Shaving and Composting

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 . . . But My Garden is in Order

“Some men there are who never shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except when they go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots in the bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to one who doesn’t shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such a man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before the snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of melancholy ruin and decay.” So wrote Charles Dudley Warner in his wonderful little book (much more than a gardening book) My Summer in a Garden (1898). I gave up shaving a few months ago, but I am putting my garden in order for autumn.

The scene is quite pretty as I look out my upstairs bedroom window upon my garden — my vegetable garden — each morning. Garden view, autumnWeeds have been removed from the paths and the beds, and spent plants have been cleared away. What remains of crops is a bed with some tall stalks of kale that were planted back in spring. Yet another bed is home to various varieties of lettuce interplanted with endive, all of which went in as transplants after an early crop of green beans had been cleared and the bed was weeded, then covered with an inch depth of compost. Also still lush green is a bed previously home to edamame, which was subsequently weeded, composted, and then seeded with turnips and winter radishes back in August.

From my window, the remaining eight beds in the garden present mostly grasses in various states of lushness. The “grass” in this case is oats, sown in any bed no longer needed for vegetables at the end of this season. I had cleared such beds of spent plants and weeds, sprinkled oat seeds (whole “feed oats” from Agway), watered, and then, as with the other beds, covered them with an inch depth of compost. One bed was finished for the season except for six floppy cabbage plants. I staked those plants up tall and out of the way, and then gave the bed the same treatment around the cabbages’ ankles.Cover crop, 3 beds with cabbage

Ready for Spring

That’s it: It all looks fresh, green, and neat — but more than that, what I did is also good for next year’s garden. Cleaning up weeds this year makes for less self-seeding of annual weeds and seeding and establishment of perennial weeds. Cleaning up spent plants takes any pest-ridden plant parts off-site, reducing chances for future pest problems.

Dense growth of oats protects the soil surface from pounding rain so water percolates in rather than skittles off the surface, promoting erosion. Cover crops, 2 bedsBelow ground, oat roots pull up nutrients that rain and snow might otherwise leach away into the groundwater.

And finally, that inch depth of compost that each bed gets helps support the many beneficial fungi, bacteria, actinomycetes, and other soil microorganisms that make up the soil food web. In so doing, it will provide ALL the nutrition my vegetable plants, even intensively planted vegetables, need until this time next year.

Mr. Warner, I think, would approve. Even my non-shaving; I do trim my beard regularly.

Add Water, Conveniently

A lot of compost is needed to cover all those vegetable beds. For all the beds in my two vegetable gardens, as well as those in my greenhouse, I estimate my annual needs at almost 5 cubic yards per year.

My compost is made from hay I scythe from my small field, kitchen scraps, spent vegetable plants and weeds from my garden, some horse manure in wood shavings, and, for fun, old cotton or woolen clothing, and leather gloves and shoes. 

Yes, I’ve read about striking a balance between feedstuffs high in carbon and those high in nitrogen in order to get a compost pile chugging along. As important is good aeration and moisture. Most compost piles that I see suffer from thirst.

A lot of water is required to wet the inner layers of a compost pile, and applying it requires more patience than I have. So I no longer do it manually.

I purchased a small sprinkler which I connected with 1/2” black plastic tubing (the same as I use for drip irrigation mainlines) along with some L connectors to lead the water line from the top center of a pile neatly down to ground level. Water pressure is variable from my well so I also put a pressure reducer, to 15 psi, in the line; a valve needing just one-time adjustment keeps the sprinkler wetting only the top of the pile. A U-shaped metal pin keeps the sprinkler firmly in place in the center of the pile.Compost sprinkler

All that’s needed after adding a batch of material to the pile is to set up the sprinkler, turn on the spigot, and set a timer for about 20 minutes. The droplets cover the pile right to the edges and in a day or two temperatures soar to 140° or more.

Next year at this time, this year’s piles will be ready to do their part in putting my garden neat and in order.

Some You Win, Some You Lose. Why?

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Mo’ Better Berries

Because I’ve grown a number of varieties of blueberries for a long time, I’m often asked what variety I would recommend planting. Or whether you need to plant two varieties for cross-pollination in order to get fruit.

The answers to both questions are intertwined. First of all, blueberries are partially self-fertile so one variety will bear fruit all by itself.
Large blueberries
But — and this is important — berries will be both more plentiful and larger if two different varieties cross-pollinate each other. (Apples, in contrast, are self-sterile so, with few exceptions, won’t bear any fruit at all without cross-pollination.)

Benefits of cross-pollination aside, why plant just one variety of blueberry? Different varieties ripen their fruits at different times during the blueberry harvest season. With a good selection of varieties, that season can be very long.

Here on the farmden, the season opens with Duke and Earliblue, both usually ready for picking (in Zone 5) at the end of June. The season moves on, with Blueray, Berkeley, and Bluecrop ripening in July, and Jersey, Toro, and Nelson in August.Blueberries galore As I write, in September, the variety Elliot is still bearing ripe berries.

So if you’re going to plant blueberries, which I highly recommend doing, plant more than one variety, and choose the varieties that let you enjoy berries with your morning cereal or your after dinner ice cream over a long season.

Soil Matters

I pay special attention to the soil when I plant blueberries, and it pays off. Blueberries have rather unique soil requirements among cultivated plants, demanding those that are very acidic, high in organic matter, low in nutrients, and consistently moist and well-aerated. (Most cultivated plants like soils that are only slightly acidic and have moderate to high fertility.) No matter if a soil is not naturally to blueberry’s liking; it can be made so.

The soil where I planted my blueberries drains well. If it did not, I would either choose a better location or else create mounds on which to plant.

Next in importance is soil acidity; I test it before planting. If it’s not at the required pH of 4 to 5.5, I spread pelletized sulfur, a naturally mined mineral, over the ground. (Pelletizing the sulfur makes it less dusty to work with.) Mulched blueberry planting
The amount of sulfur, per 100 square feet, needed to lower the pH by one unit would be a pound in a sandy soil and three pounds in a clay soil. My clay loam’s initial pH was about 6.5, so I needed 3 pounds of sulfur per hundred square feet to lower that pH to 5.5, that upper limit enjoyed by blueberries.

Now, for planting. I mix a bucketful of peat moss with the soil in each planting hole and then tuck the plants and soil into the hole, setting the plants slightly deeper than they stood in the nursery. Peat moss is a long-lasting source of organic matter, unique among organic matters in also being low in nutrients.

Right after planting, I spread a 2 to 3 inch depth of some weed-free, fluffy organic material, such as wood shavings, wood chips, straw, pine needles, or autumn leaves, as mulch. The mulch snuffs out weeds, which are more adept than blueberry at soaking up water and nutrients, and keeps the soil cool and moist, just as it is in blueberry’s natural habitats.

With regular watering, as needed, pruning, and annual mulching and attention to soil acidity, blueberry leaves should maintain a healthy, green color, and stems should grow a couple of feet or so each year. My planting of 16 plants yields almost 200 quarts per year of delicious, organic blueberries.

Celeriac Failure, Again

Blueberries have been a great success; now for a failure. Celeriac, a celery relative that puts that flavor  into its softball-sized, white root, isn’t well-known as a vegetable, but I’d like to grow it. I’ve tried, for the past couple of years, without success. The problem is some sort of celery blight that kills the top growth so there’s no greenery to feed the root.

Both early blight and late blight, fungal diseases, could cause problems. They arrived in gardens on infected celery seed and/or infected celery debris from the previous cropping season. Celery bacterial blightLast fall I thoroughly cleaned up diseased plants, even planted some celeriac this year in the greenhouse. Failure occurred both outdoors and in the greenhouse, although lots of rain and heat could have helped (the fungi or bacteria, not me).

I’m not giving up. Perhaps the seed is the problem. Seed can harbor the disease, but can be “cleaned” up with a heat treatment: 30 minutes at 118°F. As a last resort, I could spray an organic fungicide such as one of the organically approved materials based on copper or hydrogen peroxide. Perhaps this time next year I’ll be eating celeriac.

Figs and Peppers and . . .

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Fig Frustrations and Joys

Over the years I’ve shared the joys and frustrations of growing figs in my minimally heated greenhouse. The joys, of course, have been in sinking my teeth into fruits of the various varieties. Also, more recently, the neat appearance of the plants which are trained as espaliers. Fig espalierLeft to its own devices, a fig can grow into a tangled mess. In part, that’s because fig trees can’t decide if they want to be small trees, with single or a few trunks, or large shrubs, with sprouts and side branches popping out all over the place.

A major frustration in my greenhouse fig journey has been insects, both scale insects and mealybugs. These pests never attack my potted figs which summer outdoors and winter indoors in my barely heated basement. In the greenhouse the problem each year became more and more severe, eventually rendering many of the ripe fruits inedible.More fig espaliers All that despite my attempts at control by going over plants with a toothbrush dipped in alcohol, oil sprays, and sticky barriers to keep ants, which “farm” these pests, from climbing up the trunks.

Scale and mealybugs are hard to control, let alone eradicate. Yet I am now secure enough in my victory to have claimed success in the battle.

Success began last year, when research pointed me to two predators of these pests, Chrysoperla rufilabris and Cryptolaemus montrouzieri, both of which I ordered online and released into the greenhouse. They were expensive, bringing the cost of my fresh figs to about one dollar each. Still worth it, though.

I got to thinking, “Perhaps I could perennialize these predators in the greenhouse so that additional annual purchases would be unnecessary.” As a first step to creating a home (or a jail, depending on your perspective) for them, I covered all greenhouse openings to the outdoors with window screening. These predators also like moisture, so I periodically spritzed the greenhouse and laid some absorbent wads of paper here and there on the branches.


I further thought, “How does the greenhouse environment differ from the great outdoors, where my figs are pest-free?” Rainfall! Although the greenhouse environment is humid, water never falls on the plants’ leaves and stems. So rather than period spritzing, almost every day since early spring I have blasted leaves, stems, and developing fruits with water.

The result: I haven’t seen one mealybug or scale insect all season!

Success, Who Knows Why?

I have to restrain myself from the usual gardener’s hubris in thinking that what I did cured the problem. Perhaps the “rainfall” favored the predators, of which there’s been nary a sign, by knocking the pest insects off the plant, or by creating a moist environment inimical to the pests, or . . .  Perhaps my screening the greenhouse cured the problem. Perhaps the pest problem disappeared for none of these reasons. Or from some combination of these reasons.

If I had a full-blown experimental station and was willing to sacrifice some fresh figs to science, I could possible sleuth out the answer with control plants to what happened. But I don’t, so I’ll just keep enjoying and be thankful for the fresh figs — and keep a close eye on what’s going on.

Dondé Está la Salsa?

I have a lot of faith in natural systems (aka Mother Nature), but sometimes she gets things mixed up. Case in point relates to peppers. The pepper crop this year is excellent, mostly because I staked each plant, weeded well, and grew varieties that do well here (Escamillo, Carmen, Perperoncini, and, best of all for flavor and production, Sweet Italia). 

What can be done with excess peppers? Salsa, of course. 

But a key ingredient for salsa is cilantro, which enjoys cool weather both for germination and growth. Self-seeded cilantro plants were sprouting and growing all over the place a few months ago. The dried stems topped by BB-sized seeds is all that remains of them. Cilantro seedsThose seeds will drop and germinate in the cooler temperature a few weeks hence. But I need cilantro now.

With foresight, I could have collected and sown these seeds a few weeks ago. The plants would have bolted (put energy into flowers rather than leaves) rather quickly but repeated sowings would have kept me in fresh new plants.

Belatedly, I have sown those seeds. To speed germination, I soaked them, then planted them in seed flats I kept in the refrigerator for a day and then moved to a cool, shaded area. Optimum temperatures for germination and growing of cilantro is 50-85° F. As I write, the temperature is in the mid-90s.
 

Fig Redux, One Week Later, A Bummer

Yes, mealybugs are still not to be seen. But now I see closely related scale insects. And plenty of them. Fig scaleSo I started the water sprays again, which have the potential problem of creating so much humidity and moisture that ripening figs rot. On the other hand, it might set back the scale, perhaps by knocking off ants, who “farm” scale. I also ordered a new predator, one for scale, Aphytis melinus.
 

Mulberries and an (a?) Herb

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Mulberries, Still

I finally am getting to eat some ripe mulberries this year, and they were — and are — very, very good. The wait wasn’t because the tree was too young. And anyway, mulberries are very quick to bear fruit, often the year after planting. 

I got to eat fruit from my tree this year because resident birds have been kind enough to share some with me. Of course, it was not really kindness on their part. Illinois Everbearing mulberry fruitBirds also eat fruit for their juiciness, and the past weeks and weeks of abundant rainfall probably satisfied some of that need. The only other year I had plenty of mulberries — much more than this year — was a few years ago when 17-year cicadas descended upon here. All summer I awoke to their grating cacophony, but did feast on mulberries as birds feasted on the cicadas.

You might think it late in the season for mulberry fruits, which started ripening back in early July, to still be ripening. The variety name of my tree says it all: Illinois Everbearing. Not only is this variety everbearing, but it also has a very fine flavor, much better than the run-of-the-mill and ubiquitous wild mulberries whose fruit is usually too cloying. Illinois Everbearing’s sweetness is balanced with a bit of refreshing tartness.

Good as it is, Illinois Everbearing’s fruits cannot compare with that of black mulberry. The “black” refers to the species, Morus nigra. Illinois Everbearing is a hybrid of our native red mulberry, M. rubra, and white mulberry, M. alba, an Asian species that was introduced into our country about 200 years ago, liked it here, and mated with the native species. Black mulberry can only be grown in Mediterranean climates, so mine, in a large pot, bears only a handful of berries each year.

Some people contend that black mulberries adaptability is more widespread than mild winter climates. I have my doubts but I am going to graft a branch from my little tree onto some stems of some wild mulberries and see what happens. (The wild mulberries might either be white or red mulberries, or natural hybrids of the two; the color designations have nothing to do with the color of fruit a tree bears.)Illinois Everbearing tree

I’m happy enough with the long season, good flavor, and occasional harvest of Illinois Everbearing. Plus, it’s a pretty tree, and large, so the branches are now beyond reach of deer, who love to eat mulberry leaves.

I devote a whole chapter to mulberries, white, red, and black, in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.

Basil, Uh Oh

Bringing my eyes down from the dark mulberries to ground level, and walking over to the vegetable garden, I take a close look at this year’s basil. Hmm. Very slight yellowing of some of the leaves. Could it be  . . . ? Yes, turning over one of those slightly chlorotic leaves I see tell-tale purplish brown spores, indicating downy mildew disease.Basil downy mildew, lf upper

A relative newcomer to the garden scene, basil downy mildew (a different pathogen than cucumber downy mildew, grape downy mildew, etc.) arrived on the East Coast in 2007, made it to the West Coast by 2009, and to Hawaii by 2011. It hitchhike around on infected seed, infected plants, and infected leaves.

Basil downy mildew, leaf underside

Basil downy mildew, leaf underside

Some organic fungicides are allowed for controlling the scourge, but my basil mingles so intimately with other plants in the vegetable garden that I don’t consider that an option. Fortunately, other controls are feasible.

One thing would be to not mingle my basil so intimately with other plants. Sunlight is one nemesis of the mildew, as with most fungi. Better air circulation would also lower the humidity around the plants and speed drying of the foliage, also not to the liking of the mildew fungi.

Going one step further, Dr. Meg McGrath of Cornell University suggests growing basil in pots. Plants can be whisked under cover on cool nights, when dew threatens, or during rain or cloudy conditions.

Starting off with clean seed or plants would also limit infection. Not totally, though. Although the fungus does not overwinter in cold regions, given good (for the fungus) conditions, it can hitchhike up here over hundreds of miles.

Breeders are hard at work developing resistant varieties of basil, with some success. Among the resistant varieties are Amazel (shouldn’t the name be Amasil or Amazil?), Eleanor, Emma, Everleaf (Basil Pesto Party), Devotion, Obsession, and Thunderstruck. I’m growing Amazel and Everleaf this year. No sign of mildew on Amazel. Everleaf, this year, at least, has it as bad as my standard varieties.

None of the resistant mentioned varieties are immune to basil downy mildew, just resistant. So it pays to also give the plants a lot of sunlight and good air circulation, and consider pitted plants, for their mobility.

And Some Entomo . . . No, Etymology

Fun herb fact: The word “herb” was borrowed from the old French word erbe, which is why we don’t — and the British didn’t, initially — pronounce the h. Scribes in the 15th century, influenced by their knowledge of Latin, started using the Latin word herba. But still, no one spoke the h. Fast forward to the mid-19th-century and, all of a sudden, dropping h’s became a marker of low social class among the Brits, so they dropped them.

“Worms” Good and Bad

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Nematodes Galore

The name ”nematode” doesn’t conjure up a creature that you’d normally want to make friends with. It’s other name, roundworm, seems even more repulsive and is, in fact, also a name applied more specifically to a nematode that infects humans and dogs. 

Like it or not, nematodes are all around us, with over 25,000 species described so far that  inhabit diverse ecosystems from thousands of feet deep in the Earth to mountain tops, and from deserts to rain forests. Many are visible only under a microscope; some are two inches long. A square yard of soil can be home to more than a million nematodes, and we humans can be host to about 35 species.

Do we want our plants to cozy up with them?

A number of nematodes infect plants, resulting in stunted growth and, often, swellings on roots or stems.

Soybean cyst nematode

Soybean cyst nematode

Their common names — root knot nematode, stubby root nematode, cyst nematode, lesion nematode — describe some of the symptoms. These plant pathogenic nematodes can do further ill by transmitting bacterial or viral diseases to plants.

I’m not particularly worried about nematodes in my garden. For one thing, they’re more prevalent in warmer climates. Also, good gardening practices, such as enriching the ground with compost, leafy mulches, and other organic materials, and crop rotation go a long way to thwarting such problems.

If I did have a nematode problem, or suspected one, I could reach into a quiver of “organic” solutions. Marigolds can suppress nematodes. Not just a plant here and there, though, but a solid planting of giant, African marigolds. Mustard has a similar effect, whether grown, like the marigolds, as a cover crop, or applied as a seed meal, which also happens to be a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer.

Chitosan, made from the shells of crustaceans and the active ingredient found in commercial products such as Serenade, reputedly bolsters plant defenses against nematodes and other pathogens. (My casual experimenting with Serenade against apple diseases found no benefit.)

Welcome “Worms”

In the same way that just about no one with an eye patch is a pirate, very few “nematodes” are bad guys. In the garden, so-called “predatory” nematodes are better than neutral; they are the “good guys,” preying on a wide range of garden pests.

Some of the most common beneficial nematodes are Steinernema carpocapsae, S. feltiae, and Heterorhabditisheliothidis bacteriophora. These three nematodes vary in their habits although they all attack a wide variety of garden pests. Steinernema carpocapsae is an “ambusher forager” that lies in wait near the soil surface for unwary pests to wander past. Heterorhabditisheliothidis bacteriophora is a “cruise forager” that moves around through various depths of soil, ready to pounce upon unsuspecting sedentary pests. The habitat and hunting behavior of S. feltiae nematodes is intermediate to the other two.

Waxworm releasing beneficial nematodes

Waxworm releasing beneficial nematodes

Beneficial nematodes can be purchased. To be effective, they must be shipped at the right growth stage and applied without their drying out. Even then, annual applications are frequently needed.

Some strains of the beneficial nematodes can survive and multiply in the soil year after year. I imagine that my garden soil has plenty of “good” nematodes; perhaps more would be better. Some day I may extract some of the “good guy” nematodes from my soil, multiply them, and then re-apply them to my ground.

For now, I intend to get hold of a starter supply of native, perennial nematodes and multiply my holdings, a process which I think will have the added benefit of being fun and interesting. The three kinds of nematodes extracted from soils in central New York, are available for purchase from http://blogs.cornell.edu/ccefieldcropnews/2018/02/28/discount-available-on-biocontrol-nematodes-to-protect-alfalfa-corn-crops/.

With nematodes in hand, a nematode host is needed if I’m going to multiply them. Waxworms, sold for fishing bait, are a convenient host. The waxworms get incubated with the nematodes which, after a couple of weeks, are rinsed free of the waxworms with water.

The aqueous suspension of nematodes is then ready for application. To prevent their drying out, they’re best applied in early morning or evening along with plenty of water. If all goes as planned, they should establish and multiply to kill such pests as wireworms that bore into carrot and radish roots, plum curculio that attack apple, plum and peach fruits, and any cutworms that attack just about everything.

Come Visit My Farmden

Last minute notice: Come visit my farmden, in real life, on June 24th. As part of the Garden Conservancy Open Days program, I’ll be hosting visitors between 1 pm and 4:30 pm on that day. For more information about my farmden and other local sites, go to the https://www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days/open-days-schedule/ulster-county-ny-open-day-2.

Invaders

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Dare I Speak the Name?

As I was bicycling down the rail trail that runs past my back yard, I was almost bowled over by a most delectable aroma wafting from a most despised plants. Autumn olive blossomsThe plants were autumn olives (Elaeagnus umbellata), shrubs whose fine qualities I’m reluctant to mention for fear of eliciting scorn from you knowledgable readers.

Yet, you’ve got to admit that the plant does have its assets, in addition to the sweet perfume of its flowers. Okay, here goes: The plant is decorative, with silvery leaves that are almost white on their undersides. And the masses of small fruits dress up the stems as they turn silver-flecked red (yellow, in some varieties) in late summer. Autumn olive fruitThose fruits are very puckery until a little after they turn red, but then become quite delicious, and healthful.

(I included autumn olive in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, and also planted them — but that was before the plant became illegal here.)

Another asset of autumn olive is that it actually improves the soil, converting air-borne nitrogen, which plants can’t use, into soil-borne nitrogen for use by autumn olives and nearby plants.

This native of Asia, introduced into the U.S. almost 200 years ago, was promoted in the last century as a plant for wildlife and soil improvement. Decades ago I worked for the USDA in what was then known as the Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resource Conservation Service), an agency that not only promoted the plant but also developed varieties for extensive planting.autumn olive fruits in bowl

Autumn olive likes it here and has invaded fields throughout the northeast, the Pacific northwest, and even Hawaii. It’s an invasive plant. Don’t grow it! (But feel free to enjoy its aroma, its beauty, and its fruits.)

One of My Favorite “Invasives”

As autumn olive blossoms fade, the temporary vacuum in sweet-perfumed air will be filled by another plant, black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia). That aroma comes from the white blossoms that dangle in chains like wisteria blooms from this tree’s branches.Black locust flowers

Like autumn olive, black locust has other assets in addition to those offered by its blossoms. It’s a leguminous plant, like peas and beans, so, with the help of bacteria residing in its roots, also puts air-borne nitrogen into a form utilizable by plants. 

Black locust’s other assets refer to it when dead: The dense wood is very resistant to rot — much, much more so than cedar — and is very high in BTUs for burning. I converted all my garden’s fenceposts and arbors, which I had previously made from cedar and lasted only about 10 years, to locust.

I’m lucky enough to have a mini-forest of them growing along one edge of my property. I cut them when they are five or six inches in diameter, and in 10 or so years I have a new one to replace the cut one. It adds up.

Quick growth and the ability to resprout from stumps and grow in poor soil by “making” its own nitrogen makes black locust, like autumn olive, a plant not loved by everyone. Despite being native here in the U.S., black locust has been classified as a “native invasive.” The reason is that it was originally native to only two regions in the U.S., from which it has now spread far and wide.

Change Will Come

The classification of “native invasive” highlights the capricious legality and classification of invasive plants. Where is the boundary within which a plant becomes an accepted native? In the mountain that rises up just behind my valley setting, lowbush and highbush blueberry are thriving natives. But these plants would never turn up here on my land, except that I planted them. (And both thrive.)

Clove currant is another plant I grow, one that, in addition to bearing spicy fruits, is resistant to just about every threat Nature could throw at it: deer, insects diseases, cold, drought. And it’s a native plant, but native throughout the midwest, not here. Should I call it a “native?”

Black locust is such a useful tree that its spread was aided and abetted by humans. But it also would have spread, albeit more slowly, without our intervention. Even autumn olive, given enough time, might have hitch-hiked here in some way from Asia.

The Earth’s landscape is not static. Changes represent interactions of climate, vectors, chance, and time. Nostalgia may have us wishing for the view out the window to remain the same as it was when we were children, but that’s not Mother Nature’s way.

End of Year Punch List

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Winterizing

My carpenter friends, near the end of their projects, have their “punch lists” to serve as reminders what odds and ends still need to be done. I similarly have a punch list for my gardens, a punch list that marks the end of the growing season, a list of what (I hope) will get done before I drop the first seeds in the ground next spring.

(No need for an entry on the punch list to have the ground ready for that seed. Beds have been mulched with compost and are ready for planting.)

Hardy, potted plants, including some roses, pear trees, and Nanking cherries, can’t have their roots exposed to the full brunt of winter cold.plants, almost ready for winter I’ve huddled all these pots together against the north wall of my house but soon have to mound leaves or wood chips up to their rims to provide further cold protection.

I’ll save some leaves to protect strawberry plants. Their insulating blanket won’t go down until weather turns colder, with the soil frozen an inch deep, or else their evergreen leaves will rot beneath the leaves.

I’ll be digging out or cutting down a number of woody plants, some even 10 or 20 years old, in the next few days or weeks to make way for better ones. (Ruthless!) Anna hardy kiwifruit, short for Annanasnaya, grows very well but ripens a bit late and doesn’t have quite as good flavor as my other varieties: Geneva, MSU, and Dumbarton. So out it goes. The same goes for Mars, Concord, and Cayuga White grapes; their flavor isn’t up to snuff. And Halle’s Giant, Lewis, and Clark filberts, except that their shortcoming is their susceptibility to the disease filbert blight.

A 5 gallon bucket filled with equal parts sifted compost and soil will be ingredients for any potting soils I’ll need for seedlings from midwinter on. For the finished potting soil, I’ll mix in another 5 gallon bucket with equal parts peat moss and perlite.

One sunny day soon I’ll lean pitchforks, rakes, and shovels against the garden carts and brush them with linseed oil diluted with equal parts paint thinner. Tool handles, readiedAfter the handles have been wiped down, 10 minutes later, they’ll be in good condition for at least another year.

Pruning hardly needs to be added to my punch list. I’m reminded about this annual job every time I look out the window or walk out the back door.

Deer at Bay

Protecting some of my trees and shrubs from animals doesn’t make it to the punch list either — because it needs to be done by now! Young pears (Concorde, Abbe Fetal, and Lady Petre) and apples (Liberty, Macon, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Ashmeads Kernel, and Pitmaston Pineapple) already have their hardware cloth and/or plastic collars protecting their bottom couple of feet of growth.

What about branches higher up, the ones the deer would find tasty. Thanks to fencing at both the north and south ends of my property, a couple of Deerchaser battery-powered repellants, two outdoor dogs, and vibes from me, deer rarely venture on site. But, as I discovered this past summer, just one deer on just one night can do a lot of damage to a young tree.

So this year I’m putting 5 foot high by 3 foot diameter cages of 2×4 welded wire fencing around my young apple trees. Deer protection, high fenceThe pear trees, close to the house, don’t get bothered. The problem with such cages is that it’s a hassle to weed or prune within the cage — both very important for young trees. Two metal stakes, each a 5 feet length of EMT electrical conduit, woven into part of fencing on opposite sides allows me to slide the fence up and down to get inside a cage to work. These trees, which are replacing my very dwarf apple trees, are semi-dwarfs which can fend for themselves once they get above 5 feet. Then I’ll remove the cages.

Memorables, for Vegetables

And now, some notes for next season’s vegetable garden . . .

Reduce the number of pepper varieties to those that perform and taste best here: Sweet Italia,

Italian Sweet peppers

Italian Sweet peppers

Carmen, and Escamillo. And stake them right from the get go.

Plant a greater proportion of tight-necked onions, such as Patterson, New York Early, and Copra, to avoid bacterial diseases.

Plant less bok choy; no need to be inundated by them just because the space is available.

Keep an eye out for whiteflies and caterpillars on cabbage family plants; act sooner rather than later to keep them in check.

Plant more Shirofumi edemame; 30 feet of bed should be about right, they need a long, hot season.

Try King of the Garden Limas again, but plant even earlier indoors. 

Get Out!

Okay, time to get outside to work on my punch list before any snowfall limits the possibilities.

The Morning After

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Endive Galore

I don’t know if was a case of green thumbness or the weather, but my bed of endive is now almost as frightening as a zucchini planting in summer. The bed, 3 feet wide by 20 feet long, is solid green with endive plants, each and every plant looking as if it’s been pumped up on steroids.Endive bed

I sowed seeds in 4 by 6 inch seed trays around August 1st, “pricked out” the seedlings into individual growing cells filled with homemade potting soil about a week later, and  transplanted them into the garden in the beginning of September. The bed had been home to one of this summer’s planting of sweet corn (Golden Bantam), a heavy feeder, so after clearing the corn I slathered the bed with an inch depth of pure compost.

Perhaps the vigor of these plants also reflects the extra space I gave them. In years past I would cram 3 rows into a 3-foot-wide bed. Because we never can eat all the endive I plant, this year I planted only 2 rows down the bed. Hating to see any wasted space in the garden, I set a row of lettuce transplants, now eaten, up the middle of the bed. The endive plants have opportunistically expanded to fill whatever space they can.

Fortunately, there’s no rush to eat all that greenery. The bigger they get, the more the endives’ leaves fold in on themselves to create blanched, succulent leaves of a loose head. Upcoming cooler weather also brings out the best flavor in these plants. After being covered with clear plastic, which I’ll support with a series of metal hoops, the endive should remain flavorful for weeks to come. That’s assuming the muscular plants can be fit beneath the hoops and plastic.

I do have a Plan B: Just as zucchini bread was invented as a way to deal with zucchini excess, white bean and escarole soup might be just the ticket for my escarole “problem.”

Floating Row Cover

Another bed, planted from seed sown on August 15th, is also full of greenery. Not nearly as dense, though, which is okay because the bed is planted for its roots. Up the bed run 2 rows of turnips and one row of winter radishes.

One year I couldn’t see the turnip and radish bed because I had hidden it beneath a “floating row cover.” Floating row covers, which let water, light, and air pass through, are so lightweight that they can be just laid on top of the ground to be pushed up by growing plants. That year, I made it even easier on my plants by propping the covers up with the same kinds of metal hoops that will hold the clear plastic over the endive bed once the weather turns cold.  The row of hoops propping up the plastic creates a tunnel that, every year, looks like a sleeping, giant, white caterpillar. Garden view, the morning after

The purpose of the floating row cover was to block the root maggots that typically tunnel into many — too many — of my turnip and radish roots. Beneficial nematodes are supposed to help deal with that problem, but have been — in my experience, at least — ineffectual.

This year, for no apparent reason, most of the turnips and radishes are free of maggot attack.

A View From Above

Every morning I look down from my second story bedroom window at the garden. Closest in view is the bed of endive; looking further back, my eyes come to the back of the garden, where a row of tall, thin evergreens stand sentry to block the view of the compost piles. Those evergreens, spires of the Emerald (also known as Smaragd and Emerald Green) variety of arborvitae, are among the commonest of landscape plants. I like them.Garden view from bedroom window

The trees are at their upper limit of 15 feet high and 5 feet wide, and create a perfect screen without needing too much elbow room. They’re also perfect for injecting a bit of civility to the more frowsy gooseberry bushes and overgrown (at least till I prune them) grapevines in the foreground. Some arborvitaes turn a muddy green in winter but Emerald keeps its vibrant green color.

To the north, just beyond the garden is another row of spires, five plants of a juniper variety called Gold Cone. Each plant will mature to 10 feet tall with a spread of a mere 3 feet, just enough to hide my Cool Bot walk-in cooler, now home to boxes of apples, pears, pawpaws, cabbages, carrots, and persimmons. Livening things up is the gold coloration at the tips of Gold Cone branches.

 

Grapes And Onions

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So Many Choices, In Grapes

With over 5,000 varieties of grapes from which to choose, how can anyone decide which to grow? For better or worse, that choice is naturally limited by climate and pests in each part of the country. Here in the northeast, major limitations are humid summers that spread indigenous disease and frigid winter temperatures.

There’s still plenty of grape varieties from which to choose, which I’ve done over the years, weeding out varieties that would succumb to cold or disease. My varietal possibilities are further limited by my low lying land close to acres upon acres of forest. Cold, moisture-laden air sinks into this low spot, and the abundance of wild grapes clambering up forest trees provide a nearby reservoir of insects and disease spores.

With all that, I want to grow varieties that taste good to me (fresh, not for wine). I have dairy farmer-cum-grape breeder Elmer Swenson to thank for many of the delectable varieties that bear well here, and that I would recommend to others. His Somerset Seedless was ripe back in August, as was his seeded Swenson Red. Right now, the seeded variety Brianna — one of my favorites for flavor — is just finishing, just after Edelweiss and Lorelei.

Swenson Red Grape

Edelweiss has the strong, “foxy” flavor characteristic of American-type grapes, so is not for everyone. That flavor is most familiar in the well-known variety Concord, originated by Ephraim Bull in Concord Massachusetts over 150 years ago. I finally got around to planting a Concord vine a few years ago, and finally decided this year, despite my affinity for grape foxiness, that I didn’t like Concord’s flavor.

Edelweiss grape

Edelweiss grape

Mr. Swenson isn’t responsible for all my favorite grapes. There’s Alden, with a nice, meaty texture to go with its distinctive flavor. And two excellent, seedless grapes: Glenora and Vanessa. I’m going to rip Concord out of the ground, as well as Cayuga White, which also didn’t make the flavor cut, and Mars, which gets too much disease, and replace them with additional vines of Glenora and Vanessa. The jury is still out on Wapanuka, Reliance, and NY Muscat.

Concord grape

Concord grape

All my “keeper” varieties bear reasonably well and are bursting with distinctive, delicious flavors such that I cannot, even when grape season has passed, bring myself to eat the relatively flavorless varieties generally offered from supermarket shelves.

Rotting Onions

How are your onions holding up? Mine, not so well. I knew that the giant Ailsa Craig onions weren’t keepers. But they shouldn’t be already turning soft and smelly.

Some sleuthing uncovered the culprits: the bacteria, Pantoea agglomerans and/or its cousin P. ananatis, both of which can be lumped together in the affliction called “center rot.” The symptom is rotting of one of the rings (scales) somewhere between the center and the outside of a bulb.Onion center rot

Most plant diseases are caused by fungi rather than bacteria, and fungal diseases are generally easier to control. Even pesticide sprays are not very effective against either onion pathogen. Warm, moist conditions are what have allowed the Pantoea cousins to thrive this year.

Which is not to say that I plan to sit back and watch my onions spoil in future years, or give up growing onions. I already rotate my onion plantings, which would have been my first plan of attack. Although now that I think of it, though, I do often stick a few of various types of onions and excess seedlings here and there around the garden. No more.

The environment can be made less friendly to the bacterium. Mulching the plants would keep the soil cooler. Especially a few weeks before harvest, any watering should cease. Nitrogen fertilization also needs reining in, which would be hard to do in my garden because I fertilize only with compost. Perhaps mulching would cool the soil enough to slow the compost’s mineralization of soluble nitrogen that plants could absorb.

Onion varieties vary in their susceptibility to center rot. Generally, it is the sweet, European type varieties, such as Sweet Spanish, Candy, and Ailsa Craig, that are most susceptible.

Harvest can play a role also. Too early, before leaves have sufficiently dried and flopped down, and the bacteria might be able to edge its way into the bulb. I normally harvest when tops flop down and bulbs easily roll out of the soil (good), then leave them in place to cure in the sun (bad). Next year, I’ll roll them out of the soil and then move them to a shaded, airy place to cure. Or lay them out in the garden so each onion’s leaves covers its neighboring onion’s bulb.

All these measures are worthwhile even if your onions have always looked fine. Center rot bacteria are pretty much ubiquitous, just waiting for good enough conditions to ruin your (and my) onions.

Some Good, Some Bad

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Picking Pecks and Pecks of Peppers

Warm — no, hot — weather going on and on keeps tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers chugging along, restrained only by diminished sunshine. Still, before real autumn weather rolls in and decimates these warmth-loving plants, it’s time to do some evaluation of this season before it fades into memories that meld with previous seasons.

As usual, there are successes and failures. Good — no, great — are this year’s peppers. I credit the rousing success mostly to My choice of two varieties. The first was an old variety, Sweet Italia, aka Sweet Italian or Italian Sweet. Other varieties are available with similar names; the names are similar, but not the same, as are the fruits.

Sweet Italia has two problems: The seed is hard to find; and the plants flop over under their weight of fruit. Both problems are easily solved: Save seed (Sweet Italia is not a hybrid, so seeds come “true” as long as the plants are sufficiently distant from other pepper varieties); stake the plants. Sweet Italia is especially notable for bearing large and relatively early crops of deliciously sweet red peppers even under northern growing conditions. It’s much, much tastier than Sweet Ace, which is often grown commercially as an early ripening, sweet red pepper.Italia, Escamillo pepper

The other pepper variety of note is Escamillo, larger than Sweet Italia and also delicious, in a different way. Escamillo, bred by Johnny’s Selected Seeds, ripens yellow. Like Sweet Italia, Escamillo is a corno di toro, shaped like the horn of a bull.

Blight!!

Balancing my peppery successes are two failures celery and celeriac. Plants looked healthy from the time I sowed seed, indoors in February, until the transplants went out in the garden, in early May. It was downhill from there.

Plants are stunted and their leaves are spotted by disease. The spots are very distinctive, tan with black edges, and angular in outline. The tan areas lacked pycnidia, small, black propagules visible with the naked eye, so the disease is not one of the fungal diseases that afflict celery and celeriac.Celery bacterial blight

A web search of symptoms and images identified the problem as bacterial blight (Pseudomonas syringae pv. apii). Cool, wet weather exacerbates the condition, and we did have some of that this summer. The fungus can also spend the winter in the soil, which makes a good case for crop rotation, not planting any member of a family of plants in the same place oftener that every 3 years. I did move my celery and celeriac far from previous two locations, though.

I’m pinning the blame on seedling flats that were not sufficiently cleaned. Usually, I just give them a rinse after use; next year they’ll also get a spritzing with alcohol. 

Infected seed could also have been the culprit — doubtfully in my garden. The celeriac seed was from a reputable nursery. What’s more, the celery seed comes from my own plants, in the greenhouse. Those plants also self-seed in the greenhouse, and the volunteer plants that come up in the greenhouse look fine. (I thin them out, letting the best ones grow to provide celery all winter, and then self-seed again in spring.)

If infected, seed could be de-contaminated with a hot water treatment, 122°F for 25 minutes. Or with time. Seeds more than two years old don’t carry disease.

Other plans for next year are to be even more thorough with end-of-season cleanup of beds and to rip out of the ground any plants suspected of harboring disease as soon as noticed.

As a last resort, copper sprays, which are approved for organic use, could be applied. I probably won’t do that; it takes the fun out of just popping fresh vegetables into your mouth in among the beds. I have plenty of other good stuff to eat out there.

A Fruitful Season

In fruits, pears have been outstanding this year. Not because of any greenness of my thumb; everybody around here had good crops of pears. Must be something about the weather.

Also outstanding have been grapes. Again, not because of the greenness of my thumb, but because I have so many vines and so many different varieties. Despite weather conducive to diseases, there were — and still are — plenty of good grapes for eating.

Flowers did fine this year, except Lemon Gem marigolds, one flower that I try each year to sow enough of to define the leading edges of the beds in the vegetable garden.Lemon Gem in path They typically germinate poorly for me, but they occasionally self-seed. I couldn’t bear to remove the few that popped up in the main path near the leading edges of the beds. Their general absence makes those few all the more outstanding.