Garden Extraavaganza

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A gardening extravaganza is soon to take place, on May 11th, at the garden of Margaret Roach in Copake Falls, NY. (Margaret is a great gardener and was editor of Martha Stewart Living magazine.) It is a Garden Conservancy Open Day at her garden, I’ll be doing a presentation on “Fruit Growing Simplified” as well as a hands-on “Grafting Workshop,” and Broken Arrow Nursery will be selling plants. For more information and registrations for any of these events, see http://awaytogarden.com/2013-open-days-in-my-garden-and-nationwide.

Nuts for Fruits

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What a fool I am; I can’t even follow my own advice! A couple of days ago I planted an apricot tree that I had ordered a few weeks previously. All of which compounds my foolishness because I had plenty of time to ponder the purchase, even cancel it if I came to my senses before it’s arrival mail-order.
Planting an apricot tree may not seem foolish to you. But it is, as I’ve advised many people. The reason is that here in the northeast, perhaps even east of the Rocky Mountains, an apricot is unlikely to bear fruit. The plant hails from regions where winters are steadily cold and spring temperatures creep steadily upward. Over most of continental U.S., winter temperatures fluctuate wildly up and down, predisposing the plants to

My apricot hope for the future.

disease such as ominous-sounding, and truly debilitating, valsa canker. Trees typically die either quickly or slowly.

If only that were all . . . Apricot blossoms open at the first hint of spring warmth. The pinkish buds unfolding against the brownish red stems are a beautiful and welcome sight on the heels of winter, but those early blooms could — usually are — knocked out by subsequent frosty weather. Damaging, late frosts are least likely to occur near large bodies of water, such as the ocean and Great Lakes. Late frosts are most likely to occur in low-lying regions into which cold air sinks on still, spring nights; that would be here on my farmden in the valley of the Wallkill River.
If only that were all . . . Even if the trees stay alive through winters and their blossoms escape spring frosts, the fruits themselves are the target of a number of insects and diseases. Plum curculio, oriental fruit moth, brown rot, black knot . . . the list goes on of afflictions that can reduce the crop to zero. Oh, and did I mention squirrels. My father had a tree that every Father’s Day was stripped of every one of its small, green developing fruits by squirrels.
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Did you ever taste a perfectly ripened apricot, one that’s soft and ready to travel no more than arm’s length from the branch to your mouth? I have (when I worked at the USDA Fruit Laboratory and at a friend’s orchard; he has a good site). Perfectly ripe, the fruit tastes nothing like a lemon, as market apricots usually do, but has just a hint of tartness to offset its rich, sweet flavor. For that, I planted the tree.
My friend Lev with his apricot trees
I wrote that “apricot is unlikely to bear fruit.” “Unlikely” does not mean “never.” A crop of apricots even one year out of — say — every five years will justify, for me, the space and trouble the tree will entail.
I was smart in a couple of ways with my apricot tree. I bought it from a nursery that specializes in fruit trees (www.cumminsnursery.com) and I planted in full sun in well-drained, moderately fertile soil. And the variety is Jerseycot, one of the varieties most resistant to some of the pests and the vagaries of our winter and spring weather.
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More foolishness: I just received a confirmation for a nursery order, soon to arrive, that includes a camellia bush. Let me explain. I love living in the northeast but do bemoan the inability to grow certain plants not hardy here, among them southern magnolia, citrus, and camellia. I’ve been tempted to plant the hardiest southern magnolia, Edith Bogue, but

My “citrus” plantation.

restrain myself realizing that the plant might survive but would never become a majestic specimen the tree is meant to be. Citrus? I resign myself to growing some citrus in pots, indoors in winter and outdoors in summer.

The last few years have seen the development of hardier camellias. Long Island Pink is one of the hardiest, with compact stature, glossy evergreen leaves, and single pink flowers in autumn. Still, it’s not really hardy here. I’ll plant it in the partial shade near the northeast corner of my home, protect it through winter its first few years as it develops cold-hardiness, and perhaps my foolishness will pay off.

Tomato Sowing, and More

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Sowing tomatoes was the big moment in the garden last week. The sowing was actually indoors and it was on April 1st, which is 6 weeks before the “average date of the last killing frost,” or, to those in the know, ADLKF.
I’m finicky about what varieties to grow because good tomatoes just waste garden space, never getting eaten if great-tasting tomatoes, are also to be had. But look at tomato variety descriptions in seed catalogues and on seed packets, and you’d think that every tomato variety tastes great and is worth growing. 
I read those descriptors carefully to narrow the field. For starters, I avoid any tomato listed as “determinate.” Determinate varieties grow by branching repeatedly because each stem ends in a cluster of fruits. The plants are compact and ripen their fruits over a short season, which appeals to commercial growers. Downsides are that their lower leaf to fruit ratio results in poor flavor and concentrated ripening causes more stress and, hence, susceptibility to diseases.
So I grow only “indeterminate” varieties, whose clusters of fruits hang from along their ever elongating (indeterminate in length) stems. These are the varieties that can be pruned for staking.
Short of tasting a particular variety of tomato, the next descriptor that would guide me is whether or not it’s a “potato leaf” variety. Yes, their leaves look like those of potatoes (a close relative), that is, thicker and with smooth, rather than serrated edges. Still, a lot of great-tasting tomatoes are not potato-leaved.
Pink, heart-shaped tomatoes also have the edge on flavor. Same goes for tomatoes that don’t ripen to a

Two great tomatoes: Cherokee Purple & Amish Paste

uniform red color. Or tomatoes that don’t ripen to perfectly round orbs. I also happen to like dark colored — so-called “black” — varieties. You could almost say that the uglier the tomato (by commercial standards) the better the flavor. Which is not to say that every tomato variety bearing ugly fruits is great-tasting; but it’s a start.

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A man (or woman, or child) can grow only so many tomatoes. This year I narrowed my lineup to 16 varieties, some old favorites and a few new ones, the new ones chosen on the basis of being indeterminate, perhaps potato-leaved, etc.
The old favorites are Belgian Giant, Anna Russian (good cooked and fresh), San Marzano (good cooked, bad fresh), Cherokee Purple, Blue Beech (good fresh and with unique, good flavor cooked), Amish Paste (good

Some of last year’s tomatoes

cooked and fresh), Rose de Berne, Valencia (orange fruit), and Nepal. Also two cherry tomatoes, Sungold and Gardener’s Delight. The latter was my favorite decades ago and I’m curious now how it compares with the incomparable Sungold.

New varieties for this year are Brandywine Black, Black Prince, Cherokee Chocolate, German Giant, and Black Krim.
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Whew! That’s a lotta’ tomatoes.
Even with a greenhouse, indoor planting space is at a premium. Besides those 16 varieties of tomatoes, with plans for at least 4 plants of each variety, I have dozens of other vegetable seedlings — broccoli, lettuce, kale, Brussels sprouts, pepper, eggplant, and more — growing or in the works. And multiple varieties of each.
I’m managing all this by starting out sowing seeds in what look like miniature fields. These “fields” are 4 by 6 inch seed flats, filled with potting soil into which I press 4 furrows with my MFT (my “mini-furrowing tool”). MFT is a 4 by 6 piece of plywood with a handle on its upper side and four, spaced out, 1/4 inch diameter dowels glued to its underside. Into the furrows impressed by the dowels I sprinkle the seeds, cover the furrows, and then smooth the “field” with a similar plywood rectangle lacking the dowel underbelly. The seedlings, when they sprout, look like miniature fields of plants.
Once sprouts unfold their second sets of leaves, they’re ready to be “pricked out” and given their own home. That home could be a pot or a cell in a plastic tray of multiple cells. Sliding a small, blunt knife into the potting soil beneath a seedling lets me gingerly grab its leaves and lift it out with roots intact to be dropped

A lot of seedlings in a little space.

into a waiting hole I’ve dibbled with my cone shaped “dibbler.” As each seedling is in place I tuck potting soil in around its roots. Without delay, once a tray of seedlings has been pricked out, I spray a gentle but thorough mist of water to moisten the soil and settle the little sprouts into place without knocking them down.

Seeds and very young sprouts spend one or more weeks — four in the case of slow-germinating and growing celery — in the seed flats, and then another four weeks or so in their cells. That translates to 50 or more seedling in an area 4 by 6 inches for a couple of weeks and then about 20 older seedlings growing up in a space of about a square foot for the next four weeks.
All this not only squeezes oodles of seedlings into relatively small space; it also keeps me intimate with them in their youth. I’ll be planting tomato seedlings out in the garden one week after the ADLKF.
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Tales of Kale

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The season’s first peas and potatoes are such a taste treat, radishes are fun, and everyone pines for the first tomatoes. But kale, I think, is the vegetable most worthy of praise. Here I am in the greenhouse, watering kale transplants for the garden even as, right behind me, kale in beds planted last August are still yielding mature leaves for salads and cooking.
Kale is one of the few vegetables that tolerates heat in summer, cold in winter, and every temperature in between. You can just keep picking the lower leaves as new ones keep growing up top. Neither broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, nor other members of kale’s family can keep up production like that. And other greens, like lettuce, arugula, and mustard, send up seed-stalks and lose their flavor when days get long or hot. The kale in my greenhouse is now sending up seedstalks but the leaves taste as good as ever. Even the flower-heads themselves, which are like small, loose heads of broccoli, taste good.

Although one sowing, in early spring, could keep me in leafy greenery almost all year long, I do three sowings. The first, in early spring, is for planting out in a few weeks for eating from late spring on through summer. Sometimes, usually, I’ll sow again in July for even more greenery well into autumn and, depending on winter temperatures, into winter. The shorter plants of this later sowing are more apt to be covered by snow, which insulates the leaves and keeps them fresh all winter. In August I sow again for planting in the greenhouse, which gives us fresh kale until spring.
If I had to grow only one vegetable, kale might be the one. (I have a friend who does grow only one vegetable, and it is kale.) Besides its ease of growth and its longevity, kale packs a powerhouse of nutrients: vitamin C, vitamin K, calcium and all those other good things found in cabbage kin, and vitamin H (I made that last one up, but kale no doubt contains a lot of not-yet-known goodies also).
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Seakale (Cramb maritima) is another “kale” I grow. This one might be good eating; I have yet to taste it even though I had it in the garden for over a decade. Besides being a different plant from kale, it is functionally different in that it has a short season of edibility, in early spring, and it is a true perennial, so potentially never needs replanting. Mine needs replanting this year because, for no apparent reason, it died last year.

Seakale is a salt-tolerant plant native to coastal regions of northern Europe, and it was in those regions that it was first moved into gardens for cultivation as a vegetable. Young shoots need to be blanched (grown in the dark) — by being covered with an upturned clay flowerpot, for example — to make them palatable. The blanched shoots are very tender, so you might never see them in markets. They should make a nice garden or farmden vegetable, though.

I have yet to taste seakale because each spring I’ve never got around to blanching it. Blanching can’t continue too long or the roots will be starved for energy, which comes from sunlight.
Seakale pulled its weight in my garden in other ways than putting food on the table. Its livened up one corner of the perennial flower bed with its silvery green leaves from which arose, in early summer, loose sprays of small, silvery white flowers, almost like the ocean spray in seakale’s native haunts. I never ate the plant because I didn’t want to weaken it and possibly tone down its spring and summer show.
I sowed new seed this week.
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Continuing the “kale” theme brings me to another vegetable, a close contender with kale for ease of

growth, longevity, flavor, hardiness, and nutrition. Seakale beet, as it is known in Britain; known as Swiss chard here. I plant chard just as I do kale, except less of it because it is less nutritious than kale (high oxalate concentration limits its availability of calcium), slightly less cold-hardy, and I happen not to like its flavor as much.

Seakale beet, or chard, is closely related to beet. In fact, both are the same genus and species. Chard is a beet with extra large leaves and an extra small storage root. But beets are another, story, an underground one.
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Pruning, Not Too Late

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Nicole, from near Madison, WI won the grow GROW FRUIT NATURALLY book giveaway. Congratulations Nicole! Contact me through my website, www.leereich.com with your mailiing address so I can get the book out to you.
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Time is running out to finish pruning my kiwi and grape vines, apple, pear, cornelian cherry, filbert, and chestnut trees, rose, gooseberry, currant, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, yew, and fothergilla bushes . . . now that I list most of them, it doesn’t really seem like too, too much still to prune. Some people worry that it’s too late to prune. Nope. Most pruning is done during the dormant season, that is, anytime plants are not growing or, if deciduous, leafless. (A notable exception is spring-blooming shrubs, which are best pruned right AFTER they finish flowering. For more on all aspects of pruning, see my book, THE PRUNING BOOK.)
Kiwi, before pruning
I’ll usually do a little pruning in autumn, after leaves fall, but mostly I’ll be grabbing pruning shears, loppers, and saw as I go out the back door in late February or March, after the coldest part of winter is over. Waiting is most important with plants that are least cold-hardy because these plants tolerate cold better if left alone and, by waiting, I can see what has been damaged during winter. Buds on damaged stems aren’t swelling up this time of year so those stems can be cut off.

A few plants warrant dragging out that waiting period even longer, until they are in bloom, which is when they heal quickest. Peaches are prone to infections at wounds, pruning or otherwise, making these trees good candidates for waiting.

Kiwi, after pruning

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I may also wait to prune my grape vines until new shoot growth is underway because then they are less likely to bleed sap.
Bleeding sap worries many gardeners. Isn’t the plant suffering from that gaping wound oozing a watery fluid? No, bleeding does no harm to grape vines. But some of my grapevines climb along the arbor over my patio. It’s very pleasant to sit outdoors on that patio on warm, spring days; it’s very unpleasant to sit there with sap dripping on my head.
Kiwi vines also bleed. No matter. My kiwi vines climb a strictly functional trellis below which we don’t sit.
Root pressure of water being forced up the vines is what makes grape and kiwi vines bleed. Once leaves unfold, they take up that pressure and bleeding ceases.
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Bleeding is most welcome from maple trees. What comes out this time of year is a dilute, sugary sap that, when boiled down to concentrate the sugars, yields maple syrup and, if boiled down still more, maple sugar. Sugar concentration in the sap can vary, depending on such factors as temperatures, age of tree, site, soil fertility, and moisture. Typically, the ratio of sap to finished syrup is 40 to 1.
It’s not root pressure that’s forcing sap out the spiles I’ve tapped into holes bored into two sugar maples. Maple sap runs best when temperatures fluctuate between 20-something degree nights and 40-something degree days. Cooling temperatures cause gas bubbles in the trees xylem cells (the inner ring of trees’ cells in which liquid is conducted upwards from the roots) to shrink and to dissolve. Something’s got to fill that newfound space, so more liquid is sucked up from the roots and into the cells. As temperatures drop further, ice forms and gases are locked within the developing ice.

Come morning, pressure builds in the cells as rising temperatures melt the ice and release the gases, forcing liquid out any holes in the bark. That liquid makes its way out the spiles, thence to buckets hanging beneath the stiles, and finally to a large pot that sits and steams on my woodstove through February and March. When the sap reaches 67% sugar, boils at 219° F., or tastes like maple syrup, it’s ready to be bottled up. For me, this has been a good year, with over 5 quarts of syrup already from only 4 taps.
Only a few trees can be tapped for their sap. Any maple can, as can black walnut and butternut. Each yields a syrup with a different flavor. Birch trees also release a sap that can be boiled down to make a tasty syrup; in this case, though, it is root pressure, as with grapes, that forces out the sap.
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Philahortica & Yet Another Giveaway!!

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The High Mowing Seeds giveaway is over and the seeds are on their way to the winner; but let’s have another giveaway! This time it’s a copy of my newest book, Grow Fruit Naturally. I’ll select randomly from all the comments offered by everyone who writes in as to what state they live in and what fruits they grow successfully and unsuccessfully, and what their favorite fruits are. The deadline for getting comments in will be Wednesday, April 3rd, at noon.

 


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Philadelphia should not be called the “city of brotherly love.” No, I didn’t get mugged on a recent trip there. It’s just that more evident — to me, at least — is Philadelphia’s greenery. The city is oozing greenery, with over 10,000 acres of park land and hundreds of community gardens and small orchards right within city limits.
Weeping cherries, Bryn Mawr, PA
Philly’s more formal garden traditions harken back at least to the early 18th century. It was then, along the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, that John Bartram, America’s first botanist, planted a garden from which notable American plants were distributed across the Atlantic. John traveled with his son William throughout the colonies studying and collecting plants, including Franklinia, a rare species that the father and son team came upon in the Altamaha River valley in Georgia. They brought seeds back to their nursery, trees of which are the source of all Franklinias in existence today. Franklinias have never been seen again in the wild since the Bartram’s last sighting.

Stewartia monophylla at the Barnes Foundation, PA

But let’s get back to today’s city of horticultural love (Philahortica?). Trees seem to like it there. I’ve come upon majestic specimens of sycamores and weeping cherries, Korean mountain ash from which drooped fiery, orange fruits, and stewartia trees with sculptural, copper-red trunks. Last week, the weather there was warm yet the ground seemed to be covered with broad, thin expanses of lingering snow. No, not snow! Closer inspection revealed sweeps of pale blue crocus flowers just unfolding. This self-seeding, deer-resistant crocus species — Crocus tommasinianus, with the appropriate common name of snow crocus — seemed to be coming up everywhere.
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During my three days in Philahortica, the plant that really blew me away was sarcococca, also known as sweet box. And how sweet it is. Walking down a sidewalk, I all of a sudden started sniffing the air like a dog. No flowers were in sight, but my nose brought me closer to a thick, green groundcover with tiny, cream-colored flowers tucked into the leaf axils. The aggregate effect of all those tiny flowers was a sweet scent barreling down from the bank of plants to the portion of sidewalk I was approaching. I have to admit that I was not at all familiar with the plant, having learned my plants in Wisconsin where Sarcococca and other evergreens are not cold-hardy, at least back when I lived there.
Stewartia japonica
Already I’ve sited, in my mind, a home here for Sarcococca. This evergreen plant enjoys partial shade with moist, well-drained soils that are rich in organic matter, which are the same conditions enjoyed by many plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). I have a whole bed of heath family plants — including mountain laurel, rhododendron, lowbush blueberry, and lingonberry — along the east and north sides of my home. Sarcococca will look right at home sharing the bed with these plants when tucked right up to the brick wall of my house.
Among the species of Sarcococca, the one I’ll be seeking out in the coming weeks is the botanical variety humilis of S. Hookerana. Sarcocca is borderline cold-hardy in my relatively cold garden, and the variety humilis is a bit more cold-hardy than digyna, another botanical variety of the species. The brick wall should offer extra heat in winter and protection from drying winter sun and wind.
The path to the front door runs right along that bed and if everything goes as planned, I and others will be enjoying the sweet, sarcococcal fragrance as we walk along the path in two March’s hence.

Witchhazel, here at the farmden

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Not that there’s any lack of fragrance around here this time of year. Outside, near that front walkway, witchhazel is in full bloom. Indoors, jasmine is coming to the end of its bloom period but the fragrant orchid, Ondontoglossum pulchellum is still going strong. Gardenia flower buds are fattening up next to my desk and, back outdoors, a whole bed of hyacinths are pushing up through the soil. 

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Write in your heirloom favorites soon . . . the giveaway (see below) will end Wednesday, March 27th at 1 pm.

A Giveaway, Dragons, Seedlings, and Aromas

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I purchase vegetable and flower seeds from a handful of seed companies. All offer high quality seeds, organically grown when possible, and at reasonable prices. High Mowing Organic Seeds of Wolcott, VT is one of those companies. 

      And now for the giveaway: A “High Mowing” cap and their boxed set of seeds for heirloom vegetable lovers. The box includes packets from such old-time favorites as Brandywine tomato, Red Salad Bowl lettuce, Detroit Dark Red Beet, Red Russian Kale, and others. To enter this giveaway, in the “Comments” box below tell us about some of your favorite heirloom vegetables. Winner of both the hat and the box of seeds will be selected randomly and contacted for mailing by email.

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        There must be a converse to the saying, “Be careful what you wish for . . . “ And if there is, I’ve realized it. I wrote, a couple of weeks ago, about the so-called hardy orange, Poncirus trifoliata, which, with warmer winters, now seems hardy in my garden. I’m looking forward to fragrant flowers and “oranges” that have a citrus-y smell even if they are too tart and bitter to eat.
Last time, I also mentioned one especially striking variety of hardy orange, Flying Dragon. This variety has the thorny, evergreen stems of the species, but the stems wriggle and squirm and twist every which way. It’s very ornamental, and also, like the species, will have fragrant flowers and orange fruits to come.
I saw a Flying Dragon sitting in a pot at a consulting job last week and mentioned my affection for the plant. “Take it,” I was told, “it’s an extra.” I did, and am now the proud owner of a 3 foot high Flying Dragon.
You can imagine how congested Flying Dragon could become, with with all the twisting stems and — I forgot to mention — thorns that curl backwards. Those ornamental assets made the pruning, which my new plant needed, all the more difficult. I hope, in years to come, that the saying I associate with this plant won’t become “Be careful what you wish for because it might come true.”
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The march of vegetables is on its way. With decades of growing vegetables under my belt, I have a schedule for sowing seeds indoors, transplanting seedlings, and sowing seeds outdoors. It’s not a schedule writ in stone, though. Each year it gets tweaked as my experience grows, and to account for recent years’ earlier warming springs.
My schedule is applicable to other gardens with average date of the last killing frost in spring of mid-May. It’s even applicable to gardens elsewhere by merely shifting sowing and transplanting dates forward or backward by the same number of weeks they differ locally from the May 15th, last frost date at my farmden.

Here, then, is my schedule for sowing and planting some vegetables (after June 1, all plantings are outdoors):

•Feb. 1: onion, leek, and celery seeded indoors;
•Mar 1: broccoli, cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts, eggplant, and pepper seeded indoors;
•April 1: tomato seeded indoors; peas seeded outdoors;
•April 15: onion, leek, broccoli, cabbage, kale, and brussels sprouts seedlings transplanted outdoors; carrots, turnips, and beets seeded outdoors;
•May 1: cucumber and melon seeded indoors; celery seedlings transplanted outdoors;
•May 15: beans, squash, okra, and corn seeded outdoors;
•May 21: tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings transplanted outdoors;
•June 1: cucumber and melon seedlings transplanted outdoors; second seeding of corn;
•June 15: broccoli, cabbage, and kale seeded for autumn harvest; second seeding of cucumber and bush beans; third seeding of corn;
•July 1: second seeding of summer squash; fourth seeding of corn;
July 15: third seeding of bush beans.
The nice thing about having this schedule is that the weather no longer pushes me around. A warm, sunny day in the middle of April might tempt me to plant corn — except if I look at my schedule. The year before last, the last spring frost was in early April, so corn could, in fact, have been planted earlier. Last year provided greater temptation with a spate of 70 degree temperatures in March. The mercury plummeted in mid-May, which would have snuffed out the corn sprouts.
I have a similar schedule for the autumn and winter garden. But no need to look at that right now. (A more detailed schedule for all sowings can be found in my book Weedless Gardening, available by clicking on the cover image at right.)
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Shoots terminated in branching stems with round buds hinted at flowers to come and now, after a long, slow buildup, flowers have finally opened on my poet’s jasmine (Jasminium officinale). For many years this plant has disappointed me with no or paltry flowering, to the extent that I threatened to walk it to the compost pile if this year was a no-show. That threat was made easier because I now have another kind of “jasmine” (Cestrum nocturnum) that blooms more freely (with a different aroma).
The threat evidently was effective. At least that’s my only explanation because I can’t put my finger on exactly what I did differently this year. Sun, water, and fertilizer kept the plant growing well through summer and some thirst and a spell of exposure to near freezing temperatures in autumn were supposed to make for abundant blooms. Or so I’ve been told. But I’ve heard that and done all that for years.
Then again, last year I did pinch out the tips of growing shoots through summer, something I haven’t done previously. Perhaps that’s what brought on the better, but still hardly abundant, flowers.
So the plant gets pinched, and gets to live — for at least another year.

What’s New, Or Going to Be

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Some white tomatoes, grown
years ago

Two or three people have already asked me, “Are you growing anything special this year?” Each time I had to stop and think: Am I? Then I  feel, yes, I should be growing something new each year. Then, on the other hand, I feel, what with the vagaries of the weather and pest problems, that it’s interesting enough just to grow every year what I’ve grown in previous years. Reinforcing that last thought is a quote from Charles Dudley Warner (My Summer in a Garden, 1870): “I have seen gardens which were all experiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced little or nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation.”

I’ve surely paid my dues in the “experiment” department. I’ve grown garden huckleberries, an annual that, cooked with lemon and sugar, is alleged to rival blueberries for pie. False! Garden huckleberries are tasteless. The pie would taste like a lemon-and-sugar pie. I’ve grown white tomatoes, touted as being sweeter than red tomatoes. One taste made me realize how welcome is the refreshing tang of red tomatoes. And then there was celtuce, supposedly combining the leafy qualities of lettuce and crunchy stalk of celery in one plant. Not so! It tasted like bad celery and bad lettuce. Celtuce is essentially a lettuce going to seed, the seedstalk trying to stand-in for celery.
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Okay, now that I think about it, I am growing some things that are sort of new this year. Normally I would shy away from planting apricots, even though biting into a tree-ripened apricot — sweet, soft, and rich in flavor — is a heavenly experience. But apricot trees have serious insect and disease problems, their early blossoms usually succumb to late spring frost, and our fluctuating winter temperatures increase disease susceptibility so that the trees die either quickly or slowly.
Still, I couldn’t resist, while perusing Cummins Nursery (www.cumminsnursery.com) website and happening upon the variety Jerseycot, the most reliable apricot for apricot-unfriendly regions of the northeast. Planting an apricot tree may represent a 20 year cycle for me; about 20 years ago I finally gave up and cut down an apricot tree I had planted a few years earlier. (The wood is beautiful and I reincarnated it as a coat rack. I hope this year’s tree sees many productive years before becoming a coat rack also.)
Apricots, in my future — I hope.

Another “new” plant for this year is honeyberry (Lonicera edulis), sometimes called edible blue honeysuckle. This is another plant I grew many years ago. It performed poorly because of the poor care I gave it which was mostly because of the poor flavor of the one berry I tasted. But honeyberry is a new fruit, in the same place, development-wise, as the apple might have been 2,000 years ago. New varieties have come down the pike and I’m ready to try these newbies.

A couple of other sort-of-new plants here are artichoke and citrus. The artichokes I planted last summer did nothing except grow leaves. I dug up the two plants, potted them, and have grown them through winter in sunny window. Age and last autumn’s exposure to cool temperature should get me some ‘chokes to eat this year. (Artichokes need a cold spell before they decide to make ‘chokes instead of just leaves.)
New citrus will expand my current collection. I’m deciding between Satsuma mandarin and Clementine which, in either case. will join the rest of the (citrus) family in pots here that winter indoors in sunny windows and summer outdoors in full sun.
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I’ve gardened for decades, but with a mere 12 years of greenhouse growing under my belt, feel like a novice trying to keep the greenhouse green and productive all winter. The basic routine is to sow salad and cooking greens in late summer and autumn for late autumn, winter, and early spring harvest. Timing is key. Planted too early, some greens go to seed before winter even gets underway; planted too late, short days and cool temperatures don’t allow enough growth for reasonable harvest.
This year, all went smoothly, keeping our salad bowls amply filled right up until a couple of weeks ago. Here, for the record, is some of what worked well:
•Direct sown Green Fortune bok choy, Aug. 30th;
•Direct sown Oregon Giant spinach, Sept. 6th;
•Direct sown Runway arugula; Aug. 28th;
•Direct sown Rhapsody and other lettuces; Aug. 28th.
Lettuce sown in seed flats at the end of December and transplanted out in the greenhouse in mid-February is now big enough to contribute some leaves to salads and, in a few weeks, whole heads. I’ll round out those pickings with recent sowings of spinach, arugula, erba stella, and mustard greens in the greenhouse.
More record-keeping along with fine-tuning sowing times and what varieties to grow will make the greenhouse even more productive in years to come. 
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