Peppers & Potting Soil

Concerned

You’d think that there’d be no reason for me to be concerned. After all, year after year I raise my own seedlings for the garden. Nonetheless, every day I take a look at the small tray of soil in which I had sowed eggplant and pepper seeds, waiting for little green sprouts to poke through the brown surface of the potting mix.

These plants are on a schedule. They get a start indoors — in a greenhouse now; under lights or in sunny windows in years past — so that they have enough time to start ripening their fruits by midsummer.

Italian Sweet peppers

Italian Sweet peppers

Even an early-ripening pepper wouldn’t ripen its first fruits before October if seeds were sown directly in the garden once the soil had warmed enough for germination, which isn’t until the end of May around here.

Ingredients for Good Transplants

Not that raising transplants for the garden is difficult. All that’s needed is attention to details, the first of which is using seed that is not too old. The dry tan pepper and eggplant seeds might not look alive, but they are. And they do age. Under good storage condition — cool and dry — pepper seeds retain good viability for only a couple of years, eggplant seeds for 4 years.

Next in importance is the container and potting mix. Old yogurt containers, egg cartons — people have come up with all sorts of containers for growing transplants. They’re all fine as long as they’re at least an inch and a half deep and have holes in their bottoms to let excess water drain out.

Garden soil, even good garden soil, is not suitable for containers. It stays too wet, suffocating roots. So all potting mixes contain aggregates, such as sand, perlite, vermiculite, or calcined clay (a.k.a. kitty litter), which are large mineral particles that make room for air in the mix. Mixes also contain some organic material, such as compost, peat moss, or coir (made from coconut waste), to help them retain moisture.

You can purchase potting mixes made with or without real soil in them, and either sterilized or not. Sterilization kills potential pests that might lurk in the raw ingredients. Not sterilizing keeps living things, including potential enemies of any potential pests, alive in the mix. I make my own mix, usually unsterilized, from equal parts compost, garden soil, peat moss, and perlite.

With seeds sown and then covered with about a half inch of potting mix, the container is gently watered, then covered to keep in moisture.

Warmth is the next ingredient for good germination. Seeds need more warmth to sprout than than a seedling needs for good growth. In the case of pepper and eggplant seeds, between 70 and 80° F. is ideal for sprouting. The top of a refrigerator might provide a warm home for the seeds to get started, as might a shelf above a radiator. I use a soil heating mat.

The last ingredient in raising seedlings is the most difficult one for me to provide, at least with pepper and eggplant seeds. Patience. Even under good conditions, these seeds might take a week or two to sprout. All I need, then, is to be rational. I sowed the seed on March 5th; I provided good conditions. As I write this, it is March 12th. One week, a not unreasonable time for the seeds not to yet show signs of life.

Not to Worry

Growing transplants is generally easy. Although I’m a little concerned until pepper and eggplant sprouts emerge, I’m more laid back with pretty much all other seedlings. Tomatoes, for example, are among the quickest and easiest to grow, and, because of the wide choice of varieties when growing your own transplants, very satisfying.

Once the peppers and eggplants sprout, they, like other sprouts, need to be moved to where they are bathed in light. Along with light, slightly cooler temperatures from then on make for sturdy, healthy growth. And then, towards the end of May, out to the garden they go.

Update: March 17th. I was about to re-sow the pepper seeds. But first I checked the ones sowed March 5th. They sprouted!Pepper seeds sprouting

Warm, Spring Weather is Coming

Poppies in Snow

Snow today (March 7) — a perfect time to plant seeds outdoors. Yes, really!
Obviously, not just any seed can be sown in snow. The ground is still frozen solid so I can’t easily cover seeds with soil. And cold temperatures are going to rot most seeds before the weather warms enough for them to germinate and grow.

I’m planting poppy seeds. It does seem harsh to sow a flower whose seeds are hardly finer than dust and whose petals are as delicate as fairy shawls. But early sowing is a must, because poppy seedlings thrive during the cool, moist weather of early spring. Covering the seeds with soil? No problem: Poppy seeds sprout best left uncovered. And because poppies don’t transplant well, their seeds are best sown right where the flowers are going to grow.

I’ll be sowing annual poppies, whose petals and leaves are more delicate than those of Oriental poppies. Corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas) once dotted the grain fields of Europe with its blood red flowers.

corn poppy

Corn poppy

Corn poppies and pear trees

These flowers were immortalized in the poem Flander’s Fields, symbolizing lives lost in World War I. On Memorial and Veteran’s Day, red tissue-paper “corn poppies” are still distributed in memory of wars’ victims. Shirley poppy is a kind of corn poppy that has white lines along the edges of its petals. Corn and Shirley poppies begin blooming shortly after spring-flowering bulbs have finished their show, and continue blooming through July.

California poppy (Eschscholtzis californica) was named in honor of Dr. Eschscholtz, a Russian ship surgeon who found these bright orange flowers blanketing California hillsides. California poppy is a perennial but in our harsh winters must me treated like an annual and sown yearly.

Each winter, it doesn’t seem possible that the dust-like seeds I sprinkle atop the ground’s chilly, white blanket could ever amount to anything. Each spring, I’m amazed to see myriad of ferny poppy leaves, then flowers.

Warmer Spring in Greenhouse

The sun is getting brighter in the sky day by day so it’s mostly lack of heat that’s holding back plant growth. Outdoors, there’s not much to do about a lack of heat. In the greenhouse, it’s time to turn up the thermostat a bit.

Thus far, I’ve let greenhouse temperatures drop no lower than about 38 degrees F. During bright, sunny days, of course, temperatures push up into the 80s. Seedlings in greenhouseAn exhaust fan keeps temperatures from getting too high, which, with lows in the 30s, would wreak havoc with plant growth, at the very least causing lettuce, mustard, and arugula to go to seed and lose quality too soon.

Adding just a few degrees at the bottom end of the temperature scale will spur growth in the newly sprouting lettuce, arugula, onion, and leek seedlings. This new minimum temperature of 43 degrees Fahrenheit strikes a congenial balance between plant growth and the cost and conservation of energy, propane in this case.

Bottom Heat for Seedlings

I’m not skimping on heat when it comes to germinating seeds. Seeds require more heat to sprout than seedlings need to grow. Too little heat and seeds either rot or sprout too slowly.Heating mat
Fortunately, seeds need little or, in some cases, no light to sprout. Some people use the warmth atop their refrigerator for seed germination; the top of my refrigerator isn’t warm at all. Some people germinate their seeds at a warm spot in their house, such as near a heating duct; my home, heated mostly with wood, has no such oases. The temperatures near the wood stove swing over too wide a temperature range for good germination.

Years ago I invested in a thermostatically controlled heating mat, made especially for gardening. The mat is in the greenhouse, so even if greenhouse temperatures drop to 43 degrees F., my seed flats sit with their bottoms soaking up 75 degree warmth from the mat below.

That’s how much warmth is needed to get the pepper and eggplant seeds I sowed this week to sprout.

Make your own pear tree; a workshop

New Book by Lee!

A Book Is Born

            Finally, after all the hard work, I have in hand the first copies of my new book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden. The Ever Curious GardenerThis book grew out of my long love affair with gardening—such a congenial confluence of colors, flavors, and aromas all seasoned with the weather, whatever pests happen to stop by that year—and the science behind it all!

            And the science behind it all is what this book is about. No, it’s not a comprehensive overview of botany and related sciences. It is some of the natural science that can be applied in the garden. Science may seem out of place in so bucolic an activity as gardening. After millions of years of evolution, seeds want to sprout, and plants want to grow, even in such diverse soils and climates as the Arctic tundra, the Arizona desert, and my garden in New York’s Hudson Valley. So it’s possible to have a decent garden with minimal effort or know-how.

            But with some understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes, and application of that understanding, gardening can be something more than this business as usual, with commensurately more rewards.

In The Beginning . . .

            The beginnings for this book came to me one day as I was piling recently scythed hay and horse manure, along with old vegetable plants and sprinklings of soil and dolomitic limestone, into one of my compost bins. I realized that what I was adding to the pile and how much of each ingredient, even how I fluffed them up or patted them down with my pitchfork, and then watered, all reflected what I had learned over decades of gardening. My classrooms have included actual classrooms; gleanings from magazines, books, and scientific journals; conversations with other gardeners and agricultural scientists; and (most importantly) the garden itself.

            My garden education has been unusual. Growing up in the suburbs, the tenure of our family’s small vegetable garden was soon eclipsed by a swing set.Lee, 1955, in garden Wait! How about that potted banana tree and one hyacinth bulb that I nurtured under the purple glow of a Growlite in the basement during high school? Or the potted cactus that I bought to adorn my bedroom windowsill in graduate school. Hints of future interest? Perhaps.

            Graduate study in those cactus days was in chemistry, a continuation of an interest kindled by my high school chemistry teacher. But coming to the conclusion that graduate study in quantum chemistry was not going to answer any fundamental questions, I dropped out, moved to Vermont, and got the gardening bug. Because I was living in a third floor apartment, I expressed that gardening bug with a voracious appetite for books—books about gardening.

            A year later, I dove into agriculture in earnest, and was fortunate to land in a graduate program in soil science. My interest and education in chemistry proved a good foundation for soil science.

            A small plot of land began my education “in the field” and complemented my academic studies. Lee, 1974, in gardenThe university’s agricultural library offered more books to further round out my education. (I remember coming across a whole book on lettuce seed!)

            Eight years later, with two framed diplomas to hang on my wall, one for a master’s degree in soil science, and the other for a doctorate degree in horticulture, I was still gardening with the same exuberance and learning about gardening through experience, the printed word, and contact with others “in the know.” Thinking back, how little I knew about gardening. And so it goes.Lee, 2014, in garden

A Little Natural Science for a Lot Better Garden

            Back to my compost pile… I took into account the meadow hay’s youthful lushness, which influences its ratio of carbon to nitrogen, as I layered it into the bin along with the horse manure. Manure is usually thought of as a high nitrogen material, but I looked at what was in the cart and, eyeing the amount and kind of bedding (wood shavings) with which it was mixed, made a rough estimate in my head of how much to use to make a good balance with the meadow plants. When the pile was finished, I checked my work by monitoring the temperature of the pile’s interior with a long-stemmed compost thermometer. Etc., etc. There’s art in making compost. But also science.

            With this book, I hope to show how knowing and using a little of the natural science behind what’s happening out in the garden can make for a lot better garden in terms of productivity, beauty, plant health, sustainability… and interest. Knowing some of the underlying science at work in the garden also makes for a more resilient gardener, better able to garden at a new location or in a changing environment.

The Ever Curious Gardener is available in bookstores and online in mid-April, 2018, or now, signed from me, at https://leereich.com/books/the-ever-curious-gardener-using-a-little-natural-science-for-a-much-better-garden.

This Bud’s for You

 

Swelling Buds

What an exciting time of year! After a spate of 50 plus degree temperatures, lawn grass — bare now although it could be buried a foot deep in snow by the time you read this — has turned a slightly more vibrant shade of green. Like a developing photographic film (remember film?), the balsam fir, arborvitae, and hemlock trees I’m looking at outside my window, have also greened up a bit more.

Going outside to peer more closely at trees and shrubs reveals the slightest swelling of their buds. Earlier in winter, no amount of warmth could have caused this. As a cold weather survival mechanism, hardy trees and shrubs are “smart” enough to know to stay dormant until warm weather signals that it’s safe for tender young sprouts and flowers to emerge.

These plants stay asleep until they’ve experienced a certain number of hours of cool temperatures, the amount varying with both the kind and variety of plant.

Once that cold “bank” has been filled, the plants merely respond to warming temperatures. Which, for many plants, is now.

Physiology aside, the buds provide an interesting winter diversion; look at their sizes, their shapes, their colors, and textures. (Admittedly, their interest would pale in the landscape exploding into flowers and leaves, when the buds anyway mostly disappear into flowers or leaves until later in summer when new ones re-form.)

More than just interest, buds are useful. Buds can be used to identify the kind of plant as well as whether flower buds are in the offing. Or perhaps that flower buds were in the offing but were damaged by winter cold.

Info from Buds

The first bit of information I glean from winter buds is plant identification. To begin, how are the buds arranged along the stem? Buds directly opposite each other, which is relatively rare for local trees, narrows the choice down to maple, ash, dogwood, and horse chestnut, or, as some people remember it, MAD Horse.

L to R: peach, pawpaw, fantail willow, viburnum, dogwood

L to R: peach, pawpaw, fantail willow, viburnum, dogwood

Of course, once I identify a tree as, for example, a maple, I have to look for other details, such as the bark, to tell if it is a red, sugar, silver, or Norway maple.

(A few less common trees also have opposite leaves, including katsura and paulownia, both non-native, and viburnums, some of which are native. Most shrubs have opposite leaves.)

Buds that are not opposite each other along a stem might be alternating along the stem, they might be whorled, or they might be almost, but not quite opposite, presenting a much wider field of plants from which to choose.

Then it’s time for a closer look at the buds themselves. Some plants—viburnums, for example—have naked buds, enveloped only by the first pair of (small) leaves, rather than the scaly covering protecting the buds of most other plants. Buds of plants such as maples have buds enclosed in scales that overlap like roof shingles. Or two or three scales might enclose a bud without any overlap, as they do on tuliptree.

Mature plants have two kinds of buds. Those that are longer and thinner will expand into shoots. Flower buds are usually fatter and rounder. I note how dogwood flower buds stand proud of the stems like buttons atop stalks — very decorative if you take the time to have a look. I take a look at a peach branch with its compound bud: a single, slim stem bud in escort between two fat flower buds.

Peach buds

Peach buds

Apple and crabapple flower buds occur mostly at the ends of stubby stems, called spurs, that elongate only a half an inch or so yearly. Pawpaws fruit buds are fat and round with a brown, velour, covering.

Practicalities aside, buds can predict what kind of flower show or fruit crop to expect, barring interference from late frosts, insects, diseases, birds, or squirrels. If peach fruit buds just sit in place rather than fattening as winter draws to a close, I’ll know that the night back in January when temperatures plummeted to minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit did them in, or at least some of them. 

More Winter Details

Back to winter plant identification and entertainment. Looking more carefully at these leafless plants promotes familiarity. Notice the intricacies of their various barks; shagboark hickory, sugar maple, persimmon, white birch, and, my favorite, hackberry,

Hackberry bark

Hackberry bark

are very characteristic. Note twigs’ color, presence of ridges or lenticels (corky pores), even their taste or aroma. The aromas of yellow birch (wintergreen aroma), sassafras, and black cherry (almond) practically shout out their identification.

Here Kitty, Kitty

 

To a Cat’s Delight

How does your cat like your houseplants? I don’t mean how they look. I mean for nibbling, a bad habit of some cats. Bad for them and bad for you because eating certain houseplants could sicken a cat, or worse, and, at the very least, leave the houseplant ragged.

One way to woo a feline away from houseplants would be to provide a better alternative. Now what could that be? Duh! Catnip, Nepeta cataria, a member of the mint family, admittedly not the prettiest of houseplants but, hey, you’re growing this for your cat, not yourself. (Other Nepeta species, such as N. x faasssennii and N. racemes, are less enticing to cats even if they are more attractive to us.)Catgrass and cat

Catnip is very easy to grow outdoors, and can be grown indoors through winter. The main ingredient that could be lacking in winter is light; six or more hours of sunlight beaming down on the plant through a window would be ideal. Other than that, needs are the same as most other plants: regular potting soil coupled with a watering regime that keeps said soil neither sodden nor bone dry, just moist.

Catnip plants are not hard to find. Growing from seed is easy, except the plants won’t be cat-ready for weeks and weeks.

Established plants are quick and easy to multiply so if you’ve got a friend with a potted plant, preferably overgrown so that you both benefit, you can make new plants by slicing the root ball into two or more new sections along with their above ground stems, and then repotting each of them. Or clip off stems each a few inches long, strip leaves from their bottom portions, and poke them into moist potting soil to root. Help these shocked plants or plant parts recover by keeping them in bright but indirect light for a couple of weeks — and protected from any cats!

Which brings me to perhaps the worst potential pest of your new catnip plant: cats! They’ll roll in it, releasing the strong aroma that drives them crazy, and nibble it to experience its narcotic effect. Outdoor plants tolerate such rambunctious playing; indoor plants, with less than perfect growing conditions, are more frail. You might want to limit playtimes to weekly visits.

Limiting playtimes might also keep the plant more enticing. Cats can habituate to catnip. And even then, only about fifty percent of cats fall under the spell of catnip, none of them as kittens.

—————————————

No reason to limit your cat’s botanical garden to catnip. Cats also like to nibble on grasses, which can be very pretty houseplants and lack the not very popular aroma (to most humans) of catnip.

It’s not clear why cats, which are carnivores, like that nibble. Perhaps, some say, to induce vomiting to get rid of undigested animal parts. Perhaps, others say, for vitamins and minerals.

“Grasses” is a term I use quite liberally, to mean not necessarily lawn grass but any plant in the grass family. Most convenient is to just mosey over to the local health food store and purchase some whole grain such as wheat (sold as “wheat berries) or rye. Soak a batch of these seeds in water for a few hours and then sow them in potting soil in a decorative container. Depending on the temperature, green sprouts should soon appear against the dark backdrop of soil. Grasses grow quickly, given light, warmth, and sufficient, but not too much, water.

The aforementioned grasses are annuals and at some point in their growth, what with cat nibbling and aging, will start looking ragged. Have another pot ready with already sprouting grass. And so on.

The grass serves well for us humans as well as our cats to enjoy. They’re very spring-like in their appearance even if confined to only a small pot, a microcosm of what’s to come.

Happy Birthday Ficus

 

Another Year, Another Pruning and Re-potting

I’d like to say it was the birthday of my baby ficus except I don’t know when it was actually born. And since it was propagated by a cutting, not by me, and not from a seed, I’m not sure what “born” would actually mean. No matter, I’m having its biannual celebration marking its age and its growth.

Just for reference, baby ficus is a weeping fig tree (Ficus benjamina), a tree that with age and tropical growing conditions rapidly soars to similar majestic proportions as our sugar maples. That is, if unrestrained in its development.

Baby ficus (FIGH-kus) began life here as one of three small plants rooted together in a 3 inch pot and purchased from a discount store. (Weeping figs are common houseplants because of their beauty and ability to tolerate dry air and low light indoors.) Eight years later, it’s about 4 inches tall with a wizened trunk and side branches that belie its youth. Bonsai, Ficus, at 8 yearsMoss carpeting the soil beneath it and creeping up the trunk complete the picture. I’ve made and am making baby ficus into a bonsai.

The biannual celebration begins with my clipping all the leaves from the plant. Baby ficus’ diminutive proportions keep this job from being tedious.Lear pruning Clipping the leaves accomplishes two goals. First, plants lose water through their leaves so removing leaves reduces water loss (important in consideration of the next celebratory step).

And second, clipping the leaves reduces the size of leaves in the next flush of growth, keeping the in proportion to the size of the plant. Leaves on an unrestrained weeping fig grow anywhere from 2 to 5 inches long, which would look top heavy on a plant 4 inches tall.

The next step is to tip the plant out of its pot so I can get to work on its roots. The pot is only an inch deep and 4 inches long by 3 inches wide, so obviously can’t hold much soil. Bonsai root pruningBaby ficus gets all water and its nourishment from this amount of soil. Within 6 months or so, roots thoroughly fill the pot of soil and have extracted much of the nourishment contained within.

So the roots need new soil to explore, and space has to be made for that new soil. That space is made by cutting back the roots. (Less roots means less water up into the plant, which is why I began by reducing water loss by clipping off all the leaves). I tease old soil out from between the roots and with a scissors shear some of them back.

Next, I put new potting mix into the bottom of the pot, just enough so the plant can sit at the same height as it did previously. Any space near the edges of the pot gets soil packed in place with a blunt stick. Throughout this repotting, I manage to preserve more or less intact the moss growing at the base of the plant.

Now the plant needs its stems pruned. After all, I don’t want the plant growing larger each year, just more decorative as the trunk and stems thicken and age. Pruning involves some melding of art and science. As far as art, I’m aiming for the look of a mature, picturesque tree. Bonsai stem pruningAs far as science, I shorten stems where I want branching, usually just below the cut. Where I don’t want branching but want to decongest stems, I remove a stem or stems right to their base. I also remove any broken, dead, or crossing branches unless, of course, leaving them would be picturesque.

Finally, a thorough watering settles the plant into its refurbished home. Until new leaves unfold and new roots begin to explore new ground, water needs for baby ficus are minimal.

Oh, one more step. I stand back and take an admiringly look at baby ficus in its eighth year.Bonsai ready for another year