Vegetables – Page 17

FRUIT BOOK GIVEAWAY, AND FRUIT FUTURES

March 13, 2015/53 Comments/in Books, Fruit, Gardening, Pests, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

The Eternal (Fruit) Optimist

   We fruit growers get especially excited this time of year. On the one hand, there’s the anticipation of the upcoming season. And on the other hand, we don’t want to rush things along at all.
   Ideally, late winter segues into the middle of spring with gradually warming days and nights. Unfortunately, here, as in most of continental U.S., temperatures fluctuate wildly this time of year. Warm weather accelerates development of flower buds and flowers. While early blossoms are a welcome sight after winter’s achromatic landscapes, late frosts can snuff them out. Except for with everbearing strawberries, figs, and a couple of other fruits that bloom more than once each season, we fruit lovers get only one shot at a successful crop each season.
   How did all these fruits ever survive in the wild? They did so by not growing here — in the wild. Apples, peaches, cherries — most of our familiar fruits — were never wild here, but come from climates with more equable temperatures, mostly eastern Europe and western Asia. We favor them because they are part of our mostly European heritage.
   The fruits that I never worry about here are the few that are native: pawpaw, persimmon, grape, mulberry, lingonberry, and blueberry, to name a few. (Also raspberry, gooseberry, and currants, cultivated varieties of which are hybrids of native and European species.) After decades of fruit growing, I’ve hardly missed a harvest, no matter what the weather, from any of these native fruits. (I cover native, non-native, common, and uncommon fruits in my books Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden and Grow Fruit Naturally.)
   Still, I can’t deny the delicious flavor of apples, peaches, and other non-native fruits, especially those I grow myself. So I do grow them, do what I can for them, and hope for the best. I may even put a thin coat of white kaolin spray on these trees to reflect the sun’s warmth and further delay awakening of the buds.
   Last year was a very poor year for many tree fruits, and I’m not sure why. (Recovery from the previous years cicada attacks could be part of the reason.) Nonetheless, every year about this time I’m bursting with optimism for a bountiful fruit harvest.

Veggies, As Usual, Chugging Along Nicely

    I consider vegetables relatively easy to grow because most are annuals and because, with most of them, I can sow and harvest repeatedly throughout the growing season. Let cold or some pest snuff them out, and I can just replant.
   The first of my lettuces, sown early last month in little seed trays, are up and growing strongly, each seedling transplanted into its own APS cell (available from www.gardeners.com). Ninety-six seedlings take up little more than a couple of square feet and, with capillary watering from a reservoir beneath the APS trays, I need check the water only about every week.
   My next wave of indoor seed-sowing will take place in the middle of this month. That’s when I’ll sprinkle pepper, eggplant, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and cabbage seeds into the miniature furrows of miniature fields of my seed flats.
   I’ll also sow another batch of lettuce seeds indoors, this batch for eventual transplanting outdoors. The first batch is soon to be transplanted into greenhouse beds.

Fig Prophylaxis

    Buds on fig trees planted in the ground in the greenhouse are showing hints of green and swelling ever so slightly in spite of the cool night temperatures in there. The scale insects that I battled last year are undoubtedly also coming to life on those plants. In the past, I’ve kept these insects at bay by scrubbing the bark in winter with soapy water or by spraying it with insecticidal soap, or, during the growing season, wrapping the trunk with a sticky Tanglefoot barrier to stop travel of ants that herd the insects.
   I’ve never gotten rid of scale insects, only kept them from gaining the upper hand. And some years it’s been a neck and neck race as to who would win out before the end of the season.
   I’ve already begun this season with prophylactic sprays of oil. Oil has a long history of controlling insects and some diseases, with the advantage of causing little collateral damage to the environment, including beneficial insects. Because it’s main effect is to clog insect breathing ports (spiracles), there’s little danger of insects developing resistance.
   Oil’s major hazard is its potential to injure plants, mitigated by spraying when temperatures aren’t too hot or below freezing, or when rain is likely, all easily avoided in a greenhouse. Various kinds and formulations of oil — kinds include vegetable, mineral, and neem oils — differ in their hazard to plants. I’m using a high-purity mineral oil (Sunspray) from which I expect no damage, especially since the plants are still leafless.
   Scale insect eggs should be hatching about now. Brutal as it may sound, I hope to suffocate the crawlers before they settle down to one spot to cover themselves with their protective armor and literally suck the life from the plants. Weekly sprays should cover successive hatches.

New Video

Check out my new video on “pricking out” seedlings!

Free Book!

Book giveaway! Write a comment here telling us which is the most difficult fruit you grow, and why, and why you grow it, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to get a free copy of my most recent book Grow Fruit Naturally. Comments must be submitted no later than noon, March 23rd.

Upcoming Lectures

Check out the “Lectures” page of my website for some lectures I’ll be giving in the next few weeks.

FIRST SOWINGS OF THE YEAR, DEADLINE MISSED

February 20, 2015/4 Comments/in Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Onions & More, Late But They’ll Be Fine

   I missed my deadline by four days, sowing onion seeds on February 5th rather than the planned February 1st. That date isn’t fixed in stone but the important thing is to plant onions early.
   Onions are photoperiod sensitive, that is, they respond to daylength (actually, night length, but researchers originally thought the response was to light rather than darkness, so the phrase “daylength sensitive” stuck). Once days get long enough, sometime in June, leaf formation comes screeching to a halt and the plants put their energies into making bulbs. The more leaves before that begins, the bigger the bulbs.
   Plants from seeds sown outdoors — towards the end of March — won’t have as many leaves as plants given a jump start indoors. I like big bulbs; hence the early February sowing.

Fresh Seeds & Mini-furrows in a Plastic Tub

    First step on my way to onion-dom is to get fresh seeds. Onion seeds are relatively short lived and I want to give the plants plenty of time to grow. I don’t risk delays from poor germination and replanting of old seed.
   Seeds get sown in a miniature “field:” A plastic tub 18 inches by 12 inches, with drainage holes drilled in its bottom and filled 4 inches deep with potting soil. Some weed seeds are unavoidably lurking in the garden soil and compost in my homemade potting mix, so I top the potting mix with a one inch depth of a weed free, 1:1 mix of peat moss and perlite.
   The edge of a board pressed into the firmed soil mix in the tub makes furrows, 6 of them equally spaced and about 1/2 inch deep within the tub. Into each furrow go onion seeds, sprinkled at the rate of about 7 seeds per inch. Once the furrows are closed in over the seeds, I water thoroughly and, to avoid washing away seeds, gently.
   Covered with a clear pane of glass and warmed to 70 to 75° F, the seeds should appear as grassy sprouts above the soil mix within a couple of weeks. From then on, my goal is to keep the plants happy with abundant light and water as needed. They get a haircut, their leaves snipped down to 4 inches, whenever they get too floppy. The compost and alfalfa meal in the potting mix should provide sufficient nourishment to the seedlings until they are ready for the great outdoors. That deadline is April 15th, weather permitting.

Other Cool Temperature Seeds Join the Party

Onions won’t be alone on the seedling bench in the greenhouse. I’m also now sowing seeds of celery, celeriac, and leek. All, like onion, need a long period of growth before they’re ready for outdoors.

Onion seedlings, up and growing.

These seeds get sown in furrows in small seed flats from which the seedlings, once they have two leaves, are gingerly lifted and cozied into waiting holes poked into the potting mix filling seed trays with individual cells. Little growing space is needed because a single seed flat can be home to a few kinds of seeds and the celled trays in which the seedlings grow until planted outdoors can house about two dozen plants in a square foot.
I’m sowing lettuce in a similar manner. In contrast to celery and company, lettuce grows quickly. It’s needed to fill in gaps opened up from winter harvests of kale, lettuce, mâche, claytonia, celery, and parsley in the greenhouse, and should be ready to eat in April.

Nature & Nurture & the Spiciness of Onions

Last year’s onions were abundant, large, sweet, and juicy. Anticipating their not keeping well, we ate them quickly, pulling the last ones from their hanging braid in the basement sometime in November. These were so-called European-type onions, varieties such as Ailsa Craig and Sweet Spanish.
Next year we should have fresh onions for soups and stews on into winter because I’m growing some American-types, New York Early and Copra. American-type onions are actually sweeter than European-type onions, but their sweetness is masked by their increased pungency. That pungency comes from sulfur compounds, which are vaporized during cooking. Those sulfur compounds are also what help these onions keep longer.

Stored onions, in basement

Soil enters the picture when it comes to onion flavor and storability. Sulfur is an essential plant nutrient and the more sulfur in the soil, within limits, the more sulfur in the onions. Sulfur is a key component of organic matter, so my compost-rich soil (with a whopping 15% organic matter) should have plenty of sulfur.
Still, I’m thinking about spreading sulfur, the same pelletized sulfur I use to maintain soil acidity beneath my blueberry bushes, on half my onion beds to see if flavor or storagability are noticeably affected.

HOW TO FEED THE WORLD

February 12, 2015/4 Comments/in Gardening, Planning, Soil, Uncategorized, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Perennial Wheat to Save Our Soil, But What About Compost?

   We — that is, almost all of humanity — get all our sustenance from the thin skin that covers out planet, the soil. In appreciation of this, the United Nations has declared 2015 “The Year of Soil.” “Soil is more important than oil,” stated Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, in his keynote at this year’s recent NOFA-NY conference. Like oil, soil is a nonrenewable, or only slowly renewable, resource. Centuries go by before rainfall, freezing, thawing, and microbes and plants eat away at rocks to make new soil; on average, it takes a thousand years for the creation of a mere half-inch of new soil.
   The problem is that, as with oil, we humans are using up soil faster than new soil is being created — 10 to 40 times faster! Also, as with oil, that soil, as it is used, releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Tillage exposes carbon stored in the ground to air, burning” it up, and annual crops, which are represented by sweeping fields of corn, soybeans, wheat, and other staples of civilization, put little of the carbon that they take in from air below ground. Agriculture is the second highest generator of greenhouse gases.
   Whew, what to do? Dr. Jackson’s tack, for the past half century, has been to focus on shifting our staples from annual to perennial crops. Wheat, for instance. Kanza, a hybrid, perennial wheat under development at the Land Institute, would sequester carbon by not requiring annual tillage and by packing carbon compounds into its long-lived root system. Perennial crops also decrease opportunities for soil erosion (another source of soil loss), grow with less added fertilizer and water, and have the potential to increase biodiversity for a healthier ecosystem.

Organic Materials: Wasted Fertilizer

What about vegetables, how are they treating our resources? Up to the podium stepped Tim Crews, director of research at the Land Institute, to give the roomful of organic and aspiring organic vegetable farmers and gardeners bad news: Our soil care is not sustainable. All that manure hauled onto our fields or piled high into compost piles is bedded with hay or comes from animals that have been fed grain. The grain or hay was grown in fields that were fertilized, most of it with commercial fertilizer which is mostly made from atmospheric nitrogen via the Haber-Bosch process which requires — you guessed it — fossil fuel for energy.
Still, the fact that organic farming and gardening wastes less energy than conventional farming and gardening should assuage some of the guilt that resonated through the room. The soil of a good organic farmer or gardener will, in general, be higher in organic matter (5.4% vs. 3.5%) and, hence, carbon. Said plot will require less water, less pesticide, and less manufactured nitrogen for fertilizer.

Compost, Garden — and Small Farm — “Gold”

    Compost, and compost alone, is how I maintain fertility in my vegetable beds. I do haul in some horse manure for that compost, and, as Dr. Crews pointed out, somewhere way back in that manure’s history, fossil fuel needed to be burned.
   But civilization, and especially industrialized civilizations, generate many waste products, of which horse manure is one. Picture also all the food waste from restaurants and supermarkets, autumn leaves and grass clippings that are considered “garbage,” even sewage effluent. All these organic materials contain carbon, some of which could be sequestered in the ground, to the benefit of agriculture and the environment, and some of which feed soil organisms and, in turn, plants.
   Better to recycle as much of those organic materials as possible into agriculture than let them go to waste or cause pollution. The bottlenecks here are cultural and political rather than agricultural.

Grow Your Own Fertilizer

Another way, as I suggested at the conference, to make vegetable farming more sustainable would be to grow your own carbon and fertilizer. A perennial grain or hay field could be harvested for the grain or hay for the animals or, even more efficiently, just for hay to use either as mulch or for composting. Running hay or grain through animals burns up carbon to grow and fuel the animal to the tune of, on average, about 6 times more needed in terms of calories. That is, for every 6 calories we grow and feed to a cow, we get only one calorie back when we eat the cow.
Left to its own devices, any field will naturally build fertility. Bacteria, free-living bacteria and symbiotic with the roots of legumes, harvest atmospheric nitrogen and put it in the ground, and the combined action of myriad soil organisms slowly chew away at a soil’s rocky matrix to release other nutrients for plant use. Plants grow, their roots oozing substances that further stimulate microbial activity and soil fertility.

Nodules from nitrogen-fixing bacteria on soybean roots.

The key word in the previous paragraph is “slowly.” In order to be able to harvest fertilizer in the form of hay from a field year after year, sufficient time must be allowed between harvests for fertility to be garnered from the air and rocks. For that you need either more land or less harvest. The big picture, then, is to have more land, to make better choices in how the land is used, to utilize organic practices, and have fewer people.
With the problems of soil improvement, global warming, sustainability, and agricultural production solved, I’m going to sow onion seeds. Planted in flats in potting soil at 7 seeds per inch, I should have plenty of pencil-thick seedlings ready to poke into holes in compost enriched beds in early May.

LECTURES THIS WEEKEND

February 8, 2015/2 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Feb. 14, 2015
Gardener’s Supply Co.,Burlington, VT
“Espalier Fruits”
“My Weedless Garden”

Feb. 15, 2015
Northeast Organic Farming Association of VT, Winter Conference,
Burlington, VT
“Hardy Kiwifruits”
“Compost Tea: Snake Oil or Plant Elixir?”

GOOD BOOKS, GOOD LECTURES

January 29, 2015/3 Comments/in Books, Design, Gardening, Planning, Tools, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

One Book = Years of Experience

    I’ve been gardening for over 30 years. Don’t be impressed. The number of years spent with hands in the dirt doesn’t necessarily confer any particular expertise in the field (pun intended). Some gardeners do the same foolish things year in and year out, or never sufficiently investigate other, perhaps better, ways of doing what they’ve been doing. Or not appreciate cause and effect. (Was it really the compost tea spray that led to bountiful yields last year, or was it reliable rainfall interspersed with bright, sunny days? The tendency is to hold the former responsible.) Or, the wizened, old gardener’s wealth of knowledge might not extend beyond what they’ve grown on their own “back forty,” severely limiting the benefit of any wisdom passed on to others with a shorter history of gardening.
   Reading is a efficient way to squeeze wisdom of others, reflecting decades of digging, pruning, and seed-sowing, into just a few years, for yourself — depending, of course, on the weight of the words. The fact that so many gardeners have always gotten by with little or no reading is testimonial to millions of years of evolution that makes every pea seed naturally want to grow and every apple tree naturally want to bear fruit.
   So, in the spirit of becoming better gardeners, especially this time of year with nothing to do in the garden, let’s thumb through the pages of three worthy books that recently found a place on my desk.

Good Tools are a Help

    Did you know that the hose was invented by Jan van der Heijden in the 17th century? Tarred canvass, linen, and hand-stitched lengths of leather pipe were all predecessors of the modern garden hose, all of which I learned from Bill Laws’ A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools. It wasn’t until near the end of the 19th century that technology and marketing brought hoses into more general use in gardens.
   Just imagine having to water your garden with repeated trips to the spigot with your watering can, another of Mr. Laws’ “Fifty Tools.” Not that the garden hose has displaced watering cans, which have been around in various incarnations for hundreds of years and may have reached their peak in functional and visual elegance with the work of John and Arthur Haws. Haws cans are still made; my 2 gallon, galvanized Haws watering cans have served me and my plants well for over 20 years.
   . . . Fifty Tools will not, admittedly, make anyone a better gardener. Instead, it’s a very interesting history of 50 gardening tools with — okay, this might be some help in the garden — sidebars, “Tools in Action,” telling of the best use of each tool.

Haws watering can

Some listing are a stretch of the word “tool:” a radio, a scarecrow, separate entries for plant container, terracotta pot, and stoneware urn? I would have included the garden cart, pitchfork, and hori-hori knife as necessary garden accoutrements.

Inspiration from Paris

    In and Out of Paris: Gardens of Secret Delight by Zahid Sardar, with photographs by Marion Brenner is slightly more practical than A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools, even if I’m not planning to garden in Paris or like a king. The first section, eye candy, has the usual gardens of a literally majestic scale: Versailles, the Tuileries, Vaux-le-Vicomte, etc.
   Sections on private gardens are more inspirational for us non-royalty. Most of the gardens, whether majestic or small, are typically French, with long views or symmetric arrangements. Not one of the gardens, though, the 1000 square foot Japanese garden near the Bastille, with carefully placed, but not seemingly so, boulders nestled into mosses, lichen bordering a koi pond. Walls shield the garden from the sight and sound of the surrounding city, the effect softened with clumps of bamboo and a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees.
   One of the most interesting gardens is the Experimental Parc Méry-sur-Oise, which started life as the historic Renaissance-era Chateau de Méry-sur-Oise. More recently, in 1999, the grounds were re-done, this time with water features, not traditional fountains, but misty, hot, cold, brackish, and mineralized water that rains down from above or tumbles over waterfalls. Long-term goals, the “Experimental” part of the garden, include observations of the effects of the various waters on plants and the ecosystem over time. Elsewhere are free-standing gabion walls planned for vertical gardens. That never happened. Money ran out and the gardens have been neglected since 2003 — a modern, neglected garden!
   In all honesty, I mostly just looked at the beautiful photographs of In and Out of Paris: Gardens of Secret Delight.

Grow Vegetables? Study this Book

    Even if you are a backyard gardener rather than a market gardener, The Market Gardener, by Jean-Martin Fortier, will have you harvesting more and better tomatoes, and with less effort. Two themes of this book, as I see it, are planning and record-keeping. The author is a successful market gardener in Quebec, grossing over $100,000 from a mere acre and a half of land.
   The growing units on Jean-Martin’s farm are raised beds 100 feet long by 30 inches wide. Having all beds the same makes it easy for him to calculate the amount of compost needed and keep track of yields. The latter are spelled out in a handy chart showing days to maturity and yield of individual vegetables per 100 foot bed. I haven’t calculated yields from my 17 foot by 36 inch wide beds, but do know that I need to plant 4 beds at two week intervals to harvest our fill of sweet corn to enjoy during summer and, frozen, through winter.
   Another useful table spells out spacing of transplants, in flats and in beds, and another lists dollars reaped per bed from various vegetables. The only other gardening book that quantifies small-scale vegetable growing so well, in this case strictly backyard growing, is Burrage on Vegetables, from 1954, by Albert Burrage. How times have changed: Burrage is pictured in his garden in sport coat and bow tie; farmers in Jean-Martin’s book are pictured dressed as, well, farmers.

1950s vs the present: Different look but 2 good gardeners

The book also has the requisite listing of each vegetable along with growing information as well as useful chapters on soil care (generally good but with some misconceptions) and microclimate. One particularly simple, cheap yet innovative technique described for weed control after harvest, between plantings, is covering a bed for 2 weeks with a reusable 6mm thick, black silage tarp.
Jean-Martin emphasizes that it is possible for farming and gardening to be, at the same time, productive and bucolic only with planning and organization to avoid wasting time. In so doing, he can be a farmer who can put in a workday from a reasonable 8 to 5. Charles Dudley Warner wrote in his 1870 classic My Summer in the Garden, “Blessed be agriculture! If one does not have too much of it.” I agree.

Talks in Pennsylvania & Vermont Coming Up

Some good conferences and lectures coming up. I’ll be in Pennsylvania and Vermont talking about espalier fruits, weedless(!) gardening, growing hardy kiwifruit, pawpaws, and blueberries, the efficacy of compost tea, and pruning fruits. For details, see my “Lectures” page.

FRESH-PICKED SALADS ALL WINTER

January 17, 2015/7 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Greenhouse, Coldframe, Hotbed = Fresh Lettuce, Mâche, & other Salad Fixings

You can’t beat the luxuriousness of entering a greenhouse on a sunny, cold winter day, and hitting that welcome wall of moist, warm air. Once you get through that soft wall, you drink in the redolence and visual vibrancy of green, growing plants. All this is possible even with a relatively inexpensive greenhouse, such as mine, which is, basically, 2 layers of plastic film supported by sturdy, steel hoops (plus thermostats, a propane heater, a cooling fan, and a “squirrel cage” fan to inflate the space between the layers of plastic for better insulating value).

Fresh greens in the greenhouse

Still, a greenhouse — my greenhouse, at least — isn’t for virtual trips to Puerto Rico; It’s for growing edible plants, mostly fresh lettuce, celery, mâche, claytonia, and arugula to fill the salad bowl every day from late fall through early spring.

This same benefit, though, can almost be achieved much more simply and much more cheaply with a coldframe. A coldframe, in its most basic incarnation, is a box frame covered with glass or some other transparent material and within which plants are grown or protected through the coldest months.

I have both a greenhouse and a coldframe. The coldframe came first. With a greenhouse full of greenery, I admit to usually neglecting the coldframe, which is unheated and only 25 square feet in contrast to the greenhouse’s heated 750 square feet. Still, last fall I had an extra 25 lettuce transplants and lacked even a square foot of extra space in which to plant them in the greenhouse. So I spread an inch of compost in the coldframe, firmed the transplants into holes there, and then gave the whole bed a good watering before replacing the cover.

Cold frame with cover closed, and Sammy

Except for one subsequent watering, I’ve pretty much ignored the coldframe. The polycarbonate (‘Exolite’) cover is translucent so the coldframe’s innards are hidden from view unless the cover is lifted. Today, mostly out of curiosity, I lifted the cover to see what was going on inside. The lettuce was alive and had grown. Fall weather was admittedly relatively mild although temperatures here did drop below 10°F at least one night — pretty good survival for plants growing in little more than a covered box outdoors.

With short days and cold weather, lettuce is growing very slowly. Individual leaves, perhaps whole heads, probably will not ready for harvest until towards the end of February. That’s if the lettuce survives that long, which it might not even in the coldframe, depending on the length and depth of winter cold. Spinach would more likely make it through winter; mâche and claytonia would definitely weather the coldest days and nights.

Beefing Up the Coldframe

In the absence of a greenhouse, I would beef up coldframe salad production to yield more and for more of the winter. I would, first of all, construct more coldframes because, with slow growth inside in winter, one harvest could decimate the crop, for a period at least, from just one coldframe.

Anything that helps the coldframe fend off cold and retain heat would also help increase the amount and duration of harvest. Insulating the sides helps, and said insulation need be nothing more than wood chips or straw piled up against the sides. Or make the box itself out of whole bales of straw!

Cover open, Sammy on guard

Heat rises and glass and plastic are poor insulators, so most of the heat is lost through the translucent or clear covering. The Exolite cover on my coldframe is actually 2 layers of polycarbonate plastic sandwiching polycarbonate ribs that hold the layers 1/4” apart, proving better insulating value than a single layer. On really cold nights, an insulating mat, even just a blanket could be thrown over the cover. In Europe a hundred years ago, cold frames were used extensively for commercial vegetable production, and mats of woven straw covered the glass to keep out the coldest weather.

A few feet down into the earth, temperatures remain constantly in the 50s. That earth is a source of heat, tapped into by sinking the floor of the coldframe a couple of feet deeper, which also allows head space for taller vegetables, such as Romaine lettuce. Too deep, of course, makes harvesting very inconvenient.

And finally, winter production can be beefed up by actually heating a coldframe, in which case it’s no longer a “coldframe” but what’s called a “hotbed.” The traditional heat source for a hotbed is horse manure, layered into the bottom of the bed after a foot or so of soil has been dug out. A certain art is involved in getting the right amount and moisture content of manure, packed in just right and then covered with soil for a steady even heat. I made my coldframe into a hot bed a couple of years ago, or, rather, tried to. I didn’t get it just right; will have to try again.

True, you can’t climb into a coldframe for a tropical junket, but the coldframe, with care, can become a hotbed of tasty, fresh, organic, very locally-grown vegetables from fall to spring.

IT’S ALL ORGANIC, BUT NOT NECESSARILY ALL GOOD

December 11, 2014/7 Comments/in Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Hay, Grass Clippings, Manure, Leaves — Watch Out!

Organic materials — that is, things that are or were once living — are the core of “organic” agriculture, and right from the get go, many years ago, I set out pitchfork in hand to gather these materials. Into large garbage pails toted around in my van I loaded manure from nearby stables. Neighbors let me haul away their bags of autumn leaves.

I even convinced city workers to dump a truckload of harvested lake weeds onto the side lawn of my small rented house. (That was in Madison, Wisconsin, where fertilizer runoff from lawns was spurring growth of lake weeds which, besides making swimming hazardous, were, upon their death, causing oxygen depletion of the lakes.)

Me mulching, even as a beginning gardener

Mowings of roadside hay, which I stuffed into the back of the van, were another source of organic matter, used for mulch and for compost. That was before the days of lead-free gasoline, so lead contamination was some concern. Then again, high levels of organic matter in the soil mitigate lead hazards in soils.

More dramatically of concern were bags of grass clippings I once dragged across the yard from my neighbor’s freshly mowed lawn. Hours after I had spread the clippings around my potato’s lush, green vines, their stems twisted and contorted as if screaming in pain — the effect of weedkiller used on the lawn. Perhaps my neighbor was striving for a uniform greensward; perhaps he had inadvertently used a lawn fertilizer laced with weed killer. “Weed and feed” sounds so cheerful and labor-saving. Lawn weedkillers are toxic to broadleaf plants, which means anything but a grass.

The particular weedkiller was probably 2,4-D, also know as Agent Orange (less cheerful-sounding), which is a synthetic category of plant hormone called auxins. At the right concentration and at the right time, whether natural or synthetic, auxins do good things, such as bending plants towards light, initiating root growth in cuttings and in growing plants, and promoting upward growth Otherwise, they can wreak havoc.

I phoned the university extension specialist and was advised to remove the mulch and to adsorb any escaped 2,4-D by mixing activated charcoal into the soil. I did so and subsequent growth was normal.

Home-Grown vs. Imported Hay

I now have the luxury of scything much of the organic material I need from my own one acre field. Early season mowings are succulent and nitrogen-rich, just like grass clippings. Later mowings are hay, dry and carbon-rich. During the growing season, depending on what and when I mow, I can harvest either end of the spectrum, or anything in between.

Wood chips are another good source of organic material, one free of chemicals

I no longer rely on roadside mowings as organic material for my plantings. They are nowadays too finely chopped for easy and fast scooping up with a pitchfork. Even if that were not the case, I would have second thoughts about bringing such hay on-site. Again, weedkillers are the threat, more insidious these days because of use of more persistent ones. So-called pyridine carboxylic acid weedkillers might hang around in the soil or on sprayed vegetation for anywhere from less than 30 days to several years, even in the manure from animals that have eaten sprayed vegetation!

Caution, Testing, & Time to Avoid Problems

I do still occasionally supplement home-harvested organic materials with imported ones. One source is horse manure from a local stable.

A few weeks ago I was pitching forkful after forkful of manure into the bed of my pickup truck when I glanced over at the far side of the pile and noticed some discarded hay, much of it still pressed together in partial bales. “How convenient,” I thought, for mulching, compost, or bedding for my chickens and ducks.

On my drive home I started thinking about that hay riding behind me. Could it be laced with weedkiller?

For the most straightforward answer, I could just ask the stable owner. A stable hand told me that the hay had been shipped from a few hours away. Rather than cross examine my manure donor, I looked closely at the hay to see if any clover, alfalfa, or other broadleaf plants were mixed in. No. Of course, lack of broadleaf plants does not prove that weedkiller was used.

Well-formed leaves indicate that the hay is free of chemical residues

My final recourse was to do a bioassay of the hay, essentially, to plant seeds in it and observe their growth. Two 4-inch flowerpots, one with chopped up, homegrown hay and the other with the chopped up, imported hay, served as growth media, into which went 3 bean seeds each. Long story short: Growth seemed normal in the imported hay although germination was slower, probably because its texture lent itself to more readily drying out.

To put my mind thoroughly at ease about the hay, I’m going to let the pile sit for a few months, where rain, sun, and, eventually warmth, can do their job in splitting apart the insidious weedkiller molecules. The hay is not for my compost, in the dark innards of which weedkillers, if present, would be particularly persistent.

Autumn Leaves, Good Stuff

Just like the old days, I do still import organic materials in the form of bagged autumn leaves — except a lot more these days. They are both weed- and weedkiller-free.

New Video from Last Summer: Grape Training & Pruning

If you’d like to join me on a brief journey back into summer, see www.leereich.com/videos for a new video, I made last summer, about how to prune that quintessential summer vegetable, tomatoes, just like the Godfather.

A Harvest of Mediterranean Transplants

December 3, 2014/5 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Mediterranean Delectables & Not So Delectables

Figs thrive in heat and sunlight, nothing like the cold and frequently overcast days we now have, with only a few hours of sun when it does show itself. Still, my figs keep my attention.

In the greenhouse, heated only enough to keep temperatures above 35°F, the fig trees still have plenty of hard, unripe fruits splayed along their stems. Nothing odd about that. Figs, unlike apples and most other fruits which ripen during a narrow window in time, keep developing and ripening new fruits all along their growing stems.

But only one of my varieties, given the name Rabbi Samuel, seems able to tap into what little sunlight and heat are still at hand. The flavor of fruits that ripen on the heels of a spate of cold, rainy weather falls flat. But whenever sunlight fuels enough photosynthesis in the leaves and warmth in the greenhouse for at least a couple of days, a few fruits will swell and soften, their rosy insides then sweet and richly flavored.

Next Year’s Fig Crop is Readied

Next year’s fig crops are also on my mind.

Greenhouse figs no longer bearing good-tasting fruits get lopped back to 3 to 4 feet high. That dramatic pruning will coax vigorous growth next spring on which new fruits will be borne. More dramatic pruning would coax even more vigorous growth, but the figs on that new growth would begin ripening too late.

Potted figs have also been pruned and moved to my barely heated basement where temperatures below 50°F will restrain growth until outdoor temperatures in spring warm enough so that the pots can be moved back out. Figs are subtropical plants that, when dormant, tolerate temperatures down into the 20s, or lower. If kept too warm in winter, new growth begins indoors. That new growth is tender and easily burned by slight frost or even bright sunlight when moved outside.

Potted figs are difficult to muscle around; mine need to be carried through three doorways and then down narrow stairs to the basement. So a potted fig needs to be kept in a reasonably sized pot even though that allows for only a reasonable amount of growth which, in turn, allows for only a reasonably sized crop.

Kadota fig, dug up in November

I worked my way around this problem by taking one of my potted figs, a Kadota, out of its pot and planting it directly in the ground in spring. Theoretically, eager roots reach out into the surrounding soil, enough to support more growth — and larger crops — than if restricted within a pot. Another plus with this method is that no watering is needed beyond an initial drenching.

My success, thus far, has been limited. Kadota may requires too long a season to begin ripening any fruit outdoors here. Still, success might come once the plant gets used to its routine, or I’ll use this method with a shorter season variety such as Brown Turkey.

The time to dig up a planted out fig is anytime before temperatures dip below about 20°F. Or sooner, if the plant has lost its leaves and gone dormant.

Kadota fig stored in cold basement

The Hunchback of Nice Vindicates Cardoon

Continuing the Mediterranean theme (is this some primal attraction to a Garden of Eden?), I wrote back in May about growing, with reservations, Gobbo di Nizza (Hunchback of Nice) cardoon. In my garden many years ago, cardoon proved to be an enormous, spiny, bitter-tasting vegetable. But that wasn’t Gobbo di Nizza cardoon.

First off, Gobbo di Nizza is not spiny. It looks spiny but the soft “spines” don’t bite. This is an impressive-looking plant, something like a giant thistle (which it is, as is the closely related artichoke, botanically speaking), a whorl of gray-green leaves (very Mediterranean) soaring almost 4 feet high.

I tasted Gobbo di Nizza a month or so ago and was very unimpressed with its bitter flavor.

Blanching, which is blocking out sunlight, is a way that the flavor of vegetables such as endive and chicory is mellowed. Some folks blanche cardoon. So I gathered together Gobbo’s leaves, secured them in a tight bundle with a wrapping of twine, and waited a few weeks. Once I had harvested the leaves, removed the blades, and pared away the stringy flesh, I was left holding large, pale leaf stalks, the stalks looking much like celery on steroids.

Chopped into 1” pieces, and drained after being boiled for 15 minutes in salted water, Gobbo di Pizza had a smooth, artichoke-y flavor, quite good. Perhaps it was the olive oil and home-grown sun-dried tomatoes I drizzled over them.

Earthy Flavor: What am I, a Worm?

Beets are too earthy in flavor for my palette, and it’s not my imagination. That earthy flavor is from geosmin, a substance that is actually also present in soil! I like my earthiness in the soil, not my food.

Varieties differ in their geosmin concentration, with cylindrical varieties and the striped variety Chioggia being highest. This past season I was duped into growing beets again. I grew the old, low geosmin variety Detroit Dark Red, but still found it too earthy. Most were given away. The few left await vinegar, horseradish, or mustard to tone down their earthiness.

Who’s the Best Gardener/Farmdener?

November 21, 2014/3 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Fresh Watermelon, and More, with Help from Ethylene

Could I possibly be the best gardener west of the Hudson River? Perhaps. As evidence: On November 1st, here in Zone 5 of New York’s Hudson River Valley, where temperatures already have plummeted more than once to 25°F, I was able to harvest a fresh, dead-ripe watermelon. Not from a greenhouse, not from a hoop house, not even from a plastic covered tunnel. Watermelon, a crop sensitive to frost and thriving best in summer’s sun and searing heat.

Okay, perhaps I can’t assume all that much responsibility for the melon. Let me explain . . .

Every fall, I have a landscaper dump a whole truckload of leaves vacuumed up from various properties at my holding area for such things. Rain and snow drench the pile in the coming months, starting it on the road to decomposition. When sufficiently warm weather has decided to stay in spring, I scoop out a few holes in the pile, fill them with compost, then tuck in watermelon transplants.

Last fall’s pile yielded well from summer until early fall this year, at which time I gathered up remaining melons for eating or, if unripe, for composting along with the vines. The tractor, with its bucket, was able to move and compact the now dense pile to make way for this year’s crop of leaves.

Ben & Jeremy show off the November watermelon.

Now we’re up to November 1st, time to spread the leaf mold before it freezes — a big job that necessitated enlisting the help of my neighbors Jeremy and Ben. We were loading and hauling and loading and hauling, forking deeper and deeper into the bowels of the pile, when Jeremy yelled that he’d just speared a watermelon I had overlooked when cleaning up. I cleaned it off and sliced it open. It proved to be a ripe watermelon. The taste? “Awesome,” to quote Jeremy.

The Watermelon Mystery

Okay, I admit to not being able to claim too much credit for the ripe watermelon. How did it get there? Was it ripe and overlooked, then buried and preserved in the warm bowels of the leaf mold pile? Was it unripe when buried, then subsequently ripened? Probably not. No leaves were poking out of the pile, capturing the sun’s albeit weak rays for photosynthesis to make the sugars needed for ripening. A couple of nights of 25°F would have done in the leaves anyway.

Some fruits can actually ripen after harvest. These include apples, pears, bananas, avocados, and other so-called climacteric fruits. Just before ripening, respiration of climacteric fruits dramatically increases along with a burst in production of the plant hormone ethylene. Through a feedback mechanism, ethylene stimulates more respiration which in turn stimulates even more ethylene production and even quicker ripening. Hence, enclosing bananas in a bag stimulates ripening, and why one rotten apple — injury, whether mechanical or from pests, also elicits an ethylene response — can indeed “spoil the barrel.”

This burst in ethylene production occurs even after climacteric fruits have been harvested, as long as they were sufficiently mature at the time. You can’t pick a golfball-sized green apple and expect it to ripen off the plant.

Non-climacteric fruits lack that pre-ripening spike in respiration and ethylene production, and do not ripen after harvest. Or so the thinking, based on early experiments, went. According to more recent research, fruits show various degrees of ethylene production. Watermelon is not a climacteric fruit, but at a certain point the white flesh within does release a burst of ethylene some time after which it morphs from bland and unripe to sweet, red, and ripe. But that won’t happen off the vine.

(“Ripe” is open to some debate. Peach, for instance, is a climacteric fruit that, if picked sufficiently mature but underripe, will soften and become more edible. But it won’t develop the aromatics of a tree-ripened fruit or, until rotting changes starches to sugars, become at all sweeter after picking. I don’t call that “ripe.”)

So my watermelon must have been overlooked and ripe and evidently kept perfectly well in the moist warmth of the leaf pile.

Deb & Ethylene Take Credit for the Peppers

Ethylene, and not me, is going to take credit for the fresh, sweet red peppers in today’s salad. Peppers are a climacteric fruit. Green peppers are unripe peppers, but if the fruits have just a hint of red on them, they can ripen even after harvest to full red (or yellow, orange, or purple, depending on the variety of pepper) color and, at least to my taste buds, flavor.

Still eating fresh, red, ripe sweet, juicy, delicious peppers.

Skill is needed to ripen peppers off the plant. Cool, but not too cool, temperatures hold the fruits for storage and warmer temperatures then speed ripening. Just the right amount of humidity is also needed to, on the one hand, avoid drying, or, on the other hand, rotting. My wife, Deb, rather than I, plies these skills, so should probably get credit for the ripe, red peppers.

This season has been the best pepper season ever, both in quantity and in quality. King of the North peppers, large and blocky, with thick, juicy walls, now ripening in a basket taste as bland now as they did all summer. I won’t grow them again. In contrast, Carmen, Sweet Italia, and (slightly hot) Pepperocini peppers, also ripening in that basket, taste as good now as their siblings did snapped from plants basking in summer heat and sun a few months ago.

FIGS, POMEGRANATES, LETTUCE, BEDS: ALL READY

October 31, 2014/6 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening, Planning, Soil, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Beds Ready for Spring Planting, Figs and Lettuces Readied for Cold

Much colder weather has been sneaking in and out of the garden but leaving traces of its presence with some blackened leaves on frost-sensitive plants and threatening to brazenly show itself in full force sometime soon. This fall I vow to put all in order before that event rather than, on some very cold night, running around, flashlight in hand, gathering and protecting plants.

Before even getting to the plants, drip irrigation must be readied for winter. Main lines and drip lines can remain outdoors but right near the spigot, the timer, the filter, and pressure reducer must be brought indoors where they won’t freeze. I plug the inlet for the drip’s main line to keep out curious insects. At the far end of the line is a cap that I loosen enough to let water drain out. Opening all other valves along the line leaves no dead ends in which freezing water could expand to break lines.

Begonia, amaryllis, Maid of Orleans jasmine (Jasminium sambac), and other topical plants are next in importance. Being near the radiating warmth of the house has spared them recent slightly frosty nights. Colder temperatures would not be so kind. I snap the stems off the begonias right at ground level and put the pots in the basement where cool temperatures will keep the tubers dormant to wait out winter. Amaryllis plants also go into the basement. Cool temperatures and lack of water for a couple of months give these plants the rest period they need so that, brought upstairs to a warm, sunny window, their blossoms can show off their bright, red color against the achromatic winter landscape beyond.

Maid of Orleans jasmine right away gets a prominent place in a sunny window to share its nonstop, sweet fragrant blossoms.

Figs, Pomegranates, & Subtropicals Readied for Cold, But Not Too Much

Fig, pineapple guava, Chilean guava, and pomegranate are subtropical plants that tolerate temperatures down into the ‘teens so can remain outdoors for weeks to come. Still, many of these plants are in large pots, not something I want to be lugging around following at last minute threat of frigid temperatures. So I’ll gather them together in a convenient location for quick dispatch indoors when needed.

Potted subtropical plants are getting ready for colder — but not too cold — weather

The guavas, as well as kumquat and common jasmine (Jasminium officinale), are evergreen subtropical plants. The leaves are important to these plants both for beauty and for function so they’ll make the move indoors before the other subtropicals to make sure their leaves go into winter undamaged.

Common jasmine stays out longest because some exposure to cold is needed to get blossoms in winter.

Cold Weather Vegetables for Weeks to Come

The vegetable garden is still green with endive, kale, lettuce, turnips, Brussels sprouts, arugula, and other cold-hardy vegetables. Soon, though, their cold tolerances will be tested. I’ll pre-empt that testing by covering some of the beds with tunnels of fabric (“fleece” to the Brits, “floating row covers” to us colonists) or clear plastic. No need yet to cover the plants but better to have the metal hoops which support the fleece or plastic in place and ready for the covering before that frigid night to come.

Metal hoops readied to support covers for lettuce.

Not all hardy vegetables get covered; just the leafy ones — lettuce, mustard, arugula, and endive — for fresh salads in the weeks to come. Brussels sprouts and kale are so cold hardy that they can go for weeks without protection, and, anyway, they’re too tall to cover. Leeks also can stay outdoors unprotected until December, or later, then get dug up and packed together in a box or large pot to store in the basement and use as needed.

Carrots, beets, turnips, and winter radishes enjoy the protection of the earth. With a deep mulch of leaves or straw, they could remain tender and unfrozen all winter. More convenient for eating is to dig them up just before really frigid weather descends on the garden and pack them in boxes with dry leaves to store in the cool temperatures of the basement. I’m putting off deciding which option to choose.

Fresh Lettuce ‘Til When?

Someone recently told me that they gardened maniacally all summer and now they are finished for the season . . . which reminds me of some more things that I still have to do. Plant garlic. I planted cloves back in early September; a second planting, now, will give some indication if early or late planting is better. Mulch blueberries as soon as their leaves all drop. Sift compost and garden soil into buckets to store for making potting soil in late winter. Cut down asparagus plants after the tops yellow, and mulch the bed. Clean up spent vegetable beds of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants and spread them with an inch depth of compost. Mow hayfield and lawn to expose rodents to predators and, in the hayfield, to keep blackberry, sumac, and autumn olive from taking over. Plant bulbs (a large, naturalized planting of alliums; more on that some other time).

Beds readied for spring, and lettuce readied for winter

I’d also like to divide older plants in a flower bed and dig out weeds that are starting to think they’re home. And build a rustic fence to hid the propane tank for the greenhouse.

I’m not yet ready to throw in the trowel for this season.