GREENING UP

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Chickweed, Not for Me

    Warmish days come and go, but I’m not twiddling my thumbs waiting for spring to come early, late, or vacillate. True, I have a greenhouse. Even there, though, weather can be quite cool, down into the 30s at night and on overcast days.
    A few plants that are good for fresh, salad greens aren’t just surviving under these conditions; they’re thriving. And with very little effort on my part because rather than cultivating them, they grow so profusely that I have to weed out excess before they take over the greenhouse.Chickweed
    Speaking of “weed,” one of them really is a weed, at the very least in name: chickweed (Stellaria media). This weed loves cool weather; it’s been sprouting in the greenhouse all winter. It’s also no stranger to the garden outside the greenhouse, where winter temperatures snuff it out so that each year it must return from seeds it sows. In the greenhouse, it might become — perhaps is now — perennial.
    Chickweed is tasty and nutritious. I don’t doubt the second adjective but disagree with the first. I wish I liked the flavor. Because I don’t, I’ll spend some time today in the greenhouse weeding it out.

Claytonia All Over the Place

    The greenhouse is also pleasantly indundated with claytonia (Claytonia perfoliata), another wilding cultivated for salads, perhaps soups(?), in cool weather. This green is native to California, where it drops its seeds in spring; cool, moist weather of fall induces sprouting whence it blankets Western ground in green all winter long.
  Claytonia in greenhouse  Conditions in my greenhouse are very similar to those of norther California. (Claytonia is sometimes called miner’s lettuce because Gold Rush miners ate it to prevent scurvy.) Years ago I sowed some claytonia seeds in greenhouse beds. No longer is that necessary. Those first plants came up in the straight lines of my furrow. Nowadays, they blanket the ground as a lush edible groundcover, mostly near the sidewalls where rain washed down from the roof and into the  ends of the beds when I rolled up the sidewalls in summer for ventilation.
    The plants make more than just an edible groundcover; they make an edible, ornamental groundcover. The tender stalks rising from ground level are capped by heart-shaped leaves, in the center of which eventually sits a cluster of small, white flowers. I’d use it as a winter groundcover if it could survive our winters; temperatures below about 10°F kill it.
    The flavor is nothing to write home about. It’s mild, to say the least. Perhaps its greatest contributions to cold weather salads are color and texture.

Make Mine Mâche, My Favorite

    Some people might say the same thing about mâche (Valerianella locusta), in my experience the most cold-hardy of all salad greens. It’s ready for harvest no matter how cold the weather in the greenhouse, or out, and will actually grow a little with the slightest degree of warmth whether natural or from the protection of a south wall or a cold frame.Mâche plant
    To me, mâche is the most delectable of salad greens. It also self-seeds both in the greenhouse and outdoors. What else can you ask for in a plant: tasty, available all winter, no need to plant.
    Like claytonia, mâche is a cool weather annual. Sow it in summer and nothing happens. Sow it under cool, moist conditions and it sprouts readily. This is another salad green that I planted years ago, but not since. Cultivation of mâche entails, mostly, pulling up wayward or excess plants before they expire and drop seed in late spring, in so doing preventing it from becoming weedy.
    Mâche is a European import, a centuries-old favorite only of the peasantry until the gardener to Louis XIV gave it street cred’. In English-speaking countries, it’s sometimes called “corn salad” because it’s a weed of grain fields, “corn” in the Queen’s English being any kind of grain, not necessarily and not usually corn, which they call maize. If I had a grain field, I’d welcome some corn salad for tender, tasty salads almost all winter long.

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT (MICRO)CLIMATE CHANGE

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Microclimates, Here, There, and Everywhere

    Mark Twain wrote that “Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” I’m going to step up to the plate and do something about it — not the climate but the microclimate. “Microclimate” is the very local weather. And I do mean “very local,” as, for example, right around a particular plant.
    Different microclimates exist all around my property — and yours. Near the south wall of my brick house for example, winter low temperatures don’t plummet nearly as low as they do, say, 30 feet away from the wall. The bricks are very good at absorbing the sun’s heat, then let it slowly ooze out after nightfall. Near that wall is where I’m planning to plant out a Kadota fig tree now dormant in my basement. (Come late fall, after harvest, I’ll dig up the tree with a good root ball and return it to winter quarters in the basement.) 

'Surround', a white clay, sprayed on apples

‘Surround’, a white clay, sprayed on apples

    On the other side of my house, where sunlight can’t fall in winter, days and nights are colder than the general temperatures, and remain colder from spring through fall. Near that north wall, then, would be a good place to plant an apricot or peach tree to delay unfolding of their blossoms, which otherwise open so early that they often succumb to subsequent spring frosts. Dead blossoms mean no crop for that season.
    Apricots and peaches, like most fruits need sunlight to fuel the most flavorful fruits. Although areas near the north wall are shaded — and hence cooler — in winter, from spring through early fall the sun wraps enough around the sky from the northeast to northwest corners to cast its light there.
    Other influences on microclimate include fences, land sloping in various directions, paved areas, plant or built windbreaks, and changes in elevation.

(Micro)Climate Modification

    Much of what I have planted, including many fruit plants, are nowhere near fences or paving, and my land is mostly flat. It is lowland, in a valley, and cold air, which is heavier than warm air, collects in this low spots, to threaten the blossoms on my fruit plants with late, killing frosts.
    Mark Twain notwithstanding, I’m going to try doing something about the weather — the microclimate, in this case — on plants nowhere near walls, fences, or paving.
    Enter ‘Surround’, the trademark name for a special formulation of kaolin clay. This product was developed about 30 years ago mostly as a nontoxic way to thwart insect pests. It’s especially useful for controlling plum curculio, a pest of plums, peaches, apples, and some other fruits; curculio isn’t easily controlled by other organic methods.
 

'Surround' spray on blueberries

‘Surround’ spray on blueberries

   Kaolin is white, so when a sufficiently thick coating of ‘Surround’ is built up on branches, they appear white. Old Sol’s rays just bounce off white surfaces, the surfaces, in this case being the buds of fruit plants. So the buds stay cooler, delaying bloom, hopefully until after threat of frost has past.
    I’ve already given the plant a couple of coats of ‘Surround’, and they already have a sun-drenched, gray-cast, Mediterranean look to them. A couple more coats will make the visual effect more dramatic, both to me and Ol’ Sol, and will get a jump on curculio control.

Awake too Soon

    Downstairs, in the basement, things are not as quiescent as hoped. That’s where the figs, pomegranates, and mulberries are spending winter, the cool (45°F) temperature holding back growth. Or so I thought.
    One plant, Pakistan mulberry, has decided to awaken. This mulberry is a species of white mulberry (Morus alba) that differs markedly from the white mulberries you see here. Pakistan is only about as cold-hardy as fig (which is why they share winter quarters in my basement) and bears a very delicious, dark purple fruit up to three inches long!

'Pakistan' mulberry

‘Pakistan’ mulberry

    Pakistan evidently has a low chill requirement, that is, it does not take much cold for it to feel like winter has ended so it can begin growing. Different plants have different requirements for the number of hours of chilling, which is temperatures between about 30 and 45°F., they need to be exposed to before they can begin growth for the season.
    I may have to move the budding plant into the greenhouse where it really is spring, with temperatures at least into the 70s on this sunny day.

LITTLE ITALY IN THE HUDSON VALLEY

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 Curing my Olive Harvest

   My olive harvest, about which I recently wrote, was such a success that I want to up my production beyond this year’s bountiful 6 fruits. Those 6 fruits, once cured, were truly delicious. (Yes, the halo effect — my assessment of them veiled by my having grown them — could come into play.)
    Part of the reason for the fruits’ high quality was how I cured them. Not very complicated: I just let them sit and dry out. After about two weeks, they had lost their bitterness, and, without the distraction of salt, oil, or spices, their rich, olive flavor shined through.

New Roots, New Shoots

    Part one of my twofold plan to increase production is to put the plant into a larger pot. A larger pot makes for a larger plant; a larger plant has more branches on which to hang more fruit.
    Looking more closely at the plant told me that re-potting was necessary immediately! New flower buds are already beginning for the next crop. Because the plant is moving up to a larger pot, no root pruning is necessary. I put some potting soil in the bottom of a pot, set the exposed root ball on top of the soil, loosened some roots along the outside of the root ball, and packed new soil in the space between the root ball the the side of the pot.My potted olive tree, pruned
    With soil firmed and a thorough watering, the roots have a happy home — for a year or two, when root pruning and re-potting become necessary. If moved up to a yet larger pot, the plant would be too unwieldy to muscle indoors and out.
    Part two of my plan to increase production is pruning. To prune any fruit plant for best yield and quality, you  have to know something about how the particular plant bears its fruits. For instance, peaches are pruned very differently from apples because peaches bear only on one-year-old wood and apples bear on wood a couple of years old on up to a decade or older. One of the goals in pruning peaches is to coax enough new growth this year for a good crop next year.
    To figure out how to best prune an olive, I referred back to The Pruning Book (which I wrote, and also details pruning of apples, peaches, and just about every other plant). “Fruits form in leaf axils along, but not to the end of, the previous year’s stems (and sometimes from dormant buds in one- or two-year-old wood).”
    So olive fruits something like a peach, on young wood. Actually more like an apricot, which bears fruit on wood from one to three years old.
    My ploy was too shorten some stems, focussing on those making the plant look gawky. Without sacrificing yield, shortening stems has the benefit of encouraging new, branching growth. More branching will make the plant look prettier and provide more young stems on which to hang fruit next year.

Sleep, Sweet Fig

    Going from the sun-drenched window, in front of which my olive tree basks, all the way down to the basement, I check out another Mediterranean fruit, my potted fig trees. What’s happening with them? Nothing, I hope.
    Now is a crucial time of year for a potted fig tree. The goal is to keep them dormant. Unfortunately, just a bit more warmth or a bit more light and they’ll start to awaken. If awakened, new growth will be soft and sappy, even if the plants sit in front of a sunny window. Then, when the plants finally go outdoors, intense sunlight, wind, and cooler temperatures are apt to burn back such growth.
  Figs buds, still dormant in basement  Temperatures stay relatively consistent and cool (40-45°F.) in my basement and it’s dark down there, so the plants generally stay dormant until sometime, probably next month, when I can set them outside. Keeping the plants slightly on the dry side also helps hold back growth.
    Last year was perfect. I moved the dormant figs outdoors while the weather was still cool without temperatures dropping too low below freezing. (Dormant figs tolerate temperatures down to the low 20s.) Growth began in synch with increasing temperatures, culminating in branches draped with soft, ripe figs by summer’s end. I’m planning for a repeat performance.

MYSTERY OF THE UNDEAD ROSE

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 Death shows Life

   It was with red rose in hand — a long-stemmed red rose — that Deb returned from a recent bridal shower. The rose was a party favor, the flower a welcome sight in the dead of winter. It found a home in a vase of water on the kitchen table.
    After a week, the rose was still sitting on the kitchen table, its bloom looking as perky as the day it had arrived. After two weeks, still no change.
    Okay, I’m sure that the vase was clean, the water fresh and initially warm (for quicker absorption into the stem), and that the base of the stem was freshly cut at a 45 degree angle just before immersion. All that, and the cool room, would make the blossom last longer. But that long?

Commercial rose, after 2 weeks

Commercial rose, after 2 weeks

    No special potions were added to the water. Like sugar, to feed the leafless stem and flower. Or an acidifier to make the water’s acidity more near that of the cell sap, stabilizing the flower’s color. Or an inhibitor to prevent microbes from running amuck. Such potions can be purchased or made at home by mixing: 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of plain household bleach, 2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice and a quart of lukewarm water; or mixing 2 parts water to 1 part tonic water (or non-diet lemon lime soda).
    The problem was that the blossom was eerily too alive after a couple weeks. Without roots, sunshine, or leaves, the flower should have started dropping petals and looking generally forlorn. It didn’t, at least not quickly enough to exude that there was a life force within.
    Contrast this behavior with that of the carnations (Dianthus caryophyllus) that blossom sporadically in my greenhouse through winter.  I cut the fragrant, pink blossoms, put them in a vase of water, and within a week they’re spent.
    I’ve gained appreciation for the transience of cut blossoms. Their timely decline and death declare their aliveness.

Blame it on (a) Gas

    Comparing roses and carnations may be like comparing apples and oranges.
    Ethylene, a simple gas that’s also a potent plant hormone, comes into play here for its role in plant senescence, including that of cut flowers. Combustion, whether from a cigarette, an automobile engine, or a candle, produces some ethylene, as do plants themselves, especially when they are wounded or in their final throes of aging.
 Carnation, fragrant and pretty   Carnations are among flowers, along with baby’s-breath, lilies, snapdragons, and most orchids, whose ethylene production ramps up as senescence begins. These flowers also are very sensitive to the effects of ethylene, which speeds aging, which generates more ethylene, which further speeds aging, which . . .
    Roses, in contrast, are less sensitive to ethylene. (And ethylene plays no role in the decline of daisies, daffodils, and irises.) Also, as a commercial product, the long-stemmed, red rose that sat on my kitchen table could have been pre-treated with silver thiosulfate or aminoethoxyvinylglycine, both ethylene inhibitors.
    No matter. I don’t require a whole lot of carnation blossoms, and new ones appear at a rate sufficient to replace spent ones, or, if slower, to increase appreciation for each new one.

In the Greenhouse, Out with the Old, In with the New

    All winter, the greenhouse beds have been vibrant green with lettuce, arugula, celery, parsley, mâche, chard, kale, and claytonia. Just lately, the greenery has lost some of its vibrance.Lettuce going to seed
    Planted in early fall, these greens grew to size — as hoped — to provide good eating through winter. Over the past few weeks, as days grew short and dim, and temperatures cooled, the greenery — as expected — mostly just sat still. In anticipation, I had grown them to size before the onset of winter. A bigger greenhouse would allow for a little something to be harvested from a lot of little, slow growing plants, enough for the daily fare. But the greenhouse is what it is.
    And some of the lettuce plants, though not very big or old, are going to seed. It seems that lettuce transplants, rather than plants from seeds planted right in the ground, are more prone to this bolting.
    Time for some fresh young growth: I pulled out some old and bolting plants, and sowed fresh lettuce, spinach, and arugula seeds. Growth will be slow for now; older plants should supply sufficient harvest until young’uns are ready for picking.

OF MITES & MOISTURE

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It Mite be a Pest

    Mites! Eek! A new pest in town (for me). Actually, the mites, which showed up on some newly rooted Meyer lemon cuttings, don’t really scare me, nothing like the scale insects that regularly turn up on some of my citrus. Chigger mites, scabies mites, dust mites, itch mites — they’re not pests of plants, and they WOULD scare me.
    The cuttings were well rooted and just sitting still, basking in a south-facing window, waiting for longer days and warmer temperatures before they can come alive. (They pick up an attenuated version of seasonal temperature changes at that window.) A few weeks ago I noticed a yellow stippling developing on the green leaves.Mite damage symptoms
    No panic; the plan was to wait a few weeks and see if the stippling disappears or if new growth, unstippled, develops. Citrus sometimes develop iron deficiency, which also yellows leaves, in cold soils, not because the soil lacks sufficient iron but because the roots aren’t at the top of their game in cold soil.
    A closer look a few days ago revealed, to the naked eye, very small black specks on the leaves. An even closer look, with a hand-held lens, revealed tiny mites crawling around on the leaves.
    Mites are mostly problems in dry, dusty conditions, not atypical for a house heated in winter and the usual for summer in Mediterranean climates such as California. One simple cure is to make conditions less dry and dusty. Climate change within the whole house would be impractical. Instead, I started giving the plants a daily spritzing with water.
 

Mites, photo with iPhone + hand lens!

Mites, photo with iPhone + hand lens!

   More potent sprays may be needed; fortunately they need not be toxic to humans. “Horticultural oil” sprays are effective as are sprays of insecticidal soap. Problem is that these sprays are inconvenient to use indoors, where excess spray would end up on windows, furniture, and floors. Sprays need to be repeated weekly to kill mites that hatched from eggs (which are spray resistant) since the last spray.
    Because the Meyer lemon cuttings are still small with very few leaves, I chose to go at them mano a mano, merely rubbing my fingers across each leaf to crush the buggers (technically arachnoids, like spiders, not bugs). As with the oil or soap sprays, mano a mano combat must be repeated to crush newly hatched mites. But it’s quick and satisfying.
    Mites do have many natural predators, among them other kinds of mites. Just like Jonathon Swift’s flea that “Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ‘em; And so proceed ad infinitum.”

Low-Tech Auto Water

    Every couple of days I have to think of all the plants in the house (they’re not all “houseplants”) that need water, including the mite-infested Meyer lemon cuttings. Two devices or setups keep me sane and my plants healthy in the face of all this watering.

Hydrospike

Hydrospike

    Larger, potted plants — those in pots over about 4 inches in diameter — are serviced by “water siphons” (aka “hydrospikes”, “self-watering probes”). A porous ceramic probe, previously soaked in water, filled with water, then capped, is pushed into the potting soil. The far end of the long, thin, flexible tube that comes out of the cap is plunked into a reservoir of water. I use mason jars as reservoirs and pre-fill the tube with water so that the water column is continuous from the ceramic probe to the reservoir.
    Voila! As the potting soil dries out, it sucks water from the ceramic probe which sucks water along the tube from the reservoir. Larger pots need more than one ceramic probe.
   Capillary mat For smaller pots, I use capillary mats, which are nothing more than water-absorbing mats (available from www.gardeners.com) on which sit the pots. The mat is laid on a stand that sits above a similarly shaped, one-inch-deep tray, with one end of the mat dipping down into the tray. The mat absorbs water from the reservoir and the potting soil in the pots, as they dry, absorb water from the mat.
    It’s important to maintain good capillary contact between the potting soil and the mat. This means no coarse drainage material in the bottom of the pots (a silly, counterproductive idea anyway), and no “feet” elevating the bottom of the pot.
    Not having to frequently water makes it all too easy to forget about watering. I already lost one old rosemary plant this winter. Hydrospikes and capillary mats don’t work — duh! — unless their reservoirs have water in them.

OLIVE HARVEST IN FULL SWING HERE

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What To Do With This Year’s Harvest?

Olive harvest will begin — and end — here this week. Yes, it’s late. After all, the harvest in Italy was in full swing weeks ago, back in autumn. But this is the Hudson Valley, in New York. What do you expect?
    I’m talking about harvesting real olives, not Russian olives (Elaeagnus angustifolia) or autumn olive (E. umbellata), both of which grow extensively in a lot of places, including here. Too extensively, according to some people, which is why they’re listed as “invasives” and banned from being planted in some regions. (But their fruits are very tasty, their flowers are very fragrant, their leaves are very ornamental, and their roots enrich the soil with nitrogen from the air, all of which garnered them a chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)Olive tree in a sunny window
    Present harvest here is of the true olive (Olea europaea), unrelated to the previously mentioned olives. Temperatures in the Hudson Valley, and beyond, would spell death to an olive tree, which is cold-hardy to about 14°F, so my tree is planted in a pot, just like my other Mediterranean-climate plants — fig, pomegranate, feijoa, black mulberry, bay laurel, kumquat, black mulberry, and Golden Nugget mandarin (tangerine). I can handle only so many potted, small trees, so it’s lucky that my olive doesn’t need a mate to bear fruit; it’s the self-fruitful variety Arbequina. The plant I got a few years ago from Raintree Nursery started bearing its first season!
    Unlike my fig, pomegranate, and mulberry, olive is evergreen, so it needs light year ‘round. Fig, and company, are in a dark corner of my cold basement, dormant. The olive is in a cool room basking in sunlight from a south-facing window.
    Two years ago, after an auspicious start, only one olive remained on the tree in late summer. I think my duck ate it.
    This past fall, the harvest has increased many-fold — to almost a dozen fruits. What with being knocked around when moved indoors and the change in environment, about half that number of fruits now hang from the branches.
    I like my olives fully ripe, black, so have let them hang as long as possible. Some are beginning to dry and shrivel, so it’s time to harvest. Fresh, the fruits are unpalatable, with a bitterness that comes from oleuropein. That bitterness is removed by curing and fermentation using lye, salt, and time. I’ve had naturally cured olives that use only the last ingredient, time, and that’s how I’m going to try mine.

For More Than Just Olive Fruits

    A few years ago, I almost got rid of my olive tree. After all, it wasn’t making a dent in my olive consumption. Then someone pointed out that the olive, for thousands of years, has been a symbol of peace. That alone should be enough reason to keep the tree, and it was.
    Also, the tree is pretty and long-lived — thousands of years, as documented by radiocarbon dating.

Secret Soil Recipe, Divulged (Again)

    In preparation for the upcoming gardening season, I brought pails of frozen potting soil, compost, and soil in from the garage/barn. Soon I’ll need to trim back roots and repot some of those Mediterranean-climate fruits, including my Arbequina olive. Not my Meiwa kumquat, though, some of whose green fruits are showing hints of yellow, foreshadowing ripening to begin over the next couple of months. Trimming back its roots would cause branches to let go of fruits.
    Potting soil will also be needed for the first seeds of the season, to be sown indoors in the next week or so.
 Mixing potting soil   I will now divulge my recipe for potting soil. The main ingredients are garden soil, compost, peat moss, and perlite. I thoroughly mix together equal volumes of these four ingredients, then add a cup of soybean or alfalfa meal (for extra nitrogen). If I’m feeling generous, I also throw in a half a cup or so of kelp meal (for micronutrients, although it’s probably superfluous with the panoply of nutrients from the compost). Perhaps also a half a cup of dolomitic limestone (for alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium, also probably superfluous with the buffering action and richness of the compost). Using wooden frames onto which I’ve stapled 1/2 inch hardware cloth, I sift together the mixture.
    Ten gallons of potting soil should carry me through winter until the compost piles and the soil have defrosted.

Olive Curing Update

Olives harvested and cured.

Olives harvested and cured.

   It’s now some days after I first wrote the above. Olives received no other treatment except being left to dry and wrinkle. Tasted them today —  delicious! (I’m going to plan for bigger harvests for the future.)

CHERRIES JUBILEE (I HOPE)

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More Plants?!?!?!

    You’d think, after decades of gardening in the same place, that I by now would have planted every tree, shrub, and vine I could ever want or have space for. Not so! Every year I make up a “Plants to order” list, unfortunately before I hone down just where I’ll sink my shovel into the ground to prepare a planting hole.
    Topping my list was Carmine Jewel cherry, a tart cherry that’s also good fresh. (Tart cherries often have higher sugar levels than do sweet cherries; but they also have tartness and other flavors that offset that sweetness.) The biggest draw for Carmine Jewel is its stature — no more, at maturity than 6 or 7 feet high. And a bush, not a grafted tree, so that if cold or deer nip back branches, new sprouts from ground level bear the same cherries that the rest of the bush does or did.
    As a bush, Carmine Jewel is easy to net against birds, and easy to harvest. One big unknown is pest resistance and its flavor — that is, whether or not I will like it.
    Some research indicated that Carmine Jewell is a hybrid of Prunus cerasus, which is the genus for conventional tart cherries, and P. fruticosa, a hardly edible cherry that offers bushiness to its offspring. It’s often listed, botanically, as P. X kerrasis, after Dr. Kerr who started this breeding line way back in the 1940s.

Carmine No, Juliet Yes

    One benefit — to me — of this weekly column is that it forces me to research more deeply topics or plants that I might otherwise gloss over. Said research this week makes me cross Carmine Jewel off my “Plants to order” list.Advertisement for Juliet cherry
    Carmine Jewel, it turns out, has siblings. Among its siblings, it’s one of most tart. A newer group of siblings, the Romance series, were born in 2004, whose fruits are larger and sweeter. From this group, the variety Juliet was very productive and the sweetest. (Romeo was also quite good, but not as sweet.) So Juliet it is for me.
    It remains to be seen just how good Juliet tastes, and how resistant it is to common cherry pests.

Nanking Cherries, All Good

    Between the first paragraph and now I’ve figured out where to make Juliet home — in the “available seat” in the row of Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa) that line my driveway. This position will also make easy comparisons with the Nankings, one of the most reliable, tasty, care-free, and ornamental cherries I grow.

Nanking cherries, easy, good, quick to bear, prolific

Nanking cherries, easy, good, quick to bear, prolific

    Nanking cherries, despite snowballs of pinkish white blossoms every year, sometimes followed by frosts, have never failed to offer more cherries than we could possibly eat. I prune the bushes only to keep them from swelling to their 10 foot high and wide full size. The only downside to the fruits is that they are small. But they’re so good they earned themselves a whole chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.

Choke(!)berry, Maybe

     I recently learned that I may qualify to wear a longsleeve, blue T-shirt emblazoned with a large S. The S won’t stand for Superman, but for Supertaster. I sifted out this information with another fruit bush that was on my “plants to order” list: chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa).
    About twenty years ago I planted a chokeberry bush. It fruited rather quickly, I tasted the fruit, spat it out, and dug up the plant.
    A few weeks ago I was talking with a young farmer and after agreeing on the delectable flavor of black currants, he mentioned that chokeberry was another of his favorite fruits. “They’re awful,” said I. “Not if they’re cooked, frozen, or dried,” said he. Hmmm . . . chokeberry’s bite is from astringency, which, does dissipate when certain fruits — persimmons, for example — are cooked, frozen, or dried. Perhaps chokeberry needs a second chance here.
    Then I started reading about supertasters, whose palates can be very sensitive to certain organoleptic sensations — astringency, for instance. I must be a supertaster because the slightest amount of astringency induces my spit reflex (which is why I grow Mohler and Szukis persimmon, both of which yield ripe fruits with hardly a hint of astringency). Reading more about chokeberry, it seems that those who like the fruit don’t mind, but actually enjoy, some astringency. So chokeberry is now on my “Plants to order, maybe” list.
    Taste aside, chokeberry has much to recommend it. It’s a beautiful landscape bush, white blossoms in spring and, on many varieties, fiery red leaves in fall. It tolerates cold to below minus 30° F., and some shade. It’s also cosmopolitan about the soil in which it’s planted.
    Chokeberry garners a lot of attention these days because its among the highest of any temperate zone fruit in both antioxidants and anthocyanins. The anthocyanins are one contributor to the astringency.

WINTER ‘SHROOMS, SUMMER DREAMS, & A WINNER

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Mushrooms Think It’s Autumn Again

   The 15 oak logs sitting in the shade of my giant Norway spruce tree more than earned their keep last year. Seven of them got inoculated with plugs of shiitake mushroom spawn in the spring of 2013; eight of the were inoculated in the spring of 2014. With little further effort on my part, reasonably good flushes of mushrooms appeared through spring and summer, then heavy flushes through fall until the mild weather turned frosty.Indoor shiitakes
    My friends Bill and Lisa, also shiitake growers, told me a few days ago how they’re still harvesting good crops, cold weather notwithstanding. They brought one of their logs indoors, where it stands in the sink of their laundry room. Great idea!
    I don’t have a laundry room, but I do have a cool, dark, moist basement, i.e. mushroom heaven. So a few days ago I carried one of my logs down the narrow basement stairway and propped it against the wall in a dark corner near the sump pit. That nearby pit could catch excess water in case the log needed to be watered.
    No watering was needed: A few days after taking up residence in the basement, fat, juicy shiitake mushrooms exploded from the plugs up and down the log — so many that we had enough to dry for future use.
    I’ll leave the log down there to see if it flushes again. If nothing happens within a few weeks, I’ll carry it back under the spruce and replace it with another log from outside. The few weeks in the cool basement might be enough time for more mycelial growth in the log in preparation for another flush. And then, sitting for some time in cold weather beneath the spruce might be just what a shiitake log needs to shock it into another cycle of production.
    Rotating the logs between the basement and beneath the spruce could keep us in fresh mushrooms all winter long.

Winter Green

    Most years, by this time, piles of snow would make it difficult for me to get to those outdoor shiitake logs. Recent weather, and predictions for the coming months, makes me wonder if I should even keep using the word “winter.”
    I’d sacrifice fresh shiitakes for a real winter with plenty of snow. (We have enough quart jars of dried shiitakes to last well into warm weather.) It’s nice to have that white stuff to ski on. Snow even fertilizes the ground (“poor man’s manure”) as well as insulates it against cold.

Bamboo after a mild winter

    On the other hand, a mild winter has its appeal. Most winters, leaves and canes my yellow groove bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) are damaged — or, like last winter — killed back to the ground. The roots survive to re-sprout but the leaves turn brown and the new canes in spring are spindly. Some winters, like this winter probably, make for attractive (and useful) tall, thick canes dressed all winter long in green leaves.
    Chester blackberry is another borderline hardy plant. It’s the hardiest of the thornless blackberries yet comes through most winter with many stems dried and browned — dead, that is. In the spring after our mild winters, stems are still green, foreshadowing a good crop of blackberries in late summer.
    I’ve been waiting for a string of reliably milder winters to plant out my hardy orange plant (Citrus trifoliata). Yes, a citrus whose stems can just about survive to flower and fruit outdoors here, where winter temperatures normally plummet to minus 20°F or below. The fruit, sad to say, is only marginally palatable.
    One more plus for a mild winter is the color green. The green of plants comes from chlorophyll, which is always decomposing, so must be continuously synthesized if the plant is to remain green. Synthesis requires warmth and sunlight, both at a premium during winters here. So most winters turn lawns muddy green or brown; even the green of evergreens, such as arborvitae, turn chalky green.
    But not this winter — so far. Grass is still vibrant green, as are the arborvitaes and other evergreens.

My Favorites

    My friend Sara asked me if I had yet ordered my seeds, and if I was getting anything especially interesting. Yes and hmmm.Some of my favorite tomatoes
    As far as hmmm . . . I’ve tried a lot of very interesting plants over the years, too many of which — celtuce, garden huckleberry, vine peach, and white tomatoes, for example — were duds. So mostly, I restrain myself, devoting garden real estate to what I know either tastes or looks good, and grows well here in zone 5 or, more specifically, on my farmden. Some of my favorites include Shirofumi edamame, Blue Lake beans, Blacktail Mountain watermelon, Hakurei turnip, Sweet Italia and Italian Pepperoncini peppers, Golden Bantam sweet corn, Pennsylvania Dutch Butter Flavored and Pink Pearl popcorn, Lemon Gem marigold, and Shirley poppy.
    I’m very finicky about what tomato varieties I plant, so won’t even mention them. Oh yes I will: Sungold, San Marzano, Paul Robeson, Brandywine, Belgian Giant, Amish Paste, Anna Russian, Valencia, Carmello, Cherokee Purple, and Nepal, to name a few.

And the Winner Is (drum roll) . . .

Thanks for all your comments, requested on last week’s post, about your soil care. Looks like you readers (or, at least, those of you who commented) are very savvy gardeners, enriching your soils with lots of organic materials.  I chose one comment randomly fro the lot, the writer of which gets a free copy of my book Grow Fruit Naturally. Congratulations Selena.

For those of you who subscribe — or have attempted to subscribe to my weekly blog, a glitch is preventing you from getting email notifications. I just found out that the glitch has been glitching since back in September. I hope to get it fixed soon. Any suggestions? (The blog is in WordPress and subscriptions are with Feedburner, whatever that means). Stay tuned. If you want to just go to my blog site, new posts come out towards the end of every week.

TO SAVE OR NOT TO SAVE, & A FREE BOOK!

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New Seeds Needed?

    “Ring out the old, ring in the new.” But not all the “old,” when it comes to seeds for this year’s garden. I’m flipping through my plastic shoeboxes (I think that’s what the boxes are meant for) of vegetable and flower seeds, assessing what old seeds are worth keeping and what new seeds I need to order.
    Seeds are living, albeit in a dormant state, and, as such, have a limited lifespan. The longevity of any seed depends, first of all on the kind of seed, its genetics. Most seed packets come dated; if not, I write the date received on the packet.
    Few seeds have as short a viability as parsnips. (No matter to me; I don’t grow them.) More astounding is the longevity of some seeds, especially the current record-holder for longevity, Silene stenophylla seed, possibly 32,000 years old, found buried in a squirrel burrow in the Siberian tundra. At the other end of the spectrum are seeds that remain viable for even less time than parsnip. The record at that end is probably held by seeds in the family Tillandsioideae, related to pineapple, with a viability of 4-6 weeks. Swamp maple, Acer saccharinum, seeds retain their capacity to germinate for only about a week.
    It’s not worth the risk to sow parsnip, spinach, or salsify seeds after they are more than one year old. Two years of sowings can be expected from packets of carrot, onion, okra, pepper, and sweet corn seed; three years from peas and beans, radishes, celery, and beets; and four or five years from cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, radish, cucumbers, beet, endive, melons, eggplant, tomato, and lettuce.
    Among flower seeds, the shortest-lived are delphiniums, aster, candytuft, and phlox. Packets of alyssum, Shasta daisy, calendula, sweet peas, poppies, and marigold can be re-used for two or three years before their seeds get too old.

Life Extension, for Seeds

    As with humans, genetics and lifestyle determine actual longevity, lifestyle, in the case of seeds, being storage conditions. So although onion seeds remain potentially viable for 2 years, I replace the year old, dog-eared seed packets in shoeboxes in my garage with new packets each year.Bicycle vacuum pump
    Conditions that slow biological and chemical reactions also slow aging of seeds, i.e. low temperature, low humidity, and low oxygen. All winter, my seeds find their low temperature and low humidity storage in my garage. Good for seeds. But come summer, my garage becomes warm and humid. Bad for seeds.
    If my seed boxes could be kept well sealed, I could eke more sowings from a packet of seeds by lowering the humidity with a packet of silica desiccant.
    Reducing oxygen levels has generally not been practical . . . until I came across plans for converting a bicycle pump into a vacuum pump (http://www.instructables.com/id/make-a-manual-vacuum-pump-for-under-$20-by-convert/). Going forward, my plan is to stuff some packets of seed into large-mouthed mason jars, then evacuate them with the reversed bicycle pump plugged into a “FoodSaver Wide-Mouth Jar Sealer.” I’d like to figure out some box I could make, modify, or buy in which I could more conveniently put my seeds, and then evacuate. Any suggestions?
    I’ve already tried this on a number of mason jars of dried tomatoes, dried shiitakes, nuts, and beans. The vacuum is not very strong (0.74 atmospheres), but sucking out air also sucks out moisture. Some testing will determine just how it affects seed longevity.

Test It

    So I don’t really know how viable my seeds are. One option is to order all new seeds each year. That could be very expensive. Another option is to guesstimate my seeds’ viabilities, taking into account their inherent longevity and storage conditions. That’s my approach, seasoned with yet another option: testing the viability of some of my seeds.

Testing seed germination

   I test viability by counting out 10 to 20 seeds from each packet to be tested, and spreading the seeds between two moist rounds of filter paper on a plate. Enclosing the plate in a plastic bag to hold in moisture, and putting the bagged plate somewhere warm, preferably around 75 degrees, provides just about perfect conditions for germination. (Alternatively, place seeds on a damp paper towel, roll it up, bag it, and put it somewhere warm.)
    After one to two weeks, germination occurs — if it is going to. Peeling apart the filter papers (or unrolling the paper towels) lets me count the number of seeds with little white root “tails”.
    Seeds with low or no percentage germination got tossed into the compost pile. If the germination percentage isn’t too low, I’ll use the seeds and adjust the sowing rate accordingly.

A Freebie

A book giveaway, a copy of my book GROW FRUIT NATURALLY. Reply to this post telling us, if you grow vegetables, how you maintain soil fertility year after year, and how it’s working, or not, for you. Let us know what state you are in (as in NY, OH, CA, etc., rather than happiness, wistfulness, etc.). I’ll choose a winner randomly from all replies received by January 22nd.

MULCH, SOMETIMES BETTER LATE THAN EARLY

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Cardoon Gets to Stay

    I haven’t yet given up on cardoon — growing it. But eating it? I just about give up. It’s like eating humongous stalks of stringy celery having just a hint of artichoke flavor.
    As an ornamental is how cardoon has made itself garden-worthy. Like most perennial plants, it grew only leaves this past season, its first season here. But what leaves they were! As I said, like “humongous stalks of celery.” Not much good for eating but nice to look at. The edges of the three-foot-high stalks were winged with undulating, pointed blades (each stalk is a leaf), and the whole plant is a very Mediterranean-looking olive-green.Cardoon in late fall
    If all goes well, next year should provide an even better show, when flowers also appear. Cardoon is in the thistle family. It’s as if you injected our common (Canadian) thistle with steroids. In addition to those giant leaves, the flower stalks rise to 6 feet and are then topped by fat, spiky, cerulean balls, each a couple of inches across.
    Cardoon not only looks Mediterranean; it is Mediterranean. As such, is not cold hardy this far north. Temperatures in the 20s do no harm to the top of the plant, but the top will die back when temperatures turn colder. The crown of the plant and the roots, shielded in the ground, tolerate even lower air temperatures. Eventually, though, our winter cold penetrates the ground to do them in.
    But not if I soften that cold affront. Once temperatures turn colder, and stay reliably so, I’m going to lop back the tops of the plants, then pile on a thick layer of mulch, from a couple of large bags of leaves I stockpiled back in November. The reason to hold off until the soil turns colder is because in still-warm soil, the crown would have pushed out new growth beneath the mulch. That new growth would have died from lack of sun, or rotted.
    Cardoon’s fleshy crown is especially prone to rotting, so I’ll lay a flat piece of plastic over the pile of mulch. That should shed rainwater while allowing some breathing room from the side.
    Perhaps next year I’ll get to enjoy the flowers. Perhaps the stalks will be worth eating.

I Put The “Straw” In (On) Strawberry

    Cardoon isn’t the only herbaceous perennial that needs protection from cold. Another is strawberry.
    The crown of a strawberry plant is, in essence, a stem that has been telescoped down. Instead of a few inches from leaf to leaf along the stem, only a fraction of an inch separates a leaf from its next higher or lower neighbor. So instead of elongating a foot or two every year, like most stems, a strawberry crown elongates only a fraction of an inch each year.
    Still, over time, that crown rises higher and higher up out of the ground, each year becoming more exposed to cold. Mulching prevents cold damage to strawberry in the same way as it does for cardoon. As with cardoon, the time to cover the plants is AFTER cold has penetrated the ground. When the soil has frozen about an inch deep is about the right time.
    Strawberry crowns are not particularly prone to rotting, so there’s no need to lay a water shedding cover over the mulch. Or to cut back the leaves; strawberry leaves aren’t fleshy and don’t rise high above the ground.

Doin’ Some Dustin’

    In addition to leafy mulches, already spread beneath other trees and shrubs, one other sign of creeping cold is the gray dust that has settled on parts of the meadow, beneath the pear trees, and around the currant bushes. There’s more to come, and it’s not snow. It’s ash, from the wood stove.
    Spreading wood ashWood ash is both a waste product and a resource, depending on how much you have and how much space you have to spread it. As a resource, it’s high in potassium, an essential nutrient for plants, and contains other essential elements. Wood ash decreases the acidity of soils which, around here, mostly increases naturally over time.
    But too much potassium can be a bad thing. As can too little acidity; slightly acid soil is what’s ideal for most plants.
    Since wood ash varies somewhat in its composition, it’s impossible to put a number on how much to spread. No more than 20 pounds per thousand square feet is reasonable, except on alkaline soils (pH greater than 7) or beneath acid-loving plants such as blueberry, azalea, and rhododendron, which should get none. I disperse it over the whole farmden — on the meadow and the lawn, beneath fruit and nut trees and bushes — to avoid concentrating it anywhere. I also save some to spread on icy walks and to sprinkle around plants if slugs become a problem.