GRAPE EXPECTATIONS

/5 Comments/in , , , /by

Hello Vanessa

A few days ago was the perfect day for planting the Vanessa grape vine deposited here by the UPS guy. Not because the weather was warm and sunny or because working outdoors was made all the more pleasant with peach, pear, and plum trees in all their glory, awash in white or pink blossoms. And not because the plums were suffusing the air with a most delectable fragrance.

Vanessa grape

Vanessa grape

The day was perfect for planting because the soil was in such good tilth. With each shovelful, clumps of soil broke apart under their own weight. A far cry from decades ago in my first garden, around this time of year, when digging brought up clods of Wisconsin soil still sticky and wet.

In wet soil, digging drives air out of the soil; under such conditions, roots of trees, shrubs, vines, and seedlings suffer. Better to wait for the soil to dry before planting. But not too long. Soil that is too dry turns rock-hard, too hard to crumble into small pieces to sift amongst roots. All this is moot in sandy soils, which never hold enough water to make them too wet for planting. Firming soil around roots

My present ground is a clay loam, which could be poor for planting if too wet. It wasn’t, because, first of all, it hadn’t rained for a few days. Second, warm weather had warmed the soil, the warmth speeding downward movement of excess water. And third, years and years of mulching with leaves, hay, and compost had made the ground rich in organic matter whose goodness had worked its way down through the soil profile with the help of earthworms and other soil organisms, rain, and the action of alternate freezing and thawing. Organic matter, among other benefits, acts as a glue to aggregate soil particles into a crystalline-like structure that helps with holding both air and water.

Training And Pruning Plans

I can bank on Vanessa growing well her first season in the ground. Soon after she arrived, bare-root, I had her roots plumping up with a day-long soak in water. Her planting hole was just deep enough to let her sit at the same depth as in the nursery, and one-and-a-half to twice the spread of the roots across. I clipped back a couple of long, straggly roots.

Holding the stem with one hand, I pushed the soil I had dug out of the hole back in amongst the roots, working it in with my fingertips after initially sifting soil in among the smaller roots by bouncing the plant up and down a little. With the roots nestled into their planting hole, I sprinkled a couple of gallons of water to further settle the soil and get the plant off to a good start.

She arrived with five strong-looking canes jutting up just above where her roots splayed out. Too many, for my purposes. Like her established neighbors, Vanessa will be trained to a “high wire double cordon spur pruned” system, a mouthful that sounds more complicated than it is. Two trunks will rise, unbranched, to about 6 feet in height to the middle wire of a five-wire trellis. One trunk will continue its journey horizontally along the middle wire in one direction; the extension of the other trunk will do likewise in the opposite direction. These two horizontal growths are permanent fixtures, called cordons (same root as the word “cord”). High wire double cordon spur pruned grape

Grapes bear fruits on one-year old stems — these are the so-called “canes,” easily identified by their smooth, reddish brown bark and roughly pencil-thickness. New shoots growing from buds on canes bear bunches of grapes and can drape on the remaining wires on either side of the middle wire.

The following year, the new shoots become one-year-old canes. Without pruning (or with incorrect pruning), fruiting shoots and canes each year move further and further away from the cordon, so I cut each cane back to 2 buds in winter and, after a few years, cut them all the way back, to be replaced by new canes that are always popping out right from the cordon.New shoots bearing grapes

But all this is in Vanessa’s future. This year, all I want from her is two strong trunks.

Don’t Do What I Did

Rain fell, and I didn’t follow my own advice. Because I needed to convert a lumpy old garden area next door to lawn, and because lawngrass establishes best in cool weather, and because I had two helpers coming in a few days to help with ground preparation, I readied the area with a rototiller. I did so even though rain had been falling all day long. Rain fell even while I was tilling.

All in all, it was a horrible experience. Mud everywhere. Wrestling the tiller. Loud engine chugging away. (Now I remember one reason for my book, Weedless Gardening. Weed-less-ness comes, in part, from dispensing with tilling, which awakens buried weed seeds by exposing them to light. And there’s the added benefit of not having to till.)

Youthful, foolish Lee, tilling

Youthful, foolish Lee, tilling

With good drainage, the job finally got done without excessive destruction of soil structure. And anyway, I was only planting lawngrass.

CATS ON A COOL, GREEN ROOF

/3 Comments/in , , , /by

Not Green Enough

I’m looking up at my green roof, my evergreen roof, and it’s not green enough. Literally. I had expected that by now the roof would be solid green. It’s not.Two cats on my green roof

The green of this roof was supposed to come from the plants growing on it. Because conditions up on the roof are very harsh, the plants I chose were tough ones, hens-and-chicks (Sempervivum spp.). Hens-and-chicks look like little cabbage heads of stubby, succulent leaves. Baby plants push out from around the mother plants, grow, and make more babies, and so on, ad infinitum. Or so I hoped.

The roof only has a couple of inches of “soil” on it and covers a porch, so has no heated space or insulation beneath it. If winter temperatures plummet to 10 degrees below zero, not uncommon here, temperatures within that thin layer of soil also plummet to 10 degrees below zero. If summer temperatures hit 95° in the shade, the soil, which is shaded at one end, also hits 95° — and more in the sunny end. The roof never gets watered, except by natural rainfall.

The hens-and-chicks have established and survived and spread. But not enough. By now, I expected the roof be packed solid with hens-and-chicks, with excess plants spilling decoratively over the front edge. But too much soil still shows. Part of the green problem is that hens-and-chicks are not all that green; the leaves are more pale blue-gray.

Enter Angelina

So I’ve been taking steps to green up the roof.

The first step has been introducing a companion plant for the hens-and-chicks. The plant, which I believe is ‘Angelina’ rocky stonecrop (Sedum rupestre), has been magically appearing here and there in and around my rock walls. Well, not magically. As with other succulents, ‘Angelina’ easily grows into whole new plants wherever any piece of stem or leaf merely drops onto the soil. Over the past few years, whenever I’m so inclined, I grab a few pieces of ‘Angelina’ and toss them up on the roof. They’ve rooted and spread, parading up there as forest-green patches.Sedum Angelina on green roof

I periodically get more serious with ‘Angelina’. “More serious” means filling some cell-type seedling flats with a “soil” of equal parts moist peat and perlite, and poking inch-long pieces of leafy ‘Angelina’ stems into the mix. After a winter in the greenhouse or a sunny window, those cuttings are rooted enough to plug into holes I dibble into the soil on the roof among the hens-and-chicks. The roof is a little more than 100 square feet. Each plant could potentially fill up a square foot in a couple of seasons, so 100 cuttings of this plant would do the trick and take up only a couple of square feet of space in their holding cells.Propagating Angelina plants

Another step to making the rooftop greener is to beef up the “soil.” The soil is actually a mix of equal parts peat and calcined montmorillonite clay (a.k.a. kitty litter, unused). The mix is heavy enough not to blow away, and the peat is relatively resistant to decomposition. Some shovelfuls of this mix periodically tossed up on the roof replace what’s washed away or settled.

The mix is lean in nutrients so, come spring, I could also beef up the rooftop with some fertilizer. Not much, though, because succulents are light feeders and too much fertility would encourage weeds.

Is Green Better Than . . . ?

I don’t get it. Green roofs are so “in” these days, for their green appearance and for their environmental green-ness. Sure, green roofs insulate rooms below from heat and cold. And green roofs capture and evaporate some rainwater rather than let it run down gutter pipes and into sewers or streams. The air above green roofs stays cooler than that above conventional roofs, so heat islands aren’t created.

But are the above good enough reasons to put plants on a roof? After all, good insulation also insulates, a lot better than soil and with a lot less weight. And how much water could a roof of succulent plants — plants known for their low water usage — evaporate?

Much as I love plants, I’d rather see solar panels on roofs. My green roof is for looks (and not sunny enough for solar panels).

And A Bow To The Weeds

My green roof is a testimonial to the tenacity of plants. Despite the leanness of the soil mix and its being initially pretty much weed-free, some weeds have colonized the roof. And they survive, despite the harsh growing conditions up there.Weeds on green roof

The weeds that came in weren’t succulents, but grasses and perennials such as foxtail grass and goldenrod. Every time I look up at the roof, I am awed at how these and other plants not only got there, but how they manage to survive there year after year.

Weeding up there would seem such a travesty — and be very difficult.

 

UBER ORGANIC & A BEAUTIFUL BLOSSOM

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

‘Tis the Season

    ’Tis the season to really put the “organic” in organic gardening. “Organic,” as in organic materials, natural compounds composed mostly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. “Organic,” as in materials that are or were once living, things like compost, leaves, manure, and hay.Vegetable beds in autumn
    I’ve spread compost over almost all my vegetable garden beds. A one inch depth laid atop each bed provides all the nutrients the vegetable plants need for a whole season, in addition to other benefits such as snuffing out weeds, holding moisture, improving aeration, and nurturing beneficial, pest-fighting organisms.Compost piles
    I’m also finishing up the bulk of making new compost for the year. Pretty much everything organic — old vegetable plants, kitchen trimmings, even old cotton clothing — go into the compost piles. The primary foods, though, are hay, which I scythe, rake up, and then haul over from my hayfield, and horse manure, which I pitchfork into the bed of my truck, then unload into a garden cart to haul over to the compost bins.
    Autumn leaves piled up last year have rotted down into “leaf mold,” essentially the same material as compost, with the same benefits. This pile arrived as a truckload last autumn thanks to the generosity of a local landscaper. The leaf mold isn’t quite as thoroughly broken down as the compost so I’m hauling that over to all my young trees and shrubs, and then spreading it beneath them.
    I’m also on the lookout for trash bags stuffed with leaves. Local leaf gatherers/baggers contact me when bags are ready for pickup. I toss the bulging bags into the bed of my pickup truck, then haul them over to and unbag them beneath my blueberry, raspberry, currant, and gooseberry bushes.

Organic Matters

    All this compost, hay, manure, leaf mold, and leaves are food for soil organisms. Most of the food is carbohydrates, the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen that combine to make sugars, starches, cellulose, chitin, and pectin of living organisms. As carbohydrates are gobbled up, nutrients are released for plants.
    In their raw state, these organic materials are relatively low in plant nutrients. Compare the one pound of phosphate you get from ten pounds of 10-10-10 chemical fertilizer with the 100 pounds of compost you need to offer  that same amount of phosphorus.Raking hayfield
    You could get that one pound of phosphate from only ten pounds of an “organic” source such as bone meal. That would be easier than shoveling out 100 pounds of compost — but the soil would then be deprived of 90 pounds of carbohydrate and other bulk that feeds soil organisms and, in turn, bestows physical, nutritional, and biological benefits in the soil.
    So I’m continuing to haul manure, hay, leaves, leaf mold, and compost for my garden. It’s also good exercise.  

A Beaut’ Worth Reviving for Winter

    Much lighter work is digging up an amaryllis bulb. I’ve always considered amaryllis too gaudy a plant, one giant, often flaming red flower appearing atop a bare stalk in early winter. And then, last autumn, someone sent me a big, fat amaryllis bulb along with a pot to plant it in, as well as some potting mix. How could I help but plant it?

Amaryllis now

Amaryllis now

    The flowers were prolific and awesome, flower after flower (yes, flaming red) appearing on each stalk, and stalk after stalk of flowers. This one was a keeper.
    Green leaves, the more the better, are what fuel the following year’s blossoms. (One flower stalk for every nine leaves, according to one source.) Periodic little fertilizer and, as needed, water kept the plant growing well until warm weather settled in for good in spring. Then I tipped the bulb out of its pot and nestled into a hole in a bed in part shade with rich soil and drip irrigation.

Amaryllis late last winter

Amaryllis late last winter

    Just before a night when temperatures dipped into the low 20s, I dug up the bulb and potted it up. It now sits, unwatered and leafless, in the cool temperatures of my north-facing mudroom. A couple of months of cool temperatures, 50 to 60°F, is good for waking up the flower buds within the now fatter bulb — and its small, baby pup, thank you.

THE WEATHER, AND BLACKCAPS

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Dry Soil

    Digging a hole to bury an animal last week gave me new respect for the plant world. Each shovelful brought up dusty, light brown soil, even to a depth of more than two feet. That’s expected, since it hasn’t rained more than 1/4 of an inch here for the past five weeks.
    With their leaves flagging in midday, trees and shrubs don’t exactly look spry. Still, they are alive, even some spring-planted trees and shrubs which have had little time to spread their roots deep and wide.

Thirsty, young Asian persimmon

Thirsty, young Asian persimmon

    Appearance of a soil can be deceiving. There’s some water lurking within those pores, water held tightly by capillary attraction. After heavy rains or irrigation, all soil pores get filled with water, a situation as bad for plants, if it lasts too long, as dry soil. Plant roots need air as well as moisture; air gets sucked in once gravity drains water from the largest soil pores.
    From then on, capillary attraction is what holds moisture in the ground — a pleasant situation for plants because the roots can tap into the more loosely held capillary water while they breathe freely. I prepare for possible droughts when planting by digging relatively small planting holes, which minimizes the amount of ground loosened up, in turn, among other benefits, preserving capillary networks in the soil. (Mulching and watering, right after planting, also helps.)
    Eventually, more and more of the loosely held capillary moisture gets sucked out of the ground by plants and evaporation. At some point, there’s still moisture in the soil, but what’s left is in the smallest pores and right against soil particles. It’s tightly held capillary moisture, water that plants can’t access. They wilt. When moisture levels drop to what’s known as the “permanent wilting point,” plants die.
    We’re not there yet and now, toward the end of the season, woody plants do have a Plan B: They can just drop their leaves, reducing moisture loss from stems and roots, and segue into winter on stored energy and moisture. To a point.

Cold Air

    If it’s not one thing, weather-wise, it’s another. On September 26th, I woke to find parts of the lawn hoary with frost. I’m not complaining. Frost should be expected, on average, around that date around here. Except that I’ve been spoiled for the last few years by much later frosts, frosts, so late that I pulled out old tomato plants because chilly weather drained tomatoes of their flavor rather than frosty weather killing the plants.Endive, lettuce, and old tomato plants
    Also, no complaints because the September 26th brought only a light frost; temperatures just hit 32°F. and the hoariness was spotty, here and there. A light frost is a good thing this time of year. It signals plants to get ready for even colder weather. In preparing for cold, cell walls strengthen and permeability of cells to water is actively altered. Even subtropical plants like peppers and tomatoes toughen up, with some chilly preparation, so that they can now tolerate temperatures that drop even a few degrees below freezing.
    Tender vegetables, frost or no frost, on the wane, have left the door open to vegetables that enjoy the cool weather of autumn. Most of the garden now presents a verdant sight of beds lush with lettuce, Chinese cabbages, winter radishes, endive, turnips, cabbages, arugula, mustard greens, carrot tops, and leeks, all ready for harvest, at my leisure, over the next few weeks.

Fall Black Raspberries

    Segueing over to the fruit world, I’m still harvesting the last of the blackcaps (black raspberries) of the season. Blackcaps? Anyone familiar with this fruit, abundant in the wild and often cultivated, knows that they ripen in midsummer.

Niwot blackcap, now ripe

Niwot blackcap, now ripe

    Last year I planted two new varieties of blackcap, Niwot and Ohio’s Treasure. With most blackcaps, canes just grow their first year, then fruit their second year. (During the second year, new canes are also growing, to fruit the following year, so a planting bears fruit every year.) Niwot and Ohio’s Treasure bear fruit at the end of the canes’ first year of growth, in late summer and autumn. Those same canes — I think — then continue bearing the following year, in summer, just like most blackcaps.
    I haven’t yet decided whether Ohio’s Treasure or Niwot offer the better berry, but it’s nice to be harvesting fresh berries this late in the season.

GOOD FOR CROPS, GOOD FOR THE EARTH

/13 Comments/in , /by

How to be a Good Gardener/Farmer, Simplified

    “The poor farmer grows weeds, the mediorcre farmer grows crops, the good farmer grows soil.” How true, when I think of the good farmers and gardeners I’ve visited over the years. I aspire to be a good farmdener and spend a lot of time trying to grow soil.
    Growing soil isn’t all that complicated. (You do need to start with good drainage of water.)
    First, keep the ground covered. Organic mulches, such as leaves, straw, and wood shavings, keep rain from pounding the surface. The pounding drives small soil particles into pores, sealing the soil surface so water can’t percolate in. Bacteria, fungi, worms, and other soil organisms gobble up organic mulches, releasing nutrients and forming humus, which improves percolation and moisture retention, and makes room also for air in the soil. In my gardens, I never want to see bare ground.Bare, cracked soil
    Live plants likewise protect the ground. The plants might be cabbages, marigolds, carrots, and other garden plants. They might be cover crops, such as rye, oats, peas, or buckwheat, sown specifically to clothe and protect the ground during or at the end of the growing season, and through winter. They might even be weeds — Mother Nature’s way of protecting her soil.
    Second, maintain soil organic matter. Mulches do this, as do growing plants. I go one step further, and import organic matter. Bushel after bushel of leaves that have been raked and bagged by neighbors are collected are unbagged and unraked once they arrive here. Leaves that have been vacuumed into a landscaper’s large truck and then left here in a pile get unpiled here one pitchfork and garden cart at a time.
    I also pitchfork horse manure into the bed of my pickup truck at a local stable. Mostly, that manure is transmuted into compost and then slathered onto beds in the vegetable garden.

Compost, in the making

Compost, in the making

    I also import — really just transfer — some organic material from one part of my property to another. My small hayfield gets mowed once a year by tractor to keep it from becoming forest but parts of it I periodically scythe, these mowings to feed, along with the horse manure (and kitchen waste, old garden plants, etc.), compost piles.
    The third key to growing soil is to maintain fertility. A soil test can confirm what, if anything, is needed. If the first and second points in growing soil are followed, fertility is probably up to snuff.
    And finally, the fourth key to growing soil: Minimize soil disturbance, avoiding tillage or, at least, excessive tillage. Tillage mixes so much oxygen into the ground that soil organisms go into a feeding frenzy, in so doing gobbling up organic matter too fast. Thus, many of the above benefits, physical, biological, and nutritional, waft away, literally, as carbon dioxide.
    Farming and gardening aren’t “natural.” At their best, they are a balancing act that leans towards emulating natural systems. Which is to say, for instance, that tillage, is not all bad; it can be part of good soil growing if not done to excess and points one, two, and three are followed.
    A measure of “organic matter content” (OMC), from a soil test, provides a rough indication of soil growing progress. Less than 3% means more work is needed. Five percent, or more, is very good. (My vegetable beds are at about 15%.)

Blue-Green Algae Redux

    Last week’s notes about the darker side — and the brighter side — of blue-green algae may have left everyone feeling helpless. After all, you can’t change the hot dry weather that is, in part, responsible for the current blooms. But nitrogen, phosphorus, and other minerals washing into waterways to feed the bacteria also play a role, and it’s something over which we have control.
    Improper septic systems are one culprit.
    More topical culprits are mineral nutrients originating in backyards and farm fields. Too many farmers and homeowners subscribe to the philosophy that “if a little is good, more is better,” when it comes to fertilizer. Not so. Too much fertilizer not only is a waste of money; it damages or kills plants and, with rain, leaches through or runs off the soil to eventually find its way into waterways. A soil test will tell what nutrients, if any, are needed.
    Even better, if fertilizer is needed, is to use an organic fertilizer. Most are not water soluble until metabolized by soil organisms, which means they are less likely to wash through the soil.
    Better still would be to use compost to provide fertility. Nutrients in compost are locked up physically and chemically, waiting to be released by soil life in synch with plant uptake and growth.

Terraced field in Viet Nam

Terraced field in Viet Nam

     Phosphorus is a plant nutrient that binds tightly to soil granules, but makes its way downhill when rain washes over bare soil to move it downslope. One way to keep this nutrient out of waterways is to keep the soil covered with mulch or vegetation, especially on sloping land. Another way is to avoid exposing soil by tillage. Another way, if tillage is needed, is to till perpendicularly to the fall line of a slope. And yet another way is to alternate tilled areas with grassy strips to catch and hold soil.

Rye cover crop

Rye cover crop

    Do a lot of these recommendations — mulches, cover crops, composts, no-till — for preventing blue-green algae blooms sound familiar? Good gardening and farming practices are also good for the environment.

DRY WOOD, & AUTUMNAL AIR

/3 Comments/in , , , , , /by

 Passionflower to the Rescue

   When I began, many years ago, to heat my home with wood, I struggled to get the driest possible wood, finally building a 60-foot long woodshed beneath which a double row of logs basked in the direct hit of sunlight from the south. I more recently learned that firewood can be too dry, which is when moisture drops below 15 to 20 percent. Bone dry wood can’t get enough oxygen for a clean, efficient burn, so smoke, within which is locked the potential for rendering additional heat, is produced; pump enough oxygen into the mix, though, and you get an inferno that can damage a woodstove.
    So — and here’s the plant-related part — rather than tear down or put siding on my super-drying woodshed, I put some heat loving vines to climb and provide some shade on the south face. Sections of hog-fencing temporarily hung on hooks just below the roof in front of each of the 8 foot bays support the vines.
    Maypop, Passiflora incarnata, is an ideal candidate for this location. (Learn more about maypop — a whole chapter’s worth! — Uncommon Fruits For Every Garden.) It’s an herbaceous perennial, emerging early each June to grow vigorously into lanky vines 10 or more feet long. Maypop is a hardy species of passionflower, and a few weeks after emerging, the intricate blue or white blossoms unfold along the stems.White maypop flower
    Flowers would be enough, but there’s more. A few weeks later, those flowers morph into egg-shaped fruits: tropical passionfruits this far north.Maypop fruit
    In southeastern U.S., maypop, with its spreading root system, is considered a weed. This far north, maypop will enjoy the extra heat of the microclimate at the south face of the woodshed. The woodshed itself will contain the plant in its travel northward. The lawnmower will contain the plant in is travel southward. Let it spread all it wants east and west along the base of the shed.

Morning Glory & Kin for Quicker Effect

    In spring I planted a maypop plant at the foot of four of the woodshed bays. As a perennial, maypop needs time to get established. Because I went to the trouble of hanging a trellis from each of the bays, I wanted something to clothe even this summer.
    Enter the Convolvulaceae family, which counts morning glory among its kin. Less know, but also kin and vines with pretty flowers, are cardinal vine and moonflower.  I figured that some member of this family could accompany maypop in each planting hole.Morning glory against woodshed
    All three Convolvulaceae family members grow vigorously so could provide good coverage for the woodshed. They also integrate well with each other, design-wise. Morning glory wakes up early, its sky-blue flowers opening each morning to foreshadow the blue sky that lies ahead. (The flowers remain furled under overcast skies.) Once the sun rises high in the sky, fire-engine red flowers of cardinal flower take the torch for the remainder of the day. As night falls, moonflowers’ large, white trumpets open and emit their sweet scent.
    This year, those annual vines grew so vigorously that they stunted their companion maypops. Next year will be better. Also, a couple of plants of another vine, native and somewhat decorative, have tried to get a foothold in the planting. Poison ivy, you’re not welcome here.

Autumnal Readiness

    Morning glories have started lingering later into the mornings, a sign that autumn is approaching. I’m also getting signals — a softness in the air and an occasional chill, a slight chill — of autumn’s approach. Those signals do not have me lingering late in the morning, though.
    The imminence of autumn has me scurrying around making sure all is copacetic in the weeks to come and on into next year. Turnips and winter radishes have been thinned. Cabbages, Chinese and European, transplants are growing well, hinting at crocks of kim-chi and sauerkraut to come. Onions have been harvested and woven into ropes for storage, now in the garage, later in the basement.Winter radishes and Chinese cabbages
    Any cleared vegetable bed is given a thorough weeding and then an icing of an inch depth of compost. That compost will snuff out small weeds attempting to sprout below. Additionally, it will feed soil microbes which will, in turn, feed plants for at least a year. I’ll sow arugula, mustard greens, and “spring” radishes in the bed which I recently cleared of sweet corn, weeded, and composted.
    A couple of sites have been prepared for two new trees. “Prepared” is too fancy a word; all I did was pile mulch on the ground at both locations. The mulch will kill existing vegetation and leave soft, moist ground for easy planting in October.
    Autumn will be bountiful and next year will be a good year.

UNPERMACULTURE

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Accusations,  (Mostly) not True

I’ve understandably been accused of being a “permie,” that is, of practicing permaculture.
    (In the words of permaculture founder, Bill Mollison, “Permaculture is about designing sustainable human settlements. It is a philosophy and an approach to land use which weaves together microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management, and human needs into intricately connected, productive communities.” In the words of www.dictionary.com, permaculture is “a system of cultivation intended to maintain permanent agriculture or horticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem.”)
    Walk around my farmden and, yes, you’ll come upon Nanking cherry bushes where forsythia bushes once lined the driveway, an American persimmon tree where a lilac bush once stood, and other edible plants used also for landscaping. In the vegetable garden, I preserve soil integrity by never tilling it, and, in the south field, blackcurrant bushes make use of the space beneath pawpaw trees. There’s the requisite mushroom yard of shiitake-inoculated logs, free-range poultry, solar panels, a rain barrel . . .

Pawpaws interplanted with blackcurrants, and a row of hardy kiwis

Pawpaws interplanted with blackcurrants, and a row of hardy kiwis

    But no! I am not a permie. My vegetables grow in beds in parallel, straight rows (rather than keyhole plantings) and, despite that commingling of blackcurrants and pawpaws, most trees, shrubs, and vines here keep to themselves. Permaculture plantings of, say, hazelnuts in tall grass and rubbing elbows with elderberries, seaberries, apples, pears, and other edibles become, over time, an unproductive management nightmare with some plants drowning out others, productivity declining due to shade, and diseases increasing from tangled stems creating dank conditions. The paltry output of such planting are best left for wildlife, who can afford to spend all day foraging for a few tidbits of food.
    My hazelnuts are grown in a mown strip that, for easy gathering, is sheared low as nuts ripen.
    Low maintenance is a goal touted by permaculturalists; understandably so. But taken to the extreme, low maintenance means not giving the grape vine the pruning it needs to be a healthy vine yielding the most flavorful berries that are easy to harvest. (One book suggests, rather than troubling with a trellis, growing grape vines up trees; the vines do so in the wild, but such fruit, in partial shade and not easily accessible, can never be high quality.)
    Much of permaculture seems to me to be not only unrealistic, but also no fun. I enjoy caring for my plants, reaping the gustatory and other rewards for a job well done. I like the challenge of researching some pest or nutritional problem and finding a solution. I like watching how plants respond to my ministrations, whether I’m wielding pruning shears, a pitchfork piled high with compost, or my winged weeder hoe.
    Agriculture is about balancing Nature’s designs and human will. Too much of the latter is a losing battle. Too much of the former leaves nothing worth harvesting.

Big Bantam, an Oymoron

    My planting of sweet corn is very un-permaculture. It’s high-culture: 6 seeds per hill dropped into compost-enriched ground maintained weed-free, timely watering with drip irrigation, hills thinned to 3 stalks per hill, even stakes to keep the stalks standing soldier straight. I mentioned, last week, how my Golden Bantam variety of sweet corn isn’t bantam at all. The stalks soar over 10 feet high.
    Was it because of my green thumb? No. I now know that it is genetics.
    This year I made four plantings of Golden Bantam. The two later plantings are, in fact, bantam-size. Looking over my seed orders, I see that I had planted Golden Bantam Corn, Original 8-row Golden Bantam Corn, and Improved Golden Bantam Corn.
    Golden Bantam is an open-pollinated variety. As with any open-pollinated variety, various strains might arise, strains which might differ in some ways from the original. With any good variety, the hope is that progeny are monitored to eliminate any off-type varieties — or to look for something that might be better than the original.

Golden Bantams compared

Golden Bantams compared

    So the name Golden Bantam could be attached to the original Golden Bantam, from 1902, or any strain, which could also have “Improved,” “Original,” etc. attached its name. (Golden Bantam was also developed into a hybrid, Golden Cross Bantam, which, like other hybrids, would be genetically more consistent and ripen in a shorter window of time.)
    On the theory that bigger is better, “Improved” was tacked onto name of the strain of my early plantings. The original Golden Bantam was 8-row; Improved Golden Bantam is 10 to 14 row. I should have read the catalog more closely because Improved Golden Bantam casts too much shade, ripens too late for my intensively planted vegetables, and yields less, with but a single ear per stalk. The original also has better flavor, to me.

Permaculture, but not by Me

    Walking down the main path of my vegetable garden yesterday, you’d come upon a very permaculturalesque planting — in the path. The path was overrun with purslane, which I didn’t even have to plant. Purslane is a tasty, very nutritious vegetable enjoyed raw or cooked. But not by me.Hoeing purslane in path
    I grabbed my winged weeder and hoed the purslane loose from the soil. As a succulent, purslane can continue to grow — and seed! — even with its roots flailing in the air. So after hoeing, I scooped the plants up to feed to the compost file.

PESTS, INCLUDING ME(?)

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Watch Out, for Black Walnuts

Citizen scientists (that could be you and me), look up! At black walnut’s leaves. At the recent meeting of the New York Nut Growers Association (www.nynga.org), Karen Snover-Clift of Cornell University went over the ins and outs of “thousand cankers disease of walnut.”
    Like Dutch elm disease — it pretty much wiped out American elms, once valued for creating a cathedral effect as their branches arched over tree-line streets — thousand cankers disease is spread by an insect. But the walnut twig beetle is only part of the problem. When it bores into the bark, it spreads a fungus that clogs up a tree’s “tubes.”
    With Dutch elm disease, once a tree is infected, the fungal culprit spreads within the tree to kill it. Not so with thousand cankers disease. With this disease, death comes from fungal infection that follows thousands of dark, dead cankers of insect feeding.
    Who cares about black walnuts? I do. Each fall the trees bear an abundance of nutritious and delicious nuts. (Not delicious to everyone; the strong flavor does not appeal to everyone. But no reason any food should appeal to everyone unless you’re MacDonald’s.) And, quoting from The Tree Book, written in 1914 by Julia Rogers, “The black walnut is majestic as a shade tree — a noble ornament to parks and pleasure grounds. It needs room and distance to show its luxuriant crown and stately trunk to advantage. Then no tree excels it.”

Walnut twig beetle

Walnut twig beetle

    And finally, black walnut yields among the most beautiful of woods for furniture and gun stocks. Again quoting Ms. Rogers, the wood has “silvery grain, rich violet-purple tones in the brown heart wood [and] exquisite shading of its curly veinings.”
    Thousand cankers disease moved into southwestern U.S. from Mexico (would a wall keep them out? will Mexico pay for it?) and has remained mostly in that region. Black walnut is native to eastern U.S., but the tree has occasionally been planted out west. More importantly, the disease has recently reared its ugly head at a few locations in the east. If infected trees can be identified, the disease can be contained to check its spread.

Thousand cankers

Thousand cankers

    Any tree with an infected branch is usually dead by the end of the season!
    So look up, scan the tops of any black walnut trees for limbs that are dead or show flagging foliage. Your job, and my job, is to look for these trees and then report them.
    For a more thorough treatment of thousand cankers disease, as well as reporting guidelines, see www.thousandcankers.com. A good start in confirming the disease would be to take some good digital photos and send them to the state diagnostic laboratory, the county Cooperative Extension office, or department of environmental conservation.

Chipmunks, Still Cute Here

    I find chipmunks cute, as I’m sure everybody would — except for anyone for whom chipmunk is a garden pest. This year, for some reason, an especially good crop of chipmunks are scurrying about. I see them everywhere, except on my farmden. Their absence here could be attributed to my dog friends Sammy and Scooter, and my cat friend Gracie.
    I would not tolerate chipmunks if they were to eat my blueberries, my filbert nuts, my . . . pretty much anything I’ve painstakingly planted and nurtured. Besides dogs and cats, traps also are effective.

No, I’m Not a Strawberry Pest

    As if plants didn’t have enough pest problems. I recently attacked my strawberry bed with my scythe, swinging the sharp blade low enough to cut off every last leaf from the plants. No, I’m not just another plant pest, trying to kill plants; I was “renovating” the bed, preparing it for next spring.
    Shearing off the leaves not only removes leaves, but also disease spores on the leaves that inevitably find their way into any strawberry bed. Obviously, I raked up the old leaves and carted them over to the compost pile.
    The next step in renovation was to pull out any weeds in the bed. The major weed in the bed was  . . . strawberries. Strawberries spread by creeping stems along which grow new plants that take root, making them usually their own worst weed. Each plant needs about a square foot of elbow room to realize its full potential of one quart of berries per plant.
    So I ruthlessly ripped out enough plants so that my 3-foot-wide bed was left with a double row of plants spaced a foot apart. Older plants get decrepit with age, so those were the first to go.Spreading compost in strawberry bed
    Finally, icing on the cake. I laid a 1 inch depth of compost all over the bed and tucked up to each of the remaining, leafless strawberry crowns. A little fertilizer and straw, pine needle, wood shavings, or any other weed-free organic material would be almost as good.
    It’s been a few weeks and already new leaves are sprouting. The plants are on their way to a healthful and healthy crop of sweet, juicy berries next spring.Strawberry plants, a few weeks after renovation

EDEN’S GARDENS

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Eden’s Start with Good Soil

    G, as I’ll refer to him, has a blank canvas, about 10 acres of mostly open field. His vision is, essentially, for a Garden of Eden, with fruit trees, bushes, and vines, vegetables, nut trees, and flowers. Before he even thought about digging his first planting hole, I suggested he learn something about the soil beneath his blank canvas.
    Your and my tax dollars have contributed to a most useful soil resource for G (and you and me), the Soil Web Survey, put out by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) of the USDA. This survey provides soils maps of more than 95% of the counties in the U.S., each map delineating what lurks beneath the surface.

Web Soil Survey, opening page

Web Soil Survey, opening page

    Soils are distinctive, as different from one another as robins are from blue jays. These differences are harder to appreciate, of course, because soil is mostly underground, hidden from view. But if you were to dig some holes a few feet deep and then look carefully at their inside surfaces, you would find that soils are made up of layers of varying thicknesses — called horizons. And one soil might differ from the next not only in the thicknesses of its various horizons, but also in just how the various horizons look and feel. There might be horizons as white as chalk, as red as rust, or as dark brown as chocolate. A horizon might be cement hard, gritty with sand, or stuff for sculpture. And if you were to tease the dirt along one edge of the hole so it falls away naturally — wow! — each horizon would reveal its particles clumped together in such arrangements as plates, blocks, or prisms. Such information, and more, has allowed soils to be classified, much as birds, flowers, and living things are.
    Armed with this information, G can know what will thrive in his future paradise and what might need to be done to better accommodate what he wants to grow.

Tax Dollars at Work

    The Web Soil Survey is an easy-to-use online resource. Either google it or go directly to http://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm. The big green button labelled “START WSS” gets you started.
    The first step is to define your “Area of Interest (AOI)”, that is, your own back forty. Reading down from the AOI tab, you come to the “Address” line, in which, after clicking, you can fill in your own street address. Hit “Return” and, to the right, you’re zoomed into an aerial photo centered on the specified address. Click on one of the two boxes labelled “AOI” (which one depends on whether your AOI is going to be a rectangle or a random polygon) just above the map to delineate, in red, your AOI. Double click the last point and the map enlarges around the defined area.

Area of Interest defined

Area of Interest defined

    Back to the tabs at the top of the screen, and click on “Soil Map.” Now you know what to call your soil. Yes, its name. If more that one soil exists within the AOI, squiggly lines will delineate their names and extent.
    From there, all sorts of useful and not so useful (for you) information are at your fingertips. Click on the soil name and you get a slew of information on that soil, including the all-important drainage class, depth to a restrictive layer, depth to water table, and its ability to hold onto water. Other clicks get you to the soil’s potential use for recreation, construction materials, building site, even military operations.
    Most important is soil depth and drainage. G’s is fine, facilitating his first step towards Eden.

A Tree of Eden

    Speaking of Gardens of Eden reminds me of fruit and western Asia. Which brings us to a mulberry now ripening in a pot sitting on my front terrace. This mulberry is quite different from those trees now ripening their fruit practically every few hundred feet around here.

Pakistan mulberry fruit

Pakistan mulberry fruit

    For one thing, this mulberry comes from western Asia, Islamabad, Pakistan, so is not cold-hardy here in New York’s Hudson Valley. Hence the pot, in which the plant resides during winter in my basement, along with figs, pomegranates, and other subtropicals.
    The hardy mulberry trees that pop up here and there throughout most cold regions of the U.S. include Asian white mulberries (Morus alba) and out native red mulberries (M. rubra), and their natural hybrids. Note that fruit color has nothing to do with the species. White mulberry is a very variable species, in hardiness, fruit color and flavor, even leaf shape.
    Pakistan mulberry is also unique for the size of the berries. Each is a couple of inches long. In warmer climates, the berry can elongate to over 3 inches.
 

Pakistan mulberry tree in pot

Pakistan mulberry tree in pot

   I wouldn’t trouble myself with a potted fruit tree just because it’s exotic and large-fruited; the flavor makes the effort worthwhile. They have a heavenly flavor, among the most delicious of all mulberries, on a par with the world’s best fruits: a rich berry flavor fronting a congenial background of sweetness offset with just the right amount of tartness.
    Pakistan is sometimes listed as a variety of white mulberry, other times as a variety of yet another mulberry species, M. macroura. Outdoors, it can grow to 60 feet. In my Garden of Eden, the potted tree will be restrained to 5 or 6 feet.

SMALLER IS BETTER

/12 Comments/in , , , , /by

Small Plants

Weeding. Planting. Harvesting. Making compost. Spreading compost. Staking. Pruning. Mowing. These are some of the activities I share with my plants this time of year. But, as Charles Dudley Warner wrote in his 1870 classic, My Summer in a Garden, “Blessed be agriculture! If one does not have too much of it.” Which prompts me to weed, plant, harvest, etc. most efficiently.

Bush cherry, 1 month after planting

Bush cherry, 1 month after planting

    Let’s take a look at some of the trees and shrubs I’ve planted this spring: Romeo and Carmen Jewel bush cherries, aronia, Grainger shellbark hickory, Great Wall Asian persimmon, Rosa canina, and Hidcote St. Johnswort. Just getting all those plants through their first season could entail lugging around many buckets of water. But it doesn’t.
    Large plants of any of these could possibly be sourced but I chose small plants. And that was the first step to making sure that, paraphrasing C. W., I wasn’t overburdened with my agriculture.
    With smaller root systems, small plants establish more quickly than large plants. In fact, establishing more quickly, smaller plants usually outgrow their larger counterparts after a few years.
    A tree or shrub with a two-foot diameter root ball might require 3 gallons of water weekly until enough roots foraged out into surrounding soil to make the plant self-sufficient water-wise. Two cups of water weekly is enough to keep my newly planted Romeo bush cherry alive since its move from the 4-inch-diameter pot it previously called home.
    By the end of this growing season, all these small plants will be firmly established and pretty much water independent. They’ll get supplemental water only if there’s any extended dry spells in their second season.

Small Planting Holes

    Water for these young plants isn’t all about watering per se.
    Site preparation is also important. Not that, as older gardening books used to suggest, it’s “better to dig a $50 hole for a $5 tree than a $5 hole for a $50 tree,” the dollar amounts reflecting the size of the tree and the hole. No need for such heroic measures. Digging that large a hole breaks up the capillary channels in a large volume of soil, leaving large air gaps in the soil through which water just runs down and out. Capillary channels can move water, down, up, and sideways.
 

Shellbark hickory, 1 mo. after planting

Shellbark hickory, 1 mo. after planting

   Better — and easier — is to dig a hole only twice as wide as the spread of the roots or root ball (if potted), and only as deep as needed so a plants sits at the same depth as it did its pot or the nursery.
    With few exceptions, no need to add compost, peat moss, fertilizer, or anything else to the soil in the planting hole. After all, the expectation is for roots to eventually extend well beyond the planting hole. Create excessively posh conditions in the hole and roots have no incentive to leave. Then roots grow only in their planting hole, not beyond.
    All soil goodies are best lathered on top of the ground. My first choice is for compost. Nutrients and beneficial soil organisms within the compost, over time, meld with the soil below. Compost also softens impact of raindrops so that water can percolate down into the ground rather than running off in rivulets — lessening my need for watering.
    A mulch is the final icing on this layer cake. I’ll top the compost with wood chips, leaves, straw — any weed-free, organic material. This top layer further softens the impact of raindrops, keeps compost moist and vibrant, and slowly decomposes to nourish soil microorganisms and then  the tree or shrub.
    Yesternight’s rain or 1.25” did a week’s watering for me. A good rule of thumb is to apply one-inch of water once a week, or, equivalently, three-quarters of a gallon per estimated square foot spread of the roots. Potted trees and shrubs need that one-inch of water spread over 2 or 3 days of the week for a couple of weeks after being planted, until their roots begin to spread into surrounding soil. Larger tree and shrub transplants need more water, more frequently, for a longer period of time.

Followup on Drastic, and Less Drastic Pruning

    I recently wrote of “renovating” my old lilac shrub, a no-brainer as far as pruning. You just lop each and every part of the plant right to the ground. My fears that such drastic pruning might also kill the plant were unfounded. Already, new sprouts are growing from the sawed off remains of the plant as well as from some distance away. All that’s needed now is to choose which sprouts to keep to grow into a whole new shrub.

Lilac regrowth from stump

Lilac regrowth from stump

    My blueberry shrubs also received more drastic pruning than usual. To lower their height and to encourage and make space for younger, more fruitful stems, I lopped a few of the oldest stems of each bush right to ground level. Like the lilac, new sprouts soon rose from ground level.

Blueberry, new sprouts

Blueberry, new sprouts

    Late next winter, I’ll save the most vigorous of these new sprouts and lop the rest of them all the way to the ground. And, of course, again lop to ground level some of next year’s oldest stems.
    Such pruning (covered in my book The Pruning Book) keeps blueberry and lilacs perennially renewed, without any stems that are too old to flower or fruit well as well as plenty, but not too many, young replacement stems for the future.