PERMACULTURAL GLITCHES

/6 Comments/in , , , , /by

Imperfect Lawn

I’m no devotee of the perfect lawn, but I did recently suggest, for the bare palette of ground on which W wanted to plan for a variety of fruits, a patch of lawn. W protested that she hated mowing and wanted a “permaculture planting” that would take little care.

Visitors to my garden have occasionally complimented me on my lawn. The only care I give it is mowing with a mulching mower that lets clippings rain back down. By not cutting the lawn I avoid “mining” the soil for nutrients by repeated harvest of clippings. The clippings also enrich the ground with humus.

Pawpaw tree in my cousin's lawn

Pawpaw tree in my cousin’s lawn

Still, I’d rather grow trees, shrubs, vines, especially fruiting ones, and vegetables and flowers, than lawngrass. But I have plenty of ground devoted to these plants. And the easiest way to care for a plot of ground, short of sealing it in asphalt or just letting weeds grow (some of which would undoubtedly be edible or attractive) is by mowing. Visually, lawngrass also provide a calm backdrop for the scene out my back and front door. Plus, it’s nice to walk and play on.

A lawn need not be the environmental disaster inadvertently promoted by purveyors of fertilizers, and pesticides. As stated above, by letting clippings fall where they may, ground is not drained of its fertility, so fertilizer may not be needed. Especially if you let a little clover invade the lawn to add nitrogen, the most evanescent of plant nutrients.

That nitrogen highlights another approach to an easier lawn: Not striving for the uniform look of artificial turf. My lawn has its share of dandelions and clover and, later in the season, crabgrass, especially if the weather turns dry. I tolerate all this, with a refocussing of my aesthetic lens to celebrate a certain amount of diversity in the lawn.

Lawn care is even more environmentally sound these days with cordless electric lawnmowers not spewing noise, carbon dioxide, and other byproducts of gasoline consumption into the air. Periodic scything is a very pleasant way to get by with less mowing and sheep may be a way to get by with no mowing (but you do have to fence and do whatever else is necessary to care for the sheep).

Eco-mowers

Eco-mowers: Fiskars push, Stihl battery, and Scythe Supply Co. mowers

Fruits To (And Not To) Grow

Now for W’s permaculture fruit trees, shrubs, and vines — with some lawn, of course. (I think I convinced her.) For starters, I suggested steering clear of apples, peaches, plums, cherries, nectarines, and apricots. All are relatively high maintenance and, even with all that maintenance, still are iffy crops in this part of the world because of our extreme and variable climate and the plants’ susceptibilities to insects and diseases.

Nanking cherry hedge

Nanking cherry hedge

So what’s there left to grow??!! Berries, for one. Most berries don’t stand up well to commercial handling so are picked underripe even though they don’t ripen at all once harvested — all the more reason to grow berries in the backyard where the best tasting varieties can be planted and the harvest need not be shipped much further than arms’ length.

Redcurrant espalier

Redcurrant espalier

Summer's berries

Raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries are all easy to grow without much care beyond pruning, which is very important for keeping the plants disease free and convenient to harvest.

And no need to restrict the berry bowl to these most common berries. Also easy to grow are seaberries, elderberries, lingonberries, mulberries, and hardy kiwifruit (which are, botanically, berries). An added plus for these latter berries, as well as the aforementioned blueberries, is that the plants are also ornamental.

There is one common tree fruit that’s easy to grow: pears.  And even easier than European pears, such as Bartlett, Anjou, and Bosc, are Asian pears, such as Chojuro, Yoinashi, Hosui, and scores of other varieties. Asian pears also bear more quickly and prolifically, and are a little more decorative than the also decorative European pears.

Asian pear, comfrey, and lawn

Asian pear, comfrey, and lawn

Avoiding Nightmares

The main problem that I’ve seen with many permaculture plantings is that they look great on paper as well as when first planted. Mouths water at the prospects of all those ornamental, fruiting plants cozied together, fruit on creeping plants beneath trees whose branches strain downward with their weight of fruit. And perhaps a nearby grape or kiwifruit plant insinuating its berried vines in among the trees’ branches.

I’ve seen such plans and such plantings. What a nightmare of management they are or will be, mostly because of the need for relentless, extensive, judicious pruning to keep some plants from overtaking the landscape and starving others for nutrients or light. The result is less fruit of lower quality and difficulty in finding the fruit and getting to it.

A little lawn is good to give the fruiting plants some elbow room and to make them easier to care for.

—————————————-

Don’t wait for dry weather to learn about an easy and better (for you and plants) way to water. On June 24, 1-4:30 pm, I’ll be holding DRIP IRRIGATION WORKSHOP at the garden of Margaret Roach in Copake Falls, NY.  Learn how to design a system, and participate in a hands-on installation. For more information and registration, www.leereich.com/workshops.

AWESOME BLOSSOMS & RATIONALITY

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

 

Wow!!

With blossoms spent on forsythias, lilacs, fruit trees, and clove currants, spring’s flamboyant flower show had subsided – or so I thought. Pulling into my driveway, I was pleasantly startled by the profusion of orchid-like blossoms on the Chinese yellowhorn tree (Xanthoceras sorbifolium). And I again let out an audible “Wow” as I stepped onto my terrace, when three fat, red blossoms, each the size of a dinner plate, stared back at me from my tree peony.

Tree peony blossoms

Both plants originate in Asia. Both plants are easy to grow. Both plants have an unfortunate short bloom period, more or less depending on the weather. Fortunately, both plants also are attractive, though more sedately, even after their blossoms fade.

The tree peonies have such a weird growth habit. I had read that they were very slow to grow so was quite pleased, years ago, when each of the branches on my new plant extended its reach more than a foot by the end of its first growing season. Tree peony is a small shrub; at that rate mine would be full size within a very few years. Or so I imagined.

The tree peony still grows that much every year. But every year many stems also die back about a foot, more following cold winters. No matter, though, because every May giant silky, red flowers unfold from the remaining fat buds along the stem.Yellowhorn blossoms

I originally planted Chinese yellowhorn not for its flowers but for the fruits that follow the flowers. Each fruit is a dry capsule that later in summer starts to split open to reveal within a clutch of shiny, brown, macadamia-sized nuts. Yellowhorn frequently makes it onto permaculture plant lists, with the edible nuts billed as having macadamia-like flavor also. Not true. I’ve tried them raw and roasted. Roasting does change the flavor, but raw or roasted, the flavor is bad.Yellowhorn tree

Still, those blossoms make yellowhorn well worth growing. And after the blossoms fade, this small tree is adorned with shiny, lacy leaves. Much like the tree peony, yellowhorn grows many new stems each year, and many of the stems die back, not necessarily from winter cold but because they’re seemingly deciduous. I tidied the tree up last week by pruning off all the dead stems.

Out With You-All

Today, May 25th, with temperatures around 90 degrees F., I may not be able to restrain myself. It’s hard to imagine that temperatures could still plummet below freezing at least one night sometime in the next week or so. I’ve already ignored that “should” and a few days ago moved houseplants outdoors.

Why the rush? First of all, houseplants enjoy growing outdoors more than growing indoors. Outside, breezes rustling leaves and stems make for stronger, stockier growth and rain showering the leaves washes off a winter’s accumulation of dirt and grime.

After a winter indoors, the plants do need to acclimate to these conditions, which is why they start their outdoor vacation on the terrace on the north side of the house, which blocks wind and, for part of the day, sunlight.

I also urged the plants outdoors because populations of aphid and scale insects were outgrowing the appetites of the ladybugs crawling up and down the stems. Outside, natural predators keep pests in check and, if necessary, I can spritz the plants down to knock off pests and spray soap or summer oil to kill them without worrying about getting spray or oil on windows, walls, or furniture.

The Rush On Sweet CornCorn planting

Even tender seeds, such as corn, squash , and beans, can be sown now. The earth has warmed enough for decent germination, and by the time the plants are up, warm weather will have settled in for the season.

Tomorrow I plant sweet corn. Kinky as it sounds, I’m anxious to sink my teeth into a freshly picked ear.

Upcoming Workshop

June 24, 1-4:30 pm, DRIP IRRIGATION WORKSHOP at the garden of Margaret Roach in Copake Falls, NY. Don’t wait for dry weather to learn about this easy and better (for you and plants) way to water, including participation in hands-on installation. For more information and registration, www.leereich.com/workshops.

SANS (fr.) / SIN (sp.) SOIL

/4 Comments/in /by

Clarabel And Abbe Fetel

The UPS guy delivered two large, long boxes last week. Laid out in each box as in a coffin was what looked like a sturdy, 4-foot long stick. You wouldn’t think that either stick, one labelled Clarabel quince and the other labelled Abbe Fetal pear, could ever become a tree, could ever even come to life! Unpacking, then holding one of the sticks up, its bare roots dangling in the air, I had my doubts about the plant’s viability, even though I’ve planted many bare root trees over many years.

Bare root tree soaking

Bare root tree soaking

Bare root trees are grown at a nursery and, sometime between fall and spring while still leafless and dormant, are dug up, their roots shaken free of soil, and shipped. Before shipping a tree, a good nursery will  tuck moist sphagnum moss, shredded newspaper, or other water retaining material in among the roots, then swaddle the  roots and moist packaging all in plastic.

Some loss of large roots is unavoidable when digging a bare root tree.  Less obvious is loss of tender root hairs. And roots don’t ever like being out of the soil. So why didn’t I just order a potted tree, which hardly need know that it’s been moved, rather than a bare root tree?

The main reason for buying a bare root Claribel quince or Abbe Fetel is because there’s not much chance of finding a potted one locally or, probably, anywhere. Bare root trees and shrubs are cheaper to buy and cheaper to mail than potted trees and shrubs, and are available in much greater variety.

Treated well, growth of bare root trees and shrubs will match that of their potted counterparts. Good treatment doesn’t end at the nursery. Soon after unpacking Claribel and Abbe Fetel, their roots were in a bucket of water, to soak for a few hours. Planting holes were dug just deep enough to set each tree at the same depth as at the nursery (as evidenced by the soil line on the trunk) and twice as wide as the spread of the roots. Abbe Fetal had a couple of straggly roots; I clipped them back to the same length as the other roots.

Holding a tree in place with one hand, I sifted soil back in among the spread roots in the planting hole, working the soil in amongst roots by poking with my fingers and occasionally bouncing the plant up and down slightly. After planting, a thorough watering further settled soil in amongst the roots. An icing of mulch — I used wood chips — and the plant, still looking like nothing more than a stick, was ready to go, as far as I was concerned.

Daphne . . . Alive

Last year I bought a potted Daphne bush at a local garden center. As I tipped the plant out of the pot to nestle into its waiting planting hole, all the potting soil fell away from the roots.Daphne in bloom

It’s not uncommon for a garden center to buy in bare root trees and shrubs, just as I did with Clarabel and Abbe Fetal, then pot them up for sale. Roots in some soil are ready to take in nutrients and water as soon as when warm weather coaxes out new leaves and shoots. Some weeks must pass before the roots actually grow out into the potting soil, though.

The Daphne was leafed out but hardly rooted when I tipped it out of the pot, making it again bare root. I had doubts about its survival. But it did survive. Still, it was an expensive bare-root plant.

Annuals In Cells

A hundred or so years ago, even tender, annual vegetable transplants were re-located to their new homes bare root. Tomatoes would be grown in cold-frames, hot beds, or greenhouses, then gingerly lifted free of the soil. Kept out of the sun and with their roots moist in a bucket of water, the plants were moved to the field or garden and planted, preferably on an overcast day. If the day was dry and sunny, a cedar shingle might be shoved into the ground to shade the plant for a day or two.

Transplant in Orto pot

Transplant in Orto pot

These days, as you know, vegetable transplants come in plastic cell packs, each plant in its own mini-pot. For tender, small annual plants, potted is much better than bare-root.

Clarabel Has Risen

Resurrection! Only a few days after planting Clarabel and Abbe Fetel, and, like magic, green buds have swollen along the once dead-looking stems.Clarabel starting to grow

DESIGNS ON GARDENING

/11 Comments/in , , , /by

The Turn Of  The Year

Sure there’s seed-sowing, weeding, and pruning to do, but I’ve also been spending a good amount of time communing with my pitchfork. Turning compost.

Some people are put off by the thought of having to turn compost. Don’t be. Compost does not have to be turned. Any pile of organic materials will eventually become compost.

Still, I like to turn my composts. I typically build new piles (a lot of them!!) through summer into fall, turn them the following spring, and then spread the finished compost that fall or the following spring. As I fork the ingredients from the old pile into the adjacent bin, I break up any clumps with the pitchfork and fluff up any parts that seem sodden and gasping for air. A nearby hose makes it convenient to spray any dry areas.Compost bins

Everything organic (was once or is living) — hay, weeds, old plants, some horse manure, old cotton clothes, vegetable trimmings — goes into my compost, and that includes, unavoidably, weed seeds. Turning my compost pile exposes weed seeds buried within the pile to light, which prompts them to germinate — only to be snuffed out as they are again buried in the turned pile.

I take note of the progress of the decomposition, generally tossing any less decomposed pitchforkfuls towards the more active center of the turned pile. I also “take note” very literally, writing down a rough estimate of how far along the compost has progressed. If it’s, say, 80% finished, it should be ready for use, if needed, within a month or so. If 60% finished, it’ll have to keep cooking until fall.

I like to watch the results of the bacteria, fungi, and other compost pets nurtured within the piles. And turning them is good exercise.

Design Ultimatum

Over the years, my compost bins have gone through many incarnations as I, each time, came up with what I thought was the ultimate design for the bin itself. The present design has retained that status for a number of years now.

The present bin is made of notched boards, 24 per pile, each about 1” thick by 6” wide by 4 feet long. The boards stack up to make a cube Lincoln-log style. For a thorough enclosure, two boards ripped to half their width make up two sides of the bottom of the  bin. The advantage of the notched boards is that all four sides are enclosed and the compost bin can be built higher and higher, as needed, as material is added. And lowered, in steps, as finished compost is being removed for spreading, or half-finished compost is being removed for turning into a expanding, adjacent bin.Compost bin board

My original “ultimate design” bins were made from wood, which needed replacement every 8 to 10 years. Present bins are made from artificial wood decking, which should hold up forever.

While not a necessity for making compost, a bin does keep everything neat and tidy, keeps scavenging animals and wind-blown weed seeds at bay, and retains heat and moisture for quicker and more thorough composting. As I wrote a few paragraphs earlier, “Any pile of organic materials will eventually become compost.”

Transplant Design

Speaking about good design . . . With so many transplants to water, any method of automatic watering is a godsend. Right now, a couple of hundred of my seedlings are growing in individual, plastic cells sitting on capillary mats. As soil dries out in the cells, it sucks up water from the capillary mat which, in turn, draws water from the reservoir below it. This, the APS system, works very well.

And now an even better design has come down the pike, one made out of terra cotta that, unless dropped, is sure to outlast plastic systems. Cells for a tray of Orta Seed Pots are all housed together in an attached reservoir. One advantage of this design is that cells absorb water throughout their terra cotta walls. Another advantage is that each cell has a drainage hole, so periodic top watering can leach out excess minerals that can build up in pots watered from below.Orta pot

The only downside to Orta Seed Pots is that they are expensive. Then again, they can potentially last forever, and they grow very good plants. The design is so elegant and effective (as borne out by some seedlings that I raised in Orta’s) that I’m going to shamelessly help in their promotion with a link,  (www.ortakitchengarden.com/factory-seconds-sale/),to discounted factory seconds, which work perfectly but have cosmetic flaws, or, till the end of May, discounted firsts (www.ortakitchengarden.com), with discount code ORTAMAY).

GRAPE EXPECTATIONS

/5 Comments/in , , , /by

Hello Vanessa

A few days ago was the perfect day for planting the Vanessa grape vine deposited here by the UPS guy. Not because the weather was warm and sunny or because working outdoors was made all the more pleasant with peach, pear, and plum trees in all their glory, awash in white or pink blossoms. And not because the plums were suffusing the air with a most delectable fragrance.

Vanessa grape

Vanessa grape

The day was perfect for planting because the soil was in such good tilth. With each shovelful, clumps of soil broke apart under their own weight. A far cry from decades ago in my first garden, around this time of year, when digging brought up clods of Wisconsin soil still sticky and wet.

In wet soil, digging drives air out of the soil; under such conditions, roots of trees, shrubs, vines, and seedlings suffer. Better to wait for the soil to dry before planting. But not too long. Soil that is too dry turns rock-hard, too hard to crumble into small pieces to sift amongst roots. All this is moot in sandy soils, which never hold enough water to make them too wet for planting. Firming soil around roots

My present ground is a clay loam, which could be poor for planting if too wet. It wasn’t, because, first of all, it hadn’t rained for a few days. Second, warm weather had warmed the soil, the warmth speeding downward movement of excess water. And third, years and years of mulching with leaves, hay, and compost had made the ground rich in organic matter whose goodness had worked its way down through the soil profile with the help of earthworms and other soil organisms, rain, and the action of alternate freezing and thawing. Organic matter, among other benefits, acts as a glue to aggregate soil particles into a crystalline-like structure that helps with holding both air and water.

Training And Pruning Plans

I can bank on Vanessa growing well her first season in the ground. Soon after she arrived, bare-root, I had her roots plumping up with a day-long soak in water. Her planting hole was just deep enough to let her sit at the same depth as in the nursery, and one-and-a-half to twice the spread of the roots across. I clipped back a couple of long, straggly roots.

Holding the stem with one hand, I pushed the soil I had dug out of the hole back in amongst the roots, working it in with my fingertips after initially sifting soil in among the smaller roots by bouncing the plant up and down a little. With the roots nestled into their planting hole, I sprinkled a couple of gallons of water to further settle the soil and get the plant off to a good start.

She arrived with five strong-looking canes jutting up just above where her roots splayed out. Too many, for my purposes. Like her established neighbors, Vanessa will be trained to a “high wire double cordon spur pruned” system, a mouthful that sounds more complicated than it is. Two trunks will rise, unbranched, to about 6 feet in height to the middle wire of a five-wire trellis. One trunk will continue its journey horizontally along the middle wire in one direction; the extension of the other trunk will do likewise in the opposite direction. These two horizontal growths are permanent fixtures, called cordons (same root as the word “cord”). High wire double cordon spur pruned grape

Grapes bear fruits on one-year old stems — these are the so-called “canes,” easily identified by their smooth, reddish brown bark and roughly pencil-thickness. New shoots growing from buds on canes bear bunches of grapes and can drape on the remaining wires on either side of the middle wire.

The following year, the new shoots become one-year-old canes. Without pruning (or with incorrect pruning), fruiting shoots and canes each year move further and further away from the cordon, so I cut each cane back to 2 buds in winter and, after a few years, cut them all the way back, to be replaced by new canes that are always popping out right from the cordon.New shoots bearing grapes

But all this is in Vanessa’s future. This year, all I want from her is two strong trunks.

Don’t Do What I Did

Rain fell, and I didn’t follow my own advice. Because I needed to convert a lumpy old garden area next door to lawn, and because lawngrass establishes best in cool weather, and because I had two helpers coming in a few days to help with ground preparation, I readied the area with a rototiller. I did so even though rain had been falling all day long. Rain fell even while I was tilling.

All in all, it was a horrible experience. Mud everywhere. Wrestling the tiller. Loud engine chugging away. (Now I remember one reason for my book, Weedless Gardening. Weed-less-ness comes, in part, from dispensing with tilling, which awakens buried weed seeds by exposing them to light. And there’s the added benefit of not having to till.)

Youthful, foolish Lee, tilling

Youthful, foolish Lee, tilling

With good drainage, the job finally got done without excessive destruction of soil structure. And anyway, I was only planting lawngrass.

A BETTER BERRY?

/8 Comments/in , /by

Out With The Old, In With The New

“Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did,” wrote a Dr. Boteler about the strawberry (as quoted in Izaak Walton’s 17th century classic The Compleat Angler). I disagree. I also don’t like to crawl for my fruit. With that said, I’ll agree that strawberries do taste very good, more so for being, usually, the first fruits of the season.

I just took a look at my strawberry bed; weeds are making inroads and the plants look pretty puny. Dispatching the weeds is no problem. As far as the puny plants, it was to be expected. Although strawberries are perennial plants, over time they pick up diseases, including some virus diseases lacking dramatic symptoms except that they reduce productivity. So a strawberry bed should be replanted — at a new location — every 5 years. My garden notes tell me my strawberry bed is 8 years old.

My strawberry bed in its prime

My strawberry bed in its prime

Strawberries send out shoots, called runners, at the ends of which develop new plants which, in turn, send out runners that also develop new plants, ad infinitum. So an untended bed can become very weedy, with strawberries. Even a well-tended bed sneaks in a few extra plants here and there. None of these plants should be used to start a new strawberry bed! Viruses are systemic, so all these new plants will also carry any virus infection.

I’ll be ordering my new strawberry plants from a nursery that sells certified disease and virus free strawberry plants. Then, at least, the plants start off “clean.”

The Best Berry Of All

If I had authored that quote by Dr. Boteler, I would have applied it to highbush blueberries. Not only are they, in my opinion, the best tasting berry, but the plants are truly perennial, remaining productive for 50 years or more. And I can harvest them standing up.Bunch of blueberries

No one is sure just how long a blueberry bush will thrive because they haven’t been cultivated for very long. It was only about a hundred years ago that Dr. Frank Coville of the USDA started studying blueberries in an effort to learn how to grow them. Previous to that, harvests were from wild plants. Even 50 years ago, fresh blueberries rarely appeared on grocer’s shelves.

Of Strawberries And Intrigue

Strawberries, also, have come into cultivation relatively recently, in this case over the past 200 years. Garden strawberries, that is, which owe their origin to a chance mating of two American species of strawberry in a garden in France.

One parent of the modern garden strawberry is the Virginia strawberry of eastern North America. Plants of this tasty, small-fruited species were brought over to Europe and planted in gardens there as early as the 17th century.

Intrigue enters the story in the arrival of the other parent of the modern, garden strawberry, the Chilean strawberry, to Europe. Moving the clock forward to the beginning of the 18th century, we find the French King Louis XIV needing a spy to observe Spanish fortifications in Concepcion, Chile. For this task, he chooses Amédée Francois Frezier, a young lieutenant colonel who had already distinguished himself with an aptitude for foreign languages and science. Amédée set sail on an armed merchant marine ship in 1712.

Upon his arrival in Concepcion, Chile, Amédée posed as a merchant marine captain, which enabled him to visit Spanish fortifications as a tourist. Secretly, he kept notes and made sketches of ammunition stores and escape routes. Besides military reports, Amédée also wrote about the indigenous peoples, the physical geography, and agriculture of the region. One of the plants that caught the lieutenant colonel’s fancy was the Chilean strawberry, which bore fruits larger than those that were known in Europe. Amédée included descriptions and sketches of the Chilean strawberry in his notes, and when it finally came time to leave Chile in 1714, he packed up five plants to smuggle back for his return voyage.

The marriage of the two species finally took place in a strawberry field near Brest, France as a bee carried pollen from the flower of a Virginia strawberry to the female flower of a Chilean strawberry. A seed from the fruit that developed germinated and grew into a plant that was the first modern, hybrid strawberry, combining the large size of one with the high flavor and intense red color of the other.

Better Strawberries

Since Dr. Boteler and Izaak Walton were writing in the 17th century, that “better berry” to which they referred could not have been the modern, garden strawberry. But other species were enjoyed before the modern species came into being: the alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca), and the musk strawberry (Fragaria moschata). Both species yield delectable, though small, fruits, and are still available today. I’ve grown both.

Musk strawberry

Musk strawberry

Musk strawberry might be the best tasting of all, but yielded very little for me.White alpine strawberries

I’ve grown, and still grow, alpine strawberries, white ones that have a pineapple-y flavor and are ignored, because of their lack of color, by birds. The plants are cold-hardy, don’t make runners, and bear all season long. The fruits are a nice, little treat, but not ones with which you’d fill your freezer. For that, the one to plant is  some variety of the modern, garden strawberry. I’ll be ordering plants of Earliglow.

WITCHES AND BREBAS

/1 Comment/in , , , /by

Arnold, You’re Too Big

Witchhazel, a few weeks ago

Witchhazel, a few weeks ago

Over the years, my Arnold’s Promise variety of witchhazel has earned its keep with branches showered in fragrant, golden flowers late each winter. Some years, like last year, part of the bush would blossom in autumn, then put on a repeat performance in late winter. (Branches that blossom in autumn don’t blossom again in later winter, but other branches, which hold off in autumn, do.)

I should have read the fine print more carefully before I selected this variety of witchhazel. My plan was for the plant to visually smooth the transition from the corner of the house to an upright stewartia tree to a moderate-sized shrub (Arnold’s Promise) to some subshrubs (lowbush blueberry) to ground level. Except that Arnold’s Promise has grown to 15 feet high. Which it’s supposed to do, according to the fine print. Which I didn’t read.

My job, now, is to bring the shrub to more comely proportions for the site, by pruning. Like other shrubs, witchhazels can be pruned by a renewal method, cutting to the ground the oldest stems and thinning out the number of youngest stems. The pruned plant, then, always has a spectrum of various aged stems, none of them too old or too overcrowded.

What makes an “old” stem for a shrub depends on its growth habit. For raspberries, two year old stems are “old,” so old that they die. And they make lots of young stems that need ruthless thinning out.

Witchhazels are at the other extreme. Very old stems keep sporting flowers, and the shrubs typically send up very few young stems. So witchhazels need very little pruning.

Witchhazel, partially pruned

Witchhazel, partially pruned

At first, I was going to renew Arnold’s Promise over the course of a few years, removing some of the oldest stems each year and hoping for younger replacements. That would let the shrub put on a nice show each year.

But once I get started pruning, restraint is difficult. I was tempted to  cut every stem, young and old, to the ground, then decide, as growth began, which young stems to save to build up the shrub again. I mostly did that, but saved a couple of small stems for a few blossoms this autumn or late next winter.

Especially this time of year, no matter what you do, you’re unlikely to kill a shrub by pruning. And, since they’re always growing new stems from ground level, even mistakes can be eventually corrected. (More about all this in my book, The Pruning Book).

A Reprieve For Arnold

Of course, I could kill Arnold’s Promise and plant a smaller variety of witchhazel, such as Little Suzie or Pallida. The latter’s flowers are reputedly especially fragrant. Then again, it reputedly grows 10 feet high — not that much smaller than Arnold’s Promise. Little Suzie, though, is billed at reaching only 5 or 6 feet tall.

For now, I’ll try pruning to cut Arnold’s Promise down to size.

Breba Figs are Swell(ing)

I can’t leave pruning yet. Figs. These plants have a most interesting and unique flowering and fruiting habit. Some varieties bear on one-year-old stems; some on new stems; and some on both.

I was pleasantly reminded of all this as I stepped into the greenhouse and looked up at the couple of full-length stems I had left after last autumn’s pruning of San Piero fig. San Piero is one of those varieties that bears on both one-year-old and new stems. New figs, the size of a quarter were already getting plump way up at at the tippy top of the full-length stems. If all goes well, these figs — called the breba crop — will ripen in midsummer.San Piero breba figs forming

To reap that breba crop, one-year-old stems must survive winter weather. Which they do in my cool-temperature greenhouse, as well as where winter temperatures hardly dip below freezing. Where winters are cold, breba figs can be harvested from plants grown in pots and moved to a cool, but not frigid, location for winter, such as a barely heated garage or a mudroom (no light necessary). Or, in late autumn, stems can be bent to the ground and covered with plastic, to shed excess moisture, and then leaves, straw, or some other insulating material. Or, in even colder climates, bent down into a covered trench. (Fig trees are very flexible, literally and figuratively.) 

My non-breba-forming figs and all except those few long stems I left on San Piero get drastic pruning. Everything, except for those one-year-old stems to save, gets pruned down to about 3 feet high. This pruning stimulates lots of new, vigorous shoots which bear the “main” crop, in late summer and on into autumn. Unlike apples, peaches, and other familiar fruits, main crop figs keep ripening over a long period, as long as the new shoots have enough light and warmth to keep growing.

HOUSEPLANTS THRIVE DURING MY CUBAN GETAWAY

/2 Comments/in , , , /by

 

Water In Air, In Soil, In Reserve

My houseplants enjoyed my absence more that I expected. I thought it might be harder on them. After all, with spring in the air (indoors) for a few weeks now, they were all pushing out new shoots from the ends and along stems that had lain dormant all winter. Citrus, avocado, and amaryllis were even flowering, and rosemary was getting ready to flower.

Lack of water was going to be the threat, 5 days of it, while I was far away wandering up and down streets and in and out of alleys of Havana, Cuba.Havana street scene

Through winter, I had eased my houseplant watering chores by using “water siphons” (aka “hydrospikes” or “self-watering probes”). These porous ceramic probes, filled with water and pushed into the potting soil, have the thin, flexible tubes coming out of their caps plunked into mason jars filled with water. I knew well just how thirsty the plants were, watching the water in the reservoirs into which the tubes that connect to the ceramic cones drop daily, in some cases a cup or more per day.Automatic watering spikes

Plants cool off by letting water evaporate through little holes in their leaves, called stomates. So leaving the house thermostat set to cooler temperature was going to help slow water loss.

Evaporation is faster, whether through stomates or from the potting soil, the drier the air. Heat from radiators is less drying than that from the wood stove, our usual source of heat — also helping plants that might be pining away in my absence.

I poured water into the saucers in which each pot sits. As this water evaporates it creates a microclimate around nearby plants, a microclimate slightly more humid than that of the rest of the house, cutting down water loss from the potting soil and through the leaves. The humid microclimate was made more so by cozying plants in a cluster right up next to each other. Pebbles in the saucers bumped up this benefit by increasing the evaporative surface area.

To further help plants through their period of neglect, I filled the saucers with more water than usual, with the water level a smidgen above the bottom of the pots. As the potting mix dried, it could suck this water into the pot by capillary action. I don’t usually let water sit in the saucers above the level of the bottom of any resident pot because then the bottom of the pot becomes waterlogged, eventually leading to dead roots. I figured a few days would do no harm, and surely less harm than would drying out of the whole plant.

My final ministration was to cut open a clear dry cleaner bag and drape it loosely over the clusters of plants to maintain even higher humidity.Houseplants covered to maintain high humidity

The upshot: The plants did not miss me even a little. They looked healthy and happy upon my return, perhaps even more so than with five days of constant attention!

Visitando El Jardín Botánico Nacional

One day in Cuba I ventured beyond Havana for a tour of the Jardín Botánico Nacional, or National Botanical Garden, which is adjacent to Parque Lenin (Vladimir, not John) Park. We bounced along on a tractor-pulled wagon through a landscape devoted to plants native to Cuba, then on into a savannah of plants of African origin, to groupings of plants indigenous to Latin America, and on through other tropical climates and ecosystems.

A few greenhouses there create special environments. One was a tropical rainforest greenhouse, with humidity kept high with frequent, automatic watering. A houseplant such as maranta formed an expansive groundcover there, and other familiar houseplants, such as peperomia, philodendron, begonia,, and spathiphyllum, either spread all over the ground or reached heights you would never see in a house.

A dry greenhouse, the covering, this time, to shed rainfall, was home to succulents and cactii. One cactus that caught my attention, especially so with Cuba’s connection to the Soviet Union, was the “Russian soldier cactus.” The upper portion of this upright cactus was furry and brown, just like a Russian soldier’s hat. (As far as cool, common names the Cubans have for plants, another one was “tourist tree,” so-named for its red, peeling bark, just like the skin of pale tourists that get too much tropical sun.)Russian soldier cactus

Another Orchid!?

I’m very happy with my two orchid plants — Dendrobium kingianum, the pink rock orchid, and Odontoglossum pulchellum, lily-of-the-valley orchid. Both bloom reliably once a year, in winter, for over a month. 

But one of the orchids at the Jardín Botánico Nacional caught my attention for more than its beauty. Spathoglotis plicata, sometimes called Phillipine ground orchid, blossoms all year ‘round. It’s a terrestrial orchid that’s also easy to grow, not needing an excess of light. I’m going to get one to add to my collection.Spathoglottis orchid

Orchids can become an obsession; I hope I’m not about to fall down a rabbit hole.

BLEEDING PLANTS, WHAT ABOUT RABBITS?

/1 Comment/in , /by

 

Bleeding Is Okay

Everyone wants to prune this time of year. And rightly so. It’s a good time to prune most trees, shrubs, and vines, as it was a couple of months ago and, looking forward, will be until about when these plants come into bloom.  Or, finished blooming, in the case of those plants whose pruning gets delayed until after we all get to enjoy their early blossoms.

A reader wrote me about her Japanese maple, which needed to have one of its multi-trunks cut off. Should she do it now or in autumn? If lopped back now, would the tree bleed to death? Would the gaping wound get infected, possibly leading to the demise of the whole tree?

Japanese maple in fall

Japanese maple in fall

Bleeding sap generally does more harm to gardeners’ psyches than to plants’ physiologies. My grape and hardy kiwi vines bleed when I prune them this time of year, with no harm done. So why worry about harm to a maple? 

(The bleeding of grapevines that climb the arbor over my patio does have one downside. It’s very pleasant to sit outdoors on that patio on warm, spring days; it’s very unpleasant to sit where sap drips on my head.)

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.Maple syrup buckets

Root pressure is not what forces sap (which sounds more benign than “bleeding”) out of wounds of maple trees. With maples, cooling temperatures cause gas bubbles in 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. The expanding liquid is forced out any holes in the bark, whether from a maple sap spile or from a pruning wound.

Although maples bleed for a different reason than do most other plants, the bleeding itself causes no harm to the plants. The reason small maple trees, with trunks narrower than 6 inches in diameter, should not be tapped is because the wound left by the tap hole extends within the trunk beyond the hole; sap will never again travel past the wounded area. A tap hole is large in relation to the size of a small tree’s trunk, so significantly restricts liquid flow.

Of course, there’s no need to conduct sap up a trunk that’s been lopped off. So, Barbara, go ahead and prune, now, when the gaping wound can soon begin to heal. Autumn, which leaves a gaping wound exposed to the elements and pests until spring, would be a very bad time to prune.

A Wabbit!!!!

I looked out the window awhile ago to see a rabbit crouched against a backdrop of pure, white snow. How cute. NOT! It’s the same old story. Farmer McGregor and Peter Rabbit, and now farmdener me and some other rabbit.

A few days previously I had noticed that some bark had been nibbled off the pencil-thick “trunks” of some young, grafted trees — the handiwork of those awful furballs. That nibbling probably won’t kill the small plants but will set them back a year, or more, if the nibbling kills the scion down to the graft.Rabbit damage to branches

As for the rabbit and its probable kin, I’m setting traps. Unfortunately, my Peter Rabbit seems to enjoy my plants more than anything I put in the trap.

Rabbit, At Bay

I’ve kept my Peter Rabbit at bay from all my older trees this winter with diligence and hardware cloth and or commercially available plastic spiral tree guards. The protection goes 2 feet above ground, or higher, not that a rabbit could reach that high — except when there’s snow to give it “a leg up.” The light-colored spirals also protect the thin barks of young trees from sunscald, which results when sunny, cold winter days warm the bark, whose temperature then plummets as the sun drops below the western horizon.rabbit

I remove all the spirals in spring so insects can’t find shelter from birds beneath the spirals.Tree protected with plastic spiral

Monthly, throughout winter and into early spring, I also sprayed plants with Bobbex, a mix of “putrescent whole egg solids,” garlic, and cloves that is repellant to rabbits, as well as deer (and me).

And finally, there’s Sammy, my trusty dog who would chase away any rabbits if he happened to be awake, happened to be on the right side of the house, and happened to see them.

MOVING ALONG, INSIDE AND OUT

/10 Comments/in , , , /by

 

Figs Awakening

Even in the cool temperature (45 degrees Fahrenheit) and darkness of my basement, the potted figs can feel spring inching onward. Buds at the tips of their stems have turned green and are just waiting for some warmth to burst open. Or, if the plants just sit where they are long enough, the buds will unfurl into leaves and shoots. Which would not be a good thing.Fig bud awakening

My goal is to keep the plants asleep long enough so that they can be moved outside when they will no longer be threatened by cold temperatures. How much of a threat temperatures pose depends on how much asleep the plants are. Fully dormant, a fig tree tolerates temperatures down into the low 20’s. Even now, as they are just barely awakening, they can probably laugh off temperatures into the mid-20s.

If the buds expand into shoots and leaves, they’ll be burned by any temperature below freezing. And especially so if those new shoots and leaves get started indoors, where warm temperatures and relatively low light makes for overly succulent growth. Bright sunlight, even without freezing temperatures, can then cause damage.

Fig plants that start growing in earnest indoors get presented with two options. The first is to get them to the sunniest window in the coolest room so that growth is more robust, then move them outdoors after any threat of frost has passed — about the same time as tomato transplants get planted out. (Around here, that’s about the third week in May.)

The second option is to move them outdoors as soon as temperatures won’t again fall below the mid-20s. Temperatures below 32 will burn the succulent, new shoots and leaves, but plants will push forth new growth well-adapted to the great outdoors. If an Arctic blast is predicted, with lower that usual temperatures — that is, below about 25 degrees Fahrenheit — the plants need to be moved temporarily to the garage, mudroom, or other convenient shelter.

Different Strokes For Different . . . Figs

A fig’s treatment depends on the variety. Genoa, Excel, and Ronde de Bordeaux are three new varieties that I hope to taste this summer. They’ll get first-class coddling: Moved outside soon, then put into temporary shelter at the slightest hint that damaging temperatures could arrive. I might just put the others outside, and leave them there.Some figs of summer

The Kadota fig gets planted, in its pot, right in the ground. Its roots will grow out through all the holes I drilled in the side and bottom of the pot so the plant becomes self-supporting, waterwise, until fall. I’ll plant it out soon, even though once it’s planted, it’s staying put all season long. (I have a backup plant.)

Too Weird To Eat

Moving forward into spring — on into late spring — brings dogwoods into bloom. Blossoms of our native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) will soon be followed by those of kousa dogwood (C. kousa), and also called Japanese or Korean dogwood), native to east Asia.

The flowers of both species are very small and pretty much green. “Not so!,” you say, thinking back to last spring’s show of large white or pink petals. Those large white or pink things are, in fact, not petals, but bracts, which are modified leaves that, admittedly, serve pretty much the same function as petals, that is, to look pretty, attract pollinators, etc.

Over the years, the spring show from flowering dogwoods has become sparse because of powdery mildew and other diseases. Which is why kousa dogwood, which is disease resistant, has been increasingly planted.

Flowering dogwood can have either pink or white flowers — whoops, I mean bracts. Until recently, kousa dogwood came only in white. But now, breeders at Rutgers University, after decades of work, have introduced Scarlet Fire kousa dogwood, a cold hardy (Zone 5 to 8), disease resistant variety bearing pink bracts.Cornus kousa fruit in summer

The flowers of kousa dogwood, whether pink or white bracted, are followed by edible fruits. The round fruits are the size of a quarter, dark pink, and very weird-looking. To me, they look like water (naval) mines, not a very friendly association for a fruit. Their appearance has also been described as that of a sea urchin shell, also not very gustatory. Inside, the flesh is sweetish and mealy, something like a cross between mango and pumpkin — not my two favorite flavors, but even if they were, those dark pink water mines are too off-putting in appearance for me to more than sample them (just so I could report on their flavor).

Still, kousa fruits add to the show from the flowering bracts and the healthy foliage.