Making Sense

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Lilies, More Than Just Pretty

I’m triply thankful for the lily stems in the vase in the kitchen.

First, for their beauty. The large, lily-white (of course) petals flare out into trumpets, from whose frilly throats poke groups of rust-red anthers and single tear-capped stigmas. The petals spread about 8 inches wide from one side to the other, and the single stalk I plunked into the vase sports six of them!Lilies in vase

Second, I’m thankful for the lilies’ fragrance. The heady, sweet fragrance fills the whole room.

And third, I’m thankful that the plants, cut from outdoors where they share a bed with staked Sungold tomato plants, are alive. They’ve been threatened by a relatively new pest, the lily leaf beetle (Lilioceris lilii). This European pest made its North American debut in Montreal in 1945, and its debut on my farmden in 2015.

Lily leaf beetle can be controlled by sprays, even organic ones such as Neem or spinosad. But I’m not keen on spraying anything on plants rubbing elbows with edibles, in this case my Sungold tomatoes.
The beetles’ bright red color makes them easy to spot, at which point they can be crushed. Battling the beetle mano a mano is a viable control for a backyard planting. This was my approach a couple years ago. With other garden distractions and many crown imperial (Fritillaria) plants, which also are attacked by the beetle, I abandoned any efforts to control the beetle.

Yes, I saw some beetles on the lilies this season; yes, the plants are still doing well. Plants can tolerate a certain amount of pest damage and still do fine.

Play It Again Sam

My awesome lilies aren’t just any old lilies. They’re true lilies (Lilium species), not daylilies (Hemerocallis species). Once we’ve narrowed down “lily” to the genus Lilium, there are about 100 species within that genus from which to choose.

My lily is one of many varieties of Asiatic hybrid lilies. Its name: Casa Blanca. I highly recommend growing it.

Casablanca lily in the garden

Casablanca lily in the garden

Popeye’s Delight, Later

With eyes and nose taken care of, let’s move on to another of the senses, taste. I’d like some spinach. But I can’t have it — yet. I can plant it very soon, though, and then in a month or so I can be eating it.

So why didn’t I plant it a month ago so I could be eating it now? The reason is that spinach is a long day plant, which flowers (aka “goes to seed”) during summer’s long days. Planted a month ago, even two months ago, and after making a rosette of a few leaves the plant would pump its energy into flowers and seeds. Besides yielding a paltry harvest of leaves, that whole “going to seed” thing also ruins the flavor of the leaves.

Actually, it isn’t long days that make spinach gustatorily morph from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde; it’s short nights. (Photoperiodism, the name for this response, was originally though to be the response to daylength; calling it a response to “daylength” stuck even after it was discovered that the response was to the length of the the night.) Beets, gladiolas, lettuce, and radishes are also “long day plants.”

Photoperiod doesn’t work alone in prodding plants to grow or flower. Temperature, either before germination or while the plants are growing, also figures in, as does light intensity and soil moisture. Spinach usually flowers when days are 14 or more hours long (more correctly, short nights that are 10 or less hours long), but will also do so following 8 hour days (16 hour nights) if the seeds are chilled.

Nights are now just over 10 hours long so I can plant spinach. While the plants are growing, cooler temperatures, which are coming this way, and adequate water, which my plants will get thanks to drip irrigation, also factor in to keep spinach from going to seed. So the spinach that I sow today will put all its energy into growing large and tasty leaves.

Peas, Please

A taste of peas would also be nice. The spring harvest was good. Still, some gardeners successfully plant peas in summer for an autumn harvest. Not me.Peas in pod

Daylength isn’t what messes up late sown peas, for me, at least. Heat is. Peas languish during hot weather, common through August and even lingering into early autumn. So the peas grow poorly, and if they do weather the hot weather, they are apt to be struck down by the first frost of autumn.

I’ve heard that Wando is a pea variety that can take some heat. I haven’t tried for an autumn harvest for many, many years. With climate change, perhaps autumn peas are worth another try.

Savin’ Seeds, Killin’ Weeds

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Bolting Plants

Last week I was admiring a vegetable garden where just about every lettuce plant was reaching skyward, with flower buds about to cap the tops of the spires. Isn’t that the wrong way to grow lettuce?

Bolting lettuce plantsLettuce that flowers — “goes to seed” — becomes bitter and tough. In my own garden, I aspire to have no lettuce spires by sowing lettuce seeds every couple of weeks for a regular harvest of mild-flavored, succulent leaves or heads. The plants don’t have time to bolt.

Those bolting lettuces I was admiring were in a garden in Iowa, one of the gardens at the Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org), an organization that every gardener should know about and a garden that I should have not waited so long to visit. The mission of Seed Savers Exchange is to save and preserve heirloom seeds, which are varieties that have been passed on down among generations of farmers and gardeners. Taste some heirloom tomatoes and it’s understandable why these varieties have been saved and passed on. Belgian Giant tomato may not have the smooth, round shape of a modern Big Boy tomato, but this heirloom is well worth growing for its complex, sweet-tart flavor.

One way that Seed Savers fulfills their mission is by growing and saving many varieties of seed. Hence the bolting lettuces I saw there. Some varieties of vegetables, such as most squashes, tomatoes, and cucumbers, spread their pollen too freely. To keep these varieties seed “true,” contamination from foreign pollen is prevented by growing all plants of a particular variety in fine-mesh, insect-proof enclosures.Seed growing at SeedsaversNetted enclosure to prevent cross-pollination

The Seed Saver mission is also fulfilled by so-called “participatory preservation.” An over 13,000 member network of gardeners grow seeds and share them — to the tune of over 23,000 varieties — through an online seed exchange. Anyone can browse the listings but only members can request the seeds.

Not that non-members don’t have access to any of these seeds. Every year, Seed Savers Exchange publishes a seed catalog, from which anyone can order seeds. The names of the old varieties themselves make some of the seeds irresistible: Tolli’s Sweet Italia pepper (better name than flavor), Green Arrow Pea (excellent flavor and high yielding), Jelly Melon cucumber (very interesting name and appearance, but I have yet to try it).

What To Do With Weeds

Ten days absence from my garden, with warm, sunny weather interspersed with rainy days adding up to two inches of rainfall, wrought big changes. Sweet corn and polenta corn reached well over 5 feet in height, flopping stems of staked tomatoes were in desperate need of tying, blueberry stems bowed down with their weight of plump, ripe berries, and  . . . weeds were abundant.

Ninety percent of the weeds were Canadian thistle, crabgrass, purslane, Purslanepigweed, common yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis sricta) and — my worst weed —  creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata). I’m jerking each thistle out with a gloved hand. Yes, roots left in the ground will resprout. I’ll just keep jerking them out until they expend all their stored fuel and before new shoots can start pumping new fuel down to the roots, and the plants will die. I poke my hori-hori knife right at the roots of crabgrass and toss the severed tops into the compost bucket.

Yellow wood sorrel is easy, and sort of fun, to remove; pull the plant and the whole thing comes out easily. Creeping woodsorrel is another story: With brittle stems that creep just below ground level and dirt-colored leaves, it’s hard to see and hard to remove. Most effective is a spray of household vinegar, repeated each time new stems grow.

The way to remove purslane and pigweed is to harvest it — yes, for eating. Unfortunately, I don’t like purslane, so I weed it. But pigweed is a delicious cooked green. I wish I had more of this weed; it cooks down a lot and the harvest was over after two dinners.

Bye, Bye Black Currants

Belaruskaja black currants

Belaruskaja black currants

I mourn the passing — okay, “mourn” is a bit too strong — of fresh blackcurrants. The harvest was bountiful and long lasting,  but now is over. Over twenty quarts of them are in the freezer but those are for eating through the winter. 

THE GOOD OL’ DAYS

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Corn Made Even easier

I can understand why corn was so popular a crop early on in the settlement of our country by Europeans. Sure, it tastes good popped, ground and cooked, and, while immature, fresh from the cob. Mostly, though, corn was easy to grow in the rough soil left from recently cleared forest.

Most of my corn grows in my two vegetable gardens where the soil is crumbly and weed-free, watered gently by drip irrigation, and nourished annually with an inch depth of compost.

Highly cultivated sweet corn

Highly cultivated sweet corn

The south garden is home, every year, to a couple of beds (about 60 square feet) of popcorn, and the north garden to 4 beds (about 215 square feet) of sweet corn. Those two gardens provide us with all the sweet corn and popcorn we eat for a year.

Separate gardens are needed because if sweet and popcorn cross-pollinate, the sweet corn will be less sweet and the popcorn won’t pop as well.

I also grow polenta corn, an heirloom Italian variety called Otto File. But I only have two vegetable gardens. So this corn goes out in the field into the weedy soil between my dwarf apple trees. Conditions there aren’t as rough as cornfields wrought from forests in colonial times, but out there the corn must deal with weeds, grasses, rabbits, and drink only water that falls from the sky.

I did not use colonial methods to ready the soil for planting. Instead, I mowed all vegetation to the ground, and covered the planting areas, 2 beds each about 3 feet wide for a total of about 100 square feet of planting, with gray resin paper. (Sometimes called building paper, gray resin paper is used in construction, usually as underlayment under flooring and siding.) I topped the paper with an inch or so of compost, then made two rows in each bed, in each row poking holes 2 feet apart into each of which I dropped 6 Otto File seeds followed by a sprinkling of water.

The seedlings are up and looking strong, so I thinned them out to 3 or 4 plants per hole, pulling out a few weeds as I thinned. I’ll weed one or two more times and then leave the plants to themselves. Weeds will grow, but the then-tall corn plants should shade some into submission and hold their own against the more aggressive ones.Otto File planted in field

For authenticity, yes, I could have buried some fish in the ground at each planting hole. But that would be more work, and I’m interested in production with minimal effort from that planting. Each year those beds have provided a year’s supply of polenta corn.

Apple Threats

Apple trees flanking the Otto File beds are loaded with a hopeful crop of cherry-sized fruits. The dreaded plum curculio, which is as happy to ruin a crop of apples, peaches, nectarines, or cherries as well as plums, should have ceased their egg-laying by now, and burrowed into the soil to prepare for next year’s onslaught. (Surround® is an organically approved spray of specially formulated kaolin clay that controls curculios.)

Just because the nascent fruits have come along this far does not mean I’m home free. Apple maggot reliably makes its appearance just as the curculios vanish. This pest doesn’t usually make the fruit drop, as do curculios, but it riddles the fruit with so many tunnels that you can’t even eat around them.

Maggot & curculio scars

Maggot & curculio scars

Fortunately, non-chemical control of apple maggot is easy. In the 1980s, Dr. Ron Prokopy, at the University of Massachusetts, discovered that Ms. Maggot was attracted to the reddest apples, so he tried  hanging croquet balls painted Tartarian Red and coated with forever-sticky Tangletrap® in apple trees. Maggots tried to lay eggs in the ersartz apples, where they expired, their mission unfulfilled. The spheres offer as good control as do chemical sprays.

In the last few years, I’ve used Tangletrap® coated, real Red Delicious apples as traps. They are very red and very apple-like. Hung in the branches, one per dwarf apple tree, they last almost the whole season and, when the season ends, can be composted rather than scraped clean for use the following year.Red Delicious maggot trap

Apple maggot isn’t the only remaining threat to my apples. There’s also the codling moth (the classic worm in the apple), apple scab (that’s what it looks like), and various summer rots.

Once Upon A Time

Oh, for the good ol’ days when the grass was greener, the corn was sweeter, and apple trees took care of themselves. Mostly, the good ol’ days weren’t the various “-ers.” But one exception was the apple maggot. Two hundred years ago, Ms. Maggots didn’t look twice at apples. This native insect was happy to attack our native hawthorns, which are related to apples.

When apples were introduced to this part of the world, some apple maggot flies tried them out. Over time, some began to favor apples over hawthorns, so much so that the maggots evolved into two tribes, one favoring hawthorn and the other apples. Oh well.

PERENNIAL VEGGIES AND A DEAD AVOCADO

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King Henry Was, And Is, Good

The good king has gone to seed. Good King Henry, that is. A plant. But no matter about that going to seed. The leaves still taste good, steamed or boiled just like spinach.

The taste similarity with spinach isn’t surprising because both plants are in the same botanical family, the Chenopodiaceae, or, more recently, the Amaranthaceae. Spinach and Good King Henry didn’t change families; their family was just taken in by, and made into a subfamily of, the Amaranthaceae.Good King Henry

Whatever its name — and it’s also paraded under such common names as poor man’s asparagus and Lincolnshire spinach — Good King Henry is a vegetable that’s been eaten for hundreds of years, except hardly ever nowadays. While spinach, beet, and some of its other kin have been improved by breeding and selection over the years, Good King Henry was neglected.

But the Good King, besides having good flavor, has a few things going for it lacking in spinach. It’s a perennial plant, it’s edible all season long, and it has no pests problems worth mentioning. This Mediterranean native made its way to my garden over 20 years ago, from seed I purchased and sowed. I haven’t had to replant it since then.

Which brings me to one possible downside of Good King Henry: It keeps trying to spread beyond the far corner of the garden where I originally planted it. Every spring I yank out errant plants, and eat them.

One of my favorite things about Good King Henry is its species name, bonus-henricus, making its whole botanical name Chenopodium bonus-henricus.

Another Perennial Oldie

Another perennial vegetable that I’ve enjoyed this spring is seakale (Crambe maritima), a relative of cabbage, broccoli, and kale. This also is an old-timey vegetable, one whose popularity peaked in the 18th century; Thomas Jefferson was a fan.

The origin of the name may trace to the leaves (kale-like) being pickled to bring aboard ships (the “sea” part of the name) to prevent scurvy.

Seakale, though perennial, does not spread. I started my plants from seed a few years ago, which is tricky only because the seeds have a low germination percentage. I’ve seen a few seedlings pop up a foot or so from the mother plant, which I welcome as an easy way to multiply my holdings.Seakale, blanched

Seakale tastes very good either cooked or raw, something like a mild cabbage with a refreshing touch of bitterness. Either way, blanching is needed to make it tasty, and that entails nothing more than covering it for a couple weeks or so, more or less depending on the weather (more warmth, less time), to keep out light and make the shoots more mild and tender.  I invert a clay flowerpot over the whole plant, with a stone or saucer over the drainage hole to keep light from wending its way in. Like asparagus, new leaves eventually need to be set free to bask in the sun to fuel the roots for the next year’s early shoots.

One more plus for seakale is that the plant is a beauty, so much so that it’s sometimes planted as an ornamental. The wavy, pale bluish green leaves have a silvery pallor reminiscent of the British seascape to which they are native. Later in the season, a seafoam of white blossoms rises from the whorl of leaves.Seakale in flower

I Give Up

Now for an about face, from European plants enjoying cool weather and sometimes dry conditions, to a tropical American plant. Awhile back I wrote about my efforts to grow avocados here in New York’s Hudson Valley. Not on a large scale; just one or two plants from which I could harvest a few fruits of some special variety.

I grew two plants from seeds I saved from locally purchased avocado fruits, and grafted onto those seedlings the stems of two varieties a gardening buddy sent up from Florida. Ungrafted, the seedling plants would bear fruit of unknown quality, if they bore at all. Grafted plants would give me improved, named varieties that would bear quickly.Avocado grafts

avocado about to flower

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I failed. Only one graft took, yet two varieties are needed for fruiting. As expected, the grafted stem on the successfully grafted plant flowered within a year of grafting. For days I tried to get the pollen from the male to pollinate the female parts of the flower — to no avail. And then, for some reason, the grafted stem started to darken and turn black, and died back.Avocado with dead graft

I give up on trying to grow an indoor-outdoor avocado plant — for fruit — in a pot.

AWESOME BLOSSOMS & RATIONALITY

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Wow!!

With blossoms spent on forsythias, lilacs, fruit trees, and clove currants, spring’s flamboyant flower show had subsided – or so I thought. Pulling into my driveway, I was pleasantly startled by the profusion of orchid-like blossoms on the Chinese yellowhorn tree (Xanthoceras sorbifolium). And I again let out an audible “Wow” as I stepped onto my terrace, when three fat, red blossoms, each the size of a dinner plate, stared back at me from my tree peony.

Tree peony blossoms

Both plants originate in Asia. Both plants are easy to grow. Both plants have an unfortunate short bloom period, more or less depending on the weather. Fortunately, both plants also are attractive, though more sedately, even after their blossoms fade.

The tree peonies have such a weird growth habit. I had read that they were very slow to grow so was quite pleased, years ago, when each of the branches on my new plant extended its reach more than a foot by the end of its first growing season. Tree peony is a small shrub; at that rate mine would be full size within a very few years. Or so I imagined.

The tree peony still grows that much every year. But every year many stems also die back about a foot, more following cold winters. No matter, though, because every May giant silky, red flowers unfold from the remaining fat buds along the stem.Yellowhorn blossoms

I originally planted Chinese yellowhorn not for its flowers but for the fruits that follow the flowers. Each fruit is a dry capsule that later in summer starts to split open to reveal within a clutch of shiny, brown, macadamia-sized nuts. Yellowhorn frequently makes it onto permaculture plant lists, with the edible nuts billed as having macadamia-like flavor also. Not true. I’ve tried them raw and roasted. Roasting does change the flavor, but raw or roasted, the flavor is bad.Yellowhorn tree

Still, those blossoms make yellowhorn well worth growing. And after the blossoms fade, this small tree is adorned with shiny, lacy leaves. Much like the tree peony, yellowhorn grows many new stems each year, and many of the stems die back, not necessarily from winter cold but because they’re seemingly deciduous. I tidied the tree up last week by pruning off all the dead stems.

Out With You-All

Today, May 25th, with temperatures around 90 degrees F., I may not be able to restrain myself. It’s hard to imagine that temperatures could still plummet below freezing at least one night sometime in the next week or so. I’ve already ignored that “should” and a few days ago moved houseplants outdoors.

Why the rush? First of all, houseplants enjoy growing outdoors more than growing indoors. Outside, breezes rustling leaves and stems make for stronger, stockier growth and rain showering the leaves washes off a winter’s accumulation of dirt and grime.

After a winter indoors, the plants do need to acclimate to these conditions, which is why they start their outdoor vacation on the terrace on the north side of the house, which blocks wind and, for part of the day, sunlight.

I also urged the plants outdoors because populations of aphid and scale insects were outgrowing the appetites of the ladybugs crawling up and down the stems. Outside, natural predators keep pests in check and, if necessary, I can spritz the plants down to knock off pests and spray soap or summer oil to kill them without worrying about getting spray or oil on windows, walls, or furniture.

The Rush On Sweet CornCorn planting

Even tender seeds, such as corn, squash , and beans, can be sown now. The earth has warmed enough for decent germination, and by the time the plants are up, warm weather will have settled in for the season.

Tomorrow I plant sweet corn. Kinky as it sounds, I’m anxious to sink my teeth into a freshly picked ear.

Upcoming Workshop

June 24, 1-4:30 pm, DRIP IRRIGATION WORKSHOP at the garden of Margaret Roach in Copake Falls, NY. Don’t wait for dry weather to learn about this easy and better (for you and plants) way to water, including participation in hands-on installation. For more information and registration, www.leereich.com/workshops.

DESIGNS ON GARDENING

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The Turn Of  The Year

Sure there’s seed-sowing, weeding, and pruning to do, but I’ve also been spending a good amount of time communing with my pitchfork. Turning compost.

Some people are put off by the thought of having to turn compost. Don’t be. Compost does not have to be turned. Any pile of organic materials will eventually become compost.

Still, I like to turn my composts. I typically build new piles (a lot of them!!) through summer into fall, turn them the following spring, and then spread the finished compost that fall or the following spring. As I fork the ingredients from the old pile into the adjacent bin, I break up any clumps with the pitchfork and fluff up any parts that seem sodden and gasping for air. A nearby hose makes it convenient to spray any dry areas.Compost bins

Everything organic (was once or is living) — hay, weeds, old plants, some horse manure, old cotton clothes, vegetable trimmings — goes into my compost, and that includes, unavoidably, weed seeds. Turning my compost pile exposes weed seeds buried within the pile to light, which prompts them to germinate — only to be snuffed out as they are again buried in the turned pile.

I take note of the progress of the decomposition, generally tossing any less decomposed pitchforkfuls towards the more active center of the turned pile. I also “take note” very literally, writing down a rough estimate of how far along the compost has progressed. If it’s, say, 80% finished, it should be ready for use, if needed, within a month or so. If 60% finished, it’ll have to keep cooking until fall.

I like to watch the results of the bacteria, fungi, and other compost pets nurtured within the piles. And turning them is good exercise.

Design Ultimatum

Over the years, my compost bins have gone through many incarnations as I, each time, came up with what I thought was the ultimate design for the bin itself. The present design has retained that status for a number of years now.

The present bin is made of notched boards, 24 per pile, each about 1” thick by 6” wide by 4 feet long. The boards stack up to make a cube Lincoln-log style. For a thorough enclosure, two boards ripped to half their width make up two sides of the bottom of the  bin. The advantage of the notched boards is that all four sides are enclosed and the compost bin can be built higher and higher, as needed, as material is added. And lowered, in steps, as finished compost is being removed for spreading, or half-finished compost is being removed for turning into a expanding, adjacent bin.Compost bin board

My original “ultimate design” bins were made from wood, which needed replacement every 8 to 10 years. Present bins are made from artificial wood decking, which should hold up forever.

While not a necessity for making compost, a bin does keep everything neat and tidy, keeps scavenging animals and wind-blown weed seeds at bay, and retains heat and moisture for quicker and more thorough composting. As I wrote a few paragraphs earlier, “Any pile of organic materials will eventually become compost.”

Transplant Design

Speaking about good design . . . With so many transplants to water, any method of automatic watering is a godsend. Right now, a couple of hundred of my seedlings are growing in individual, plastic cells sitting on capillary mats. As soil dries out in the cells, it sucks up water from the capillary mat which, in turn, draws water from the reservoir below it. This, the APS system, works very well.

And now an even better design has come down the pike, one made out of terra cotta that, unless dropped, is sure to outlast plastic systems. Cells for a tray of Orta Seed Pots are all housed together in an attached reservoir. One advantage of this design is that cells absorb water throughout their terra cotta walls. Another advantage is that each cell has a drainage hole, so periodic top watering can leach out excess minerals that can build up in pots watered from below.Orta pot

The only downside to Orta Seed Pots is that they are expensive. Then again, they can potentially last forever, and they grow very good plants. The design is so elegant and effective (as borne out by some seedlings that I raised in Orta’s) that I’m going to shamelessly help in their promotion with a link,  (www.ortakitchengarden.com/factory-seconds-sale/),to discounted factory seconds, which work perfectly but have cosmetic flaws, or, till the end of May, discounted firsts (www.ortakitchengarden.com), with discount code ORTAMAY).

HINTS OF SPRING, REMEMBRANCE OF SUMMER

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Greenery, For Humans And Ducks

Spring has come early, as usual, in my greenhouse. Growth is shifting into high gear as brighter sunlight fuels more photosynthesis and warms the greenhouse more and for a longer time each day. Giant mustard plants, which provided greens all winter, are no longer tasty now that they have shifted their energy to stalks topped with yellow flowers. No matter. I’m digging the plants out and sowing lettuce seeds.

Paths in the greenhouse are carpeted in green — mostly from weeds, mostly chickweed, which is also soaking up the sun’s goodness. No matter. I’m also digging these plants out before they go to seed and threaten takeover of the greenhouse.Greenhouse weeds & claytonia

To take over the greenhouse, the chickweed would have to do battle with claytonia, which already has self-sown to  bogart much of the greenhouse floor. Fortunately, the claytonia is good fresh in salads.

Chickweed is also good — to some people — for eating. But not for me. My ducks, however, love the stuff. So it’s a win-win situation. I weed the greenhouse paths, gather together a pile of chickweed, then throw it to the ducks as I walk past them on my way back to the house. They rush over to reach it soon after it hits the ground, gobbling it up at a frantic (for a human) pace. Good thing they don’t have to chew.Ducks eating weeds

The ducks also enjoy the flowering mustard plants which, along with the chickweed, transmute into delicious duck eggs.

Bottled Summer Goodness

A couple of weeks ago I finished off the last of the elderberry fruit syrup I made this past fall. No fruit could be easier to grow than elderberry. In just a couple of years, the bushes have grown to enormous size, their clusters of creamy white flowers bowing to the ground at the ends of stems late each spring. Later in summer, those flower clusters morph into blue-black fruits, which, admittedly, aren’t very flavorful plain (and shouldn’t be eaten raw).Elderberry blossoms

The only care I’m planning for my plants is to prune them every year or so. Pruning will entail cutting some of the older stems to the ground to make way for younger, more fruitful stems, as well as shortening any branches that arch down so much that their fruit would rest on the ground.

In summer, I stripped the ripe fruits from their clusters into a half-bushel basket, and, postponing what to do with them, froze them. Come fall, I cooked them in a little water, added some maple syrup, crushed them with a potato masher, and then jarred them up.Elderberry harvest

Why all this trouble for a fruit that’s not very flavorful? Because the berries are so healthful! Studies have shown them, or their extracts, to be “supportive agents against the common cold and influenza.” Other benefits have also been ascribed to use of elderberry, but common cold and influenza are enough for me.

Now that I’m out of elderberry syrup, I already feel a slight cold coming on.

Timing Is Important

Back to the greenhouse . . .  and sowing seeds of the cabbage family (Brassicaceae), also called crucifers. Which gets me thinking back to last fall when a friend was bemoaning the lack of fat sprouts and the puny growth of his brussels sprouts plants. I asked when he sowed the seeds. “Back in early August,” I think he said. At any rate, back in summer.

It’s no wonder he wasn’t going to be harvesting brussels sprouts. The plants need a long season to mature, from 90 to 120 days, depending on the variety. For best yields, this means sowing seeds now, growing them as transplants for about 6 weeks, and then planting them out for harvest that will begin in late summer. At the very least, the seeds could be planted directly in the ground in a few weeks.Crucifer seedlings

I’m sowing other crucifers now, not because they need such an inordinately long growing season, but so that they can be harvested in late spring and early summer. First harvests will be of miniature bok choys, and then cabbages and, if I grew them (I don’t), broccoli and cauliflower. Kale is the most versatile member of the family — and the one I grow in greatest quantity — amenable to sowing anytime from now until later in summer for harvest in late spring, through summer, and on into fall and winter.

Mustard, turnips, and arugula are also crucifers, the whole family most easily identified by their four-petaled blossoms in the shape of a cross, the root of the word crucifer.

NO SIGN OF SPRING HERE YET, BUT . . .

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The Onion Cycle Begins Again

Early February, February 6th to be exact, was the official opening of my 2017 gardening season. No fireworks, waving flags, or other fanfare marked this opening. Just the whoosh of my trowel scooping potting soil into a seed flat, and then the hushed rattle of seeds in their paper packets. And the grand opening was not for a flamboyant, who-can-reap-the-earliest-meal of a vegetable like peas or tomatoes.

No, the grand opening for the season is rather sedate: I sowed onion seeds in mini-furrows in a seed flat. Why onions? In addition to the fact that I love the flavor of onions raw and cooked, onions need a long growing season. The summer growing season is cut short because the plants stop growing new leaves to put their energy into swelling up their bulbs when daylengths grow sufficiently long, 14 hours long, to be exact. Around here, that happens sometime in May. The more leaves the plants make before then, the bigger the bulbs. Hence my early planting.Sowing onions indoors

So I poured about a 3-inch depth of potting soil into an 18 by 24 inch plastic tub in which I had drilled drainage holes, and then made seven parallel furrows in the soil into which I dropped onion seeds. This year I’m growing New York Early, Patterson, and Ailsa Craig. (I also sowed leeks in one of the furrows.) After closing up the furrows, I watered, covered the tub with a pane of glass, and put the tub on a heating mat set at 75 to 80° F.

Done. The season has begun.

 

Other Beginnings

There are so many ways to grow onions. Let me count the ways, some other ways.

1, and easiest, is to just plant onion sets, those mini-onions you can buy to plant as soon as the ground outside warms and dries up a bit. One downside to sets is that the variety selection is very limited. Not only limited, but also restricted to so-called “American-type” varieties, which keep very well but are very pungent and not very sweet. Onion sets that are too large — larger than a dime — tend to go to seed. Plants going to seed look very pretty but don’t make bulbs for eating.

Number 2 method overcomes one of the limitations of method number 1: Purchase onion plants, which are growing plants, with leaves. The sweet “European-types” — Ailsa Craig, Sweet Spanish, and Granex, for example — are available in this form. The plants are grown in fields in the South, and there’s the potential to bring a disease into the garden on these plants. Also, “organic” onion plants might be hard to find.

Setting out onion transplants

Setting out onion transplants

Method number 3 is the most involved. (I’ve never tried it.) Grow your own onion sets. The trick is to sow the seeds outdoors densely enough so that they bulb up while still small — dime size. Once bulbs mature, their harvested to store for winter, and then planted in spring just like the sets in Method 1.

Method number 4 is fairly easy, and that is to sow seeds of the Evergreen variety onions right in the ground in spring. This variety never forms bulbs but makes tasty green onions, or scallions. It’s also perennial, so any scallions left in the ground will multiply year after year. The downside here is that you don’t get onions for winter. I grow these every year and do get them for winter use also, in my greenhouse. 

Method number 5 is easiest of all. Grow Egyptian, or Walking, onions. This is another perennial onion. It “walks” by forming bulblets on top of some stalks. The weight of the bulblets pulls down the stalk, and when the bulblets touch ground, they root to make new plants. The new plants eventually send up bulblet-topped stalks which likewise bend to the ground, etc., etc., walking the plants around. To me, Egyptian onions are all hotness with little other flavor. I no longer grow them.

Walking onions

Walking onions

I learned of method number 5 from Jay at Four Winds Farm. Simple enough. Just sow the seeds outdoors as soon as the ground is warm enough and dry enough for a nice seedbed. A nice seedbed is key here, because onions compete very poorly with weeds and the goal is to get the seeds to germinate as fast as possible. I tried this last year and the bulbs ended up pretty much the same size as those from the plants I sowed last February and then transplanted into the garden in April. So I get a wide choice of varieties without having to start the seeds in February. Thanks Jay. (I’m growing transplants and direct seeding this year, just to make sure.)

My Pea Planting Will Not Be On St. Pat’s Day!

My early February onion-sowing date isn’t some magical date. My greenhouse is only minimally heated, making for very slow growth early in the season. Growth picks up as sunlight grows more intense and further warms the greenhouse. A week or more difference in sowing date early in the season doesn’t translate into that much difference in growth near harvest time.

The same goes for pea-planting, which is attended by more fanfare than onion planting. Many gardeners rush to get their pea seeds planted by St. Patrick’s day, but planting a week later doesn’t delay that harvest by a week. Perhaps by a couple of days or by a few hours, depending on the season. And anyway, St. Patrick’s day might be the traditional date for planting peas in Ireland, but it would be way too early in Maine and way too late in Georgia. I plant peas here in Zone 5 on April 1st, give or take a few days.

In my book Weedless Gardening, I have a chart that shows what and when to plant, whether as seeds, indoors or out, or as transplants, for all regions. All you have to do is plug in your average date for the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn. This date is available from your local Cooperative Extension Office. 

STEPPING INTO SPRING

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Cleanup Time Re-Starts in Veggie Garden

Warmer weather, even if it’s not all that warm, makes me feel like spring is just around the corner. The ground — in my vegetable beds, at least — isn’t even frozen, no doubt because water doesn’t linger long in the well-drained soil and because the dark-colored compost blanket I laid down in autumn sucks up the sun’s warmth.

So yesterday seemed like a perfect time to continue the garden cleanup that screeched to a halt when frigid weather struck, and some snow fell, a couple of months ago. Old cabbage heads that never quite ripened were laying on the ground like ratty, pale green tennis balls (with stalks attached). The four-foot-high stalk of one Brussels sprouts plant, stripped in autumn of its sprouts, stood sentry like a decrepit soldier in the same bed.Kale in winter

Of course, kale also still stood, except for those that flopped to the ground under their own weight. The latter were mostly the variety Tuscan (Lanciata). The Dwarf Blue Scotch plants, which I think taste better, stood more upright and compact, helped along, I’ll admit, with some bamboo stakes pushed into the ground next to them back in summer. I dug up the Tuscan kale plants and stripped yellowed and flaccid leaves from the Dwarf Blue Scotch plants. My guess is that by April they’ll be unfolding new, tasty leaves.

Stepping over to another bed, I twisted or coaxed out, with the help of my Hori-Hori knife, stumps from harvested lettuce and Chinese cabbage. A row of arugula in that bed showed enough life to awaken in spring with fresh, new leaves. I left it.

All this cleanup gets a jump on spring and removes debris that might harbor insect or disease pests that could infest or infect this season’s plants. The debris went into my garden cart and thence to the compost pile. The winter pile doesn’t heat up, so I’ll give the bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, and earthworms two years to get their jobs done, killing off any “bad guys.”

Cursed Voles!

Stepping over to the remains of the endive bed that I planted towards the end of last summer and began harvesting in October — what havoc has been wreaked!

The bed had been covered with a tunnel of clear plastic and row cover to provide extra warmth to the plants in cold weather. Extra warmth also to some furry creatures, it seems.

Taking off the cover, I saw a bed riddled with tunnels along with the scattered remains of unharvested endive plants. This has happened in the past; something about endive seems particularly attractive to the furry creatures (and to me), which I assume are voles, which are mouse-like creatures.Endive with mouse damage

My garden must be vole heaven. The cat rarely hops the garden fence to hunt because she has to cross the DMZ zone to get to the garden, and she’s scared of our dog, Sammy. The compost-enriched soil has plenty of earthworm for good eating, as well as all the tasty, organic produce. So far, though, the voles have been satisfied with just the endive.

Short of planting the cat in the garden, which Sammy can’t enter, my plan is to do extensive trapping. One web site recommendation for a small garden is for twelve traps baited with oatmeal and peanut butter, or with apple.

As consolation, vole populations are said to decline after 3 to 5 years. It’s almost time, although the declined population might still be too many for me. And all is not bad with voles; they help stir the soil to distribute nutrients.

Pre-Season Warmup

While in the garden, I also did some pre-season weeding. Creeping Charlie, which enjoys cool weather, is always sneaking in here and there once I turn my attention away from the garden.

All this garden cleaning and straightening up isn’t all for practicality. It makes the view of the garden each morning from my second floor bedroom window prettier.

 

THE WEATHER WON’T PUSH ME AROUND

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Breaking (Pruning) Rules

Snow squall or not, I just had to get outside. Not enough snow for a cross-country ski, but, after too much time indoors, I had to do something outside.

I was driven to break a fundamental rule of the garden. I pruned, and that’s a no-no. Pruning is best delayed until at least after the coldest part of winter is over, ideally closer to the time when warmth and sun are stirring buds to swell in preparation for their final burst. I did rationalize that any pruning now would leave me that much less to do amidst the hubbub of spring gardening activities.

I wasn’t indiscriminate in trespassing this Rule of Gardening. The plants that I pruned were gooseberries, which are very cold-hardy plants so are unlikely to suffer any cold damage as a result of untimely pruning. Also, no need to wait, as is done with peaches, for growth to begin to see which branches have died back from winter cold; none ever do so on a gooseberry bush.

Pruning without spring breathing down my back made for a very relaxed pruning session. I had plenty of time to pay attention to details and prune a little differently than in the past.

Gooseberries bear fruits on stems that are 1-, 2-, and 3-years-old, so the usual method of pruning is to cut away any stems more than 3-years-old and remove all but six of the sturdiest 1-year-old stems. The pruned bush, then, is left with a half-dozen each of 1-, 2-, and 3-year old stems. Each year a bush is renewed as oldest stems are removed, and new grow kept vigorous and healthy as excess young stems are thinned out.

Gooseberry before & after pruning

Gooseberry before & after pruning

The gooseberry bushes always bear many more berries than we can eat, and their weight bows the branches to the ground. So this year I decided to also prune each side branch on the older stems back to a couple of inches long. I’ll reap fewer berries, but those that remain should be larger and more accessible among the thorny stems.

Great Gooseberries

Is it worth mentioning such details about growing gooseberries? After all, who eats gooseberries these days? To most people, a gooseberry is a small, green, tart berry suitable only for pies, jams, and fools (a dessert made by folding cooked, sweetened, sieved gooseberries into whipped cream).A bowl of fresh gooseberries

If small, green, and tart is your idea of a gooseberry, you’ve never tasted a so-called dessert gooseberry. Dessert gooseberries are sweet and flavorful right off the bush; they are, as Edward Bunyard wrote almost a hundred years ago in The Anatomy of Dessert, “the fruit par excellence for ambulant consumption.” (He was from England, where gooseberries are more appreciated and known than here.)Gooseberry varieties on a bench

Only certain gooseberry varieties warrant the label “dessert gooseberry,’ of which I grow about a dozen varieties. My favorites include Hinonmakis Yellow, Poorman, Black Satin, Webster, Red jacket, and Captivator. Their sweet flavors carry wine-y overtones and reminiscences of plum or apricot. Some have soft skins, others have firm skins that explode with the flavorful, sweet juice when you bite into them. I devote a whole chapter to the history and varieties of gooseberries as well as how to grow them and where to get them in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden (available from the usual sources and, from me and signed, at my website).

Back Indoors, But Still Gardening

Frozen fingertips eventually drove me back indoors. But I’m now on a gardening roll, spurred on further by a box of seed packets that arrived in the mail.Lettuce seedlings

Lettuce, claytonia, and celery from the greenhouse have been filling our salad bowls all winter. As these plants wane or go to seed, we’ll need more. So today I sowed seeds of Black-Seeded Simpson, Romaine, Buttercrunch, Blushed Butter Cos, and Majestic Red lettuces. Some I sprinkled into seed flats that can be kept warm for quick germination. Some I sowed right in the ground beds in the greenhouse; they’ll germinate more slowly but hold their quality longer than those that are pricked out from seed flats into “cells” and then into the garden.

Sometime soon, I’ll grab my pruning shears and get back to the gooseberries. And then on to the grapes, the kiwis, the apples, the pears, the . . .