IN WITH THE NEW, STILL WITH THE OLD

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Scale Attack Beginning!

As if to ring in the new year, scale insects are starting to make their presence known. These insects crawl around as babies, find nourishing spots on leaves or stems, insert their feeding tubes, and then spend their days sucking plant juice. Carbohydrates and sugars are what result when sunlight and chlorophyll get together, so longer days may already be making plant sap sweeter and more plentiful, much to the liking of these suckers.

Armored scale on staghorn fern

Armored scale on staghorn fern

I encounter two kinds of scales on my houseplants. Each armored scale looks like a small, raised, brown tab. Cottony cushion scale looks like a small tuft of white cotton. As either kind feeds, it exudes a sweet honeydew that drips on leaves, furniture, and floor, and eventually becomes colonized with a fungus that airbrushes those sticky drippings an unappealing smokey haze.

(Scale insects are often problems on trees and shrubs outdoors. I’ve never had any problems outdoors probably because natural predators, of which scale insects have many, can do their job. Once indoors in autumn, houseplants lose the benefits of these natural, outdoor predators. )

Repeated sprays last autumn of “horticultural” oil smothered the creeping, crawling baby scales as they were looking for homes on houseplants. I do all this spraying outdoors, where it is most convenient, before the plants come indoors for winter. None have turned up yet on the kumquat or the staghorn fern, both of which have been scale magnets in the past. I don’t see any on the bay laurel, another magnet, but I do see and feel the tell-tale sticky honeydew.

And . . . Counterattack

Cute, little white tufts of cottony cushion scale are starting to dot the undersides of strawberry guava’s leaves. It’s not surprising: I received this plant last autumn, already with scale, and it was too late then to start spraying with oil. As autumn progressed, the undersides of its leaves became increasingly covered with those white tufts.

Cottony cushion scale

Cottony cushion scale

Repeatedly, over the last few months, I have fought back the buggers mano a mano by dipping cotton swabs in alcohol and methodically cleaning them off each leaf. (The plant is young and its leaves are large and few.) The last cleaning was especially thorough but some eggs evidently survived. Time to get out the alcohol and swabs again.

Mmmm, Tomatoes, In Planning Stage

Like the scale insects, I feel the distant tug of spring and spring seed orders are complete. With most vegetables and flowers, I’m pretty picky about variety so have to rely on mail order sources for my seeds.

And especially so with tomatoes: I refuse to waste time and space growing anything but the best tomatoes (to me), which makes me very wary of trying new varieties. My own tried and true varieties — flavor is what I’m after — include Belgian Giant, Sungold, Anna Russian, San Marzano, Amish Paste, Rose de Berne, Nepal, Valencia, Cherokee Purple, and Blue Beech.Heirloom tomatoes

Every once in a while I’ll also grow a few others, but only if they come highly recommended from a reliable source and especially if they are an “oxheart” or “black” fruited variety. Not even worthy of consideration is any “determinate” variety because their leaf to fruit ratio is too low for good-tasting fruit. The seed catalog or seed packet itself should say whether a variety is determinate or indeterminate. This year’s tomato newbies include Rosella Purple and Dwarf Sweet Sue, both recommended by a reader of this column.

I highly recommend growing tomatoes from seed. It’s easy, especially if the seeds are sown in a timely manner, which is about 6 weeks before the average date of the last killing frost of spring — about April 1st here in USDA Hardiness Zone 5.

 

Onions, Last Year And This Year

It’s really not all that early to be ordering seeds. My date for sowing onion and leek seeds is February 1st. New York Early, Copra, Sweet Spanish, and Ailsa Craig are three onion varieties that did well for me last season, and will be returning for an encore. Last summer’s onions still hang in braids from the basement rafters, ready to be pulled off as needed to chop into a pan for roasting with sweet potatoes, into the soup pot with chickpeas and kale, and other savory dishes for weeks to come. Onion braids in basement

 

EVERYTHING’S EASY, FOR NOW

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An Easy Orchid

Orchids are one group of plants I’ve regularly sidestepped. It seemed to me that if you grew orchids, you became crazed over orchids, to the exclusion of other plants. You then fill your home with as many of the over 20,000 species as you can cram onto your windowsills. I feared being led down that path.

My sidestepping took a turn into orchid-land 25 years ago when a local orchid enthusiast gave me a plant of Odontoglossum pulchellum, which I today learned has also been called lily-of-the-valley orchid. But more importantly today, the plant is in bloom. Blossoms from this plant are no rare occurrence; it’s bloomed every year for about the past 20 years, some years around now and other years waiting until February to unfold.Odontoglossum pulchellum orchid

Odontoglossum pulchellum doesn’t sport knock-your-socks-off, traffic-stopping blossoms; instead, they have a soft, subtle beauty. Right now, delicate, arching flower stems rise up from clusters of torpedo-shaped, green pseudobulbs that are perched up out of the “soil.” Eight to 10 dainty, waxy, white blossoms line up along each flowering stem and waft a sweet fragrance, more like paper-whites than lily-of-the-valley to me, that transports me to spring.

I get all this for very little effort and without becoming orchid-crazy. For years, I didn’t know the name of my plants so couldn’t even look up how to grow them. Rather than pot them up in any special orchid soil, I merely mix an equal volume of wood chips from my outdoor pile into my regular, homemade potting soil, along with a bit of soybean meal for extra nitrogen. I keep the plants in a sunny window in winter and sometimes move them outdoors in summer, dividing and repotting the pseudobulbs to make new plants.

For this bit of effort, I get fragrant, white blossoms every winter, and they last for at least a month. Odontoglossum pulchellum is easy to multiply yet I’ve happily managed to restrain myself to keeping only 3 or 4 plants after I’ve divided and repotted them each spring.

Easy Celery

Growing good celery demands a gardener’s greatest skill, and this year, in the greenhouse, I have the finest celery I’ve ever tasted or grown. The stalks are large, thick, juicy, even a little sweet. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can take credit for this horticultural achievement.

Every summer I sow celery seed to transplant into my minimally heated greenhouse to provide stalks for salads and soups throughout winter. I do take credit for selecting a good variety: Ventura. I also take credit for providing good soil conditions; each year I slather an inch or so of ripe compost on all the beds in the greenhouse. And I’ll take credit for providing timely watering, with drip irrigation until a couple of weeks ago and by hand through winter.Self-sown Ventura celery

Ventura is an open-pollinated, rather than a hybrid, variety, which means that I can save my own seed for replanting each year. Beginning a few years ago, I’d allow one or two of the greenhouse Ventura plants that began to form flower umbels to do their thing and make seed, which they did prodigiously. I’d collect seed for planting the following season’s outdoor and indoor celery.

Some of those seeds would drop to the ground and germinate right in the greenhouse. These “volunteers” sometimes grew into seedlings as good or better than the plants I would later transplant back into the greenhouse.

So a couple of years ago I decided to let the celery self-sow freely in the greenhouse. Later in winter, I’ll transplant some of those seedlings into pots for eventual planting out in the garden.

In the greenhouse, I thin out excess seedlings, keeping the largest ones, which are already large enough for harvest. The stalks, especially welcome in winter, are, as I wrote above, “large, thick, juicy, even a little sweet.” I like to think I had a hand in horticultural achievement.

And Nothing To Do (For Now)

Nothing like a little snowfall to clean everything up in the garden. December 11th was the date of the first snow, followed by a second one on the 17th. The white blankets covered the pile of crocosmia leaves lying on the ground and waiting to be carted over to the compost bin, some weeds that sprouted in the mulched area beneath the dwarf apples, some of the smaller plants I haven’t yet cleared from vegetable beds, and numerous other messy distractions. The whole view was knit together in the sea of whiteness.Winter garden scene

Spells of warmer weather and bright sunshine have eroded away some of the snow, mostly taking the fluffy, white lines and dots that rested atop fences and their fenceposts. The ground, as I write, is still pretty much covered in a white blanket. While I’m enjoying the wintry scene, I can forget about about the few odd jobs still left to do that are patiently waiting beneath the the snow.

MY PONYTAIL GROWS, AND SEEDS ENTICE

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I Grow A Ponytail

A friend gave me a ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) decades ago, and up to this summer it looked something like a palm tree sitting atop a large onion. Or a long-leafed dracena plant whose stem, near ground level, had swollen almost to the size of a bowling ball. The plant looked very interesting, but not particularly attractive, and the sharp edges of its long, strappy leaves were grabbing at me every time I walked by too closely.

So last summer, I was going to toss the plant in the compost pile; instead, I lopped off its top to about 3 feet in height. What remained was nothing more than what looked like a tan bowling ball halfway immersed in a pot of soil with a inch-thick, bare stem tapering skyward from its upper side.My ponytail palm

After pruning, I ignored the plant just as I had done for the past few decades. Ponytail palm doesn’t crave attention. As testimonial to the ability of the bulbous trunk to store water, the plant went months between waterings. What’s more, it’s been growing in the same pot with the same potting soil for all these years, no small accomplishment with the bulbous base of the plant, rather than potting soil, occupying much of volume within the pot. And fertilization? A rare event.

Now for the good part: Since being decapitated, the ponytail palm has sprouted tufts of leaves in various places. A few new sprouts appeared near the top of the plant, just as most plants would do when the top bud or portion of a stem is cut back. A tuft also appeared lower down along the stem. And seemingly out of nowhere, a couple of tufts of leaves sprung from the rounded surface of the swollen bulb.

Over time, each of those tufts of leaves is going to elongate into a stem capped by a tuft of leaves.

The plant is more verdant and very attractive now, and I should be able to direct its growth to remain so. If not, I can lop back one or more ponytails and start again.

Ponytail, Down The Road

Ponytail palm is quite a dramatic site in its native, tropical haunts. There, the plant’s stem keeps elongating, lifting its mophead of scrappy leaves higher and higher. Tufts of leaves might sprout lower down along the stem, or from the base, just as did my decapitated plant. And the bulbous base — it keeps growing fatter and fatter.

Ponytail palm in Puerto Rico

Ponytail palm in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico, I’ve seen ponytail palms the were three feet across as ground level. My plant will get a new pot as soon as it bursts out of its old one. But eventually . . . ?

Seeds! Restrain Me

Years ago, the routine was that seed catalogues would arrive in the mail sometime after January and all of us gardeners would place our orders to receive seeds a couple of months later. Now, I have catalogs that have already been sitting on my kitchen table for a few weeks, with orders waiting to be finalized. And not primitively finalized, with pen and paper, but seamlessly, on the internet.Ordering seeds

Seed companies realized that the early bird gets the worm: We gardeners, once cold weather has set in, are likely to get seduced by any reference to fresh tomatoes, so are most likely to order from the first catalogs we see. All this is for the better, for me, at least, because my efforts to limit down time in the garden mean that I need to have seeds in hand and ready to sow that much sooner. I could sow lettuce seeds today, for harvest in the greenhouse. Onion and leek seeds get sown in seed flats at the beginning of February, lettuce for transplants to be planted outdoors, follows soon after that, along with pansies and snapdragons, and the march continues from then on right through September.

One thing that has not changed over the years is that I’m still enticed and thankful for what we gardeners have at our fingertips. From just a phone call, a few dollars, or a few computer keystrokes, plants from all over the world end up in my garden. How can I resist trying Ruby Mist Love Grass, Cajun Jewel Okra, and Blazing Stars this year, along with such old standbys as Buttercrunch lettuce, Blue Lake beans, and Lemon Gem marigolds?

IN WITH ENDIVE, OUT WITH ASPARAGUS

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First Harvest At Season’s End

Finally, I’m harvesting endive from the garden, just as planned when I settled seeds into mini-furrows in a seed flat back in July. After leaves unfolded on the seedlings, I gently lifted them up and out of their seed flat, helping them up with a spatula slid beneath their roots, and into individual cells in a GrowEase Seed Starter.Endive seedlings

Also as planned, a bed in the vegetable garden was freed up from harvested sweet corn in early September. After removing corn stalks and slathering an inch of compost on top of the bed, the endive plants were snuggled in, 2 rows down the 3-foot-wide bed, with one foot between the plants in each row. In October, I laid row cover over the plants, plus a tunnel of clear plastic film supported by hoops, to protect plants from bitterest cold.Endive under plastic tunnel

Endive harvest could have begun earlier. But there was no need to, with so much other fresh salad fixings in the garden. And cold weather anyway helps bring out the best in endive. The inner leaves, partially blanched as they folded in among themselves from close planting, are now especially sweet, succulent, tender, and tasty. 

What Endive, Who?

Just to be clear on the identity of my endive, it’s botanically Cichorium endivia var. latifolia, also called escarole, broad-leaved endive, or Batavian endive. Besides delicious fresh, it’s a key ingredient in the classic Italian white bean and endive soup.

I used to also grow another endive, C. endivia var. crispum, also called curly endive or frisée. It’s very similar, except for frilly leaves. In my experience, it’s less succulent and more easily damaged by cold.endive and beets

We’re not yet finished with “endives.” There’s also Cichorium intybus, also known as Belgian endive or witloof chicory, with small heads that are torpedo-shaped and pale green or white.

More machinations are needed to grow this Belgian endive, beginning with sowing in spring and waiting the whole season for a large taproot to develp. At season’s end, the roots are dug up, trimmed to a foot or so long, then packed together upright in boxes of loose potting soil, sawdust, or anything else that will hold moisture. The roots resprout, and the goal is to keep the developing heads in the dark, either by putting a few inch depth of sawdust or sand over the roots or by keeping the whole box in darkness. Too much trouble for me. Plus, very little flavor. (Also, mine weren’t all that successful.)

Bye, Bye Asparagus

Speaking of pale leaves, I’m happy that my asparagus’ leaves yellowed a couple of weeks ago. The plants had been growing vigorously all season since harvest ended in July, the green stems and leaves gathering sunlight to pump energy down to the roots, to store and then fuel next year’s growth of the young spears. Finally, the plants yellowed as what nutrients were still left in the stems and leaves headed downward, to the roots.

My short-bladed brush scythe was the perfect tool to make quick work of the plants, a fluffy addition to the compost pile.

After July, germinating and growing weeds became too hard to reach and root out among the 6-foot-high forest of feathery stalks. With the asparagus shoots and leaves cleared away, I was recently able get into that bed for a final weeding. The two-inch-deep mulch of leaf mold I spread after weeding will slow weeds down next year, conserve soil moisture, and feed soil microbes and, in turn, the asparagus plants for what I predict will be a bountiful harvest.

ALL-AMERICAN THANKSGIVING

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Danger of Squashing

Thanksgiving is a most appropriate time to put together a truly American meal, one made up of native plants, many of which are easily grown, that might have shown up on the original Thanksgiving table about 400 years ago.

(The date of that first feast was 1623 but the date for celebrating Thanksgiving in all states— on the final Thursday in November — was not fixed until 1863, with a presidential proclamation. Lincoln hoped that a unified date throughout the country would help unify the nation during the divisive days of the Civil War. Not so. Confederate States refused to accept that date until the next decade, during Reconstruction. Another presidential proclamation, by F.D.R. changed the date to the 4th Thursday of November, in an attempt to boost the economy. Would a new date help now?)

On to garden history . . . Back in early November, I picked a 20 pound berry that was growing from my compost pile. Actually, I harvested about a dozen of these heavy berries. Don’t imagine them in terms of strawberries or blueberries. Imagine a winter squash, which botanically-speaking is a berry, a special kind of berry called a pepo. Squashes are native American fruits.

Twenty pounds is no lightweight for a squash. Nothing like the 2,023 pound (still a berry) record-holding pumpkin, of course, but big nonetheless. Especially so when you consider that mine weren’t grown to vie for any records, but for eating.

Argonaut is the variety name of my 20 pound berries. It seems to be a kind of butternut squash stretched out anywhere from 20 to 30 inches long and 8 inches across at its fattest point. It’s relatively easy to grow if you can figure out where to let the 20-foot-long vines trail. In May I had sown the seeds in 4-inch pots and then transplanted a few right atop my compost bin. I put another couple into compost-filled holes I had scooped out in a mountain of leaves (for future use, after rotting down into rich “leaf mold”) kindly deposited here by a local landscaper.Argonaut squash hanging in basement

Argonaut needs a long season before the fruits turn buff tan ripe. Longer than my plants got, this year, at least, because only some of them had only some ripe color. Still, they taste very good, and squashes will ripen, to some degree, after harvest.

The question is what to do with a dozen humongous squashes. Ideal storage is in a cool room: my basement, where temperatures no and in the next few weeks will be in the low 50s. Mice occasionally make their way into my basement. They could make many meals of the squashes. I mouse-proofed each one by tying it with a sturdy length of rope in a noose around its neck, then hanging it from the basement rafters.

More Than a Snack Food

Corn is another native American food, with popcorn predating that first Thanksgiving in America by thousands of years. Kernels have been found in the remains of Central American settlements almost 7000 years old. Four hundred years ago, the Pawtuxet Indian Chief, Massasoit, showed up at the first Thanksgiving feast with a deerskin sack filled with popcorn, a food hitherto unknown to the colonists.

Popcorn is the corn I’ll bring to our Thanksgiving table. Most people eat popcorn as a snack, but there’s no reason it couldn’t stand-in for potatoes, rice, bread, or any other carbohydrate-rich foods. Popcorn has the advantage of always being whole grain, and being very quick and easy to prepare.Popcorn hanging from kitchen rafters

Corn was the best grain crop to grow in the rude conditions of a settler’s clearing. Little land preparation was needed, and the ripe ears could be left dangling on the stalks until there was time for harvest. I could grow it under “ruder” conditions, but I plant it in compost-enriched soil with drip irrigation for consistent water. Two 12-foot long by 3-foot wide beds provide enough popcorn to carry us through the year to the next harvest season.

Since harvest, a few weeks ago, unshelled ears of Pink Pearl and Dutch Butter popcorn have been hanging from the kitchen rafters, decoratively and conveniently at hand.

Bogless Cranberries

Cranberries are among the few native American fruits sold commercially.  Although they do not provide a great deal of nourishment, they spice up present and past holiday dinners.

Cranberries can be grown in a home garden if the soil is very acidic (sulfur will make it so if it is not), rich in organic matter, and has consistent moisture. A bog is not needed.Cranberries on plants

Given the right growing conditions, cranberries can be an ornamental, edible groundcover. I once planted them as such, along with the other edible, ornamentals lowbush blueberry and lingonberry, as well as rhododendron and mountain laurel, non-edibles that enjoy these same soil conditions. The cranberries grew too well, threatening to overtake the rest of the bed. Since they were not my favorites among all the plants in the bed, they no longer live there.

Many more native American plants, such as beans, groundnuts, and Jerusalem artichokes, can round out this Thanksgiving feast. And, of course, among non-plants, turkey.

UBER ORGANIC & A BEAUTIFUL BLOSSOM

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‘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 GOOD AND THE BAD OF A DRY AUTUMN

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Just Like Korea?

    The bone dry weather blanketing the Hudson Valley and much of northeastern U.S. does have its saving graces. For one thing, it forces perennial plants to shut down and direct their energies to toughening up for cold weather lurking over the horizon. That’s a good thing — unless, of course, the soil gets dry enough to kill a plant. Deciduous plants have the option, before that happens, to drop their leaves, drastically reducing their water loss and needs.
    This dry autumn weather is not unlike that in many parts of Korea. So what? When it comes to cold-hardiness, some plants that survive Korea’s frigid winters typically are done in by our similarly frigid winters. One plant that comes to mind is Asian persimmon (Diospyros kaki). The chances of an Asian persimmon surviving a winter here at my Zone 5 farmden and ripening its fruits are generally not good. Autumn weather like this year’s ups the odds.

Asian & American persimmon, compared

Asian & American persimmon, compared

    (American persimmons (D. virginiana), on the other hand, easily survive, and varieties such as Szukis and Mohler reliably ripen their fruits here.)
    Survival of an Asian persimmon here is very topical to me because I planted one this past spring. I did plant one of the most cold-hardy varieties, Great Wall. This variety is allegedly hardy and will ripen fruit in Zone 5 (at least that’s what Lee Reich wrote in the book Uncommon Fruits for every Garden). This autumn weather should help get it through its first winter here.

Autumn Color Chemistry

    This bone dry weather has also made for glorious autumn leaf colors, even more than usual. Did I write, last year, that autumn color was the best ever, and the year before that, and . . . ? The reason for the exquisite color is physiological (the leaves’, not mine).
    Leaves can, of course, be green. Other colors also figure in, obscured by the green of chlorophyll until autumn’s cooler weather and shorter days dissolve away the chlorophyll to let these other colors strut their stuff. Autumn’s fiery oranges and yellows, especially prominent in sugar maple, gingko, aspen, hickory, and beech, are from carotenoids. Tannins are another color component that get expressed in autumn; they give oaks their brown color, and enrich the yellow hues of beeches and hickories.

Japanese maple in autumn

Japanese maple in autumn

    Unless an early freeze burns off trees’ leaves while they are still green, those oranges and yellows and browns put on a reliable show every autumn, no matter what the weather.
    Not so for the reds and purples of autumn leaves. These colors are expressed by anthocyanins, compounds which are not present or obscured by the green of chlorophyll during the growing season. Anthocyanins develop in autumn, and they need sugars for their development. Sugars come from photosynthesis, whose driving energy is sunlight.
    So, less rain and more sunny weather means more photosynthesis, more sugars, and better red and purple color in such plants as blueberry, sourwood, scarlet oak, and sugar maple. A recent spate of warm days and cool nights enhances the whole effect, the warm days spurring photosynthesis and the cool nights slowing respiration to slow “burning” of sugars.Blueberry, in autumn color

But How About Some Rain?

     Much as I revel in day after day of clear, sunny weather and trees alive in color, I’d like a few heavy rains. The water supply of many homes on my road tap into shallow groundwater, the level of which is very low at this point.
    Also, my drip irrigation system has been disconnected. The timer, the pressure reducer, and the filter, all of which must greet water as it comes out the spigot, before it enters the main lines, have been brought indoors to be protected from the recent freezing temperatures.
    With reduced transpiration from cooler weather, autumn’s usual rainfalls can carry winter radishes, endive, Chinese cabbage, and other cool weather vegetables on a few more weeks until the end of the season. But we need these usual rains.

NUTTY TIMES AND COLD WEATHER

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Nuts Galore

    What a nutty time of year, literally! Chestnuts and black walnuts, two of my favorite nuts, were raining down, figuratively, just before the middle of the month.
    Black walnuts are free for the taking. Wild trees are everywhere around here, and keep increasing because of overlooked nuts buried by squirrels. The nuts are so abundant this year, and most years, that squirrels and humans can have their fill. (Not so with my filbert nuts; squirrels will strip those bushes clean.)
    Black walnuts have a strong flavor. Like dark beer, fresh blackcurrants, and okra, not everyone likes the flavor. That’s fine. Fast food chains might purvey foods that everyone sort of likes, while a home gardener and gatherer can grow and gather fruits and vegetable and nuts that he or she really, really likes, and ignore what he or she really, really does not like.
    There’s also, if you’re not a squirrel, the getting-to-the-nut problem with black walnuts. The first step is to remove it, as soon as possible after gathering the soft, messy, dark-staining husk. My wife, Deb, does this; I try and come up with contraptions to ease the job of husking 10 five-gallon buckets worth of nuts that eventually transmutes to 8 one-quart mason jars filled with nutmeats.
    We’ve gone through a few incarnations of huskers. One year I bought an old fashioned corn husker, which needed some modification with an angle grinder. It didn’t do the job. Another year I ran the tractor back and forth over the nuts in the driveway, a common method, but not effective enough.Various black walnut hullers
    In years past, Deb has given each nut a tap with a light sledge hammer, which is enough to loosen the husk so it can be easily twisted off. Another year, I mounted a flat piece of metal in a slot I cut in a short length of 2-by-4 wood. Rolling the nut over the metal edge was enough to make the husk easy to twist off.
    This year I drilled a nut-sized hole in a piece of wood and mounted it over a bucket. One whack with a light sledge hammer drove the nut through, minus the husk. Or, it was supposed to do that. One piece of husk, on the leading edge, alway stayed attached to the nut.
    So now Deb is back to one of the standard methods for de-husking black walnuts: Stomp on them with your heel, then pick them off to rub off any remaining husk.

Readying for Cold Weather

    Enough with the nuts . . .  tonight (October 10th) temperatures are predicted to be in the low 30s, which means the high 20s in this cold spot. Mostly, I and the garden are ready for cold. Still to be done are:
    •Close all hose spigots and open ends of drip emitters and main lines, watering wands, and hose sprayers to prevent the expansion of freezing water water from causing damage;row covered vegetables
    •Set up hoops and either clear plastic or row covers over beds of lettuce, Chinese cabbage, endive, arugula, and mustard greens. These vegetables tolerate temperatures well into the 20s, but I’ll cover them just in case. And they’ll anyway need the protective coverings soon;Row covered vegetables
    •Bring tropical plants indoors. Banana “trees,” staghorn fern, avocado, and clivia have laughed off cold so far, but tomorrow morning would not look so cheery if left outdoors. They get bright windows. A banana’s growing point is below ground which allows some gardeners to merely lop the whole top off the plant and store the bulb, in its pot, through winter under cool, dark conditions;Tropical plants indoors
    •Subtropical plants could survive temperatures into the 20s. I’m hoping for a crop from Golden Nugget mandarin, Meyer lemon, and Meiwa kumquat, so they’ve been walked indoors and perched near the most sun-washed windows in my house.
    •Feijoa, olive, and Chilean guava are, like citrus, evergreen, subtropical plants, except they can tolerate colder temperatures than citrus. They sport neither fruits, flowers, nor flower buds now, so will remain outdoors until temperatures dip into the low 20s. Potted rosemary is also in this category; because I will be visiting it many times over the months that follow to clip off sprigs clipped for pizza and salad dressing, it’s new home is a sunny kitchen window.
    •Basil will be dead tomorrow. Leafy stems picked today, their bottoms plunked into a glass of water, will provide fresh basil for a few weeks. Then it’s on to frozen basil pesto.

Cold Weather Takes a Rain Check, Without the Rain

    The Morning After: No drama. That’s the way I like it. The slider on my min-max thermometer registered a low of 29° last night. A far cry from my first gardens, in Wisconsin, where it seemed every year (for the five I gardened there) around September 21st I would be wake to a frigid morning and a garden of blackened tomato, marigold, and pepper plants. This morning, marigolds and peppers have felt the chill, but live on to die slowly day by day as the sun dips lower in the sky and temperatures creep lower and lower.

DUCKS AND TOMATOES

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My Discerning Ducks

    Every morning when I throw open the door to my Duckingham Palace (a name coined by vegetable farmer Elliot Coleman, for his duck house), my four ducks step out, lower their heads as if to reduce air resistance, and race to the persimmon tree. They trace a large circle around the base of the tree, scooping up any fallen persimmons and, still running, gulping them down quickly enough so no other member of the brood snatches it.Duck eyeing my persimmon fruits
    The circle is wide because of the low, temporary fence I’ve set up around the tree. Within the fenced area, I gather up most of the fallen fruit for myself. The ducks, can’t, or haven’t figured out how to, fly over an 18 inch high fence.
    My tree is an American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), native to eastern U.S. from Florida to northern Pennsylvania. Until they are dead ripe, most American persimmons taste awful, with an astringency that dries out your mouth. (As Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, wrote, “When a persimmon is not ripe, it will draw a man’s mouth awrie with much torment.”) Some persimmons never lose that astringency, even when ripe, and here, in the northern reaches of persimmon growing, the season isn’t long enough to ripen most persimmons.Ducks not sharing persimmon fruits
    But good persimmons, when ripe, taste like dried apricots that have been soaked in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice. Mine are selected varieties that ripen this far north, the first, Mohler, beginning in early September, and the second, Szukis, beginning in early October. (I grafted both varieties on one tree.) They also set fruit without the need for the separate male pollinator that most American persimmons require.
    I highly recommend planting an American persimmon tree. Besides bearing delicious fruit, the tree is attractive all season long and shows off its pretty bark in winter. All this, without the need for spraying or pruning. (I wrote about American persimmon in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)Persimmon fruits on tree

And the Winning Tomatoes Are . . .

    As of this writing, tomato plants have not been killed by cold. But with cool weather and disease, they’re pretty much done for the season, bearing few or no fruits. That is, except for Sungold, the most tasty variety of cherry tomato. It just keeps pumping out ropes of orange fruits.
    I grew over 20 varieties of tomatoes this year, all heirlooms, except for Sungold. My main criterion for planting any variety is flavor, which was very similar for certain varieties of tomato. They did differ in productivity, my second criterion for choosing a variety. So next year I plan to pare down the number of varieties I grow to the best tasting, most productive ones.
    Topping that list will be San Marzano. Right off the plant, eating one is like eating bland cotton. Thrown into pot with a little water to prevent burning and simmered till soft, and the flavor morphs to tart, tomato-y richness. No wonder, canned San Marzano tomatoes are labeled as such in Italy.
    Moving on to fresh eating tomatoes . . . Sungold, of course, with eight plants supplying enough for grazing outdoors and salads indoors. Anna Russian, Paul Robeson, and Red Brandywine all have excellent flavor and bore well and late into the season. Anna Russian is also quite good for paste.
    Carmello and Valencia are good-tasting tomatoes, although not as good as Anna Russian and company. I’ll grow these two because they’re also very productive, and their fruits are almost perfect spheres. Many heirloom fruits are interesting for their convoluted shapes but sometimes I want just a standard issue, round tomato (that also tastes good).
    One more possible variety is from seed a reader sent me a few years ago, a variety labeled Winterkeeper. The fruits allegedly store very well. The plants are still growing well; soon I’ll see how long into fall I’ll be eating tomato sandwiches. Ones I’ve already sampled have pretty good flavor.

Persistent, Young, and Vigorous

    Every time I walk back to the compost bin and see the volunteer tomato vine insinuating itself out of a gap in the slats of the bin, I’m reminded of the importance of crop rotation. This vine is still lush and green, and laden with perfect, red, pear-shaped tomatoes.
    Sure, the vine could be healthy because its roots are running through the rich, brown compost within the bin. Perhaps the vine is so healthy because, as a random seedling, its genetics, by lucky chance, makes it so.
    Most likely, this plant is so healthy and productive because it’s growing where no tomato has grown before. No disease spores linger there from previous crops of tomatoes. (The plant got a late start for the season, so its youthful vigor could also have a hand in its health.) Compost pile tomato
    I rotate my tomato beds every year, but that only puts them 10 feet or so from beds of the previous year. That’s the problem with home gardens; it’s hard to get plants far enough away from where they recently were. Thorough cleanup and mulching help, but go only so far.
    I have the luxury of two vegetable gardens separated by 50 feet of lawn, one of which hasn’t been home to tomatoes for over a year. Next year it will be.
    The flavor of the compost-grown tomato? Good enough, not great.

THE WEATHER, AND BLACKCAPS

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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.