Page 15 – Lee Reich

CARROTS, YUK!

July 25, 2023/8 Comments/in Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Lack of Green Thumb, Or Something Else?

I just sunk my teeth into a carrot pulled mere minutes ago from the garden; the taste was not good! I’m not surprised, because that’s often the case with my carrots. For the reason why, I might turn to a book, one of my books, The Ever Curious Gardener, the last chapter where I talk about the senses, including flavor.

In that chapter I delve into various influences on flavor, things such as soil, light, moisture, day length, and temperature. They’ve all been studied, but mostly each by itself. Quoting myself,

With light, moisture, temperature, day length — so many variables — making their mark on flavor, a more additive approach to growing flavorful crops might be more useful rather than trying to parse out individual, interacting, influences.

This kind of attention has been lavished on studies with carrots by raising them in phytotrons, where light duration and intensity, day and night temperatures, and humidity can be manipulated, in pots of various types of soil. Testing soils and growing conditions mimicking those of Wisconsin, California, Florida, and Texas, the best flavored carrots…drum roll…were those grown in mineral, especially loam, soils as compared with muck soils (drained swamplands rich in organic matter) under mild winter conditions (such as in California). I’m not ready to relocate to be able to grow the most perfect carrot, and no need. Variety choice was still the most important determinant of flavor.
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A SECOND “SPRING”

July 20, 2023/5 Comments/in Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Pricking Out and Growing On. Whaa?

Make believe it’s spring. That’s what I’m doing this time of year as I drop seeds into minifurrows of potting soil in seedling trays. It’s as if I’m getting ready to plant a garden — and, in fact, I am. The fall garden.

Having a fall garden is like having a whole other garden with no additional space needed. That’s why I’m sowing in seedling trays rather than elbowing my way into the present garden’s valuable real estate.

Today I sowed lettuce, endive, cabbage, kale, and cauliflower seeds. After a week or two of growth in a seedling tray, those seeds should have sprouted and seedlings will be large enough to “prick out” and carefully lift for “growing on” in individual. small pots or cells of multicelled flats of potting soil. Read more

FOR THAT UNWELCOME MEDITERRANEAN LOOK

July 11, 2023/4 Comments/in Pests/by Lee Reich

One Name for Many Diseases

The powdery white coating I notice on leaves of my peony and lilac plants gives them a very Mediterranean look. Not attractive, though, at least to me, because that’s a sign of a disease, appropriately called powdery mildew. If I look around the garden, the disease is probably showing itself, or soon to do so, on a wide variety of plants, including phlox, zinnia, squash, gooseberry, and many more. (This blog post is excerpted from the chapter about plant stresses in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.) Even though powdery mildew is pretty reliable in showing up each season on certain plants — this is important! — the disease doesn’t necessarily spread from one kind of susceptible plant to the next. Many different fungi are responsible for the disease we collectively call powdery mildew, and each of these fungi have specific plant hosts. Thus, the fungus that causes powdery mildew on lilac (the fungus is Microsphaera alni) cannot cause powdery mildew on rose (caused by the fungus Sphaerotheca pannosa). Read more

WORTH GROWING

July 5, 2023/10 Comments/in Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Rumors Against Sweet Corn

My fourth and last planting of sweet corn went in a few days ago. I grow sweet corn despite reading years of advice that backyard gardens are too small to make sweet corn worth planting. In the last few decades, that advice has been reinforced by the fact that supersweet corn — which can be more than four times sweeter than heirloom (traditional) sweet corn, and holds that sweetness much longer after harvest — is so readily available at farmstands and markets. I strongly disagree on both counts!

Golden Bantam corn

Backyard gardens are too small? My vegetable beds are three feet wide and about 20 feet long. I plant corn in “hills,” which actually are not at all hilly. In gardening, a “hill” is a station, a location where you grow a clump of plants. Read more

SOME LIKE IT HOT

June 28, 2023/4 Comments/in Fruit/by Lee Reich

Exotic Grapes

You’d think that I’d be over and done with the greenhouse this time of year. Spring vegetables and flowers have been germinated, pricked out, grown on, and all established in their homes in the garden.

But no, the greenhouse is still chock full of goodies, plants that tolerate heat. The first plant to jump out at you (visually) as you pass through the greenhouse door is a grape vine. Not just any old grape vine, but a vinifera grape vine (Vitis vinifera). “Vinifera” is the species of European wine and table grapes. They’re generally neither cold-hardy here, nor can they fend off attacks of our native insects and diseases, so have been hybridized with hardier and tougher American grape species, such as the fox grape (V. labrusca).

Point is, the grapevine in my greenhouse could not survive outdoors here. The variety I’m growing is Perle de Csaba, a table variety, which first fruited here a couple years ago; it’s seedless and sweet, with a strong aroma.

I grew it in a large pot, then didn’t move the pot, so it’s roots have sneaked out the pot’s drainage holes and into the moist, compost-enriched soil below. That’s fine. It’s in a good place, it’s stem now trained to climb up a chain to one of the greenhouse rafters. Short, fruiting shoots grow off up and down on either side of that permanent stem, a perfect bunch of grapes dangling from each of those shoots. Read more

EASY CHERRIES

June 21, 2023/31 Comments/in Design, Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

Sweet, Juicy, & Tolerant

Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) are now at their peak of perfection, sweet and sprightly flavored, brilliant red in color, still firm, and, as usual, abundant. Nanking cherries are very juicy and not stingy to release the juice. Straight up, it’s the most refreshing juice imaginable.

You’ve never heard of Nanking cherries? Understandable since they are an uncommon fruit. (And warranted a whole chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, now out of print but in the works for updating and expanding.) As the name tells you, they are native to China, more generally to the cold, semi-arid regions of Asia. This provenance tells you something about the toughness of the plant, where it weathers winter temperatures below minus 20 degrees F. and summer temperatures as high as 110 degrees F. Read more

WISTERIA UPS AND DOWNS

June 14, 2023/14 Comments/in Design, Flowers/by Lee Reich

Shoots vs. Flowers

Around this time of year, few plants are as dramatically beautiful as a well-grown wisteria, whose chains of lavender flowers drip like little waterfalls from the branches. I’ve always wanted one, and now I have one. But I’ll keep in mind a common complaint people have with wisteria: The frustration when a wisteria plant is all shoots and no flowers!

This problem has some causes and some solutions. The common complaint can often be traced to something as simple as a poor plant or a poor site. Perhaps Read more

A SLIPPERY SLOPE

June 7, 2023/0 Comments/in Design, Flowers/by Lee Reich

A Little History

Walking down the path alongside my home first thing this morning, I looked to my right and was wowed. What I saw warranted bragging rights. Flowers in red, pink, white, and a touch of purple against a backdrop of varying shades of green leaves, some sparkling with reflected light, others mat, holding onto any reflections. Heart-shaped leaves, lance-shaped leaves, and compound leaves livened the backdrop. All of it set off against the solid backdrop of the red brick wall.

Although I chose and planted all that I admired, not too much credit for it was mine. This was no carefully planned design laid out on paper with squiggly shapes representing plants and their locations, each shape labeled with plant names and varieties, perhaps even a note to flower colors.

Twenty plus years ago, the site was a strip of sloping lawn on the east and north sides of my home. Imagining myself one day slipping while mowing with my foot sliding beneath the mower that birthed a plan for building a rock wall at the base of the slope which would be backfilled with soil. No more slope and no more mowing.

The Heath Family Stays Together for a Reason

And so was borne my “heath bed,” a bed of various plants in the Heath Family, Ericaceae. Grouping such plants together was not just a botanical plaything; it had function. Read more

A FRUITFUL YEAR?

May 31, 2023/10 Comments/in Flowers, Fruit/by Lee Reich

High Hopes

Apple, pear, and plum branches frothing in white blooms this spring foretold of bountiful crops of these fruits. Wrong. They foretold of the potential for bountiful crops. I’ve mentioned before the abundance of insect and disease pests that lurk here, ready for action, and the potential for late spring frosts. So I don’t get my hopes too, too high with these fruits, except for the pears, European and Asian, which are naturally pest-free here.

Lots of things can be blamed for a barren fruit tree, bringing disappointment no matter what the cause.

Apricot trees in bloom

If the tree is young and not yet of flowering age, fruitlessness can be forgiven. Pears, for all their qualities, are typically slow to come into bearing.

Who Needs a Mate?

There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. Read more

EXIT: TOMATOES AND PEPPERS

May 24, 2023/0 Comments/in Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

Listen to Lee, Lee

You’d think I would have known better or, at least, listened to my own preaching. An increasing warming spell a week ago induced many fellow gardeners around here to set tomato and pepper transplants out in their gardens. The average date of the last killing freeze around here is May 21 — but temperatures were getting warmer and warmer, and what with global warming . . . I have preached not going with your gut when it comes to times for spring planting, but was swayed with the crowd and the warming weather, and planted out over 50 tomato plants and a dozen pepper plants a couple of weeks ago.

Then the weather turned cooler, with night-time lows predicted to sink into the low 30s. Here in the Wallkill River Valley, cold air, which is denser than warm air, flows downhill like water to collect in low spots. My farmden always experiences temperatures a few degrees colder than locally predicted.

No problem. I made some wire supports over which I draped a row cover which is said to retain heat, offering about six degrees more of frost protection. I went to bed that night at peace with our planet. Read more