THE WEATHER CALLS THE SHOTS

The Kindest Cuts

    In years past, when I went outdoors this time of year, it was usually with skis strapped to my feet. Or wearing snow boots. Or snowshoes. With this snowless, warm winter, I’m mostly going outdoors these days armed with pruning shears, a lopper, and a pruning saw. Mostly, my feet trod a path to the hardy kiwifruit vines and the blueberry bushes.
    At first glance, the blueberries seem nothing more than a jumbled mass of stems of various ages. How to make order out of this jumble? Quicker to answer is why go to the trouble of making order out of this jumble. The same could be asked for my lilac bush, mockorange, hazelnuts, gooseberries, and currants.

Sammy & me, pruning blueberries

Sammy & me, pruning blueberries

    Then I remind myself that my goal is to reduce the crop — yes! reduce the potential crop — so that more of the each fruit or nut bush’s resources get channeled into fewer fruits or nuts so those that remain taste better. I also prune for future years’ harvests or, for flowering bushes, future years’ flowers. And I prune to let the stems of all bushes bathe in light and air, which reduces pest problems.
    Bushes are bushes because they are bushy, that is, they’re constantly growing new stems at or near ground level and never develop permanent trunks. (Except for daphne, fothergilla, witch hazel, PeeGee hydrangea, tree peony, and other plants of bushy stature with long-lived stems.) Blueberries and most other bushes, ornamental and fruiting, are pruned by a renewal method. As stems age, they grow decrepit, producing less flowers or fruits; pruning away these oldsters, right to the ground makes way for younger, replacement stems.

3 Steps, and Blueberries are Pruned

    My first cuts on any of my blueberry bushes are the most dramatic ones: I cut down a couple or so of the oldest stems using a lopper or pruning saw. Blueberry stems are typically worth keeping until they are about 7 years old, or about an inch in diameter. These most dramatic cuts also remove the tallest stems in one fell swoop, so the bushes never grow so tall that the berries are out of reach.
     The kind of shrub, the variety of shrub, and the previous season’s growing conditions all conspire to determine how many new stems, called suckers, grow from or near ground level. Often, it’s so many that as they mature, the bush becomes congested. So now I take pruning shears in hand, and reduce their numbers to, in the case of blueberry bushes, four or five.
    

Blueberry bush, before & after pruning

Blueberry bush, before & after pruning

The finished bush then — in theory — has about 4 six-year-old stems, 4 five-year-old stems, and so on, down to 4 one-year-old stems. By this time next year, each of those stems will have moved up a year in age. I’ll remove the 4 now seven-year-old stems and excess one-year-old stems, which are those that will have grown this season.
    Oh, one more step: I go over each bush with my pruning shears, removing small or dead twigs and shortening stems that are out of bounds. With 16 bushes cramped into 900 square feet, “out of bounds” is pretty close.

Early Cukes, One the Way

    As so often happens in late winter and early spring, and especially this year, weather is very variable. Today was sunny and, by winter standards, balmy — perfect for crawling in among the blueberry bushes to prune them. But no need to twiddle my thumbs on sunless days raw with cold. There are seeds to be sown.
    Some people spend the first part of summer hankering to bite into their first ripe tomato. Even more than tomato, I eagerly await my first fresh cucumbers and peppers. Like tomatoes, both get a head start indoors.Cucumber seedlings
    This year, after seeing the very early cucumber crop at Evolutionary Organics farm down the road from me, I thought I would give early cukes a try here at the farmden. On Kira, the farmer’s advice, I planted seeds a couple of weeks ago into potting soil in 4” plastic flower pots.
    Cucumbers revel in heat, both for seed germination and for growing. So, after being watered, the seeded pots went onto the greenhouse’s electrically heated seed mat that’ll keep the seeds at a cozy 80°F. Seedlings are up, their roots still still in pots and still being warmed by the heating mat.
    Within a couple of weeks, the cuke seedlings will start to outgrow their pots and need planting in the ground  — not outdoors, though, but in the greenhouse. As I wrote, I’m hankering for a very early harvest. I’ll take the soil temperature which, I hope, will stay steadily above 65°F by then.

FLOWERS, ONE VERY, VERY SPECIAL

My Quest, Fulfilled

    For thirty years, I’ve longed to catch at least a glimpse of Himalayan poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia) in blossom; finally, yesterday, I achieved that goal. I wish I could say that I braved high seas to get to India, then traipsed across increasingly mountainous plains, and finally clawed my way up some jagged peak before coming face to face with the blossom. No, I was in Philadelphia, at the the Philadelphia Flower Show, when I remembered that nearby Longwood Gardens puts on a show of Himalayan poppies each year in early March. All that was needed was to brave traffic for the one hour drive (40 minutes without traffic) over to Longwood.
    It was thirty years ago that expert plantsman and orchid hunter Norman Kellar told me of his admiring the blue poppy’s sky blue blossoms, both in reality and in reflection, from across a pond in England. The flowers, he said, are the purest blue of any flower. Did Longwood’s show meet up to my thirty year buildup? Yes. The petals, delicate as tissue paper, are a sky blue, the bluest I’ve seen in any flower. The center of each nodding blossom is lighted by a bottlebrush of orange stamens.Blue poppy
    So why haven’t I, and why didn’t Norman, just plant Himalayan poppy to enjoy in our own backyards? The plant thrives — no, survives — only where summers remain cool. Above 70°F, the plant can’t photosynthesize, so it starves. I’ve tried growing blue poppy in the past. Each time it grew fine until July’s summer heat caused it to collapse, dead.
    Longwood’s plants avoid heat by starting life in Alaska, where the plant thrives. Young plants are shipped in from Alaska in the fall and kept dormant in cold storage. Brought into Longwood’s cool (50-60°F) conservatory in January, they slowly awaken and, finally, blossom in March.
    My plan is to sow seeds in potting soil in a seed flat in late summer, then water and chill the flat in a refrigerator for a few weeks. (Some seeds need that chilling to break their dormancy or speed germination. Whether or not blue poppy needs it, a few weeks of cool temperatures will do no harm.) By early fall, the seedlings should be up and growing, which they can do outdoors and then, if needed, in the greenhouse. When cold temperatures and low light slow the plants into dormancy, I’ll store the pots at a cool location in my basement.
    Finally, in January, I’ll move the plants to a sunny window to begin growth. That time of year, even sunny windows don’t get too hot. Come March, with luck, a green thumb, and clicking my heels together three times, the sky blue blossoms will be staring at me — or out the window.
    My first sighting of “our” bluebird was a week ago. Next year, looking at blue poppy plants blossoming at a window and bluebird outside the window would be a very nice prelude to spring.

Three Perennial Treats

    Flowers have never been a focus of my gardens, and less so as each year goes by and I pay more attention to more enduring elements of my yard, such as fences, arbors, hedges, trees, and walls. Still, some flowers, such as the blue poppy, are worth the effort.
    In years past, seed flat upon seed flat of all kinds of flowers would occupy growing space. This year: Just one flat of perennials, that one flat with four mini-furrows, one for dianthus, one for cardinal flower, one for foxglove, and one for purple coneflower. Each of those mini-furrows will yield enough seedlings, to be carefully separated then planted in individual cells of potting soil to grow into plants, for transplanting, for a nice show this summer and beyond.
    The main attraction of the dianthus, for me, is its fragrance. From descriptions, the Riesen Giant Superb Mix Dianthus I just sowed seems very similar to the Dianthus caryophyllus that I grow in the greenhouse except, in contract to its greenhouse cousin, this dianthus is allegedly cold-hardy outdoors in Zone 5. (I have the feeling that both dianthus’s may be the same; the “giant” and “superb” in the name hooked me.)
 

Cardinal flower

Cardinal flower

   Cardinal flower is perennial, but not a long-lived one. It thrives in wet areas and, in congenial locations such as, I hope, here, will self-sow. This flower first caught my attention when its spike of fire engine red blossoms stared out at me from deep, deep shade. Deep shade is not home to many colorful flowers.
    With spikes of pastel-colored blossoms, foxgloves have a charm evocative of blowsy cottage gardens. They also are only weakly perennial; but they self-sow readily. Their popping up willy-nilly around any garden from self-sown seeds adds to their blowsy effect.

Foxglove

Foxglove

    One downside to foxgloves is that flowers all line up only on one side of the flower spike, facing the sun. Except for the Excelsior series of foxgloves, which is what I have sown this year. It will be interesting to see how thoroughly the blossoms embrace the spikes and then how future years’ blossoms, from self-sown seedlings, display themselves, especially since they’ll be mating with run-of-the-mill foxgloves already growing here.
    Nothing special about coneflowers. They’re native, easy to grow, and common. They’re also pretty.

Back to Fruit

    Enough with the frills! Back to pruning kiwifruit and grape vines, blueberry, gooseberry, and currant bushes, and the plum, pawpaw, mulberry, a pear trees. They are pretty, too, and give me fruit.
Fruit bowl with fig, grape, persimmon, nashi

Grafting Workshop

Grafting web ad

TOTIPOTENT — NOT WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE

 Cells Beget Plants, or Animals

   As I strode out to the garden today, the word “totipotency” was forefront in my mind. No, I wasn’t thinking of myself as “all powerful,” which is what totipotent (Latin totus=whole, potent=powerful) might seem to mean.
    Totipotency is the ability of any cell in an organism — you, me, my dog Sammy, my rose bush — to potentially give rise to any other kind of cell of that organism, or to a whole new organism, a clone of the original. Under the right conditions, you could put one of your skin cells in the right environment, and have those cells grow into new skin, toes, eyes — even a whole new you. Fortunately, nobody has yet figured out how to do that with a human.
    (What I wrote is not exactly true. Not every cell within an organism is totipotent. In organisms that reproduce sexually, egg and sperm cells — the germ cells — have only half their complement of genes, so these particular cells can’t be cloned to reproduce non-germ cells or whole organisms.)
    Back to the garden and totipotence . . . Using random plant parts to make whole new plants is nothing new to most gardeners. With stem cuttings, for example, you put a stem into a suitable environment, and it’s induced to grow roots at its base and new shoots, followed by flowers and, perhaps, fruits, above ground. With leaf cuttings, all these new parts spring from a mere leaf.
    Stems and leaves are more than just a few cells. More specialized, but still feasible, is cloning with just a few cells: so-called micropropagation or tissue culture. A few cells are removed, usually from a growing point, and then, under sterile conditions, put into a petri dish containing a medium to supply nutrients and a balance of plant growth hormones. The cells multiply without differentiation into anything special until they are transferred to another medium, this one with an altered balance of hormones, that induces cells to differentiate into leaves and roots. After a period of growth, the plantlets graduate to real soil.
    Micropropagation is a way to create many new, pest-free clones quickly and from a minimum of amount of mother plant.

Apolitical Graft

    My foray into “totipotencing” plants today required pretty much nothing more than pruning shears. I was cutting scion wood, which are stems for grafting onto growing plants. In this case, the growing plants — the rootstocks — provide roots to the clone; the completed plant, from the graft upwards, is the clone, in this case various varieties of pears.

Watersprouts on old apple tree

Watersprouts on old apple tree

    In the past, I’ve done a “Henry IVth” on pear trees whose fruits were not up to snuff, then grafted a more desirable scion on to the decapitated trees. Today’s scions are for grafting onto one-year-old pear seedlings, to make new pear trees. (Not that I need that many pear trees. The grafting will be done by participants at a couple of grafting workshops I’ll be holding this spring. Stay tuned to my website for when, where, and other details.)
    Grafts are most successful with young scions — one-year-old stems, those that grew last season. They come in various sizes, depending on their vigor; pencil-thick is about right. I cut them into foot-long lengths. Watersprouts, those vigorous, vertical branches often appearing in the upper parts of a tree, are good for scionwood, and most, anyway, should be removed.
 

Pear scions

Pear scions

  The odds for success are also increased if grafting takes place with dormant scions grafted on rootstocks that are either dormant or awakening. That’s why I collected scions today; they’re still dormant, but not for long, outdoors.
    I’ll keep those scions dormant with cold, in the refrigerator or my mudroom (north side of the house, tile floor over concrete).
    Drying out would spell death to the scions, as it would to any living plant or plant part. They need to be kept hydrated, but not in so moist an environment as to cause rotting. So I store them in a plastic bag, around which I wrap a moist towel, and then put the towel-wrapped bag into another plastic bag, well-sealed.

I Was Wrong About Arnold

    I was wrong. Back in December, I wrote, “My Arnold’s Promise witchhazel usually flowers in March. This year’s October flowering means no flowers this coming spring.” Well, it’s March 1st as I write this, and Arnold’s Promise is showered with strappy, yellow blossoms.

Witchhazel's winter flowers and remains of fall flowers

Witchhazel’s winter flowers and remains of fall flowers

    Evidently, not all flower buds slated to open this month opened prematurely, last October. Some did as they are supposed to do: waited. Why? Good question. Looking at the shrub, a location effect does not seem to come into play. Late winter blossoms seem randomly distributed rather than concentrated on older, younger, lower, higher, southern, or northern stems.
    With no explanation coming to mind (yet!), I’ll just relax and enjoy the unexpected show.

GREENING UP

Chickweed, Not for Me

    Warmish days come and go, but I’m not twiddling my thumbs waiting for spring to come early, late, or vacillate. True, I have a greenhouse. Even there, though, weather can be quite cool, down into the 30s at night and on overcast days.
    A few plants that are good for fresh, salad greens aren’t just surviving under these conditions; they’re thriving. And with very little effort on my part because rather than cultivating them, they grow so profusely that I have to weed out excess before they take over the greenhouse.Chickweed
    Speaking of “weed,” one of them really is a weed, at the very least in name: chickweed (Stellaria media). This weed loves cool weather; it’s been sprouting in the greenhouse all winter. It’s also no stranger to the garden outside the greenhouse, where winter temperatures snuff it out so that each year it must return from seeds it sows. In the greenhouse, it might become — perhaps is now — perennial.
    Chickweed is tasty and nutritious. I don’t doubt the second adjective but disagree with the first. I wish I liked the flavor. Because I don’t, I’ll spend some time today in the greenhouse weeding it out.

Claytonia All Over the Place

    The greenhouse is also pleasantly indundated with claytonia (Claytonia perfoliata), another wilding cultivated for salads, perhaps soups(?), in cool weather. This green is native to California, where it drops its seeds in spring; cool, moist weather of fall induces sprouting whence it blankets Western ground in green all winter long.
  Claytonia in greenhouse  Conditions in my greenhouse are very similar to those of norther California. (Claytonia is sometimes called miner’s lettuce because Gold Rush miners ate it to prevent scurvy.) Years ago I sowed some claytonia seeds in greenhouse beds. No longer is that necessary. Those first plants came up in the straight lines of my furrow. Nowadays, they blanket the ground as a lush edible groundcover, mostly near the sidewalls where rain washed down from the roof and into the  ends of the beds when I rolled up the sidewalls in summer for ventilation.
    The plants make more than just an edible groundcover; they make an edible, ornamental groundcover. The tender stalks rising from ground level are capped by heart-shaped leaves, in the center of which eventually sits a cluster of small, white flowers. I’d use it as a winter groundcover if it could survive our winters; temperatures below about 10°F kill it.
    The flavor is nothing to write home about. It’s mild, to say the least. Perhaps its greatest contributions to cold weather salads are color and texture.

Make Mine Mâche, My Favorite

    Some people might say the same thing about mâche (Valerianella locusta), in my experience the most cold-hardy of all salad greens. It’s ready for harvest no matter how cold the weather in the greenhouse, or out, and will actually grow a little with the slightest degree of warmth whether natural or from the protection of a south wall or a cold frame.Mâche plant
    To me, mâche is the most delectable of salad greens. It also self-seeds both in the greenhouse and outdoors. What else can you ask for in a plant: tasty, available all winter, no need to plant.
    Like claytonia, mâche is a cool weather annual. Sow it in summer and nothing happens. Sow it under cool, moist conditions and it sprouts readily. This is another salad green that I planted years ago, but not since. Cultivation of mâche entails, mostly, pulling up wayward or excess plants before they expire and drop seed in late spring, in so doing preventing it from becoming weedy.
    Mâche is a European import, a centuries-old favorite only of the peasantry until the gardener to Louis XIV gave it street cred’. In English-speaking countries, it’s sometimes called “corn salad” because it’s a weed of grain fields, “corn” in the Queen’s English being any kind of grain, not necessarily and not usually corn, which they call maize. If I had a grain field, I’d welcome some corn salad for tender, tasty salads almost all winter long.

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT (MICRO)CLIMATE CHANGE

Microclimates, Here, There, and Everywhere

    Mark Twain wrote that “Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” I’m going to step up to the plate and do something about it — not the climate but the microclimate. “Microclimate” is the very local weather. And I do mean “very local,” as, for example, right around a particular plant.
    Different microclimates exist all around my property — and yours. Near the south wall of my brick house for example, winter low temperatures don’t plummet nearly as low as they do, say, 30 feet away from the wall. The bricks are very good at absorbing the sun’s heat, then let it slowly ooze out after nightfall. Near that wall is where I’m planning to plant out a Kadota fig tree now dormant in my basement. (Come late fall, after harvest, I’ll dig up the tree with a good root ball and return it to winter quarters in the basement.) 

'Surround', a white clay, sprayed on apples

‘Surround’, a white clay, sprayed on apples

    On the other side of my house, where sunlight can’t fall in winter, days and nights are colder than the general temperatures, and remain colder from spring through fall. Near that north wall, then, would be a good place to plant an apricot or peach tree to delay unfolding of their blossoms, which otherwise open so early that they often succumb to subsequent spring frosts. Dead blossoms mean no crop for that season.
    Apricots and peaches, like most fruits need sunlight to fuel the most flavorful fruits. Although areas near the north wall are shaded — and hence cooler — in winter, from spring through early fall the sun wraps enough around the sky from the northeast to northwest corners to cast its light there.
    Other influences on microclimate include fences, land sloping in various directions, paved areas, plant or built windbreaks, and changes in elevation.

(Micro)Climate Modification

    Much of what I have planted, including many fruit plants, are nowhere near fences or paving, and my land is mostly flat. It is lowland, in a valley, and cold air, which is heavier than warm air, collects in this low spots, to threaten the blossoms on my fruit plants with late, killing frosts.
    Mark Twain notwithstanding, I’m going to try doing something about the weather — the microclimate, in this case — on plants nowhere near walls, fences, or paving.
    Enter ‘Surround’, the trademark name for a special formulation of kaolin clay. This product was developed about 30 years ago mostly as a nontoxic way to thwart insect pests. It’s especially useful for controlling plum curculio, a pest of plums, peaches, apples, and some other fruits; curculio isn’t easily controlled by other organic methods.
 

'Surround'  spray on blueberries

‘Surround’ spray on blueberries

   Kaolin is white, so when a sufficiently thick coating of ‘Surround’ is built up on branches, they appear white. Old Sol’s rays just bounce off white surfaces, the surfaces, in this case being the buds of fruit plants. So the buds stay cooler, delaying bloom, hopefully until after threat of frost has past.
    I’ve already given the plant a couple of coats of ‘Surround’, and they already have a sun-drenched, gray-cast, Mediterranean look to them. A couple more coats will make the visual effect more dramatic, both to me and Ol’ Sol, and will get a jump on curculio control.

Awake too Soon

    Downstairs, in the basement, things are not as quiescent as hoped. That’s where the figs, pomegranates, and mulberries are spending winter, the cool (45°F) temperature holding back growth. Or so I thought.
    One plant, Pakistan mulberry, has decided to awaken. This mulberry is a species of white mulberry (Morus alba) that differs markedly from the white mulberries you see here. Pakistan is only about as cold-hardy as fig (which is why they share winter quarters in my basement) and bears a very delicious, dark purple fruit up to three inches long!

'Pakistan' mulberry

‘Pakistan’ mulberry

    Pakistan evidently has a low chill requirement, that is, it does not take much cold for it to feel like winter has ended so it can begin growing. Different plants have different requirements for the number of hours of chilling, which is temperatures between about 30 and 45°F., they need to be exposed to before they can begin growth for the season.
    I may have to move the budding plant into the greenhouse where it really is spring, with temperatures at least into the 70s on this sunny day.