SOW NOW?
Next Year’s ‘Chokes
Ahh, such a leisurely time of year to sow seeds. And for some of them, I don’t care if they don’t sprout for months. You might wonder: Why sow now; why so laid back?
I’ll start with artichoke, from whose seeds I did want to see sprouts soon. And I did. The seeds germinate readily. Right now, a few small seedlings are growing, each in its own “cell” of a seed flat, enjoying the cool, sunny weather.
Artichoke is a perennial whose natural life cycle is (usually) to grow leaves its first year, then edible buds its second year and for a few years hence. Especially in colder regions, artichokes can sometimes grown from seed like annuals, with a wrinkle.
To make that transition from growing only leaves to growing flower buds, the plants need to get vernalized, that is, to experience some winter cold. Except that winter cold here in the Hudson Valley (and everywhere else colder than Hardiness Zone 7) will do the plants in. So we cold-climate gardeners need to trick the plants into feeling like they experienced winter cold, just not our winters’ depth of cold.
When growing artichokes like annuals, from seed sown in spring, you make “winter” by exposing the young, growing seedlings to cool, but not frigid, temperatures (32-50°F) for a couple of weeks. The problem with this method is that the plants are fairly small when they get this signal that “winter” is over. In my experience, these small plants make commensurately small buds for harvest.
I’m lucky enough to have a greenhouse that gets very cool in winter, but not below freezing. My young artichoke plants will continue to grow very large though the very extended “autumn” weather in the greenhouse. In midwinter, they should get plenty of chilling. Come spring, after frost danger is past, I’ll plant out the large plants to, I hope, make large, fat buds.
I got this idea from growing cardoon, which is essentially the same as artichoke, except it’s grown for its large leaf stalks.
Or it’s grown as a flower, in which case it would require the same conditions as artichoke to make flowers. I don’t like cardoon as a vegetable but do like it as a flower, so last year, around now, I sowed cardoon seeds and grew the seedlings in the greenhouse just as I’ve described for artichoke. The result was big, fat, beautiful, blue flowers. I expect the same, except I’ll harvest the artichoke buds before they open.
Actually, I grew two cardoon plants, and for some reason one of them grew only leaves all summer, and is still growing them, the olive-green leaves each rising from ground level in a four-foot-high-whorl.
More Hucks’
A couple of months ago I collected huckleberry seeds from my huckleberry plant and sowed them. As expected, they still haven’t sprouted. They weren’t expected to sprout, at least not until they were “stratified.”
Like artichoke, huckleberry (Gaylussaccia baccata) needs to feel that winter is over, in this case before its seeds will sprout. Stratification, as this cold exposure is called, prevents small seedlings from being killed by winter cold after sprouting in late summer or autumn.
My huckleberry plant in fall
Again, it’s a certain duration of cool (32-50°F) temperatures that do the trick. Under natural conditions, these chilling requirements are fulfilled in late autumn and/or in spring. In this case, colder temperatures would do no harm, but would not put any hours into the “chilling bank.” Once the “chilling bank” has been filled, the seeds await warm enough temperatures to sprout.
(For more details and wrinkles about seed germination, see my latest book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.)
The pot of huckleberry seeds has been sitting outdoors, covered, since they were sown. If I want earlier sprouting, I’ll bring the pot into the greenhouse in winter.
Ramping Up
I collected seeds from my ramp plants about a month ago with an eye to increasing my holdings. You guessed it: Ramps also need cold. But given mere stratification, the seed will not germinate. The behavior of ramp seeds is a little different from huckleberry seeds in that ramp seeds have a double dormancy.
Roots need to grow before the shoots will sprout. That first stage requires a couple of months or so of warmth. Only after then can the second stage, shoot growth, begin, except that won’t occur until after a stratification period, with cool temperatures, again between 32-50°F.
Under natural conditions, ripe ramp seeds get their warm period before winter sets in and then are ready to sprout in spring. But further north, where seeds ripen later, that first stage, to get root growth underway, is delayed until the summer after the seeds drop. In that case, sprouts don’t poke above ground until their second spring.
I don’t want to wait that long so I sowed my ramp seeds in a seed flat which I’m keeping in a warm place for a couple of months. After that, I’ll move the flat to cooler temperatures. And then, come spring, sprouts — I hope.
My ramps mother plants
I guess two plants per pole, with poles about a foot apart, is too crowded. Next year: one plant per pole.
I train my tomato plants to stakes and single stems, which allows me to set plants only 18 inches apart and harvest lots of fruit by utilizing the third dimension: up. At least weekly, I snap (if early morning, when shoots are turgid) or prune (later in the day, when shoots are flaccid) off all suckers and tie the main stems to their metal conduit supports.
I lop wayward shoots either right back to their origin or, in hope of their forming “spurs” on which will hang future fruits, back to the whorl of leaves near the bases of the shoots.
Newly planted trees and shrubs are another story. This first year, while their roots are spreading out in the ground, is critical for them. I make a list of these plants each spring and then water them weekly by hand all summer long unless the skies do the job for me (as measured in a rain gauge because what seems like a heavy rainfall often has dropped surprisingly little water).
Not only vegetables get this treatment. Buy a packet of seeds of delphinium, pinks, or some other perennial, sow them now, overwinter them in a cool place with good light, or a cold (but not too cold) place with very little light, and the result is enough plants for a sweeping field of blue or pink next year. Sown in the spring, they won’t bloom until their second season even though they’ll need lots of space that whole first season.
Every time I look at a weed, I’m thinking how it’s either sending roots further afield underground or is flowering (or will flower) to scatter its seed. Much of gardening isn’t about the here and now, so I also weed now for less weeds next season. It’s worth it.
The next bins weren’t bins but just carefully stacked layers of ingredients, mostly horse manure, hay, and garden and kitchen gleanings. And then there was my three-sided bin made of slabwood.
Which brings me to my current bin which, now, after many years of use, I consider nearly perfect. Instead of hemlock boards, these bins are made from “composite lumber.” Manufactured mostly from recycled materials, such as scrap wood, sawdust, and old plastic bags, composite lumber is used for decking so should last a long, long time.
When finished, I ripped one board of the bin full length down its center to provide two bottom boards so that the bottom edges of all 4 sides of the bin would sit right against on the ground.
Before setting up a bin, I lay 1/2” hardware cloth on the ground to help keep at bay rodents that might try to crawl in from below.
With the Lincoln-log style design, the bin need be only as high as the material within while the pile is being built, and then “unbuilt” gradually as I removed the finished compost.
I wouldn’t find that many earthworms at work in my own grassy meadow. The last glacier, which receded about 12,000 years ago from the northern parts of the U.S., including here in the Hudson Valley, wiped out all the earthworms. Darwin’s meadow was spared because glaciation didn’t reach as far south as where Darwin’s home eventually stood.
These non-native earthworms are of concern because of the rapidity with which they gobble up organic matter. Their voracious appetites threaten the mountain laurels, rhododendrons, and blueberries that thrive in the organic matter — the leafy mulch — that blankets the forest floors in our nearby Catskill and Shawangunk Mountains.
Through summer, pale pink milkweed blossoms dot the meadow. Come late summer, purple flowers of bee balm cap the sea of green grass like ocean whitecaps. And then, later and on into autumn, various species of yellow goldenrod bloom in succession. In the cool of the morning, dew and morning sunlight bring sparkle to the show.
Grape sticks got plunged into the ground where they grew their own roots, shoots, and everything else. Apples aren’t so amenable to growing their own roots.
Roots of Rabbi Samuel fig, near the endwall, spread under the wall and outside the greenhouse, soaking up so much water that the figs split before ripening. Yet, a few fig fruits escape both afflictions and ripen to juicy sweetness.
The youngsters finally were growing tubers, small bulb-like structures that will, in the future, store energy to carry the plants, dormant and leafless, through winter.
Not that some of the seeds wouldn’t self-sow near the mother plans, but seedlings that do sprout under natural conditions are subject to competition for light, nutrients, and water from other plants.
