootstock knit together, and the scion piece begins to grow.

The final step will be deciding what to do with my growing citrus orchard in pots. Plants for my annual sale, perhaps? The largest citrus orchard (potted) in the Hudson Valley?