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DUCKS WORKING, BUT NOT ON GROUNDNUTS

 THE DUCKS CALL THIS “WORK”?

   My ducks told me that the hardy kiwifruits were ripe. No, they’re not trained to give a specialized “hardy kiwifruit ripe” quack. Instead, they’ve taken to hanging out beneath the vines to scoop up dropped fruits. No training needed for this.

Hardy kiwifruits trained for easy harvest

Hardy kiwifruits trained for easy harvest

    Those dropped fruits are one reason that these vines — Actinidia kolomikta — are not as popular for fruit as another species, Actinidia arguta. Ripening, and dropping, is fast in the heat of July. Arguta kiwis ripen in late summer and early fall, and possibly cling to the vines more reliably then because cooler weather slows ripening.
    Not that either of the fruits are well known. Both are cousins to the fuzzy kiwis (A. deliciosa), ubiquitous in supermarkets. Both hardy kiwis differ from the fuzzies in being cold-hardy (only to 0°F for the fuzzy as compared to minus 30°F for A. arguta and to minus 40°F for A. kolomikta), grape-sized, with smooth, edible skins, and better flavor than the fuzzies.
    In addition to ripening earlier and dropping more readily, kolomikta kiwis differ from arguta kiwis in coming into bearing much sooner, often in their second year, and growing much less rampantly. Argutas are hard vines to tame. Ornamental vines of both species gracing historic gardens for decades before their fruits were noticed and appreciated is testimonial to their beauty. Kolomikta’s leaves are brushed silvery white with random pink blushes.
 

Variegated leaves of A. kolomikta

Variegated leaves of A. kolomikta

   Back to harvest. Harvest from the ground is unfeasible because the green fruits are too hard to find among the blades of green grass. And unhealthy because of all the processed kiwifruits — poop — the ducks eject at their far end as they gobble up the berries. A ground cloth to catch the berries would become similarly soiled unless I went to the trouble of spreading it, shaking the vines, then gathering up the cloth after gathering up the fruits.

Hardy kiwifruit harvest into inverted umbrella

Hardy kiwifruit harvest into inverted umbrella

    Instead, I’ve taken to walking beneath the vines with a large umbrella, upturned, and shaking portions of the vines right above the umbrella. Ripe fruit drop into the waiting “funnel.” Sure, many fruits are lost, but the vine bears more than enough to share with the ducks, who can enjoy the missed fruits.

RIPENING OFF THE VINE, HOW CONVENIENT

    Like apples, bananas, and avocados, kiwifruits of all stripes are climacteric fruits. Instead of steady ripening, climacteric fruits, just before they are ready to eat, go through a burst of ripening with sugar levels and carbon dioxide production all of a sudden rapidly increasing. Fruit quality begins to decline right after this burst.
    Ethylene, a simple gas that is also a naturally occurring plant hormone, also spikes during this burst. And ethylene further accelerates ripening, which increases ethylene production even more, which increases ripening even more, and . . .  Disease, wounds, and decay also stimulate ethylene production, which is why “one rotten apple spoils the barrel.”
    If picked when sufficiently mature, but not dead ripe, kiwifruits store well for a few weeks. They’ll ripen during storage, slower under refrigeration, faster at room temperature. From experience, I know that “sufficiently mature” for kiwis is when the first fruits start ripening. So, in addition to my umbrella harvesting, I’m harvesting a bunch of the unripe fruits and refrigerating them to extend their season. Don’t worry; there’ll still be plenty for the ducks.

SOMETHING FOR YOU PERMACULTURALISTS

    Every time I walk back to the kiwi vines, I pass a perennial flower bed. Or, at least, what was supposed to be a flower bed and now is bordering on half flowers and half weeds. The major two weeds, I admit, are my own doing.
    The first of these weeds is dayflower, which arrived here with some bee balm plants from a friend. It’s actually a pretty plant with small, blue flowers, and it’s easy and satisfying to pull out. To a point.

Groundnut tubers, in years' past

Groundnut tubers, in years’ past

    The other weed, groundnut, was a deliberate planting, by me, about 20 years ago. It seemed interesting, bearing edible, golf-ball-sized tubers that string along underground like beads. Groundnut reputedly is the food that got the pilgrim’s through their first winter. Occasionally the plant, a vine, flowers, bearing chains of pale chocolate-colored blossoms. Do I remember them smelling like chocolate also? Perhaps. With all the other vegetation in the bed, the plants haven’t flowered in a long time.
  

Groundnut flowers

Groundnut flowers

 The problem is that those chains of tubers spread to make more chains of tubers which, in turn, do likewise, ad infinitum. The vines now creep over almost every plant in that bed but rarely get enough space to themselves to make tubers anymore. No matter. They didn’t taste that good anyway.
    I wasn’t as foolish as might seem planting groundnut in that flower bed. Twenty years ago that flower bed wasn’t a flower bed, but just a place for interesting plants in my then small garden.

FLOWER BED MAKEOVER

A recent visit to the garden of Margaret Roach (http://awaytogarden.com/) inspired me to makeover a flower bed. Margaret’s garden is all ornamental, a sometimes lively, sometimes subdued interplay of plant shapes with leaf textures and spots of color. My garden is mostly for eating, although I balance that functionality with rustic arbors, shrubbery (some of it edible and ornamental), and interplay of sight lines. And I do have a couple of flower beds.

My flower bed 10 years ago.
Looking at photos of one of my beds from years past highlighted for me just how much in need it was for a makeover.

The attack began on ‘Miss Kim’ lilac. She was supposed to be a dwarf lilac (a different species, Syringa patula, than the common lilac, S. vulgaris), and I suppose she is a dwarf, comparatively speaking. But she’d grown too big and too dense for the flower bed so I did an extensive renovation, cutting to the ground a few of the oldest stems, thinning out some of the youngest ones so that those that remain would have room to develop, and then shortening or removing any other stem that was creating congestion or was in my way. The new ‘Miss Kim’ took some getting used to, like a new haircut, but now I’m pleased and other plants in the bed have more light and space.

I was more brutal with the butterfly bush. Butterfly bush is one of my favorite shrubs but this one takes over the bed each summer. And I’d just received a sample plant of a new series  — the Flutterby series — of butterfly bushes, notable for their small stature and long bloom period. The humongous root system of the old butterfly bush was no match for a chain and the Kubota tractor. Into the waiting hole went a Flutterby.

Next, I took a shovel to the Siberian irises, wonderful plants with pleasant, blue blossoms and spiky, green foliage — until the plants become overcrowded, at which point they become mostly just foliage. The plants need dividing every 3 years or so to prevent overcrowding. Dividing them was actually the hardest job because of the tough root systems. I probably removed about half the plants.

Finally, more herbaceous interlopers — which included a lot of garlic, jewelweed, and errant irises and daffodils — got cleaned up. What’s left is a clean palette, some patches of bare soil ready for some new plants. Thus far: an orange osteospermum off to one side, and deep pink rose campion with purple-pink coneflower on the other side.
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Digging in the flower bed unearthed some golfball-sized tubers connected together like a chain of beads. I immediately recognized them as tubers of Apios americana, sometimes called Indian potato or groundnut (not to be confused with that other groundnut, the peanut). How did I recognize them so quickly? Because I planted groundnuts about 25 years ago!

Groundnuts should be more famous; they are the unsung heroes of Thanksgiving. The Wampanoaga Indians introduced the Pilgrims to this plant, and the Pilgrims’ diet during one of those first winters was supplemented by an Indian cache of groundnuts and corn discovered by Miles Standish. The Pilgrims soon coveted this food for themselves, to the extent of issuing an edict in 1654 ordering that: “if an Indian dug Groundnuts on English land, he was to be set in stocks, and for a second offense, be whipped.”

Native Americans didn’t really cultivate groundnuts, but merely coaxed them along where they grew naturally. Modern Americans became interested in domesticating groundnuts a few decades ago. Hence my groundnuts, sent to me by one of those modern Americans.

Groundnut can be weedy, spreading all over the place via those tuberous chains. I’ve been half-heartedly weeding groundnuts out of my flower bed for 23 years, looking in vain for tubers each time I weeded. Evidently, I didn’t dig deeply enough — until this flower bed makeover.
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Clematis ‘Piilu’
The flower bed is also home to a couple of clematis vines that climb up 5-foot-high wire towers, and beyond. No clematis vines will be touched by a shovel for the makeover, especially since this has been such a spectacular year for those two and other clematis vines I grow. Why this year? Who knows? Clematis are generally winter hardy and not particularly at the beck and call of the weather.

My favorite clematis, named Piilu, arrived here a couple of years ago from Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery (http://www.songsparrow.com/). Piilu grows only about 5 feet high to make a very densely flowering column (with support) of flowers. The flowers have pale lavender petals whose intensity deepens towards their bases, at which also sits a dense bottlebrush of creamy white stamens. The plant blooms all season, with later flowers, borne on new stems, having double rows of petals.
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