One Of My Favorite Things About Our Planet

/3 Comments/in /by
One of my favorite things about our planet is that the darkest and the coldest days don’t coincide. Wouldn’t that be depressing if they did? We cleared the hump for the darkest days back at the end of December but days and nights are, on average, scheduled to still grow colder and colder. 
  
For me, the longer days offset the increasing cold. Only partially, though, because November to March brings the most overcast days here in the northeast. The days, at least, are growing longer and longer by about a minute each day early this month to over two minutes from one day to the next by the end of the month.
 
It is at the end of this month that we plunge, on average, into our greatest depth of cold. My tack for making the most of cold weather is to enjoy it, by skiing and skating. And by going into my greenhouse. Inside, on sunny days, it’s a steaming, humid tropical retreat even if temperatures are in the ‘teens on the other side of the inflated double walls of plastic.
 
————————————————————–
I don’t get it, the undue attraction for baby leaves of lettuce, arugula, and other greens for fresh salads. Truman Capote said that the rich are not like you and me; they eat smaller vegetables. Perhaps, deep down, eating tiny vegetables makes us feel rich.
 
Not me. Right now, I’m thoroughly enjoying mature heads of fully grown Romaine and Buttercrunch lettuce picked fresh within a hour of being put into a salad bowl. The leaves are crunchy, sweet, and, in the case of Buttercrunch, also buttery. That’s the luxury of a home greenhouse, in addition to the virtual trip to the tropics it offers.
 
Not that getting those heads of lettuce — as well as kale, chard, parsley, celery, mâche, claytonia, and arugula — from the winter greenhouse takes no effort. Planning is perhaps the hardest part. The greenhouse

 might be tropical on a sunny day but light inside is the same as outdoors, except less because it needs to go through 2 layers of plastic film. Low light and, to a lesser extent, cool temperatures on nights and overcast days (the heater kicks on at 36°F.) make for little growth in the greenhouse in the dead of winter. My goal, then, is to fill the 400 square feet of space with plants that are just about large enough to harvest by early December.

 
A home greenhouse does feel luxurious.  So as not to be profligate, I eke everything I can from the space. In-ground fig trees there bear abundantly from August to October, then their leaves drop and they get pruned back, so they cast no shade in winter. On the benches I raise all my vegetable and flower seedlings. And melons and cucumbers sometimes trail on the ground beneath the figs all through summer. All this for only $680 per season, averaged over the past 11 years, as well as my labor (of love).
 
————————————————————– 
 So how much sunlight does shine within my greenhouse, or into the sunny, south facing windows of my home? Not much this time of year.
 
Let’s quantify the light. One measure of light is the foot-candle (fc), which is the amount of light cast on a square foot area by a candle at one foot distance. You can get an estimate of this measure using a digital SLR camera. Set it on aperture priority with the aperture at f/8 and the ISO at 100. Hold a white sheet of paper so whatever light you’re measuring falls directly on it and measure the shutter speed reading the camera gives you (without a flash, obviously) for a good picture from about a foot away. Multiply the shutter speed times 4 for the approximate foot-candles.
 
(Shutter speed is usually expressed as a fraction of a second, so a speed of “500” is really 1/500th of a second; for foot-candles, you’d multiply 500 times 4 for 2,000 foot-candles. If light is very dim, the shutter speed might be more than a second; no need to measure, in this case, because in such light any plant will barely stay alive.) 
I recently took a few measurements. Outside, on a slightly overcast day, I measured 2,000 fc. Measurements were 1,000 fc righ right at a south-facing window and in the greenhouse, and 500 fc four feet back from the window. Light at a north facing window measured 100 fc, and beneath a 27 watt fluorescent table lamp, 60 fc.
 
A bright summer day bathes our beautiful planet with 10,000 fc of sunlight. No wonder plants indoors and out are just biding their time. Not to mention the cold.

Hardy Kiwifruits, Better Than the Fuzzies

/27 Comments/in /by
Last week I wrote that, what with the cold weather and low-hanging sun showing its face but briefly each day, there’s little for a gardener to do now. That proved not strictly true. Soon after I wrote those words, I received a holiday card from David Jackson and Holly Laubach of Kiwi Berry Organics, growers of what I can attest to are, as it said on the card, the “World’s Sweetest Kiwi.” Theirs are hardy kiwifruits, the small, cold-hardy cousins of the fuzzy kiwis you usually see in the market; with their smooth skins, you pop them into your mouth like grapes.
Most importantly, David and Holly’s card sported a photo, a snowy scene of their kiwi plants pruned to perfection, the fruiting canes all neatly arching over with their ends tied down to their supporting wires. To

David and Holly’s kiwis

me, the scene was both beautiful and inspirational. Acting on inspiration, I headed outdoors, pruners in hand, to get to work on my own kiwi vines.

In past years, I delayed all pruning until after the coldest part of winter. Accepted wisdom is that later pruning reduces chances for winter injury. Last year, David told me he started pruning his vines in autumn after leaves dropped. I followed suit warily with one or two vines and they came through winter unscathed. Perhaps it’s our warmer winters of late, perhaps damage that occurs depends on the plant species, or perhaps the accepted wisdom is wrong. At any rate, I’m now pruning with abandon.
————————————————————–
Staring at the tangle of stems on my kiwi plants could have quelled my enthusiasm had I not been presented with this sight in years past. Kiwis are rampant vines, each year sending out masses  of vigorous (as long as 15 feet!) that twisting stems that are hard, at first, to make sense out of. Pruning is a must to

My kiwis, before pruning

keep the vines manageable and easy to harvest, bathed in sunlight for high quality fruit, and to stimulate an annual flush of new wood. Fruits are borne only near the bases of new shoots growing off one-year-old canes.

My plants, like David’s, are trained on a T-trellis about 6 feet high with 5 parallel wires running from T to T. Each trunk rises to the height of the T and then has been trained to spread into two permanent arms, one growing in either direction along the middle wire. The one-year-old canes, off which fruit is borne, grow perpendicularly to the permanent arms, their ends tied down to the two outermost wires.
————————————————————-
My pruning begins with three easy steps. I cut away any shoots poking up from ground level or out along the trunks below the level of the wires. I shorten all fruiting canes a foot or so beyond the outside wires. And I cut the permanent arms back to where they began growth so that adjacent vines don’t grow into each other.
Then things get more complicated. Too many fruiting canes sprout each year from the permanent arms

My kiwis, last spring, after pruning
(except final shortening)

and from along canes that were left for last year’s fruits. The goal is to remove enough so that those that remain are spaced a foot apart on either side of the permanent arms, favoring those that are pencil-thick and originating either from the permanent arm or near the base of a last or previous year’s cane.

Finally, pruning becomes easy again. All remaining fruiting canes get shortened to 2 feet long and then tied them down to the wires, hopefully as neatly as on Dave’s and Holly’s vines. I will delay these last steps until later in spring.
————————————————————–
I realize that not many people grow hardy kiwi vines. You all should: The vines are ornamental (they were brought here and for decades grown strictly as ornamental vines), and the fruits are

delectable and free of pest problems. Even if you don’t grow hardy kiwi vines, though, the above pruning technique could be useful to you. It can be applied, with slight modification, to grapes, which a lot of people do grow.

The only differences with pruning grapes is that the fruiting arms can be spaced somewhat closer along the permanent arm, 6 to 12 inches apart, and each fruiting arm needs to be shortened to only a couple of buds long, at which point they take on a new name, “fruiting spurs” rather than “fruiting arms.”
Whether for grapes or for hardy kiwi vines, training to a T trellis and annual pruning presents me, in late summer on into fall, with “ceilings” of delicious berries splayed out and ready for easy harvest.

Nothing To Do

/1 Comment/in /by
If the garden, indoors and out, has no need of my attention at any time of year, it is now. I probably shouldn’t even be writing anything about gardening because pretty much nothing is going on. So I’ll make this brief.
Lack of light, warmth, and/or enough cool temperatures are keeping plants quiescent or dormant. The bonsai weeping fig, the Maid of Orleans jasmine (Jasminum sambac), the rose geranium, and other

Bonsai weeping fig, biding its time, for now

houseplants aren’t waiting for warmth. They’re indoors. These tropical plants never experience true dormancy; they’re quiescent, just sitting and waiting for better growing conditions, in this case more light.

My amaryllis bulbs aren’t waiting for brighter days. They’re now leafless, so can’t see the light anyway. Like the above houseplants, the amaryllis bulbs are now also quiescent, in this case from lack of warmth. Yes, it’s warm in my home, but not in the basement where the potted bulbs have been residing. I’ve brought the first pot of amaryllises upstairs where warmth — and water, the lack of which also has kept the bulbs purposely quiescent — can prod the bulb awake.
What about lack of enough cool temperatures to kickstart plants? That’s the case, now, with trees and shrubs outside. These plants are dormant, held back not by lack of warmth or water but by their internal physiology that needs to be switched before they’ll respond to good growing conditions.
No petals will unfold nor buds expand into young shoots until these plants are convinced that winter is over. That recognition comes after the plant experiences a period of cool — not frigid, temperatures — in the range of about 30° to 45°F. Winter’s “over” for these plants after about 1,000 total hours of exposure to cool temperatures, although the amount can vary among kinds of plants, even varieties of the same kind of plant. Also, a spell of midwinter warm weather can have the effect of removing hours from the “chilling bank.”
So what’s a gardener to do now? Nothing.
————————————————————–
Okay, not everything green is just biding its time. Some tropical flowers take the opportunity to blossom this time of year, even if the plants might be otherwise quiescent.  Hence, we have holiday poinsettias and Christmas cactii sporting their red, pink, or white blossoms.
Not that poinsettia and Christmas cactus flowers will blossom willy nilly. As with trees and shrubs outdoors, these tropical flowers can be prodded to blossom with certain environmental conditions. They don’t know from cold, except that it damages them, so what they need to flower is a change in photoperiod. For late December blossoming, poinsettia needs 6 weeks of 15-hour-long nights uninterrupted by any light at all. Even a table lamp or a flashlight.
Christmas cactus behaves similarly, with an additional wrinkle. If temperatures are cool, in the 50’s, daylength (or, more properly, nightlength, because it’s the length of dark period to which the plants are responding) is immaterial. Plants will flower. If temperatures are warm, in the 70’s, daylength is similarly immaterial. Plants will NOT flower. With temperatures in the 60’s, plants will flower only after a period of 11-hour-long nights.
After a number of years of annual bloom, my poinsettia died, last summer. I got rid of my Christmas cactus many years ago to prevent its infestation of scale insects from spreading to other houseplants. I’ll eventually replace both but for now, there’s still nothing for me to do, gardenwise.
————————————————————–
One plant that responds to some environmental condition, but I’m not sure what, is my orchid, the botanical mouthful Odontoglossum pulchellum. Every winter, sometime between the end of December and

February, my potted plant sends up thin flower stalks along which sprout white flowers whose thick petals look as if they were carved from wax and from which drifts a delicate fragrance. Blooms persist relentlessly, for weeks. The plants only flower in winter, but I’m not sure what exactly brings on the flowering.

After petals finally fall, the plants can take a rest, so need very little watering. The same goes for poinsettia and Christmas cactus plants. By then, of course, it’s late winter so seeds need to be sown and seedlings transplanted indoors, trees and shrubs need pruning, and there’s plenty of other stuff to do, gardenwise.

Holly Needs Sex

/5 Comments/in /by
LEE’S UPCOMING LECTURES/WORKSHOPS
•Jan. 9: Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association, Minneapolis, MN, “Weedless Gardening”, “Luscious Landscaping, with Fruiting Trees, Shrubs, and Vines”
•Jan. 23: Long Island Horticultural Conference, Ronkonkoma, NY, “Pruning Shrubs”
•Jan. 25, Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, Saratoga Springs, NY, “Growing Figs in Cold Climates”, “Espalier Fruits”
•Feb. 6, Indiana Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN, “Multi-Dimensional Vegetable Growing”
•Feb. 15, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 
“Grape Expectations: Everything From Choosing Varieties to Eating the Berries”, “Pruning Fruit Trees, Shrubs, and Vines”
•Feb. 20, Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Convention, Niagara Falls, CA, “Uncommon Fruits with Commercial Potential”
•March 1, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Connecticut, Danbury, CT, “Growing Figs in Cold Climates”, “Multi-Dimensional Vegetable Gardening/ Farming”
•March 15, Connecticut Master Gardener Conference, Manchester, CT, “Fruits for Small Gardens”
AND NOW, ON TO HOLLY’S PROBLEMS
The problem is obvious: No sex. No sex, no berries. Oh, did I mention that I’m writing about hollies, my hollies? Now, after a number of years, the plants have grown lush with spiny, forest-green leaves. But no red berries.
A holly berry, like any other fruit, is a mature ovary, which is a home for a seed or seeds. Seeds are what stimulate development of a fruit, but seeds themselves usually can’t get started without sex. Sex happens in plants when male pollen lands on the female part of a flower, called the stigma, and then grows a

pollen tube down the style, which is attached to the stigma, to reach and fertilize an egg. The product of successful pollination and fertilization is a seed, the development of which induces the surrounding floral part to swell to become a fruit.

Why all this concern with holly’s sex life? After all, I don’t give sex a second thought when growing tomatoes. I plant whatever varieties I want and then reap plenty of swollen ovaries . . . er, fruits . . . as well as, incidentally, seeds.
Holly is special because its pollen is borne on flowers that are strictly male and its eggs are contained within flowers that are strictly female. Each tomato flower, in contrast, is botanically “perfect,” with both male and female parts, so can take care of itself, sexually speaking. Similarly self-sufficient are rose flowers, peach flowers, sunflowers, and the flowers of many other plants.
Holly is not alone in having single sex — botanically, “imperfect” — flowers. Many nut trees, for example, share this trait. But holly goes one step further sexually, with whole plants being either male or female, a trait shared by ash and persimmon trees, among others.
The long and the short of it is that I need an all-male holly tree or bush if I’m going to deck my halls with (berried) boughs of holly from my all-female holly tree or bush. A male plant, all leaves and no berries, is not as showy as a female, so it’s fortunate that a single male can sire a half-dozen or so females.
Adding to their sex problems, or, rather, our problems with their sex life, hollies are not all that promiscuous. A few different species supply us with berried boughs — notably American holly, English holly,

My sex-less hollies

and Meserve holly — but, generally, each keeps fidelity to its own species. (An exception is that English holly can pollinate Meserve holly, which is a hybrid offspring of the English species.) Further compounding hollies’ sex problems, some males within a species cannot even adequately pollinate some females within the same species because their bloom times do not overlap.

Breeders have come up with a number of virile male varieties whose genders are obvious from their names: Blue Prince and Blue Boy Meserve hollies, and Jersey Knight American holly are examples. These males, as you might guess, are particularly good mates for the varieties named, respectively, Blue Princess, Blue Girl, and Jersey Princess.
————————————————————–
The hollies that I planted were Meserve hollies. I’m pretty sure that I planted a suitable male for my 5 females, with the male sufficiently close to do their thing with the females. So, why no berries?
One possibility is that my hollies had sex, but that late frosts caused fertilized flowers to abort. But every year? My hollies have never sported berries. One hundred percent frost damage every year is unlikely, and especially so this past spring.
The nursery could have mislabeled their plants. The only way to sex the plants is to peer closely at the small flowers early next May and look for those with male or female flower parts. I’ll do that.
————————————————————–
Sex is no problem for my jasmine (Jasminium officinale) plant; its problem is sexuality. The plant lacks flowers, and flowers are all I ask for from this plant. This plant, commonly known as poet’s jasmine, is supposed to sport oodles of deliciously fragrant, starry, white blossoms about now. (Now that I think of it, perhaps the hollies have never flowered no flowers, no sex, no berries.)
Like amaryllis, Christmas cactus, and many other winter-flowering plants, poet’s jasmine initiates flower buds in response to changing conditions such as exist in late summer and early fall. To whit, shortening days,

My flowerless jasmine

cooler temperatures, and/or, in some regions, drier weather. I’ve tried them all with my poet’s jasmine, and every year about midwinter, buds begin growth on the plant that keep stretching out into lanky, twisting shoots that try to grab onto whatever they can twist around. But no sign of flowers or flower buds.

It’s time to threaten the plant. No flowers this winter and into the compost you go, my little jasmine. (I’ve also tried threatening in previous year, to no avail.) Any suggestions??

Ugly, But Tasty, Old Fruit

/21 Comments/in /by
Today’s fruit du jour is medlar (Mespilus germanica), one of the most-disgusting-looking fruits you could imagine. Don’t stop reading! Medlar was a popular fruit in the Middle Ages, and with good reason. Charlemagne was so taken by this fruit that he decreed that it be planted in every town he conquered. Medlar needs some contemporary pr.
Let’s get those bad looks out of the way. Picture a small apple with a rough, russeted skin and the calyx end — the end opposite the stem — flared open. Not very pretty, eh? That homely appearance gave rise to

some not-so-complimentary nicknames. “Open-arse” fruit, for example, by Chaucer. Or, from Shakespeare, more discretely, “open-etcetera.”

Ugliness, for medlars, is not just skin deep. When harvested, which was a few weeks ago here, the fruits are white and rock hard within, and not ready for eating. The fruit must be bletted, or ripened, a couple of weeks or more. I blet my medlars by setting them on the cool, north windowsill facing my kitchen sink. With the woodstove at full tilt, the air at the windowsill might still be too dry for best bletting, so I also have a few fruits bletting beneath a small bell jar in another cool part of the kitchen. A wrinkling, dark skin tells me that bletting is complete. At this point the flesh has experienced a dramatic transformation —  to brown mush.
I put all that ugliness behind me and taste that brown mush. Delicious! Something like very rich applesauce with hints of wine. I’ve only eaten them straight

up. They allegedly also cook up into delicious tarts, jellies, “fools,” and the like. Here’s a simple recipe for a tart, dating back to 1660, from Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook: “Take medlars that are rotten, strain them, and set them on a chaffing dish of coals, season them with sugar, cinamon and ginger, put some yolks of eggs to them, let it boil a little, and lay it in a cut tart; being baked scrape on sugar.”

(For a once popular fruit, medlar has had its share of pejoratives. “Rotten,” in the above recipe, means bletted. But many fruits, including European pears and avocados, need to be harvested unripe to ripen off the plant. Admittedly, few are brown mush when ready to eat.)
————————————————————–
So much for medlar’s bad looks and good flavor. Let’s take a good look at the plant itself.
Those ugly fruits ripen on a very attractive, small tree that never reaches more than about eight feet high or a spread of equal width. It’s a year ‘round beauty, even now, leafless, with its craggy branches and light brown bark. In spring, in contrast to many other fruit trees, the leaves unfold before the blossoms; each

blossom, opening singly and with white petals like a wild rose (a relative), is then framed by a whorled backdrop of forest-green leaves.

The tree is also self-pollinating, so does not need a companion to set fruit. Small size, beauty, and ability to perform solo make a medlar tree perfect for a small yard. One tree, then, doubles as your ornamental plant and your fruit tree.
————————————————————-
Pests can be a big bugaboo when growing tree fruits. The best way to deal with pests is to avoid them, and the best way to avoid them is to grow kinds or varieties of fruits naturally resistant to pests. That’s one reason I suggest against growing apples pretty much anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains. (Two of apples most significant pests, plum curculio and apple maggot, are absent from many areas of the West.) Nectarines, peaches, apricots, and plums similarly suffer from serious insect and disease problems, again, especially east of the Rocky Mountains.
You may wonder, then: What’s left to grow? Pears, for one. Also, a slew of other tree fruits that are not well-known, fruits such as medlar, pawpaw, persimmon, cornelian cherry, raisin tree, mulberry, and Asian

Bletting medlars

pear.  These uncommon fruits all have excellent flavor and few or no pest problems (and play the leading roles in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden). They also demand little expertise or time in pruning as compared with some of the common tree fruits.

Not that biting into a fresh-picked, good variety of well-grown apple or peach isn’t a heavenly experience. And not that the occasional tree of such fruits some years bears a decent crop without trouble. But it pays to play the averages and proceed with eyes wide open. What are the chances for a good harvest and how much effort (and learning) will be devoted to upping the odds?

Mulchercising with a Cat

/18 Comments/in /by
I’m getting a lot of mulchercise here at the farmden these days. It’s good for me and good for the ground and, in turn, my plants.
Four piles of materials await me: a pile each of new and old wood chips, and a pile each of new and old leaves. The new pile of leaves is going to sit out this year’s mulchercise sessions. After a winter of settling and some decomposition, that pile will be just right for being planted with squash and melon plants. The lanky vines can run wild over the pile through summer and then, next year at this time, I’ll spread the much-reduced pile.
Last year’s leaf pile, from which I harvested this year’s squashes and melons, is part of my present mulchercise. The now dark brown material is getting hauled over to and spread beneath currant bushes, over the asparagus and flower beds, and on ground that will be home, next spring, to a new bed of Fallgold raspberries.
On to the wood chips . . . the old pile? That’ll go beneath various trees.
It’s amazing how simply spreading organic materials on top of the ground can bring so many benefits. Physically, that fluffy layer cushions the impact of raindrops so that moisture can percolate slowly into the

Me on the “abs & bicep” machine

ground rather than pound the surface, sealing it, and running off to make gullies. Mulch also insulates the ground, modulating swings in temperature to keep roots and other soil denizens happier. Next summer, the mulch will slow evaporation of water from the soil.

Biologically, mulch is food fungi, bacteria, and other soil organisms, the lion’s share of which are beneficial. As the leaves and wood chips go through cycles of being digested and excreted, what’s eventually left is humus, a witch’s brew of beneficial, organic compounds, which, in turn, is tied to nutritional benefits to plants. During decomposition, nutrients gathered up into leaves and wood are released into the soil, for plant use. Organic acids released during decomposition further nourish plants by dissolving additional nutrients from the rock matrix in which the soil was formed. And finally, organic chelates in humus grab onto some nutrients to render them more readily accessible to roots.
——————————————–
I didn’t forget to mention my new wood chip pile; that mulch is getting carted over to blueberry heaven, heaven for the blueberries, that is. (Also for me, during summer’s harvest.)
Each autumn, right after blueberry’s leaves drop, I spread 10 to 20 pounds of soybean meal over the thousand square feet of planted area, then top it with a fresh layer of wood chips (this year) or leaves or
George is company, but not much help

wood shavings. Some years I also spread sulfur pellets over the ground to maintain the soil acidity that blueberry plants require. Not that often, though, because another benefit of an organic mulch is that it buffers changes in soil acidity, offering plenty of wiggle room in what range keeps the plants happy. The mulch also buries any berries infected with “mummy berry” disease, a problem I never have because the mulch layer prevents any spores that might be present from wafting upward to re-infect berries next year.

Blueberry bushes have shallow root systems, most roots descending less than a foot deep, with no root hairs. Thirty years with 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch laid atop the ground has created a soft, moist, heavenly environment for blueberry roots.
———————————————-
I can just picture some readers “raising their hands” to point out that adding fresh, low nitrogen, organic materials to the soil results in nitrogen starvation of the plants. This science-y, oft repeated (and printed) myth needs debunking.
Soil bacteria and fungi need to eat both nitrogen and carbon. Wood chips and leaves are high in carbon

Me on the  “quads and aerobic machine”

but low in nitrogen, so these microorganisms grab at any other nitrogen in the ground to eat along with their fresh chips or leaves. Bacteria and fungi are better at garnering soil nitrogen than are plants, so plants are starved for nitrogen. Only temporarily, though, until some of the digested carbon is given off as carbon dioxide and what’s left are the higher nitrogen dead remains and excreta of bacteria and fungi.

When fresh chips or leaves are used as mulch, decomposition proceeds very slowly at the interface of soil and mulch. So slowly that nitrogen is re-released into the ground at about the rate it’s being tied up. Digging chips or leaves into the soil will definitely cause a temporary tie-up of nitrogen; mulching with these materials will not.
———————————————-
So here at the Springtown Farmden Health Spa, I am mulchercising away. I start at the “abs and bicep machine,” rolling what looks like a garden cart

Me on the “rotary torso machine”

over to the mulch pile and then using what looks like a pitchfork to load leaves or chips onto the cart. Then it’s on to the “quads and aerobic machine,” whence I pull what looks like a cart full of leaves or chips over to some plants in need of mulch. Next, it’s the “rotary torso machine,” which looks like I’m scooping leaves or chips from the cart, twisting around, and then dumping it beneath a plant. Finally, back to the “abs and bicep machine,” for another rep. I should be able to get a dozen or so reps in before the mulch freezes solid for the winter.

Cold? No Problem.

/5 Comments/in /by
Brrrr! The mercury plummeted to nine degrees Fahrenheit in my garden a couple of weeks ago. Yet I was still harvesting fresh salad greens. And I don’t mean kale and Brussels sprouts; they’re tasty and still available in my “back forty,” but tender and succulent they are not. Likewise, I don’t mean turnips, carrots, or other root crops that can nestle in the relative warmth of the earth. (My root crops anyway were pulled and packed away into a box for winter storage.)
What I am talking about is lettuce, endive, and Chinese cabbage. These vegetables, which ARE tender and succulent, must have antifreeze in their cells to be able to remain so in the face of such cold temperatures. Actually, that’s not far off: With gradual exposure to increasingly colder temperatures, cold-hardy plants are able to move water out of their cells into the spaces between the cells, where freezing would cause less damage. Moving water out of the cells also concentrates the solution within the cells and — if you remember from your high school chemistry — concentrating a solution lowers the temperature at which it freezes. Warming weather reverses the process.
Mother Nature had a little hand from me, in the form of row covers, which are diaphanous blankets thrown over plants to offer them additional frost protection. Spun-bonded row covers let light and water pass

through. I’ve used these materials in spring and autumn for many years, but looking through the Harris Seeds catalog (www.harrisseeds.com), I came across a “point bonded row cover” which was said to give plants an additional 8 degrees or more of cold protection. That’s a lot.

A few weeks ago, I set metal arches (made from 5-foot lengths of concrete block truss reinforcement) over the rows, cut the row cover to 6 foot widths, and laid it over the hoops secured by additional metal hoops over the row cover. The material evidently is very effective; my guess is that endive and lettuce are cold-hardy to the low 20s and the row cover would bring protection down to the low to mid ‘teens. But this was 9° F.!
————————————————————–
Row covers represent a trade-off between cold protection and light transmittance. Generally, the  heavier the row cover material, the warmer the temperature under the cover and the less light reaches the plants.
So in early spring, I’ve use a 1.25 ounce cover to speed along growth of new plants. This cover lets about 70% of the sunlight penetrate and keeps plants about 3° warmer than outside the cover. In early summer, I use an even lighter weight material, 0.55 ounce, to cover my eggplants so flea beetles don’t ravage them. Eighty-five percent of sunlight makes it through this lightweight material.
The point-bonded row cover is a heavier material than row covers I’ve used in the past. Endive, lettuce, and Chinese cabbages are now snuggled under 2 ounce fabric. Only about 30% of the sunlight, which is sparse anyway this time of year, makes it through this material. But the plants are fully grown, so don’t need to grow. To just stay alive, now, they need cold protection more than light.
————————————————————–
So I’m driving along here in New York’s Hudson Valley and what do I see growing wild along the

roadside? A cactus. A cactus growing wild outdoors wouldn’t be an oddity in Arizona, but New York doesn’t have the climate and soils usually associated with cactii.

The Eastern Prickly Pear or Indian Fig (Opuntia humifusa) actually grows wild throughout the eastern parts of North America. You’re most likely to come upon the plant growing in a sunny spot in well-drained soil. Not the one I found, though. This plant was growing on a rock face, which is well drained, on an east-facing slope right at the edge of woods. Not particularly sunny.
Prickly pear cactus can be oddly attractive, even edible. The pads, once the spines have been rubbed off (not with bare hands) can eaten be raw or cooked. The red fruits are also edible. The Opuntia species usually eaten is O. ficus-indica, which is not hardy in cold climates. Even that species never tasted that good to me so I wasn’t anxious to try eating any of the roadside plant.

Also, in New York, Eastern prickly pear is classified as an “‘exploitably vulnerable species,’” which is a plant likely to become threatened in the near future throughout all or a significant portion of their ranges within the state if causal factors continue unchecked.”

————————————————————–
I lied; I did pick off one fruit for tasting. It was seedy and flavorless. All was not exploitive, though, because I am planting the seeds.

Beans, Beans, . . . and Blueberries

/5 Comments/in /by
Deb and David gather around the kitchen table as the contenders are brought forth, each steeped in its own cooking juice in a custard cup. The event is the long-awaited bean test, home-grown Cannellini beans vs. store-bought Cannellini beans vs. home-grown Calypso (Yin Yang) beans. Mostly, we are interested in

whether the home-grown Cannellini’s would be better than the store bought, a possible reason being that stored, dry beans get tougher with age.

I planted a very short row of the Cannellini and of Calypso beans back in the middle of May. I do mean short, only about 5 feet each. After all, this planting was for testing, not for production.
The beans I planted, as well as kidney beans, pinto beans, and some other dry beans, and green beans, share the same botanical lineage, Phaseolus vulgaris. All can be grown just like green beans except that for dry beans, the harvest is of mature seeds, so a longer season is required, typically around 90 days or so.
After my dry bean harvest, I transferred an aliquot of each variety into its own glass custard cup, did the same with an aliquot of store-bought Cannellini beans, and filled the custard cups with water. The cups went into a larger pot with an inch of water and the whole setup went onto the woodstove to simmer for a couple of days. Retrieval and cooling bring us to this moment.
No need for a blindfold test because the differences were dramatic. The results? All three of us gave the home-grown Cannellini’s the highest marks in terms of creamy texture and good flavor. Second best was Calypso. It appears that I’ll be devoting more space next year to growing Cannellini beans.
—————————————
In addition to mouth-watering flavor and creamy texture, Cannellini beans (and other white beans) are rich in phosphatidylserine. The thinnest thread of evidence suggests that phosphatidylserine might — just might — improve memory and cognition, as well as confer other health benefits. Cow brains are among the richest sources of phosphatidylserine, but I’d rather be forgetful than get mad cow disease.
—————————————–
Lowbush blueberries abound in the woods around here but are conspicuously absent from gardens and landscapes — except in my front yard. I grow them for “luscious landscaping,” that is, for both beauty and

good eating. Plants recently shed their crimson leaves, which is how they show off in autumn. In spring, they show off their nodding, bell-shaped, white flowers, and all summer long, the ground is blanketed with healthy, bluish-green leaves on stems a foot and a half high.

Next summer, I know my plants won’t fruit because yesterday I cut all the stems right down to the ground. Best yields come from stems that are one-year-old and two-years-old, so stems have to grow at least a year before they can flower and fruit.
Traditionally, and under natural conditions, periodic pruning of lowbush blueberries was done with fire. Fire had the additional advantage of knocking out some potential weed and pest problems. Of course, burning also has its hazards and I’m not seeking any excitement in the blueberry bed along the east side of my house beyond a big crop of berries. So I went at the plants this week with hedge shears and hand shears, cutting the stems as low as possible. The lower to the ground plants are lopped back, the fewer the resulting stems next summer, and the more energy the plants can channel into fruit buds for the following year’s harvest.
I don’t really want to sacrifice all of next year’s lowbush blueberry crop so I lopped to the ground only half the planting. Next year, that half that was spared my shears will bear and next autumn I’ll cut those stems down. The summer after next, this year’s lopped down plants will bear fruit, and next year’s lopped down plants won’t. And so the harvest can continue hopscotching merrily along, keeping the plants productive and me in berries every year.
——————————————-

Sharing the lowbush blueberry bed is an Arnold’s Promise witchhazel shrub getting its digs in to offer what is perhaps the final oddity for a generally odd growing season. Year after year it has reliably flowered in March. This year it’s flowering right now, probably because of cool weather followed by extended warm weather duping the shrub into acting as if it was, in fact, March.
One problem with November flowering is that fewer or no flowers will open this coming March. Another problem is that I’d rather see the flowers in March, coming in other heels of winter’s relatively achromatic landscape.

A Seedy Time of Year

/0 Comments/in /by
Around here, eating fruit isn’t always just about eating fruit. Following my last bite of this Macoun apple I’m eating, I flick out the seeds with a paring knife into a cup. Same goes for pears and their seeds. Early in summer, I spit out Nanking cherry seeds into a waiting vessel. All these seeds are for planting,
Seeds of these cold hardy plants won’t sprout as soon as they hit moist, warm dirt. If they did, the young seedlings would be snuffed out by winter cold. It is after a period of exposure to cool, moist conditions that they — thinking winter over — sprout. Seeds in dropping fruits, of course, enjoy this experience naturally and poke up through the ground first thing next spring,
Wanting to keep a close eye on my seedlings, I plant them in pots and seed flats rather than let them do what they would do naturally. After I had collected the seeds, I kept them dry, and now am ready to plant

them. This week I am sowing the seeds in potting soil in flats and in pots. Once given a good watering, the seed flats and pots get covered with a pane of glass to hold in moisture. Tucked against the north wall of my house, the seeds will sprout in spring,

Sometimes I cozy such seeds into plastic bags of moist potting soil in the refrigerator. The problem is that the seeds then  sprout in the bags in midwinter. Cool, not cold, temperatures are what fool the seeds into behaving as if winter’s over. About 1,000 hours, depending on the species and variety of plant, usually does the trick. In the refrigerator, temperatures are always cool; outdoors, only sometimes, and there, it’s not until late winter that the required 1,000 hours of cool temperatures have been fulfilled. It’s hard to provide ample light for an enthusiastic seedling growing in midwinter,
———————————————
Unless a plant self-pollinates and has been grown in isolation, with desirable plants selected each generation for many generations, seedlings are unlike their parents. So none of the fruits on the seedlings that grow from the seeds taken from Macoun, Golden Delicious, Liberty, Bosc, Maxine, and Clapp’s Favorite apples and pears will match the parents; they will most likely be inferior,
No problem; these seedlings are for rootstocks on which to graft stems of good-tasting varieties of apples and pears. Rootstocks are ready to graft after growing for one season,
Nanking cherries are an exception; no varieties are available. The seedlings, which show some variation, are all good-tasting, so no need anyway to graft,
———————————————-
Another batch of seeds I’m sowing is of more tropical-like plants: passionfruit and hardy orange. I write

“tropical-like” because the passionfruit I’m planting is maypop (Passiflora incarnata) and the hardy orange is Poncirus trifoliata. Both should survive winter cold here. Both are also northern members of tropical or subtropical families, and their seed behavior reflects their tropical “roots.”

Hardy orange seeds, like citrus seeds, lose their viability if allowed to dry out. Things are not so clearcut with the best way to grow maypop from seed. I sowed the seeds as soon as I removed the delectable, gel coating each seed (by eating it),
——————————————–
Hardy orange is a nice ornamental plant; my hardy orange is the variety Flying Dragon, which is a spectacular ornamental plant,
In contrast to apple and pear seedlings, hardy orange seedlings often resemble their moms. Seeds of hardy orange, like those of citrus, look like any old seeds that result from the union of male pollen with

female eggs. In fact, many are apomyctic, that is, derived solely from mother plant tissue. No jumbling around of chromosomes to produce variable seedlings here. Apomyctic seedlings are clones, Flying Dragon in the case of my hardy orange seedlings,

A citrus or hardy orange fruit yields some apomyctic and some sexual seedlings, about 50% of each in the case of hardy orange,
As I admired Flying Dragon over the past few months, one way or another I had to make more plants. Cuttings taken a few months ago weren’t rooting and although the plant flowered, no fruits were evident. Then, last week, as leaves dropped from my plant — hardy orange parts ways with real oranges in being deciduous — I caught sight of a single orange orb perched on a stem. One fruit is plenty because they are very seedy. That single fruit, smaller than a golf ball, yielded 20 seeds,
I didn’t eat any of that Flying Dragon fruit. A bit of juice from hardy orange adds a citrus-y tang to a recipe but the fruit itself is too robust and bitter for eating straight up,

Fruit of the Gods (and So Easy)

/8 Comments/in /by
Every taste reaffirms the botanical name, Diospyros, which translates as “food of the gods” (or, more poetically, “Jove’s grain”). And, as usual, this time of year, the crop is good so tastes are aplenty. I’m

Sukis American persimmon & Jiro kaki

referring to persimmons, American persimmons, a fruit you’ve got to grow to enjoy because, when ripe, they’re too soft to travel much further than arm’s length, from tree to mouth. Eating them is like eating dried apricots that have been plumped up in water, dipped in honey, and given a dash of spice.

All this god-like fruit comes at little cost in terms of time or know-how. Once established, the plant does not call out for pruning or even for help against insects or diseases. Just enjoy. The only caveat is to start out with a good tasting variety that ripens within the growing season. Here in USDA hardiness Zone 5 in the Hudson Valley, for flavor, cold-hardiness, and ability to ripen within the growing season, I recommend the varieties Szukis, Mohler, Dooley, and/or Yates.
————————————————————–
In contrast to our native American persimmon, it’s cousin, the Asian persimmon, also known as kaki, is quite familiar in markets. Kakis have been cultivated in Asia for centuries. Marco Polo saw them near what is now Shanghai and, over the centuries, many varieties have been selected, over 2000 of them. Previous to the 20th century, it was the most widely grown fruit in Asia.
Alas, I cannot grow kakis because they generally succumb to winter cold below about zero degrees Fahrenheit (USDA Hardiness Zone 7). But would I want to grow them? As compared with American persimmons, this other “fruit of the gods” is larger — the size of a medium to large tomato, depending on variety — and firmer, which is why you do find them in supermarkets. With some varieties, you can bite into and enjoy them while the flesh is crisp. Try that on American persimmon, and for the next half-hour, you’ll feel like the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner is at work inside your mouth. As far as flavor, kakis are more watery than American persimmons, perhaps a tad sweeter, but not as rich.
Most gardeners, given the choice, plant kakis rather than American persimmons. After all kakis taste good and they are larger and easier to handle and store.
————————————————————-
I would not grow kakis instead of American persimmons, but I would grow both, if I could. And now I’m thinking it may be worth a try this far north (a possibility actually suggested back in 2004 by author Lee Reich in his book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden). My friend Vicki (who illustrated the aforementioned 

Jiro persimmon (kaki)

book) planted a tree of the kaki variety Jiro in her front yard a few years ago and this year reaped a bountiful crop of large, beautiful, crisp, tasty persimmons — that’s in Maplewood, New Jersey, USDA Hardiness Zone 6b, only 90 miles and one degree of latitude south of here.

Jiro is not a particularly winter cold-hardy variety of kaki. What’s more, crisp-ripe kakis, such as Jiro, generally require warmer summers than kakis that only develop full flavor when soft. New Jersey summers may be hot, but nothing like the hot, long summers of Mediterranean climates where these fruits grow so well.
My plan, then, is to plant one of the known cold-hardier varieties of kaki, varieties such as Eureka, Saijo, Giombo, and Great Wall. With a prime location, such as a south facing slope or backed by a warm wall, the trees might survive and ripen their fruits.
————————————————————–
Persimmons — both kakis and American persimmons — are interesting fruits, sexually. Individual trees

Szukis persimmon

bear only male flowers or only female flowers. Because a fruit is the fleshy expansion of female flower parts around the seed, only females bear fruit. With most plants, those female parts swell in response to seed development which, in turn, is in response to pollination from a male flower.

But not to worry; there’s usually no need to plant useless (except for their pollen) male persimmon trees when growing persimmons. Many cultivated, female varieties of persimmon bear fruits parthenocarpically (from the Greek, “virgin fruit;” is there a religion here?), that is, without pollination. The previously mentioned varieties of American persimmon are parthenocarpic.

If parthenocarpic fruits were tainted with pollen, they will, of course, contain seeds. With some kaki varieties, bite into the fruit and you experience more than just the presence or lack of seeds. So-called “pollination-variant, non-astringent” kakis are only non-astringent (astringency being that vacuum-cleaner-in-the-mouth sensation) if pollinated. Fortunately, the crisp-ripe Jiro fruits grown by my friend Vicki, is a “pollination-constant” variety of kaki: sweet when crisp-ripe whether or not they were pollinated. The fruits have no seeds and no need to be sired by a nearby male.