GOODBYE TOMATOES, HELLO NASHI

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One more sandwich of sliced tomatoes laid on home-made bread and topped with cheddar cheese, warmed until melted, and I’ll close the garden gate on fresh tomatoes for the year. Tomato season used to end more dramatically: The four years that I gardened in Wisconsin, a heavy frost would descend on the garden some night about the third week in September. Morning would present a scene of blackened, dead tomato, cucumber, and pepper plants. The same thing used to happen here, only a little later in autumn.
For many years now, killing frosts have arrived late, so much so that cool weather and short days sap the vitality from summer vegetables before frost arrives. The plants peter out so I have no qualms about clearing them out of the garden before they are dead. As a matter of fact, they look so forlorn that I’m anxious to clear them away and neaten up the garden.
Cleanup is especially important with tomatoes because a few diseases, such as early blight and leaf spot diseases, wait out winter on plant residues to infect next year’s plants. I clean up every bit of stem, leaf, and fruit possible, hand picking to begin with and then finally giving each bed a light raking to gather up remaining debris. With a garden knife, I cut into the ground around the base of each plant to make it easy to remove the stem and largest roots. Small roots stay in the soil, decomposing to become humus and to leave behind large and small channels for air and water movement. All that spent tomato stuff goes into the compost pile where time and temperature do their job defusing pathogens and creating rich compost. 
Just to make sure that pest problems are minimized next year, and to enrich and protect the ground, I cover each bed with an inch depth of finished compost from piles built last year.  Disease spores can’t get up through the compost blanket. And then, to further limit pest problems, next year’s tomatoes go in a different bed than this year’s tomatoes.
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Even with the declining tomatoes and other summer vegetables, the garden generally doesn’t look forlorn. Beds of late green beans, sweet corn, and squash that were cleared, cleaned, and composted over the past few weeks look neat and weed-free. To me, something like the zen gardens at Ryōan-ji, except with compost and straight lines instead of neatly raked gravel. Grassy blades of oats are sprouting with all the youthful exuberance of spring in beds that were readied before the end of September. And long before summer vegetables started to wane, I snuck autumn vegetables into the garden, so some beds are now lush with radishes, arugula, lettuce, cabbage, and other greenery that thoroughly enjoys this cool, wet weather.
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Butterscotch on a tree, that’s what Chojuro pear tastes like. Juicy butterscotch, because an explosion of juice fills your mouth with each bite,
Chojuro is one of a few Asian pears, also called nashi, that I grow; it’s my favorite as far as productivity and flavor, my others being Yoinashi, Yakumo, and Seuri-Li. Because they are generally round and crunchy, Asian pears are also sometimes called apple pears or salad pears. They have a long history in Asia, and over a thousand varieties exist.
My pears were planted 10 years ago, actually not planted but grafted on existing rootstocks to replace other, less satisfactory varieties. The rootstocks are dwarfing and the plan was to train them as a row of espaliers en arcure, that is with successive tiers of branches gently arching in curves to meet those of neighboring pear plants, all sitting in a row atop a low wall. But deer soon discovered the plants, which became a smorgasbord for which the deer didn’t even have to bend down to enjoy. 
The deer problem was eventually solved but the plants were not en arcure anymore. I could have lopped everything back to just above the grafts and started again but lacked the heart to do it because the trees were, by then, bearing fruits. So now I have an arcure-esque espaliers laden with fruit. And especially laden is the Chojuro tree, every year.
Asian pears differ from the more common European pears in a number of ways. They are generally easier to grow. With large, healthy leaves, they tend to be more decorative. They bear more heavily and at a younger age, so much so that you have to be careful not to let plants on dwarfing rootstocks bear too much too young and runt out. And while European pears must be harvested before they are ripe, then ripened off the trees, Asian pears don’t taste at their best until they are dead ripe on the tree. 
Even then, they don’t taste at their very best if the trees overbear, which they are wont to do. So beginning in June, and a few more times through summer, I kept pinching off enough fruits so that eventually remaining fruits were a couple of inches apart. It was worth it for the crunchy, juice-laden, butterscotch-flavored Chojuros.

SQUIRREL BATTLES BUT FIGS ARE FINE

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It’s a tied score, 1 for the squirrels, 1 for me. At least since I started counting, which was last year. I had some squirrel issues in previous years, but last year is when all out war started. They cleaned out the raspberries and the gooseberries early in the season, and then started eyeing the blueberries. Anyone who reads “A Gardener’s Notebook” knows how I feel about blueberries, and the squirrels evidently picked up those vibes (with some ballistic coaxing) and left the blueberries alone. Not that they kept to their nearby forest homes; they scurried across the field in late summer to strip the hazelnut bushes of every single nut.
This year is different, very different. The squirrels didn’t eat even one raspberry or gooseberry, didn’t even eye the blueberries. And my harvest of hazelnuts is secure in bushel baskets.
In fact, I only saw a couple of squirrels the whole season. They were two young ones gamboling  in the tree tops, taunting me in full view from the back window of my bedroom.
A multifaceted approach is responsible for this year’s victory. Two excellent cats are one line of defense, although I can’t imagine how cats could keep squirrels at bay. Perhaps the squirrels also saw me practicing my marksmanship. And finally, I let the field in which I planted the hazelnuts grow up into an overgrown meadow. I’ve never seen squirrels in high grass and other herbaceous vegetation, probably because it slows them down too much. (Then again, perhaps I’ve never seen squirrels in unmown meadow because I can’t see them in unmown meadow.)
To reduce competition for water and nutrients to the hazelnut plants from the meadow, I kept vegetation scythed down in a circle around each hazelnut bush and accessed the plants via a mowed path that originates only 50 feet across mowed lawn from my deck. My two dogs, Leila and Scooter, spend a lot of time sleeping on that sunny deck, so it would take a bold squirrel indeed to make the journey across the lawn and then down that no-exit, mowed path in overgrown meadow. 
 
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As for anyone who pooh-poohs my obsession with squirrels, mark my words: In a few years you’ll consider them much, much worse problems than deer. Some people tell me that squirrels are even eating their tomatoes. Fencing is, obviously, useless against squirrels.
Squirrels have never eaten my tomatoes. I’ve never even seen them in my vegetable gardens although black walnut seedlings that sometimes pop up here and there are evidence of their occasional trespass.
I wonder if squirrels eat lettuce; I hope not, because I have some nice heads developing in the garden and in seed flats. This is the time of year that takes advance planning with lettuce because, although the plants enjoy the cooler weather, it, along with shorter days, drastically slows growth. 
I aim to grow enough lettuce for salads all winter so must have enough plants started to slowly mature in the weeks and months ahead. If the plants are too small, they won’t size up when it’s their turn to be eaten. If the plants are too large, they bolt, that is, make seedstalks and turn bitter. Right now, I have two rows of mature heads in the garden and over 150 seedlings of various sizes. All those seedlings take up only about 4 square feet of space. The smaller seedlings will get transplanted into the greenhouse sometime soon.
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Greenhouse lettuce can tolerate a little shade right now, but not in a few weeks. That works out perfectly, because right now the greenhouse is shaded by 3 large fig trees growing within. They are three different varieties, each loaded with fruit.
Kadota is the best-tasting of the three, with a sweet, rich flavor held in a chewy skin. The problem is that Kadota likes dry weather, as do all figs, to some degree. With the current humid weather and incessant rain, many of the Kadota fruits rot just as they are about to ripen.
My old standby, Brown Turkey, sweet, small, and dark purple, does better. The tree has been ripening fruits since about early September.
The best of the lot, in terms of flavor (not as good as Kadota but, still, very good) is Green Ischia, also known as Verte. This variety bears fruits on stems that grew last year as well as, like my other two varieties, stems that started growing this year. Green Ischia’s earliest figs ripen in July on last year’s stems, followed by more fruits, beginning in September, on this year’ stems. The figs are sweet and very large and juicy, so much so that they begin to burst open if harvest is delayed too long. My Green Ischia, by the way, is probably not Green Ischia; figs are notorious for having multiple names and for being mislabeled, as I think mine was in the nursery.
The fig crop will end in a few weeks, the plants’ leaves will fall, and I’ll cut back all stems, except for a few on Green Ischia for next year’s early crop, down to about 4 feet high. Greenhouse lettuce can then bask freely in whatever sunlight autumn and winter sun offers.
 

TREES OF JOY & LAWN NOUVEAU

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I didn’t need the house number to hone in on Bassem’s home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania last Saturday. The Asian persimmon, pawpaw, and fig trees rising above the front hedge distinguished the landscape from those of the neighbors’ more conventional — and much less luscious — home grounds. Over the years, I have corresponded with Bassem, a fellow member of North American Fruit Explorers (www.nafex.org), and had planned to sometime stop by on one of my frequent trips to Philadelphia. Finally, I took that fruitful side step.
And what a fruitfully timely fruit step I hoped it to be: Fig season! Figs are a main interest of Bassem (http://www.treesofjoy.com/), who grew up in Lebanon. His quarter acre house lot, crammed with all sizes and varieties of fig trees, makes the collection of 35 varieties that I once grew in Maryland look like child’s play.
But figs were not all of it. Everywhere I looked was an interesting fruit plant. Hardy passionfruits (Passiflora incarnata), which I also grow, covered the ground among his foundation plantings, even sprouted up in the lawn. Did I write “foundation plantings?” Lest that conjure up an image of your standard junipers and yews, Bassem’s foundation plantings were more diverse and, of course, fruitful. There was the edible cactii (Opuntia spp.), a pomegranate with ripening fruit (the fruits on my potted pomegranates, which I mentioned early in summer, fell off), and, of course, many varieties of figs.
The backyard is home to a small greenhouse, in which Bassem overwinters some tropical fruits, and more fruit plants. A few large banana trees rose right next to the greenhouse — very decorative but not able, of course, to ripen fruit. They die to the ground each year and then sprout from overwintered roots each spring. An eight-foot-tall papaya plant, grown from seeds sown in spring, was expectantly flowering but likewise won’t have time to ripen fruits. Fruiting trees in the ground included quince (Cydonia oblonga), jujube (Ziziphus jujuba, yes, the original jujube candy was made from candied jujube fruits), and, in the back, more Asian persimmons and pawpaws.
It’s too cold here in the Wallkill River valley to plant outdoors much of what Bassem plants right in the ground even though our homes are separated by only about 80 miles of latitude. My extra few degree of cold are the result of my more rural setting, with less heat-trapping concrete, and my valley, into which cold air settles. Still, I couldn’t resist going home with 2 new fig varieties (Black Bethlehem and Pontlican) and a strawberry guava, both in pots that I’ll move indoors for winter. If the figs prove especially tasty, they might get planted in the ground in my cool temperature greenhouse.
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Goldenrod in the south field has turned the landscape a glorious yellow color. The plants have been blooming there for weeks and weeks but the intensity has recently ratcheted up.
The reason for the increased color isn’t the weather; it’s the plants. There are dozens of goldenrod species not easily distinguished from each other, even by botanists. My field is, no doubt, home to a few species and the one now blooming seems to be the one in greatest abundance.
I mow most of the south field once a year, in spring, a schedule that suits the goldenrods well. Other parts of the field that I used to mow more frequently than once a year (for a volleyball court) are mostly grasses, Queen-Anne’s-lace, and chicory, but I see some goldenrod now finally creeping in. I keep a path mowed through the field that each year follows a different trajectory. The ghost of last year’s path is high with vegetation, but not goldenrod — yet. There’s even a tropical-looking patch in the field where the large leaves of sumac seedlings shoot skyward above the surrounding goldenrods. That sumac is the legacy of a brush pile that I burned there over 10 years ago. 
It’s all very interesting and pretty.
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And, for a little more fall color: Persimmons. The orange fruits — persimmon orange fruits — are ripening on my trees and dropping to the ground. (Isn’t it odd that a color should be named “persimmon orange” when so few people know this relatively uncommon fruit? I helped remedy that situation by devoting a chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden to persimmons.)
The persimmon fruits, as usual, are delectable, with a taste and texture of dried apricots that have been softened in water, dipped in honey, then given a dash of spice. Something like Oriental persimmons but with richer flavor and texture.
The trees, as usual, are bearing an abundant crop. In over two decades of growing this fruit, the trees have failed me only 2 years, both from a very late frost that didn’t allow time for ripening. Few fruits are easier to grow: no notable pests; no pruning; just plant and pick.
Ripening is important with American persimmon because few gustatory experiences are as horrendous as biting into an unripe persimmon. The feeling is akin to having a vacuum cleaner in your mouth, and spitting out the fruit doesn’t help. Unfortunately, fruits from some wild trees of this native plant never fully lose that awful flavor, which is why I grow named varieties that are known to have excellent flavor. Over two dozen such varieties exist. 
This far north, we’re restricted to growing ones that taste good and will ripen within our relatively short growing season. Which is fine, because my two favorite varieties, Mohler and Szukis, are both cold hardy, ripen within our growing season, and taste as good as I would hope from any persimmon. Any fruit, perhaps. Persimmon’s botanical name, Diospyros, translates to “food of the gods.

[irene]

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The nice thing about living in a flood plain is its fertile, rock-free soil. Here on the flood plains of the Wallkill River, I can dig a 3-foot-deep post hole in about 5 minutes. The soil here also drains well, allowing me to plant even during heavy rains.

 
The problem with flood plains is that they flood. Hurricane Irene recently submerged the farmden here with anything from 4 feet of water, along the road, to no feet of water, in back, where the vegetable gardens are. The ground elevation also drops going into the south field, where I paddled along on August 29th in a kayak inspecting pawpaw and dwarf apple trees, and grape and hardy kiwifruit vines.
 
Thankfully, lives and homes here generally fared well through the storm; what of the plants? As I write (August 31st), persimmon, chestnut, black walnut, and filbert trees that I planted are still ankle deep in standing water. Farm fields a mile down the road also are still inundated or, at least, have soggy soil.

The combination of heavy rains and winds loosened the grip of tree roots onto the soil. Some trees blew over. Some are wobbly in the soil. It may be possible to right and stake the former, and just stake the latter, if the trees are not too big. After a year or more, new roots will grow to provide sufficient support without the stakes.

The other problem with wet soil is that the water displaces air. Roots need to breathe. Without air, roots don’t function. They then can’t even take up water so may show the same symptoms — leaves dying and drying up beginning at their edges — as do plants suffering from drought. Fruits also may drop prematurely and various nutrient deficiencies may show up in the form off color leaves.
 
So the faster the water table recedes down into the soil the better. I’ll be watching and waiting; not much else anyone can do.
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The weird thing about hurricane Irene is the clear sunny days that have followed. Look out any rear window in my house at ground that wasn’t flooded, and it’s business as usual. The plants there got a good soaking and and then had bright, sunny days. What else could a plant ask for?
 
The bed with the last planting of corn needs to be harvested and cleared, as does a bed of bush green beans and edamame. Once cleared, these beds will snuggle in beneath a one-inch blanket of compost (yearly additions of which have contributed to the soil’s excellent drainage). They are then ready to be seeded for late crops of spinach, radishes, and lettuce, planted with waiting transplants of baby bok choy and lettuce, or planted to a soil-improving and protecting cover crop of oats and peas.
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My vegetables were not exposed to flooding; not so in other vegetable plots. If the flooding was only from rainfall on-site, the only thing to do is to watch and wait for the water to recede and roots to take a deep breath. Flooding from overflow of streams and rivers poses other problems.
 

Think of all the detritus carried along by that floodwater. And then try to imagine some of the stuff you didn’t think of. The major problems I see are floating gasoline and diesel cans and the major problem I smell is of the stuff in those cans. What I don’t see or smell is whatever is running off farm fields and the overflow from sewage treatment plants, not to mention harmful chemicals and bacteria.

 
Any of these substances could contaminate flooded vegetables, especially vegetables that were ready to be harvested, by lodging onto leaves and fruits and working their way into pores. Root vegetables would be least contaminated. Hardest to clean and most subject to contamination would be leafy vegetables. Easiest to clean would be vegetables with hard skins, such as winter squashes. A warm solution of Chlorox in water used as a wash or a soak should kill surface bacteria of those vegetables that can tolerate such treatment.
 

[kelp, nofa debate, nofa, hurricane irene]

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Seaside and woo woo are permeating in my farmden this afternoon. Both can be easily explained, in spite of the fact that I’m 80 miles or so from the nearest seashore and that I am pretty grounded. One, simple word explains it all: kelp.
My plants are generally well fed. The vegetable gardens get a yearly blanket of a one-inch depth of compost which releases myriad nutrients as it decomposes. Trees and shrubs get annual blankets of wood chips, hay, or leaves which, likewise, release nutrients
during decomposition. Anything that needs extra nitrogen gets some soybean meal. All the organic materials over all these years has built up sufficient reserves of nitrogen so that extra nitrogen is rarely needed.

 

Still, plants need about 16 nutrients for optimum health (and we humans likewise need at least that many, which, in turn, come from the plants we eat). Many of those nutrients, so-called micronutrients, are needed in minuscule amounts. The miscellany of ingredients — orange peels from Florida, hay from my field, horse manure from a nearby stable, etc. — no doubt contributes to a broad spectrum of nutrients in my compost, so my plants don’t need anything else. Probably.
And that’s where kelp comes in. Coming from the sea, kelp contains a wide range of nutrients. After all, way back when, our progenitors originated in the sea, right? Perhaps something is lacking in my compost.
And that’s where woo woo comes in. What’s woo woo? It’s reasoning that seems reasonable even though is lacks a very firm basis. If I were a farmer keeping an eye on my bottom line, could I justify the $100 worth of kelp I bought last weekend to use on my vegetable beds and beneath my fruiting trees, shrubs, and vines? Probably not. Being a farmdener gives me the luxury to take this extra step that
very well might be akin to hauling coals to Newcastle. It’s woo woo.
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Speaking of woo woo, I had the opportunity last weekend to be part of a 3 member “debate” panel at the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming, www.nofa.org) summer conference in Amherst, Massachusets. Each of us panel members presented our approach to soil fertility and sustainabllity, followed by questions. I expounded (longer than I had expected) on how I build fertility from the top down using organic materials and avoiding soil disturbance, combining a reverence for both science and Mother Nature. Dave Jacke lobbied for agricultural systems based more heavily on perennial rather than annual crops, in so doing building and preserving soil and making good use of native fertility. Dan Kittredge promoted “Nutrient Dense” farming (see realfoodcampaign.org), an approach that, admirably, strives to grow food in ways that maximize nutrients, but woo woo-ably, assesses the nutrient status of crops in — shall I generously say — questionable ways.
Crop assessment in Nutrient Dense farming is with a refractometer, a hand-held instrument that measures the degree to which a liquid bends a ray of light. In gardening and farming generally, this hand-held device quickly assesses the concentration of sugar concentration in liquid squeezed out of a leaf, stem, or fruit. More sugar, more bending. So far so good.

 

The Nutrient Dense people, though, promote use of the refractometer for assessing mineral nutrients in that solution. Woo Woo. Minerals do have an effect on refraction but one that is far overshadowed by the far, far greater concentration of sugar in plant sap and fruit juice. Even if it did measure mineral nutrients, the reading would tell nothing specific about which of the 16 or so minerals were sufficient or deficient. And said readings would be expected to vary with plant part used and age of plant or plant part.
Despite the woo woo-ness of the Nutrient Dense approach, it’s been built up into an industry that helps you test for deficiencies and then sells materials for correcting them. Woo Woo.
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That bit of woo woo-ness aside, the NOFA conference is an enlightening and uplifting event, one that I’ve attended and presented at for about 20 years. NOFA is one of a few organizations that has brought organic agriculture into the mainstream over the last 40 years. I remember almost 40 years ago, as a graduate student in soil science, when organic agriculture was generally pooh-poohed both in academia and in the field.
Each summer’s NOFA conference offers an array of workshops on topics ranging from baking bread to composting with earthworms to starting a food co-op to growing blueberries (one of my workshops) to growing salad greens. Presenters are equally diverse: agricultural researchers, homesteaders, suburban gardeners, lawyers, anyone and everyone. Plenty of fun activities are also offered for teenagers and younger children.
In addition to the annual summer conference, held in mid August, each state within the northeast holds an individual winter conference. See the www.nofa.org website for links to state chapters. States and regions beyond the northeast hold similar conferences, one of my favorite being the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Farming (www.pasafarming.org) conference.
These conferences are interesting and educational, and fun, even if each does have a bit of woo woo.
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Hurricane Irene came and went. Floods came and went. Here’s a couple of photos, one showing my temporarily riverfront property, which actually looks very pleasant except that the water isn’t supposed to be there. The other photo is of me paddling among my chestnut filbert, persimmon, and espalier Asian pear trees. More on all this at a later date.

[privet, hedge shears, blackberry pruning]

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Privet is a lowly hedge, as far as hedges grow. It’s common, it’s mundane, it’s white flowers give off a sickly aroma in June, its even banned in certain areas because it can be invasive. As implied by the last mentioned feature, it is very easy to grow, and that’s why I planted a 60 foot row of it about 15 years ago.

 
I planted the privet as a divider between my property and that of my neighbor’s. At only 3 feet high, the hedge is a friendly divider. My neighbor moved and sold the property to me about 8 years ago; the divider stays. Treated with care, privet is a very nice plant.

 

 

 

 
Neglected, my hedge would grow into a towering behemoth 15 feet high, with a similar spread, a behemoth that would flower profusely to spew its fetid “breath” and spread its seed. At 3 feet high, it never grows big enough to flower.

 
The coolest thing about privet is its malleability. It also tolerates all manners of pruning, everything from being attired as your standard suburban, clipped hedge to a fanciful topiary in the shape, say, of a dragon (which seemingly lurks within, ready to be unleashed if a privet bush or hedge were to be neglected). I’ve chosen the middle road and shaped my privet conventionally except for its extremities, which swoop up to form arched openings. One end connects with a grove of tall bamboo and the other connects with a row of crabapple trees running perpendicular to the privet along the back edge of my garage.

 
 
 


The sweep of privet has been years in the making. The reason is because dense growth is needed to create a mass of greenery, and dense growth comes from many heading cuts, that is, cuts that shorten, rather than remove stems. The response to heading cuts is increased branching of the remaining portions of stem. Rather than let just a few stems make their way across each arch, I shorten all stems. This slows their progress but makes them denser with branches. For now, the swoop is in place, and the branching stems are still reaching across the arches.

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Good tools or a skilled staff of gardeners are at least part of what help make gardens productive and attractive. I lack the staff but have a few good tools.


Take that privet hedge, for example. I used to maintain it with a set of hand operated hedge shears. They are Sandvik, very high quality and make a satisfying slicing sound as the two sharp blades clipped stems. And that’s all I did with them: For years, the hedge was just a long, rectangular box. Trimming it took too long to bother with anything more fanciful.
 
 
From the hand shears, I graduated to electric hedge shears. They made fairly quick work of the hedge but that time was offset by having to unwind a long cord, maneuver it around, and then wind it back up. The cord was always catching on doorways and plants, and I had to be careful not to shear it as I worked. Using the hand shears often provided a simple, quiet respite from the hassle of the electric shears. Short sessions of hand shearing, now and then over the course of a couple days, would get the job done.

 

 


A few years ago, I graduated again, this time to Black & Decker cordless electric shears. This is the tool that makes the present privet swoop. I merely walk from one end of the hedge to the other holding the shears against the hedge at the desired level. The cuts are more uniform and now I can focus on the details of the desired shape. Five passes up and down the hedge plus some ladder work on the arch at either end, all taking no more than a half hour a few times each summer, keeps the form alive and growing.

 
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If only the Black & Decker cordless electric shears could be used on more plants, such as my blackberries. This year, they — Doyle Thornless and Chester Thornless — are growing like gangbusters. Both need detailed pruning with fingernails or hand-held pruning shears in summer and again early next spring.

 

 
 
 


Summer pruning for Chester Thornless entails clipping or pinching off the tips of all new canes when they reach a height of about 4 feet. This pruning (a heading cut, just like with the privet) induces branches on which fruits are borne next summer.

 
With both varieties, I’ll also cut to the ground all fruiting canes just as soon as they finish fruiting. Each blackberry cane is biennial, fruiting their second year. Once a cane has fruited, it dies so should be pruned away. New canes are always coming up, so the plants fruit every year.

 
Fortunately, neither variety has yet finished fruiting for the season, and is yielding the best crop ever of sweet, richly flavored blackberries.

[act, onions]

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At last week’s Northeast Permaculture Convergence, I gave a lecture and had the opportunity to attend a lecture, the latter by the diva of dirt, or, at least, of compost tea, specifically aerated compost tea (ACT), Dr. Elaine Ingham. You’ve never heard of ACT!? It’s been the hot, new thing for the past few years, an alleged cure for poor soil and plant diseases. I’ve been skeptical and thought that hearing and speaking to Dr. Ingham in person could entice me into the fold.
 
Dr. Ingham showed myriad images of fungi, nematodes, and other creatures that you might find in compost piles and teas. We saw many “bad guys” that lurk in poorly aerated composts and teas. The “bad guys” are bad, she asserted, because they release toxins into the soil and puff away as gas valuable nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus as, respectively, ammonia (not true, the release would be as nitrogen oxides), hydrogen sulfide, and phosphene (except that most phosphorus from phosphene is re-incorporated into the soil before it even gets away).
 
 
Dr. Ingham suggested monitoring our compost pile and tea happenings by purchasing a microscope and, with the help of her workshops, identifying resident microorganisms. Hmmm; interesting, but is it really necessary for a green thumb?
 
While the panoply of microorganisms discussed was impressive, I contended and contend that even a well-aerated compost pile or tea is bound to have some poorly aerated pockets. It’s not a “bad guys” vs. “good guys” situation, but a question of generally favoring an excess of “good guys.” Also, once compost is spread on the ground, the large surface area presented is going to tip the balance even more in favor of aerobic conditions.
 
(The photo shows me brewing up some compost tea, which I once tried on a few different plants. Response of plants was nothing, nada, zip, rien.)
 
More fundamentally, I still question the basic assumptions underlying the use of compost tea. Even if you have beneficial organisms in hand (figuratively) and sprinkle them on the ground, they are bound to expire unless the environment is suitable, in which case they will generally be present anyway. Bulky organic materials, such as compost, manure, leaves, and straw, are what nurture these microorganisms.
 
 
Spraying ACT on plant leaves should have little or no effect on plant diseases; again, conditions there are not conducive to their survival. In the evolutionary scheme of things, why would a microorganism that thrives in the dark, moist, nutrient-rich innards of a compost pile survive on the sunny, dry, nutrient-poor surface of a plant leaf, let alone provide any benefits. Independent university studies do not generally support the claims made for compost tea. Good gardening comes form using a pitchfork, not an elixir.
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Onion leaves have yellowed and, on most of the plants, flopped down. That’s a good thing. Onions so elegantly demonstrate their life cycle, waxing and waning in response to the progress of the seasons.
 
 
At the base of the leaves, the bulbs have swollen into 4 inch diameter, glossy, white orbs. These orbs trace their beginnings back to early February, when I sowed seeds in flats of potting soil. The three varieties, New York Early, Varsity, and Prince, are so-called “long day” varieties, suitable for northern regions because they start to bulb up in response to our long days of early summer. (In the South, early summer days are not as long as ours, so gardeners down there grow “short day” varieties.)
 
 
I sowed seeds back in February in order to give my little seedlings time to make as many green leaves as possible before they shifted gears and started putting their stockpiled energy into bulbs. Each leaf corresponds to a ring in the bulb, and the more and bigger the leaf, the more and thicker the rings. The transplants went into the ground back in early May, four rows of them, with plants 6 inches apart, down one 20-foot-long by 3-foot-wide planting bed. A quick calculation brings that to 160 onions, in theory at least; not every one survived and a few don’t form bulbs worth keeping.

 
After a few days of curing in the sun to further dry down the leaves, these onions will be ready for storage. Braiding them into string is an attractive and functional way to keep the bulbs in good condition for many months.
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To really take the onions full cycle, I would save some bulbs until next spring and then plant them out. Leaves would sprout, as they often do during the final weeks of storage, followed by flower-capped seedstalks. Onions are biennials, growing leaves their first season, going dormant, then flowering, setting seed and dying in their second season. Bulbs left in the ground also do this as long as they survive winter outdoors.
 
In years past, I grew many onions from sets, those dime-sized bulbs available in garden centers in spring. Growing from sets in easy but does restrict you to only the couple of varieties available as sets, and these varieties, while good for storage, yield sharp- rather than sweet-flavored onions.
 
Sets sometimes send up seedstalks their first season. Gardeners cut down seedstalks to force the plants to make fat bulbs instead. It’s futile; once onions are in that flowering mode, there’s no turning back.
 
Sets are made by sowing seeds close together in spring. Starved for nutrients and water, the small bulbs that form never grow big enough to sock away enough energy to shift into flowering mode. They go dormant that summer and, if planted out with elbow room the following spring, grow only leaves their second season so that they can continue storing energy for eventual bulbing, just like first year onions from seed.
 
The problem with onion sets is that if they grow too big their first season, they go to seed their second season. I saw a friend’s onion planting a few weeks ago, a planting grown from sets, and about half the plants were going to seed. Useless, unless you want to collect onions seeds, or want the plants only for their pretty, white starbursts of flowers.
 

[barnyard grass. purslane, dodder]

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Hot weather and rampant plant growth prompt me to add a word to the traditional English round, “Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!” My new version is “Sumer weeds is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu!” (“Summer weeds have arrived, Loudly sing, Cuckoo!”)

 
Almost overnight, big clumps of barnyard grass (Echinochloa crus-galli) have appeared in joints of the flagstone path leading up to my front door. It seems that just a week ago, a combination of hand pulling, weed whacking, and vinegar sprays had those joints free of everything except for a bit of moss. Today I had to cut clumps out with a bread knife that was useless on bread but has proved very useful for in the garden.

 
Besides being unsightly, those clumps of barnyard grass are unwelcome because they’re spreading. The stems prostrate stems root wherever they touch bare ground. And the emerging seed heads are prolific seed producers – reportedly over 300,000 seeds per square yard.

 
You might think I should relax because barnyard grass is an annual that flops down dead with the first autumn frost. But all those seeds are going to sit in the soil, some germinating next spring, some the following spring, and on and on. Another of the plant’s common names says it all: panic-grass.

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Purslane is another summer weed that’s picked up steam in the past few weeks. The problem with purslane is that you can’t just pull it out and toss it on the ground. The succulent leaves and stems are very resistant to drought, staying plumped up with water even when detached from the roots. Stems and leaves left on the ground take root and become whole, new plants.
 
A recent meal at a fancy restaurant in New York City solved the purslane problem. I’d always known purslane to be edible but the taste and texture never appealed to me. I thought I’d give purslane another try in the form of the beet, goat cheese, and purslane salad listed on the menu.
 
The salad was delicious, so for the next dinner at home we weeded and harvested at the same time, on the same plant: purslane. As a matter of fact, the garden seemed to be lacking in sufficient purslane to meet our new found needs. I’m not yet ready to start sowing purslane seed, which you can actually purchase. We’ll just harvest more conservatively.
 
For all I knew, the purslane in that restaurant salad might have been harvested from cracks in sunny pavement behind the restaurant.

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For gustatory use, purslane shouldn’t be confused with another, similarly prostrate plant , spotted spurge, about which I wrote a year ago. Stems and leaves of spotted spurge are not succulent. Like other members of the spurge family, spotted spurge exudes a toxic, milky sap when injured.

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Yellow threads weaving up, down, and all around clumps of blackberry, dock, and other wild plants along a road recently caught my eye. These threads are the stems of a most interesting summer weed: dodder (Cuscuta spp.)
The reason dodder is yellow and, incidentally, leafless is because it has no chlorophyll. How does it make food, then? It doesn’t! Dodder is a parasitic plant.
 
Dodder seeds germinate and the plant’s roots enter the soil only long enough to support a few inches of stem growth. Once young dodder grows a few inches tall and comes in contact with a potential plant victim, it inserts a modified root right into the plant. The grounded dodder root dies and the remaining dodder plant spends summer sucking nutrients and carbohydrates from its host plant, offering nothing in return.
 
Dodder is a very effective weed. It makes many seeds each season, the seeds do not germinate all at once, some waiting years before germinating, and it has a wide range of plant hosts. Like barnyard grass, purslane, and spotted spurge, the first frost of autumn kills the plant. Not the seeds, though.

[squash and melon vines, same on compost, cucumber tp]

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Growing winter squashes and melons has always been an iffy proposition for me. I try to keep my vegetable garden intensively planted and neat, so the question is where to direct these plants’ long, wandering vines.

 
In the past, I’ve grown squashes inside the garden along the fence, up which the vines could climb. That’s if they wanted to. Some stems would invariable make a break away from the fence and scoot into the garden proper. Other stems would start the climb and then poke through the fence to start running along the ground outside the fence. I would grab some of the delinquent stems and tie them up to the fence, along with well-behaved stems that just needed help in their upward climb. Other delinquent stems just got lopped back.
 
Nature always wins, and the squashes usually got the better of me, overrunning their corner inside and outside of the garden.
 
Melon vines are not as wild as squash vines, but still need some restraint in my garden. Some years I’d grow them on inclined trellises. Other years, they rose — with some help from me — as spiraling towers of greenery in tomato cages. Each hanging melon had its own mesh bag, attached to the trellis or cage, to prevent premature separation from the vine, and dropping. The reality wasn’t so neat; in real life, melon vines also always got the better of me.
 
The necessary growth restrictions of the squash and melon vines severely limited their output, and even with low yields, they required much attention.
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The outlook on squashes and melons changed this year with a suggestion from my wife, Deb. First, let’s backtrack to the rear of my property. Along the west border are compost bins, a lot of them, each about four feet square and of varying heights. They are straight sided boxes built up of interlocking real or composite wood. Most of the piles were built last year and stirred up this spring with my pitchfork to ripen until late summer. Then I’ll dig into them and spread the “black gold” over the vegetable beds and beneath fruit trees.

 

 

Deb suggested planting melons and squashes right into the compost bins. Perfect! Just like a mini-garden with the roots of each squash or melon plant in moist, very rich soil — compost, actually. Elevated above the ground, the young vines would be safe from rabbits and, over time, could ramble to their hearts’ content over the tops of the bins, even down to the ground and beyond.

 
At the end of May, melon and squash plants started in flats were ready to be planted out, and in they went into small holes I cut in the cardboard that covers each pile to keep moisture in and weeds out. I even put some tall tomato cages up against the back of the bins in case the vines felt like playing up and down them also.
 
Growth in these “compost gardens” has been, as would be expected, phenomenal. Besides abundant nutrients and moisture, residual heat in the bins was also enjoyed by these heat-loving plants.
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This year, of course, I’m making compost to spread next year. First year piles get quite hot: A few weeks ago, temperature within one completed piles registered 155°F. at an 18 inch depth. It has since cooled down to a balmier 130°F.

 

 

With inevitable invasions of yellow-striped cucumber beetles and bacterial wilt, cucumbers will soon peter out. They do so every year, so I always start some new plants in early July. This week I had second-crop cucumber transplants as more compost garden candidates, and I’m wondering if the new piles are still too hot for planting. I’ll find out soon enough because I did transplant a few of the seedlings into two of the piles. The plants’ roots will perhaps find temperatures to their liking in the surface layers of the pile, dipping lower as temperatures cool over the next few weeks. Or the plants might just get cooked.

 
I transplanted a few of the cucumber seedlings out into the vegetable garden, along the fence which I’ll coax the vines to climb.
 
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When I weed a section of my garden, I leave no proverbial stone unturned – unless I can’t identify the weed and it looks, for one reason or another, like like one that has garden potential. Such has been the case with the mounds of moss-like leaves that sprouted and have been slowly growing at the ends of some beds in the vegetable garden.

 The plant hardly seemed menacing. And it wasn’t.

The plant graduated out of the “weed” or “potential weed” category as a scattering of lemon-yellow flowers opened atop the mounds. Aha! I looked back on my early autumn notebook entry of last year and identified this year’s plant as Goldilocks Rocks (Bidens ferulifolia), one of a few annual flowers that I received last year for testing. The plant bloomed nonstop all last summer, and has returned for an encore.

The plant is sometimes billed as an annual, blooming from “planting until hard frost,” yet last fall, my plant kept blooming until temperatures dropped to 24° F. Sometimes the plant is billed as a warm climate perennial, hardy to 30° F., yet temperatures dipped to -18° F. in my garden last January. For one reason another, the plant returned without my doing. Snow cover may have kept the plant warm enough to act like a perennial that overwintered from last fall. Or new plants sprouted from self-sown seeds. In the latter case, which is more likely, I will add Goldilocks Rocks to my list – along with mache, dill, cilantro, breadseed poppy, dame’s rocket, cleome, and bush balsam – of friendly volunteers that annually show up in my garden.

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Pears in July? On July 11th, I was weeding around the base of a pear tree and came upon a few small pears on the ground beneath Blanquet Precoce (an old pear variety probably originating in Germany about 200 years ago). And they were ripe, overripe, in fact.

I gathered them up from the ground and picked the few that remained on the tree. The worst of them was mealy, with pear flavor that was on the “sleepy” side. The best of them had firm texture and more lively pear flavor.

Even at its best, Blanquet Precoce is not a very flavorful pear. Surely not one that would be worth growing if it ripened in late summer of fall, when other pear varieties are abundant. And, did I mention the fruit size? Very small, the size of a very small plum.

Still, Blanquet Precoce is notable for, if nothing else, being a pear that is ripe in July. The flavor would probably be improved if it was picked at just the right moment. That moment is before it is fully ripe, after which it can finish ripening in a bowl indoors, off the tree. Some pears – and perhaps Blanquet Precoce is one of them – need a period of cool, refrigerator temperatures before they can be ripened at room temperature. Skill is needed to harvest and ripen a pear to perfection, and then, to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” I’ll give Blanquet Precoce another chance, next year.
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Diligence in weeding the vegetable garden throughout spring and early summer has paid off. The garden has few weeds now, and just a few minutes pulling a weed here and there now and then is all that’s needed to keep the garden free of weed problems.

Without weed problems, the garden looks nicer, is more productive, and – very important – is ready to fill baskets, salad bowls, and the freezer with fresh vegetables from late summer on into autumn. As tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and other warm-weather vegetables of summer exit stage left in a couple of months, lush leaves of cabbage, kale, endive, and lettuce, and crisp roots of turnips, winter radishes, and beets enter stage right. The change is gradual, like a developing photographic film with the late summer and fall vegetables gradually coming into focus from among the fading tangle of summer vegetables.

Enjoying the late summer and fall vegetable garden is like having a whole other vegetable garden with little more effort and no additional garden area; but it takes planning and planting. Endive, broccoli, kale, and cabbage seedlings are on their way, ready for planting out in couple of weeks. At that time, I’ll also be sowing turnips and winter radishes and, a couple of weeks later, spinach and small (spring) radishes. From now until early September, I’ll also be sowing and transplanting lettuce.