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MY PONYTAIL GROWS, AND SEEDS ENTICE

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I Grow A Ponytail

A friend gave me a ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) decades ago, and up to this summer it looked something like a palm tree sitting atop a large onion. Or a long-leafed dracena plant whose stem, near ground level, had swollen almost to the size of a bowling ball. The plant looked very interesting, but not particularly attractive, and the sharp edges of its long, strappy leaves were grabbing at me every time I walked by too closely.

So last summer, I was going to toss the plant in the compost pile; instead, I lopped off its top to about 3 feet in height. What remained was nothing more than what looked like a tan bowling ball halfway immersed in a pot of soil with a inch-thick, bare stem tapering skyward from its upper side.My ponytail palm

After pruning, I ignored the plant just as I had done for the past few decades. Ponytail palm doesn’t crave attention. As testimonial to the ability of the bulbous trunk to store water, the plant went months between waterings. What’s more, it’s been growing in the same pot with the same potting soil for all these years, no small accomplishment with the bulbous base of the plant, rather than potting soil, occupying much of volume within the pot. And fertilization? A rare event.

Now for the good part: Since being decapitated, the ponytail palm has sprouted tufts of leaves in various places. A few new sprouts appeared near the top of the plant, just as most plants would do when the top bud or portion of a stem is cut back. A tuft also appeared lower down along the stem. And seemingly out of nowhere, a couple of tufts of leaves sprung from the rounded surface of the swollen bulb.

Over time, each of those tufts of leaves is going to elongate into a stem capped by a tuft of leaves.

The plant is more verdant and very attractive now, and I should be able to direct its growth to remain so. If not, I can lop back one or more ponytails and start again.

Ponytail, Down The Road

Ponytail palm is quite a dramatic site in its native, tropical haunts. There, the plant’s stem keeps elongating, lifting its mophead of scrappy leaves higher and higher. Tufts of leaves might sprout lower down along the stem, or from the base, just as did my decapitated plant. And the bulbous base — it keeps growing fatter and fatter.

Ponytail palm in Puerto Rico

Ponytail palm in Puerto Rico

In Puerto Rico, I’ve seen ponytail palms the were three feet across as ground level. My plant will get a new pot as soon as it bursts out of its old one. But eventually . . . ?

Seeds! Restrain Me

Years ago, the routine was that seed catalogues would arrive in the mail sometime after January and all of us gardeners would place our orders to receive seeds a couple of months later. Now, I have catalogs that have already been sitting on my kitchen table for a few weeks, with orders waiting to be finalized. And not primitively finalized, with pen and paper, but seamlessly, on the internet.Ordering seeds

Seed companies realized that the early bird gets the worm: We gardeners, once cold weather has set in, are likely to get seduced by any reference to fresh tomatoes, so are most likely to order from the first catalogs we see. All this is for the better, for me, at least, because my efforts to limit down time in the garden mean that I need to have seeds in hand and ready to sow that much sooner. I could sow lettuce seeds today, for harvest in the greenhouse. Onion and leek seeds get sown in seed flats at the beginning of February, lettuce for transplants to be planted outdoors, follows soon after that, along with pansies and snapdragons, and the march continues from then on right through September.

One thing that has not changed over the years is that I’m still enticed and thankful for what we gardeners have at our fingertips. From just a phone call, a few dollars, or a few computer keystrokes, plants from all over the world end up in my garden. How can I resist trying Ruby Mist Love Grass, Cajun Jewel Okra, and Blazing Stars this year, along with such old standbys as Buttercrunch lettuce, Blue Lake beans, and Lemon Gem marigolds?

Excitement in some Seeds

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There’s still some space left in the March 10th lecture/workshop in Philadelphia. In the morning, I’ll do a photo presentation about pruning fruit trees, shrubs, and vines and then, after lunch, we’ll go out into the real world, at the Awbury Arboretum’s Agricultural Village. For more information and for registration for FRUIT PRUNING SIMPLIFIED, please visit:
 http://chestnuthill.patch.com/events/fruit-pruning-simplified-with-lee-reich

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And now, on to what’s happening up here on my farmden in New York’s Hudson Valley . . .
Some inch-long, tapering white sprouts — roots — caused quite a stir today. For me, at least. The first was spotted inside a baggie of moist potting soil that I put in the refrigerator a couple of months ago. That sprout was attached to a marble-sized, brown yellowhorn (Xanthocerus sorbifolia) seed. Giving the bag a shake brought more seeds to the surface, all with emerging sprouts.
The other sprouts were in a Clementine tangerine box that, last summer, I had filled with potting soil in which I had sown seeds of Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa). The box sat outside along the north wall of my house until a couple of weeks ago, when I brought it indoors to warmth.
Without doing time in the cold, whether outdoors or in the refrigerator, neither batch of seeds would have sprouted. They needed, as do many tree and shrub seeds, a period of stratification, that is, time kept cool and moist. After a certain number of hours under these conditions, typically about 800 hours for hardy trees and shrubs, the seeds can sprout unless temperatures are too cold.
I chose my words carefully when I wrote “cool and moist” above; temperatures below freezing contribute nothing to this so-called cooling “bank.” So, outdoors, those Nanking cherry seeds put time into their chilling bank this past autumn and during any of winter’s warmer days. If that time hadn’t been sufficiently long, hours in the “bank” could have been topped up in late winter and early spring.
A refrigerator is just the right temperature for stratification, too right in some ways. The consistently cool temperatures there fill up the chilling bank hours quickly, so quickly that seeds collected in late summer and stratified there often sprout in December, which means indoor planting at a time when growing conditions are at their worst. That’s why my yellowhorn seeds didn’t get a good soaking and then tucked into the bag with potting soil in the refrigerator until late November.
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Forget about the nuts; yellowhorn is worth
growing even just for its flowers
The yellowhorn seeds came from a tree I planted many years ago. I planted it because yellowhorn was billed as a small, hardy tree with a nut very similar to a macadamia nut. Yes, the nut does look like a macadamia, inside and out, and it’s about the same size. But yellowhorn nuts taste nothing like macadamia nuts. The yellowhorn nuts from my tree are barely edible, roasted or raw.
So why am I so excited about the nuts (seeds) sprouting to give me additional plants. Yellowhorn is a beautiful tree with ferny leaves and drooping, large clusters of purple-throated, white flowers that rival and resemble orchids.
Run-of-the-mill, seedling macadamia nuts are not as tasty as named varieties that have been selected over the years. No named varieties of yellowhorn exist. Perhaps a tasty clone may one day be discovered. Perhaps one of the sprouting seeds in my baggie will grow into a tree that will be the one that bears those tasty nuts. 
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Nanking cherry is another story, as far as taste. Like yellowhorn, no named varieties of Nanking cherry exist. But I’ve tasted the fruits, which are small, sweet-tart cherries, from many different plants in many different places over many years, and they all taste good.
Like yellowhorn, Nanking cherry also sports beautiful flowers. Each year in early spring, my Nanking cherry shrubs are drenched in such a profusion of pinkish-white blossoms that you can hardly see the stems.
Nanking cherry stems are hidden behind
the oodles of fruit this plant bears 
Another plus for Nanking cherry is that it is pest-resistant and bears reliably every year. The usual pests of cherries — curculios, fruit flies, brown rot, leaf spots, borers — are insignificant on Nanking cherries. And the plant laughs off extremes of temperature: It’s native where winter lows plummet to minus 50°F and summer highs soar to 110°F, and even though the plants’ blossoms open early in spring, spring frosts are never a problem. Did I mention that the plants also grow quickly and bear young, typically a couple of years after planting?
All this is not to say that Nanking cherry could not be improved. Some selection or breeding could slide flavor more towards the sweeter end of the sweet-tart scale. Larger fruit would be welcome. Mostly, the cherries are a mere one-half to five-eighths inch in diameter.
So last summer I collected seeds from fruits that were a little bigger and a little sweeter than the rest. Those were the seeds I planted in that Clementine tangerine box. I’m going to let these plants grow until warm weather settles in spring, then move them outdoors. In 2 or 3 years, I’ll be sampling fruits from these seedlings. I’ll save and plant some seeds from shrubs bearing the largest and tastiest fruits, and plant them. Perhaps I’ll eventually have some better Nanking cherries. At the very least, I’ll have lots of them. 

Good Gifts for Gardeners

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What would be a good gift for a gardener at this gift-giving time of year? Every gardener has his or her special inclinations, gardenwise, so each of us warrants a special set of gift possibilities.
Still, certain expendable items are sure to please any and every gardener. Tops on my list would be a big ball of twine. Twine is useful for everything from lashing blue spires of delphinium and floppy tomato vines to stakes to tying pea vines to a trellis or grape vines to support wires. Not just any twine will do; best is twine made of natural fibre, such as hemp or sisal, so that it can be gathered up to be composted along with the plants it supported at season’s end.
Gloves are another expendable item great for gifts. Gloves made from leather and some synthetics last for years. Among my favorite gloves for everything from detail work like transplanting small seedlings to grabbing a pitchfork to pitch manure onto the compost pile are knit gloves with nitrile or latex coated palms and fingers. With rough use, the gloves only last a couple of seasons, if that, but they’re worth it for their grippiness, comfort, and hand protection. I save my leather gloves for colder weather or for rougher work such as pruning thorny rose and gooseberry bushes and grabbing firewood.
Organic gardening (a good idea and the essence of good gardening in general) conjures up its own special gifts. Straw, manure, hay, leaves, wood chips, and other organic (that is, living or once-living) materials are what put the “organic” into organic gardening. A pitchfork is the perfect tool for moving organic materials to the compost pile or on top of the soil. But choosing a pitchfork is not all that straightforward. I am the proud owner and frequent user of 4-, 5-, 6-, and 10-tine pitchforks. Each has its special use but if I were to own just one pitchfork, it would be the  6-tine fork.
If you’re going to use a pitchfork, you’re probably going to need something with which to move around all those bulky organic materials. A garden cart. Stoked full, a sturdy cart with high wooden sides and two large-diameter tires can move over 10 cubic feet or 1/3 cubic yard of material, up to about 400 pounds of weight. Please don’t buy me one; I own three.
A few other essential, welcome tools are a trowel, which any but a beginning gardener is sure to have, and hand pruning shears (my favorite is ARS although Felco and Pica are also very, very good). A rain gauge is also essential to know whether what sounded like an earth-drenching downpour really contributed to the one inch per week needed for best plant growth. Good sources for tools are Gemplers, A. M. Leonard, Charleys Greenhouse, Orchard Equipment Supply Co., and Gardener’s Supply Co.
Beginning gardeners will appreciate packets of basic seeds such as Black Seeded Simpson and Buttercrunch lettuce, Bush Blue Lake and Romano beans, French Breakfast radishes, and Green Arrow peas. More advanced gardeners start their own transplants so might appreciate especially good, but hard to find as transplants, varieties of tomatoes, such as Blue Beech, Belgian Giant, San Marzano, and Black Krim. Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Fedco Seeds, High Mowing, Pinetree Garden Seeds, Tomato Growers Supply Company, and Totally Tomatoes are among my favorite seed companies. For growing transplants, I recommend Gardener’s Supply APS, which waters seedlings automatically and gives each seedling its own home so they hardly realize when they’ve been transplanted. I already own about a dozen of them so don’t buy one for me, thanks. 
How about a gift of some of the above catalogues? How about including some good nursery catalogues also? Some of my favorite nurseries are Hartmann’s, Raintree, One Green World, Cummins, Burnt Ridge, and Nourse. 
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The best gift for the beginning gardener or for the seasoned gardener who wants to grow better is, in my opinion, a good book. Among my favorites are any of Elliot Coleman’s books about vegetable gardening, any of Michael Dirr’s books about trees and shrubs, Steven Still’s Manual of Herbaceous Plants, Hartmann & Kester’s Plant Propagation: Principles and Practices, my bible on plant propagation, and, for general gardening, Roy Biles’ The Complete Book of Garden Magic and Barbara Damrosch’s The Garden Primer. For entertaining and informative essays, there’s Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi and The Principles of Gardening: A Guide to the Art, History, Science, and Practice of Gardening by Hugh Johnson.
Oh, and did I mention my books?: A Northeast Gardener’s Year (the what, when, and how for a wide range of gardening topics arranged, as appropriate, through the year), Weedless Gardening (especially good for vegetable gardening), Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden, Landscaping with Fruit, and Grow Fruit Naturally.
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