Shipova fruit

SORBUS’ WORTHY OF ATTENTION

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Good for More then Youth Artillery

As children, my friends and I were well acquainted with mountain ash trees. European Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia) was ubiquitous to suburban home lots in the Northeast in the 1950’s, and the trees were readily recognized by their ferny leaves and clusters of flashy berries that also served as artillery.

European mountainash leaves and fruit

European mountainash

Since that time, mountain ashes have fallen out of favor — and rightly so in many cases. Like our native white birch, European Mountain Ash is native to cool, moist habitats. When planted in sun-drenched backyards where summers are hot, sometimes droughty, they fall prey to borers and other ills. Those berries aren’t actually berries, but pome fruits like apples, to which mountain ashes are closely related and with which they share many of the same ills.

No reason to ignore the whole Sorbus genus, though Read more

Old olive tree in Spain

O OLIVE TREE, O OLIVE TREE, HOW LOVELY ARE . . .

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Consider the Olive

I’m not suggesting that olive trees should elbow out spruces, firs, and other conifers that are our traditional Christmas trees. Still, an olive tree symbolizes peace and is a tree you actually would find growing in Jerusalem, so is an appropriate accompaniment to the holiday season.

Old olive tree in Spain

Old olive tree in Spain

Even if you’ll never see strings of light bulbs corralling cut olive trees together on bare lots of land the way they do cut Christmas trees, you could Read more

Laying down or burying fig for winter

INTERMENT, BUT NOT DEATH

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(The following is from my book GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES) 

The Warm Earth

I buried two fig plants a few days ago. No, not because they died. The reason was night temperatures occasionally dipping into the low ‘teens (13°F, to be exact, on December 4th), which is just about the limit for fig stem survival. If the stems die from cold, there’ll be no fig harvest from them them next summer.

Last summer’s figs

So what’s the connection with cold and burying the plants? The ground is a repository of heat; dig a few feet down Read more

Mowings from hayfield

MUCKRAKING, THE GOOD KIND

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Many Meanings

“Muck” has some bad connotations. Among dictionaries’ definitions are such synonyms as “dirt,” “rubbish, or, worse, “slimy dirt or filth.” But that’s only part of the story. Especially across the Atlantic, muck is more aligned with “manure” or the diggings from soil especially rich in organic matter. (I once had, perhaps still have if I can find it, an older British gardening book all about muck.)

Muck, let’s use the Britishism, is really wonderful stuff. Plant roots revel in this fluffy material, and the result is dazzling flowers, luscious fruits, and cushiony, green lawns. I prefer the word “humus” to muck, but two people I questioned thought that humus (pronounced HEW-muss) was a Middle Eastern appetizer (which is hummus, pronounced HUH-miss). Another name for muck could be “soil organic matter” but seems too vapid for this dark, moist stuff that is seething with nutriment and life. Compost is a form of muck.Mowings from hayfield

Leaves have fallen from trees and gardens are shutting down for the season, making now an especially good time of year for, er…mucking around. Read more

My favorite bark. Can you guess what it is?

WOOF, WOOF, BUT NOT A DOG

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More than Meets Your Eye — So Look Closely

The transition from fall to winter brings many trees and shrubs from their most ostentatious to their most subtle beauty. Like a developing photographic image, the textures and colors of various kinds of bark come slowly into view against the increasingly stark winter landscape.

If you were to choose one plant for its bark, what would it be? Paper birch (Betula papyrifera) usually comes to mind, of course. But there are so many other trees and shrubs with notable bark, some as striking as birch, others with a subtle loveliness best appreciated during a winter stroll or viewed through a window from a comfortable chair.

My favorite bark. Can you guess what it is?

My favorite bark. Can you guess what it is? Read on.

Whole books — Bark, by G. T. and A. E. Prance and Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, by Michael Wojtech — have even been devoted to bark. They are useful adjuncts, in addition to other features such as tree form and remnants of autumn leaves on the plant or ground nearby, to winter plant identification. Read more

Forest farm greenhouse

SOW A (FIGURATIVE) SEED

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An Oasis

It’s not the time of year to inspire most of us gardeners to sow a seed, but sow I will, a figurative seed in your imagination. Who knows what reality it may grow into?

As the weather turns increasingly cool, then cold, and the landscape becomes washed over in gray and brown, imagine a retreat, an oasis of lush greenery and bright colored flowers suffused in warm, moist air. A greenhouse.

Forest farm greenhouse

Greenhouse at the Nearing’s Forest Farm

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Cart use in China, 1980's

A CART FOR ALL SEASONS . . .  AND GARDENS

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What is It?

Praise is in order for an unsung hero of my garden — my garden cart. I’m serious. This cart has played a fundamental role in the pleasures my garden has offered to numerous eyes, noses, and mouths.

Cart use in China, 1980's

Cart use in China, 1980’s

Let’s first be clear on just what implement I’m talking about. Read more

Sprouting roots

OF BULBS, BULBILS, BULBLETS, AND CORMS

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Admission

I’ve admitted to this addiction before and I’ll do it again. I’ll even hope you become addicted. You are forewarned.

My addiction is to propagating plants. No harm done, you say? How about all the plants that you become inundated with. Perhaps you plant them; that can be overdone. Give them away, please. Or sell them.

Anyway, here goes another wrinkle on plant propagation. You are forewarned!

What’s in Your Hand?

You’ve perhaps bought some spring flowering bulbs for planting. Wait! Before you drop all those tulip, daffodil, crocus, and hyacinth bulbs into holes in the ground Read more

Sugar maple in fall

A WONDERFULLY FIERY FALL

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The Glory of the Hudson Valley Unfolds

Here on the farmden and beyond, this growing season is exiting with perhaps the most gloriously colored fall I’ve seen in decades. Standouts right around here this year are Korean mountainash, red oak, stewartia, huckleberry, and blueberry. Even Norway maple, usually with unsightly splotches of yellow, this year have been turning a fairly attractive pure yellow before dropping.

Korean mountainash

Korean mountainash

Knowing what puts color in leaves opens up the possibility for ratcheting it up. It might even increase appreciation for the various hues. To best do that, I’m going to plagiarize . . . from my own book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.

Yellow and Orange

Green is from chlorophyll, most welcome in spring and through summer, but not what interests me in fall. Chlorophyll must be continually synthesized Read more

Marigoule roasted chestnuts

CURING CHESTNUTS, AND MORE

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Gathering

“There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” Likewise for chestnuts, in this case twixt the ripening of the nuts (in September and October and the lip. That is, if you want the highest quality nuts.

We can start right when the nuts begin to drop. They’ll do so still enclosed in their spiny burs or the burs will open to release the nuts. Don’t be disappointed with burs pretty much empty, perhaps containing a couple or more small, slivers of nuts; these are the result of inadequate pollination.Chestnut burs & falling nuts

Those disappointing burs are among the first to drop. The real show yields burs bursting with two, even three fat, mahogany brown chestnuts. For the best quality nuts, I gather them daily, at the most every other day, before Read more