Page 20 – Lee Reich

MY BICOASTAL PLANT

August 3, 2022/6 Comments/in Pruning/by Lee Reich

A Tree Takes a Plane Ride

I managed to pack lightly for a journey, many years ago, to the West Coast, toting along only an extra pair of pants, a couple of shirts, and a few other essentials. But on the return trip, how could I resist carrying back such bits of California as orange-flavored olive oil and chestnut-fig preserves? The most obvious bit of California that I brought back was a potted bay laurel plant (Lauris nobilis), its single stem poking out of my small backpack and brushing fragrant leaves against the faces of my fellow travelers.

Bay, with its subtropical pals, rosemary and citrus

Not only did the bay laurel bring a bit of California to my home, but also traditions dating back thousands of years from its native home along the Mediterranean coast. Ancient Romans crowned victors with wreaths of laurel and bestowed berried branches upon doctors passing their final examinations. (The word “baccalaureate” comes from bacca laureus, Latin for “laurel berry”.) Bay laurel was sacred to Apollo, so was planted near temples.

Although bay laurel can grow fifty feet tall, my plan was to develop this plant into a small tree with a single, upright trunk capped by a pompom of leaves. The Mediterranean climate is characterized by hot, dry summers, and cool, moist winters. Since the plant is hardy only to about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, I had to grow it in a pot. The plant is allegedly a rich feeder, but my plants grows fine in my homemade potting mix which contains a healthy portion of compost and — for some extra oomph — some soybean meal.

The potted tree decorates the house in winter, the terrace in summer, and provides fresh bay leaves for soups and other dishes year-round.

A Winter Home

It is in winter that my plant realizes just how far it is from its Mediterranean home. Winters in its home lands are typically cool and moist. Winters inside a northern home are typically warm and dry. Since cool rooms are moister than warm rooms in winter, the cooler the room the better, preferably below fifty degrees. My bay laurel has wintered well either in sunny window in a cool room or near a bright window in my basement, where temperatures are very cool. The warmer the temperatures, the more light bay laurel needs.

The other challenge to my bay tree has been scale insects. They sit along leaves and stems under their protective shell as they suck sap from the plant. scale insects on bark Actually, it’s more of a challenge to me because the plant tolerates scale reasonably well. Once moved outdoors in spring, the plant soon recovers from the attack and its resident scale population, either from the changed environment or from predators, subsides.

The problem for me is that the insects exude a sticky honeydew that drips onto furniture and the floor. A sooty black fungus then feeds on the honeydew.

This summer I’ve taken a more active role in thwarting scale by spraying the plant weekly with horticultural oil, which is nontoxic to humans and soon evaporates.

Lollipops

Bay laurel can be trained to any number of shapes such as a pyramid, cone, or globe, with these shapes beginning at ground level or capping a long or short piece of trunk.

Right from the get go, I chose to grow my tree as a “standard.” “Standard” has many meanings both in and out of horticulture, so let’s first get straight which kind of “standard” we are dealing with: Here, I mean a naturally bushy, small plant trained to have a clear, upright stem capped by a mop of leaves. A miniature tree. Standard evergreens along front path In the world of gardening, people are divided over how they feel about “standards.” Some gardeners love them, others will have nothing to do with them. Standard bay laurel

(A “standard” apple tree is one grafted to a rootstock that does not confer any dwarfing.)

For training my lollipop-shaped bay tree, I allowed only a single stem to grow straight upward, and then pinched off any side shoots that developed. When the trunk reached three feet in height, I pinched out the tip to cause branches to form high on the stem. I kept this up, pinching branches and then their branches, to cause further branching, thus forming a dense head. (I devote a whole chapter to standards in my book The Pruning Book.)

Training a standard (rosemary, in this case)

Or, in an illustration (from The Pruning Book): Steps in making a standard

Ongoing care of the tree entails pruning and pinching to keep the mop head to size, and root pruning and repotting the plant every couple of years or so. The time to do any trimming to keep a plant in shape is mostly just as soon as the new shoots mature and stop growing in early summer. Pruning bay laurel

A few years ago, I decided that my tree was too tall and unwieldy; I wanted a shorter standard. Easy: I just lopped the whole plant to the ground and started again. With an established root system fueling new growth, I was able to develop the new lollipop quickly. Standard bay & rosemary

All this pinching and pruning yields fresh bay leaves, which find their way into the kitchen. The fresh leaf has a strong flavor, and one cookbook suggests (and I now confirm this) using one leaf for a dish to serve four people. The aroma of the fresh leaf is more than just strong; it actually has a different quality than that of the dried leaf. The fresh aroma is almost oily, to me somewhat reminiscent of olive oil — how California-ish!

A BACTERIA TO THE RESCUE

July 28, 2022/6 Comments/in Pests/by Lee Reich

A Cabbageworm is a Cabbageworm is a . . . Not!

A few weeks ago, one or more of the few species of “cabbageworms” began munching the leaves of my cabbage and Brussels sprouts plants. They ignored kale leaves, thankfully, because it’s my favorite of the three.

Cabbageworm damage

A laissez fair approach would have left the cabbages and Brussels sprouts mere skeletons, so I had to take some sort of action.

For the record, “cabbageworms” are actually not worms, but a few species of caterpillars all classified — and this is important — in the order Lepidoptera. Here’s the lineup: A cabbage looper arches its back when moving, and is light green with a pale white stripe along each of its sides and two thin white stripes down its back.

Cabbage looper

A diamondback moth larvae is 5/16 inch long, yellowish-green, and spindle shaped with a forked tail.

Diamondback moth larva

A cabbageworm (yes, one kind of cabbageworm is named “cabbageworm”) is one-and-a-quarter inches long, velvety green, and has a narrow, light yellow stripe down the middle of its back.

Cabbageworm & cross-striped cabbageworm

A cross-striped cabbageworm is 3/4 inch long and bluish-gray in color with many black stripes running cross-wise on its back, below which a black and yellow stripe runs along the length of its body.

Natural Control

I put an end to whichever “worms” were the culprits, and was able to do so without resorting to any chemical spray, by spraying the plants with Bt. Bt is the commonly used abbreviation for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that causes disease in certain insects. After ingesting Bt, a cabbageworm becomes sick, stops eating, and dies. Since the Bt I sprayed is toxic only to lepidopterous insects, it doesn’t pose any danger to other creatures, such as birds, cats, dogs, humans, and even other insects.

The insecticidal properties of Bt have been known since early in the twentieth century, when the bacterium was discovered as a silkworm pest by Japanese researchers. (Silkworms are also Lepidoptera.) The originally discovered strain of this bacteria is toxic only to caterpillars, which are larvae of butterflies and moths, and was first used purposefully to control the European corn borer in Europe in the 1930s. Interest in Bt waned in the late 1940s, when nerve gases used during World War II led to the development of new types of chemical pesticides. In the 1960s, agricultural scientists finally began to take a second look at Bt.

Many strains of Bt have been isolated. The ones for cabbageworms and other Lepidoptera are Bt aizawai and Bt kurstaki. Thuricide label The strain Bt var. israelensis is toxic to larvae of black flies and mosquitoes. Another strain, Bt var. san diego, is toxic to Colorado potato beetle larvae.

All these strains of Bt are available commercially. The bacteria are packaged in a dormant condition either as a dry powder, a liquid suspension, or, in the case of Bt var. israelensis, a slow release ring that is floated on water to kill mosquito larvae. Bt goes under a number of brand names which don’t give a hint of the pesticide’s ingredients, so read the label to make sure of what you are buying. The product I use goes under the trade name Thuricide.

Bt is a living organism, so I store it in such a way as to prolong its viability. (Here on the farmden, Bt resides in the back of the refrigerator, which is generally a strong no-no for pesticides. (But Bt is nontoxic, and there are no children in the house.) Kept cool and dry, the bacteria will remain viable in its container for two or three years. Bt works quickly enough so I can check for discolored, blackened, or shriveled larvae the next day to see if the spray is still viable.

But . . .

Is there some trade-off that must be made when using this apparently benign pesticide? Yes, insect pests can develop resistance to Bt, just as they do to chemical pesticides. Resistance is most likely from continuous, repetitive use of any single pesticide, or different ones with the same mode of action.

This problem, with Bt, has been exacerbated since almost 500 million acres of crops, mostly field corn and cotton, have been genetically engineered with insecticidal Bt genes. It’s equivalent to the field being constantly sprayed with Bt. Some resistance has been found.

In my garden, I apply Bt at the recommended rate, only to afflicted plants, and only when a pest problem gets sufficiently out of hand to warrant treatment.

There’s another good reason for careful use of at least the original strain of Bt. Since this strain is toxic to caterpillars, indiscriminate use could substantially decrease the caterpillar population and, hence, the numbers of moths and butterflies. My distaste for the celeryworm, which has a voracious appetite for carrot, celery, and parsley leaves, is tempered by the beauty of its adult form.

Celeryworm

Surely the elegance and grace of the adult form, the black swallowtail butterfly fluttering about the garden, adds as much beauty as a marigold or rose.

Black swallowtail

HEAT? DROUGHT? NO PROBLEM.

July 20, 2022/6 Comments/in Gardening, Pests/by Lee Reich

Physiological Workaround

Portulaca is a genus that gives us a vegetable, a weed, and a flower. All flourish undaunted by heat or drought, a comforting thought as I drag the hose or lug a watering can around to keep beebalm, an Edelweiss grapevine, and some marigolds and zinnias — all planted within the last couple of weeks — alive.

Portulaca employ a special trick for dealing with hot, dry weather, which presents most plants with a conundrum. On the one hand, should a plant open the pores of its leaves to let water escape to cool the plant, as well as take in carbon dioxide which, along with sunlight, is needed for photosynthesis. On the other hand, the soil might not be sufficiently moist or the pores might end up jettisoning water faster than roots can drink it in, in which case closing the pores would be the ticket.

Portulaca gets around this conundrum by working the night shift, opening its pores only in darkness, when little water is lost, and latching onto carbon dioxide at night by incorporating it into malic acid, which is stored until the next day. Come daylight, the pores close up, conserving water, and malic acid comes apart to release carbon dioxide within the plant. I describe this specialized type of metabolism in my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.

From the Pampas to my Garden

Let’s start with the flower Portulaca, P. grandiflora, which goes either by a common name that is the same as the generic name, or by the name “moss rose.” In truth, the plant is neither a moss nor a rose. But the tufts of lanceolate leaves do bear some resemblance to moss, a very large moss. And portulaca’s flowers, which are an inch across, with single or double rows of petals in colors from white to yellow to rose, scarlet, and deep red, are definitely rose-like. The plant grows to a half-foot-wide mound, with stems that are just barely able to pull themselves up off the ground under the weight of their fleshy leaves. Moss rose

Moss rose is native to sunny, dry foothills that rise up along the western boundary of the South American pampas. As might be inferred from its native habitat, this plant not only tolerates, but absolutely requires, full sun and well-drained soil. Such requirements, and low stature, make the plant ideal for dry rock gardens and for edging.

Moss rose is easy to grow from seeds sown at their final home, or started in flats for transplanting. Some gardeners mix the extremely fine seed with dry sand before sowing, to ensure uniform distribution.

Once blossoming begins, it continues nonstop until plants are snuffed out by frost. Moss rose is an annual, but sometimes will seed itself the next season. However, double varieties (plants with double rows of petals) grown this year will self-seed single varieties (plants with a row of petals) “volunteers” next year.

Plant It or Not, It Will Be There

The vegetable and the weedy Portulaca can be dealt with together; they are one and the same plant, P. oleracea. Somewhere in your garden now, you surely have this plant, whose succulent, reddish stems and succulent, spoon-shaped leaves hug the ground and creep outward in an ever-enlarging circle.

The common name is purslane, though it has many aliases, including pussley, Indian cress, and the descriptive Malawi moniker of “the buttocks of the wife of a chief.”

Tenacity to life and fecundity accord purslane weed status. Pull out a plant and toss it on the ground, and it will retain turgidity long enough to re-root. Chop the stems with a hoe, and each piece will take root. Even without roots, the inconspicuous flowers stay alive long enough to make and spread seeds.

My one consolation with having this weed in my garden is that it’s easy to remove, robs little nutrients or water from surrounding plants, and, being low-growing, casts little or no shade. Perhaps it even protects the soil surface from sun beating down on it or pounding raindrops from washing away soil. On the other hand, left unattended, it could take over a garden this time of year.

You Could Eat It

What about purslane, the vegetable? Take a bite. The young stems and leaves are tender and juicy, with a slight, yet refreshing, tartness. Purslane is delicious (to some people, admittedly not to me) raw or cooked, and is much appreciated as a vegetable in many places around the world besides its native India.

I have actually tasted the result of the plant’s specialized metabolism in summer by nibbling a leaf of purslane at night and then another one in the afternoon. Malic acid makes the night-harvested purslane more tart than the one harvested in daylight.

There are cultivated varieties of purslane for planting(!) in the vegetable garden. These varieties have yellowish leaves and a more upright growth habit than the wild forms. Wild or cultivated, the plants can be grown from seed or, of course, by rooting cuttings from established plants.

As far as actually planting purslane in my garden, I agree with the view of another garden writer who said “it is a reckless gardener who would plant purslane.” That does not mean that I do not grow purslane, though, for plenty keeps appearing despite my weeding.

Every once in a while, I again try eating it. I have enjoyed it in salads in restaurants to such accompaniments (or taste and texture disguisers) as feta cheese, olive oil, vinegar, and other strong flavors.

If you do opt to plant purslane, you must replant it yearly. Like the moss rose, purslane is an annual plant. Once established in the spring, both purslane and moss rose need no further care. Now, if only moss rose were a bit more weedy . . .

GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES video recording now available.

July 16, 2022/0 Comments/in Fruit, Planning/by Lee Reich

Watch, listen, and learn — on your own time — about GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES, with a recording of a webinar with Lee Reich. Now available online.

Learn about the nice quirks of figs, subtropical plants native to hot, dry climates, that make it possible to grow and harvest fruit from them even in cold climates. With that covered, I detail some practical applications of this information. Winter care, pruning, varieties, and speeding up ripening will all be covered. If you already grow figs, this webinar will help you grow more or better figs, and be able to manage them more easily. If you haven’t yet experienced the rewards of growing figs, you have a treat in store.

To access this video, go to www.leereich.com/video

San Piero fig Espalier fig Fig potted in ground

TWO DISAPPOINTING FAILURES, TWO DELICIOUS SUCCESSES

July 13, 2022/28 Comments/in Fruit, Gardening/by Lee Reich

Help!!

As flaming red petals drop to the ground beneath my pomegranate bush, I’m not hopeful. Sure, the flowers are beautiful, but the plant is here to give me fruit.

To survive winters here in New York’s mid-Hudson Valley (Zone 5), my plant’s home is in a large flowerpot which I cart into cold storage in late December and back outdoors or into the greenhouse in late winter or early spring. Even my cold-hardy variety, Salatavski, from western Asia, would die to ground level if planted outdoors. The roots would survive that much cold because of moderated below ground temperatures, but new stems that would rise from ground level would need to be more than a year old before flowering.

Potted pomegranate, but NOT mine

Growing in a pot, my pomegranate (and other potted fruit plants) need regular pruning and repotting. To prune the pomegranate, I snip off young suckers growing from ground level, shorten lanky stems, and thin out stems where congested. I repot the plant every 2 or 3 years, cutting off roots and potting soil from around the root ball to make room for new potting soil.

When flowers do appear, which they do over the course of a few weeks, I dab their faces with an artists’ brush. Going from flower to flower spreads the pollen from male flowers to the female parts (stigmas) of the hermaphroditic flowers.

Male pomegranate flowers

Hermaphroditic pomegranate flower

Then I wait, my eyes concentrating on each flower and hoping to see the base swelling. Problem is most, some year all, the flowers open and then drop. Occasionally, in past years, a flower or two has swelled into a mini-pomegranate. Then also dropped.

Swelling pomegranate fruitlet

I’ve ministered to this plant for years and it has never rewarded me with a single fruit. Help! Any suggestions?

Not So Idle Threats

Every summer, as my pomegranate drops its last flowers, I’ve threatened it with the same fate I wrought upon another of my subtropical fruit plants, pineapple guava. Beneath the thin, green skin of this torpedo-shaped fruit lies a gelatinous center with a minty pineapple flavor.

Pollinating pineapple guava

Over the course of growing this fruit for many years, I did harvest a few, small fruits from this plant, but not enough to keep me from reincarnating it as compost. (The flowers, however, reliably produced, sport the most delicious, fleshy petals of any that I’ve taste, with a strong, sweet minty flavor.)

A Most Delicious Fruit

Not all has been failure with my growing subtropical fruits.

My most recent success has been with Pakistani mulberry, Morus macroura, native to Tibet, the Himalayas, and mountainous regions of Indochina. I first tasted this fruit a few years ago at a nursery in Washington State and was swept away by the delicious flavor, sweet with enough tartness to make it interesting, and a strong berry undertone. (Yes, mulberry does have “berry” in its name, but botanically, it’s not a berry; it’s a “multiple fruit.”)

Besides having great flavor, Pakistani fruit is also notable for its enormous size, each one elongating, when ripe, to between three and five inches! Pakistani mulberry fruit

Pakistani mulberry is easy to grow and needs no particular coaxing to bear plenty of fruit, which it does over the course of a few weeks. Mine grows in a pot measuring a little over a foot wide, with the tree rising about four feet high. Fruits are borne on new shoots that grow off older stems, which keeps the tree very manageable. Shortening those older stems each year makes it easier to muscle the plant through doorways to move it indoors for winter and then back outdoors when weather warms a little.

Very Easy, Very Successful, Very Delicious

My longest term and greatest success with subtropical plants has been, of course, with figs. (I write “of course” because I’ve written a whole book whose content is described by its title, Growing Figs in Cold Climates, and now is available as a video of a webinar I have presented on that topic.) Fig book cover

Like mulberries, to which they are related, figs — most varieties — can bear fruit on new shoots that grow off older branches. Figlets on new shoot So, like mulberry, the plants can be pruned back some so they’re more manageable to be protected from bitter winter cold. An in-ground plant, then, could be protected from bitter winter cold by being swaddled upright or lowered to the ground, even trained to grow along the ground; a potted plant is more easily maneuvered into a garage, unheated basement, or other cool location for its winter rest.

Right now, there’s nothing for me to do with my figs except watch them grow. Small figlets now sit in the plants’ leaf nodes. They’ll just sit there, doing nothing, for a seemingly long time. Once ripening time draws near, the figs suddenly puff up, becoming soft and juicy and developing a honey sweet, rich flavor. Bowl of figs

RAISING BASIL(S)

July 5, 2022/9 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Continuing Education

“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, & instead of one harvest a continued one thro’ the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table I am still devoted to the garden. But tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

That’s what Thomas Jefferson wrote to Charles Willson Peal on August 20, 1811. Mr. Jefferson had it right. One thing, among many other, that makes gardening so rewarding for me is that there’s always something new to learn about plants and their cultivation. Basil plant

Take basil, for instance, which I, like many of you, have grown for many years. I’ve always been satisfied with a good harvest, enough for adding pizazz to summer salads and for preserving — dried, or frozen as pesto — for winter. But basil growing became more involved some years ago after a seed company sent me sample packets of a few varieties of basil, and then I spoke with some commercial herb growers.

The Lineup

In spring, I planted short rows of all the varieties I had, with a plastic tag at the head of each row. The tags were unnecessary, for no two varieties looked alike and I could have deduced the variety names by the catalogue descriptions. Potted basils

Flavor has always been my reason for growing basil, and I wondered just how different each variety would taste from its neighbor one row over. So I picked leaves of each variety and nibbled them. I rubbed their leaves between my palms, then inhaled deeply their aromas. I invited visitors to sample each variety, and as they sampled I badgered them with questions and jotted down notes. A pasta dinner was needed so we could evaluate each type of basil made into a pesto sauce. What torture!

There actually were differences in taste between the basils. The variety called Sweet lived up to its name with a mild flavor. The similarly mild flavor of Napolitano had the slightest hint of licorice; that of Spicy Globe, the slightest suggestion of mint. Progressively stronger in flavor were Lettuce Leaf, then Fino Verde. The taste of Genova was strong, bordering on acrid. Syracusa was one of the best — strongly aromatic, yet smooth to the palate.

I also grew some of the newer varieties resistant to downy mildew disease. Basil downy mildew is a relatively newcomer here, making itself seen by causing a slight yellowing of the leaves, with purple fungal spores on leaf undersides.

Basil downy mildew, top of leaf

Basil downy mildew, leaf underside

I’ve got little more to say about those varieties because none of their flavors were notably better or as good as the non-resistant varieties, because the disease rarely shows up here, and because it can be controlled with abundant sunlight and good air circulation, and by avoiding infected plants, leaves, or seeds. What’s more, disease resistance is a matter of degree, and various degrees might also exist among the varieties not bred as such.

So, Which to Grow

Honestly, though, the differences in flavor among the tasty varieties were not dramatic; rather, they were subtle nuances of the familiar basil flavor. And tasting a few varieties does put objectivity on shaky ground. Maybe even the order of tasting is important.

So which is the best variety of basil? This brings us back to the striking difference in appearance between the varieties. Since the differences in taste were not that great, I usually choose a basil variety on the basis of plant size, and the size, color, shape, and texture of its leaves. If I want a basil with a very large leaf — perhaps large enough to wrap around a piece of fish to bake — I’ll grow Mammoth. Basil leaves

For drying or pesto, I like a variety with a lot of leaf and a minimum of stem. (The dried stems are useless; they’re basil-flavored twigs.) So any variety except small-leaved Fino Verde or Spicy Globe would be suitable for pesto.

For eating fresh in salads, even the small-leaved varieties are okay, since the fresh, young stems are tender. One of the purple-leaved varieties could be used fresh to add a splash of color in salads.

I might grow some basils just for decoration, even if they had no culinary use. Spicy Globe basil, planted close together, makes soft, green mounds resembling a miniature boxwood hedge — a nice border for a terrace or a flower garden. The deep purple color of Dark Opal would contrast nicely with bright yellow and orange zinnias in a sunny flower border. Purple Ruffles could be used for a more frilly effect. The large-leaved, green basils make an island of lime-green if massed together, with a texture dictated by the leaves of the variety chosen: smooth and shiny, wrinkled, or ruffled.

And who knows, maybe I’ll grow certain basil varieties just for the musical sounds of their names. When someone innocently asks, “What kind of basil is that?” I might gesticulate and sing, “Genova Profumatissima,” “Syracusa,” or “Fino Verde Compatto.”

WISE AND NOT SO WISE

June 29, 2022/5 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

A lot about this year’s vegetable garden warrants my patting myself on my back; other things warrant a nuggy (virtually impossible unless I was double-jointed). Let’s start with the pat-worthy stuff. Perhaps you’ll find some of it useful in your vegetable garden. Perhaps you’ll want to comment on it.

Good Moves

Sweet corn is one of my favorite vegetables, both fresh in summer, and frozen in winter. Evidently, chipmunks are also fans. I plant sweet corn — the old variety Golden Bantam — in hills (clumps) of three stalks per hill, the hills eighteen inches apart in the row, with two rows running the length of each three-foot-wide bed. I spread out the harvest with four plantings, the first on about the average date of the last frost, mid-May, and the last planting the end of June.

With a variation on traditional corn planting — “one for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow” goes the old saw — I drop five rather than four seeds per hole. Corn sprouting among lettuces Seed is cheap. Unfortunately, those extra seeds merely gave chipmunks more to eat in that first planting. So . . .

For subsequent plantings I sprinkled a mixture of cayenne pepper and cinnamon over the seeds in each planting hole. Although birds can eat hot pepper, furry animals generally, my dog Daisy excepted, cannot. I figured the chipmunks wouldn’t like the taste of cinnamon and/or it would mask any aroma from the corn seeds. The result: success.

Pests threatening my onions and leeks arrived here on the farmden just a few years ago. Leek moth is one of them and thrips possibly another. Leek moth flies to lay its eggs in early spring, and thrips overwinter in debris. Another pest severely stunted last year’s onions, but neither I nor a university vegetable specialist could find anything odd about the roots, tiny bulbs, or leaves on which to lay blame.

Thoroughly cleaning up debris, which I do for all beds anyway, and covering the bed with fine mesh should keep leek moth, thrips, and possibly other pests at bay. A wire frame to support a large piece of organza fabric, with the organza clothespinned tightly near ground level did the trick. The leeks and onions look healthy and vigorous. Onion and leek, netted

A Successful Makeover

The need for a bold makeover of my south vegetable garden is embarrassing, but I’ll come clean. For some reason I oriented beds in that garden, created in 1997, east and west. I should have know better. It was a more favorable location for the two gates, but that’s not a good excuse. Tall plants in east-west beds shade shorter plants in those and nearby beds throughout the day. So whenever possible, north-south, or nearly north-south, beds are best.

Last fall, with some help from friends, I raked soil in the beds and wood chipped paths as level as possible. (My beds aren’t raised beds, but they do slowly rise after decades of annual slatherings of an inch or more of compost.) South garden makeover1 We rolled out gray resin paper to suppress weeds sure to sprout in the newly disturbed soil, then topped the paper with compost in the beds and wood chips in the paths. South garden makeover2

It’s a young garden again! Sort of. When planting, I can feel the difference in the ground from where a bed crosses regions that were once paths versus those that were beds. But the soil will get better every year, and the beds now run the better direction. Only one garden gate now, though.

Everything Not Always Rosy

Not all is always rosy down here on the farmden. Flea beetles, as expected, attacked my eggplants. I could have netted the eggplants also, but I was foolishly banking on hope. Fleabeetles on eggplant I’ll admit to spraying the organic pesticide Pyganic while waiting for the eggplants to outgrow the damage.

The other pest here is a weed, creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata). The straight species grows tall and is very easy to weed out. No problem.
The problem child is the purple-leaved variety (Oxalis corniculata var. atropurpurea) which blends in with the soil and hugs the ground in spreading mats. Oxalis weed It responds favorably (for me, not it) to sprays of household strength vinegar or any of the other organic herbicides whose active ingredient is ammonium nonanoate, such as Ortho® GroundClear® Weed & Grass Killer or the more benign sounding BioSafe Weed & Grass Killer.

And finally, we come to drip irrigation, a watering technique on which I’ve heaped tons of praise for saving water, for limiting weeds, for healthier plants, and for being easily automated. This last quality can cause a problem. A few years ago I thought a spring had sprung it my field; it was an old main line that was still in line and spewing out water below ground. Another year plants in a couple of beds seemed to languish as drier weather moved in; the underground connection of some drip lines had disconnect from the main line. Yet another time, water was pouring out of an unplugged end of a drip line. Or, last year the battery died on one of the timers; most affected were two small rosemary plants, trained as small trees, many of whose leaves and stems dried up, dead.

This spring, it was, first, the main water source, which is from a shallow well, clogging the filter. And then, a piece of hose running from the well pump to the main line developing a kink.

All these irrigation glitches were easily fixed once I noticed them. And there’s the key. My very smart phone now reminds me to spend the few minutes required to check the drip irrigation system every Monday.

PAYBACK TIME

June 22, 2022/5 Comments/in Uncategorized/by Lee Reich

Not a Gardener? I’m Honored

Perhaps some one or two of you readers of this blog might be just that — readers, not gardeners. An occasional reader has admitted this to me. Although I feel honored to be read by any non-gardener, herein is my effort to get humus under the fingernails of you gardening equivalents of “Monday night quarterbacks.”

I reckon that now, when plants are lush and have already offered or are hinting at future offerings of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, is the easiest time of year to spur your enthusiasm. Also, it’s still not too late to start a garden. I started my first garden -– in Wisconsin -– on August 1st and reaped tomatoes, beans, and other vegetables! Garden entrance

I could begin by going on and on about the favorable economics of gardening, wowing you with statistics about how much cheaper it is to grow broccoli, peaches, and tomatoes than it is to purchase these items at the grocer’s or the florist. Research back in 2014 found that, on average, a home vegetable garden yields $832 worth of fruits and vegetables beyond the cost of $285 (both figures in today’s dollars) worth of materials and supplies. Saving seed, substituting home-made compost for some or all fertilizer needs, and drip irrigation are among ways to lower costs of gardening. Good planning and good soil management could increase those returns.

So especially with these days of inflated prices, economics can be a very convincing argument for gardening, surely if you plan to eat a lot of vegetables or want flowers spilling out all over the place indoors and out — not such a bad idea at that, either of them. (Probably with flowers; I didn’t come across any figures for growing versus buying flowers.)

For the Best . . .

Quality is where the rift between buying and growing widens, in favor of growing. It’s impossible to buy (except pick-your-own) peas, lettuce, peaches, tomatoes, and many other vegetables and fruits that come even close to being as good-tasting as those you can grow. The peas picked here at the farmden today were perfectly ripe and required about six seconds of shipping (with little bruising) from plant to mouth. In a couple of days, I’ll be picking gooseberries: a dozen different varieties, none of which could I buy off the grocer’s shelf.

Early summer fruits

When it comes to cut flowers, I’ll admit to being on shakier ground promoting home-grown over bought. Just look at a bunch of commercial roses. Each flower is perfection, with not a scar from pests.

But could such perfection be turned around and looked upon as a shortcoming? Aren’t “real” flowers attacked by bugs and diseases, and do “real” flowers all open perfectly? As long as imperfections are not carried too far, I find them acceptable, perhaps even desirable. Commercial cut flowers are available out of season, but this shortcoming of home grown could be remedied with a home greenhouse.

Vase of homegrown roses

A Great Coach and Teacher

How about next comparing the physical and emotional rewards of digging the soil, bending to weed, and pitching forkfuls of manure with jogging in place on a treadmill or doing pushups? Just as Thoreau’s wood heated him twice, first when he cut it and then when he burned it, so the garden provides health twice. Even before you reap your first harvest of healthful fruits, vegetables, and herbs, you benefit from the physical exercise associated with cultivating plants. Hauling mulch

Exercise experts have even quantified some of the health benefits of gardening. A study from the University of Minnesota, for example, reported that individuals who spent 45 minutes per day gardening had one-third fewer heart attacks than those who were sedentary. Another study found that physical activity, particularly gardening, lowered risk of dementia by 36 percent.

Even breathing fresh air when gardening has its benefits. Well, not just air; the soil bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae was found to alleviate depression by activating seratonin releasing neurons in the brain.

But really, who needs studies to generally know all this?

And what of the less tangible rewards of gardening? A hundred years ago, Charles Dudley Warner wrote in My Summer in a Garden how gardening provides “exercise which soothes the spirit and develops the deltoid muscles.”

Rei-King by Deb as Sammy looks on.

Rudyard Kipling evidently considered gardening a general cure-all when he wrote

The cure for this ill is not to sit still
Or frowst with a book by the fire;
But to take a large hoe and shovel also,
And dig till you gently perspire.

Finally, the garden is a great teacher. Close observation of plants and their environment can teach chemistry, botany, entomology, and pathology. Gregor Mendel formulated the basic laws of genetics in his monastery garden. The garden teaches more than just science, though. Gardening also teaches “patience and philosophy and the higher virtues — hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in the beginning” (again quoting from My Summer in a Garden).

Like any good teacher, the garden rewards. Such rewards may be deferred, but they are sure to come, doled out piecemeal after just days (when you plant radishes), after weeks (when you plant marigolds), or after years (when you plant a maple tree).

Hakurei turnips 38 days after planting

Chestnut, 19 years after planting

FRUIT VS SHOOT

June 15, 2022/0 Comments/in Pruning/by Lee Reich

Note 1: I have some plants leftover from this past weekend’s plant sale here at the farmden. Contact me by June 24, 2022 if you’re interested in purchasing to pick up any white currant, black currant, fig, or gooseberry plants (a number of varieties of the latter two).They’re all discounted at 25% off.

Note 2: My farmden is open for a Garden Conservancy Open Day on Saturday, June 18, 2022 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Registration is required, here.

Shoots versus Fruits

I’ve been playing around with the orientation of some of my trees’ branches to influence how they grow. Branches pointed skyward generally are inherently vigorous, giving rise to long shoots, especially from their topmost buds. At the other extreme are branches oriented horizontally. They’re generally weak-growing, and tend to produce fruit buds rather than vigorous shoots and leaves. The cool thing is that if you or I change branch orientation, it changes the growth and fruiting habit of that branch.

Bending and tying branches is a good way to balance shoot growth and fruiting, especially of apple and pear trees. Both types of growth are needed. The fruits for us to eat, and the shoots to “feed” the fruit and to provide places on which to hang the fruits. Shoot growth is also needed to periodically replace old wood.

Pear espalier Branch bending to regulate growth and fruiting is especially evident with an espalier, which is a tree grown in an orderly, usually two dimensional form. Lurking behind the many forms, fanciful and otherwise, for espaliers is an appreciation for their effects on growth and fruiting.

Achieving Balance

Backyard apple and pear trees commonly put too much of their energy into shoot growth, a problem that can be exacerbated by overly enthusiastic pruning and over-fertilization. One way to coax an overly vigorous tree into bearing is by pulling upright branches downward, affixing them in that direction. This may seem an unnatural way to treat a plant, but it does help a tree to get started fruiting. Once fruiting begins, the weight of the fruit will keep branches down. Tied branches in British orchard

Sometimes fruit pulls a branch down so much that it’s too fruitful and needs invigoration. Asian pears are prone to bearing too heavily too early in their life, especially if grafted on dwarfing rootstocks; the result is a stunted tree. The cure is to drastically cut drooping branches back to more upward growing — and, hence, vigorous — side shoots. Or to stake branches into more upright positions.

Bending down branches spreads them, which, along with correct pruning, also lets all branches bathe in sunlight. With many upright growing branches, the interior of a tree becomes too shaded to produce fruit buds or even leaves. Well-trained cherry tree

Branches that are spread at an early age make wide angles with the trunk. That wide angle attachment becomes a strong juncture, one that will not break when eventually weighted down with fruit, as often occurs with branches having narrow crotch angles.

Practical Matters: How to Do It

On very young trees which are still forming their main branches around the trunk, I start spreading the new shoots when they are just a few inches long. After bending a shoot carefully so as not to break it, I hold it in that position by snapping a spring-type clothespin on the trunk with the tail of the clothespin holding the shoot down. training with clothespin Another way to hold this wide angle is to press one end of a toothpick into the shoot and the other into the trunk, just enough to keep the toothpick in place.

For older branches, I use either a stiff wire or a length of wood with a brad driven in each end. (I’ve previously removed the brad’s head and sharpened what remains.) Wooden branch spreader Tying a string around a branch, and then to a weight on the ground or to the tree’s trunk is another way to pull a branch down. Or, you can affix a weight right to the branch. For instance, glue a clothespin to a rock, then clip it to the branch. Training with branch weight

After a few weeks, the ties or weights or clothespins can be removed. The branches will stay in place.

Ideally, re-orienting the branches of apple and pear trees achieves a favorable balance between shoots and fruits. To this end, strive for about a sixty degree angle to the trunk. I try to keep the branch straight as it is oriented to this angle. If the branch has a bow in it when pulled down, overly vigorous shoots are apt to grow from buds at the topmost part of the bow.

Don’t expect immediate payback for all this care and effort. A year or more might elapse before an apple or a pear tree forms fruit buds, and fruit buds form fruit buds the season prior to actual fruit production. It’s worth the effort in the long term. Dwarf-apple-harvest

PLANT SALE, PLANT LIST

June 9, 2022/8 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Plant Sale

•This year the 14th(?) Annual Plant Sale will be held live, here at Springtown Farmden in New Paltz, NY.
•Plants, available in limited quantities
•Here’s a not necessarily complete list of what’s available (pricing not yet determined):

APPLE (Redfree)
BLUEBERRY (lowbush, Berkeley highbush)
BLACK CURRANT (Belaruskaja, Titania)
RED/WHITE CURRANT (Red Lake, Primus)
FIGS (Sicilian, LSU Purple, Brown Turkey, Rabbi Samuel, San Piero, Unknown)
GOOSEBERRY (Captivator, Chief, Glendale, Poorman, Red Jacket
GARLIC CHIVES
GRAPE (Glenora, Brianna)
HARDY KIWIFRUIT (2 species)
HARDY ORANGE (Poncirus trifoliata)
HAZELNUTS (blight resistant Somerset, Raritan)
HELLEBORE
MEDLAR (Breda Giant, Puciu Mol)
NANKING CHERRY
PEAR (Asian Tsu Li, European Harrow Delight)
PULMONARIA
SWEET WOODRUFF
TOMATOES (heirloom varieties Valencia, Nepal, Pink Brandywine)
WILD GINGER

This year, there’ll also be lots of books (in addition to the ones I wrote), some for sale and some free. The books cover a wide range of gardening topics.

Date and Time: June 12, 2022, 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: Springtown Farmden in New Paltz, NY

•Parking is available on the street, in the two driveways at the sale, and at the DEC boat launch a few hundred feet north on the opposite side of the street.
•To prevent overcrowding with cars or people, please plan on staying no longer than 15-30 minutes. Thank you.
•You must be (correctly) masked to attend this live sale, Again, thank you.

Nanking cherry, gooseberry, & lowbush blueberry