PRUNING FOR BEAUTY, FUN, AND FLAVOR

Yew Love

Mundane as she may be, I love yew (not mispelled, but the common name for Taxus species, incidentally vocalized just like “you”). Hardy, green year ‘round, long-lived, and available in many shapes and sizes, what’s not to love? Perhaps that it’s so commonly planted, pruned in dot-dash designs to grace the foundations in front of so many homes.

Still, I love her. For one thing, Robin Hood’s bow was fashioned from a yew branch (English yew, T. baccata, in this case). Two other species — Pacific yew (T. brevifolia) and Canadian yew (T. canadensis) — are sources of taxol, and anti-cancer drug.
Yew berries
At a very young age, I became intimate with yew bushes surrounding our home’s front stoop, on which my brother and I would often play. Yew’s red berries, with an exposed dark seed in each of their centers, would give the effect of being stared at by so many eyes. Sometimes we’d squish out the red juice, carefully though, because we were repeatedly reminded that all parts of the plant are poisonous. (I’ve since learned that the red berries are not poisonous; but  other parts of the plant, including the seed within each red berry are poisonous.)

If yew has, for me, one major fault, it’s that deer eat it like candy. Interesting, since grazing on yew can kill a cow or a horse.

Mostly, I love yew because she takes to any and all types of pruning. My father once had a very overgrown yew hedge threatening to envelope his terrace. I suggested cutting the whole hedge down to stumps. Following an anxious few weeks when I thought my suggestion perhaps overly bold, green sprouts began to appear along the stump. A few years later the hedge was dense with leaves, and within bounds.

Although usually pruned as a bush, yew can be pruned as a tree. A trunk, once exposed and developed, has a pretty, reddish color. Deer sometimes take care of this job, chomping off all the stems they can reach to create a high-headed plant with a clear trunk. 

As an alternative to being pruned to dot-dash spheres and boxes, yew hedges can be pruned to fanciful shapes, including animals, or “cloud pruned” (niwaki, the Japanese method of pruning to cloud shapes). Many years ago, I followed the herd and planted some yews along the front foundation of my house, pruning them to one long dash. No dots.
Yew caterpillar
Since then, I’ve converted that hedge to a giant caterpillar and, more recently, tired of the caterpillar and attempted to cloud prune it, not with great success so far. (It’s my shortcoming as a sculptor, not the plant’s fault.) The goal in this case is not the kind of cloud pruning with clouds as balls of greenery perched on the ends of stems. My goal is to blend the four plants together as one billowy, soft cloud.

Facing my kitchen window is another yew, a large one that was planted way before I got here. Its previous caretaker, and up to recently I, have maintained it as a large, rounded cone. Last year I decided to make that rounded cone more interesting, copying a topiary in Britain. The design is in its early stages, awaiting some new growth this year to fill in bare stems now showing in interior of the bush.
Yew topiary in progress

Not Too Late for Peaches

Moving on to more pragmatic pruning . . . peaches. No, it’s not too late. In fact, the ideal time to prune a peach tree is around bloom time, when healing is quick. This limits the chance of stem diseases, to which peaches are susceptible.

Peach tree, before pruning

Peach tree, before pruning

Peach trees need to be pruned more severely than other fruit trees. As with other fruit trees, the goals are to avoid branch congestion so remaining branches can be bathed in light and air, to plan for future harvests, and to reduce the crop — yes, you read that right — so that more energy and better quality can be pumped into remaining fruits.

To begin, I approached my tree, loppers and pruning saw in hand, for some Sawing peach limbmajor cuts aimed at keeping the tree open to light and air.

Peaches bear each season’s fruits on stems that grew the previous season. So next, with pruning shears, possibly the lopper, in hand, I went over the tree and shortened some stems. This coaxes buds along those stems to grow into new stems on which to hang next year’s peaches.
Shortening peach branch
And finally, I went over the tree with pruning shears, clipping off dead twigs as well as weak, downward growing stems. They can’t support large, juicy, sweet fruits.

Done. I stepped back and admired my work.
Peach tree after pruningAnd, of course, for more about pruning, there’s my book, The Pruning Book.

Spring: A Manic Time in the Garden

The Season’s Ups and Downs

To me, spring can be a manic time of year. On the one hand, no tree is more beautiful or festive than a peach tree loaded with pink blossoms. I’d say almost the same for apples, pears, and plums, their branches laden with clusters of white blossoms.
Peach tree in bloom
And it’s such a hopeful season. If all goes well, those blossoms will morph, in coming months, into such delicacies as Hudson’s Golden Gem and Pitmaston Pineapple apples, and Magness, Seckel, and Concorde pears. My peach tree was grown from seed, so has no name. With all this beauty and anticipation, I can periodically forget the pandemic that’s raging beyond my little world here.

But even as my eyes feast on the scene and I forget about the pandemic, I can’t forget about the weather’s ups and downs. Specifically, the temperature: Frosty weather has the potential to turn blossoms to mush and ruin the chances for fruit. Especially on my farmden, here in the Wallkill River valley. As in other low-lying locations, on clear, cold nights, a temperature inversion occurs, with heat radiated to the clear sky making ground level temperatures low. Cold air is denser than warmer air, so all the cold air flows down slopes to collect in valleys.

There’s not much to do to avert that frost damage. A blanket thrown over a tree would help but my trees are too large and too many. Branches could be sprayed with water; water, in transitioning to ice, releases its heat of fusion as long as it’s continuously applied. A helicopter or a “wind machine” could dilute colder air at ground level with warmer air from higher up. These methods might be used commercially but, to quote the sage of Newburgh (that’s another story), “That’s not gonna happen” here.

Therapy, a Plan

Rather than worrying myself into the manic phase of spring, I’m going to assess the damage and live with it. For starters, I need to know the temperature.

I have been using is a nifty little device called Sensorpush, a 1-inch square cube, perhaps a half-inch thick, that I have mounted outside and that continually transmits the temperature to my cell phone.Sensorpush receiverGreat. Even better, temperature (as well as humidity) is recorded, and can be displayed graphically or downloaded to my computer. So I didn’t have to be awake to find out the mercury hit 32.5°F at 12:16 AM on the night of April 17th and stayed there until it began rising around 7 AM.
Sensorpush readout
Fortunately, researchers have compiled temperatures at which damage to blossoms occurs. Specifically, damage enough to wipe 10% of the crop, and damage enough to wipe out 90% of the crop. And more specifically, applying those numbers to various kinds of fruits, which vary in their blossom’s cold tolerances. And even more specifically to the various stages of blossoming for each kind of fruit. Generally, less cold is required to kill a blossom the closer it is to bloom time.

Here is a chart compiled and photographed by Mark Longstroth of Michigan State University:
Critical temperatures for fruit buds

So now I can take this information, couple it with data recorded by Sensorpush, and foretell my sensory future, pomologically speaking. Below freezing temperatures since trees awakened have been 24° on April 17th, 27° on April 19th, and 26° on April 21st. Of course, it ain’t over till it’s over, and the average date of the last frost here is about mid-May.

Peach blossoms

Peach bloom

Plum blossoms

Plum blossoms

My plum trees were in full bloom on April 13th, at which time the blossoms are susceptible to 10% kill at 28° and 90% kill at 23°. That makes only 10% loss. The peach tree was also in bloom on that date, and is very similar in it’s blossom’s cold tolerance, so only 10% loss there also, so far.

Asian pears were showing “first white” and “full white” on April 19th, when the low hit 27°. That temperature would cause them no damage. The same would be true, going forward, for subsequent temperatures above 27°. The Europeans should be fine because today, April 21st, they are in tight cluster, and cold hardy to 24°.

Asian pear blossom

Asian pear full white

European pear blossom

European pear tight cluster

Apples also are fine, also in tight cluster so, according to the chart, undamaged by temperatures above 27°.

Apple blossom pink tip

Apple blossom tight cluster

And a Sprinkle of the Unknown

All this seems very science-y comforting, and it is. As with most garden science, though, things are more complicated, to some extent, than can be easily predicted. For one thing, some variation in cold hardiness undoubtedly exists from one variety to the next. In the case of my trees, I have an American hybrid and some European hybrid plums; they might more generally differ in blossom hardiness. And what about the length of time at a given temperature, and the effect of humidity?

Overall, the chart has calmed me down. Not to mention that a certain amount of fruit loss would be a good thing. A tree has just so much energy, and too big a crop makes for less flavor and size. Only 5% of blossoms of an apple tree need to set fruit for a full crop.

Now, I can move on to worry about insect and diseases that might hone in on my fruit.

I GET MY KICKS

Roots Do It

Some people get their kicks from hang gliding; some from racing cars. Call me mundane, but I get a similar thrill, minus the fear, from seeing cuttings of some new varieties of figs that I am propagating take root. The cool thing about hang gliding, racing cars, and rooting cuttings is also the sense of satisfaction you get from doing it well.

The current batch of cuttings provides special satisfaction because the method I used, gleaned from the web (see, for instance, what turns up with a search for “fig pops”), permit me to check and observe progress frequently. Usually, I stick a cutting into a rooting mix and learn that rooting has taken place by the resistance of the stick to an upward tug or by roots escaping through the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot. With fig pops, I get to see each cuttings wiry, white roots wending their way through the rooting mix soon after they first start to develop. Fig pops are also a way to root lots of cuttings in a small space.
A fig pop
The current figs are rooting in 3” by 8” clear, thin plastic bags filled with my usual 1:1 mix of moist peat moss and perlite.  I pushed the cuttings, fig “sticks” of last year’s growth 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick, into the mix almost to the bottom, then sealed the top closed with a twist-tie. One cutting per bag. Roots need to breathe, so I poked each bag full of holes with a toothpick. That’s it, except when the bags seemed too dry I stood them in a pan with a couple of inches of water for awhile.

(Dipping the cuttings in a commercially available rooting hormone would probably improve rooting, but I don’t use them. To me, the health precautions needed when dealing with them takes the fun out of gardening.)

All that, and time, would have been enough. But to speed things up, I moved the cuttings to a place where they’d get some warmth on their bottoms. That could have been atop a refrigerator, above, but not on a radiator, or, in the case of my cuttings, on a seedling heating mat.
Fig pops
Fig pops together in tubNo light is needed until cuttings start to leaf out. Which is an exciting moment, because roots might — or might not — begin to show about then. All that’s needed is to lift a fig pop and take a look. Some of mine showed roots after only 3 weeks! But it’s good to let them get well rooted before disturbing them.
Rooted figs
When the time came to move a well rooted cutting, I sliced the plastic on the bottom and up along one side of its bag and put the whole root ball in a bona fide pot, filling in with bona fide potting soil around it.

That’s it. Growth will pick up with increasing warmth and sunlight. And then fruit, which could arrive on the branches even this growing season. Figs are admittedly easy to root by any method. As with any cutting, an important ingredient for success is patience.

Graft (Nonpolitical) is Good

Moving on, next week, to another perennial source of excitement here in the garden: grafting. I do this every year about now? Why every year? Because I’m always getting scions (1-year-old stems for grafting) of new varieties of fruits, mostly pears, to try out or to replace existing varieties. Or I might want another tree or two of a variety particularly worth growing here.

If I’m replacing an existing variety, I do a Henry the Eighth on the tree, lopping off its head, low, to graft a new variety onto the remaining stump. With the established root system underfoot, these grafts grow very vigorously and bear relatively quickly — sometimes the year after grafting. 

Alternatively, I make a whole new tree by grafting a scion onto a one-year-old rootstock that I purchase or grow. These small trees will take longer to come into bearing, how long depending on the kind and variety of fruit, and the rootstock.

Stump of older graft

Stump of older graft

A rootstock, whether the remaining stump of a lopped back mature tree or a pencil-thick young plant, has to be closely related to the scion that will be grafted atop it for the graft to be successful. Rootstock and scion in the same genus generally do well together, so pear on pear, apple on apple, even peach on plum are compatible. Occasionally, plants in the same family but different genus, such as pear and quince, also join well.

Whip graft close up

Whip graft

One way to create a rootstock would be to just plant a seed, giving rise to the appropriately named “seedling” rootstock. A seedling rootstock’s main claims to fame might be its general toughness and its genetic diversity from other seedlings. That genetic diversity is a downside if you want to plant an orchard of uniform trees; it’s an asset if you don’t want some pest all of a sudden wiping out all your plants with genetically the same rootstocks.

Rootstocks have been selected or bred that impart special qualities to a tree, and these rootstocks are propagated not by seed, but by any one of a number of methods of cloning (cuttings, tissue culture, mound layering, etc). Most dramatic might be the effect on plant size. The Malling 27 variety of apple rootstock, for instance results in a tree that matures at about 7 feet high. As with many dwarfing rootstocks, the tree also yields its first harvest quickly with, although less fruit per tree than a larger tree, more fruit per sure foot of space. And you can plant many dwarf trees in the same space as one full-size tree.
Apple rootstocks
Dwarf trees also have the advantage that pruning, harvesting, and other needs can be met with your feet planted on terra firma. Any disadvantages? Yes: more finicky about growing conditions, much shorter lifespan, and often needing staking throughout their lives. But there are many rootstocks from which to choose, especially with apples and pears, so you can choose what suits you from a fully dwarfing tree on up to full-size tree. A rootstock might also be selected for its tolerance for certain soil conditions, hardiness, and other environmental hazards.

Most important: The rootstock, for all its effects, has little or no influence on the flavor of fruit grafted upon it.

I’ll be grafting next week. Stay tuned for the 2 or 3 easy grafts I use to make trees.

PINING FOR PINES

More Than Just Pignolis and Piñons

Pine trees first appeared on earth 170 million years ago amidst lush, steaming forests of tree ferns and the footprints of dinosaurs. In time, human footsteps replaced those of the dinosaurs. Pines and humans have been intimately associated ever since. The trees have been worshipped; the cones have represented symbols of fertility; the pitch has sealed ship hulls; and the wood has been used for construction and for paper.

Korean pine

Korean pine

Throughout this long association, seeds of certain pines have been part of our diets. The flavorful seeds of native pines have a long history of use as “nutmeat” by the people of Siberia, the Himalayas, southern Europe, and the American Southwest. Look into almost any Italian grocery store in America, and you’ll find tempting cookies studded with pignolis, which are seeds of the Italian Stone pine (Pinus pinea). Pine nuts are the nut for pesto and dolmas. And from the American Southwest come seeds of the piñon pine. 

Although pine nuts usually are associated with the dry, mild climates of Southern Europe, the American Southwest, and northern Mexico, there are pine species that will produce edible nuts outside of their native range — even in the humid, often frigid, climate of my farmden. Nut-producing pines run the gamut from scrubby shrubs to majestic trees, some with needles that are soft and misty, others with needles that are dark and somber.  

Korean pine (P. koraensis), Swiss Stone pine (P. cembra), and Siberian pine (P. sibirico) are the three most reliable nut-producers for cold climates. All are hardy to at least minus twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The Korean pine is the most commercial of the three, producing 5/8-inch-long seeds that are exported from China. The tree itself will eventually tower to a soft, dark-green pyramid of 150 feet. 

Swiss Stone pine finds a congenial home in the small garden, eventually reaching 50 feet or more, but very slow-growing. Native to central European Alps, this pine has dark, almost blackish-green, needles that, with the short branches, seem to hug the trunk. The Siberian pine is similar, except faster growing.  

Swiss Stone Pine

Swiss Stone Pine

Many other pine species potentially could produce pine nuts outside their native range, though their adaptability to very cold winter climates has not been not thoroughly tested. The closely related Colorado Pinyon (P. edulis) and Singleleaf Pinyon (P. monophylla) pines are bushy trees that become flat-topped with age. I planted a Singleleaf pine years ago; it’s annual growth was measured in inches. With the slow growth and lack of nuts, I eventually tired of it.

One of my favorites, unfortunately not hardy below 10°F, is the Digger (P. sabiniana). I saw many of these trees years ago as I was driving west down from the Sierra Nevada mountains; I came screeching to a stop when I spotted one of the large cones lying near the road. Passing motorists might have taken me for a lunatic as I tried to smash open the coneby smashing it repeatedly on the guardrail. This species bears lima bean sized pine nuts.

Some other pine species producing edible, albeit small seeds, are Himalayan pine (P. wallachiana), Limber pine (P. flexilis), Jeffrey’s pine (P. jeffreyi), and Japanese Dwarf Stone pine (P. pumila).

My Personal Pinetum

I’ve entered the world of nut pines with some plants here on the farmden. I began, of course, with Korean pine, but can’t claim great success. My largest tree, now about 35 feet high, has occasionally produced a cone near its summit. Perhaps some squirrels got them; I didn’t. The tree is a dead ringer for our native white pine (Pinus strobus); the most direct way to differentiate the two would be from the Korean pines cones, which are about half the length (about 4 inches) of white pine’s cones.

My older Korean pine

My older Korean pine

Just this year I purchased two more Korean pine seedlings. They’re each only a few inches high now, and I hope they bear like a friend’s Korean pine, which was loaded with cones when a mere 6 feet in height.

My younger Korean pine

My younger Korean pine

I’ve also planted a lacebark pine (P. bungeana). Besides offering pine nuts, the bark of this pine flakes off to yield pleasing patterns similar to that of sycamore. Neither nuts nor flaking bark here yet, though.

Lacebark pine

Lacebark pine

 Care and Feeding

 Nut pines, in common with most other pines, require little care. They are frugal plants, getting by with minimum water and fertility. They do require full sun and well-drained soil, though. Think of those dry, rocky slopes to which pines cling in the wild.

Two seasons are usually required for a female pine cone to produce ripe seeds. The cone is a primitive type of flower constructed of a tight cluster of either male or female reproductive cells at the bases of scales which spiral around a short axis. In the spring gusts of wind shake loose pollen from the male cones, which are catkin-like clusters located mostly at the tips of the trees’ lower branches.  Yellow clouds of pollen waft upwards to the female cones, most of which are high in the trees. Fertilization, the actual union of the male and female reproductive cells, takes place during the spring following pollination, within the tightly closed, green female cone. Seeds ripen at the end of the second season.

How a pine disperses its ripe seeds can mean the difference between getting pine nuts into your pesto or losing them to foraging squirrels or in the needles beneath the trees. With some pines, ripe seeds drop from open cones that remain attached to the trees. Other pines will not open their cones to release their seeds except with the stimulus of heat or the blow of a hammer. Such a mechanism, making it possible to beat the squirrels to the bounty, exists for the Swiss stone pine and the Siberian pine. The Swiss Stone pine clings to its neat little seed packages until the third spring from flowering.

It’s almost impossible to suggest an expected yield of nuts from a single tree. The trees are rarely grown in plantations. Most nuts are harvested from more or less wild trees, rather than from trees growing under uniform orchard conditions. And even then, yields are variable and erratic.

Lack of precocity or erratic nut production shouldn’t be a deterrent to planting a nut-bearing pine. What these pines lack in instant gratification, they furnish in “piney” fragrance,  longevity, and for the beauty and character they bring to a landscape.

COVID-19 OR NOT, THE GARDEN MARCHES ON

A Special Week

Coronavirus has come, and it will go, but the natural world soldiers on. My dogs, Sammy and Daisy, are as happy as ever, oblivious to the pandemic. My garden will respond likewise, trucking forward and offering a centering point as the world around has its ups and downs.

This week is a very special one in my gardening year; it’s the week I plant peas. April 1st, to be specific. It’s sort of the official beginning of the vegetable garden. “Sort of” because actually have been planting and harvesting lettuce, mâche, arugula, claytonia, kale, bok choy, chard, and celery all winter in the greenhouse.Peas in pod

Not Too Early, Not Too Late

For some gardeners, St. Patrick’s Day is the date for sowing peas. Yes, that is the correct date for pea sowing — in Ireland, Virginia, and other places where I imagine soil temperatures reach about 40° F by that date. Above 40° F, and pea seeds become most likely to sprout rather than rot. On the other hand, waiting too long to plant pea seeds has the plant bearing during hot weather; peas don’t stand the heat well.

I mostly plant shelling peas, which are admittedly more trouble because they need shelling. To me, they’re worth it, for their flavor. (Then again, with the pandemic, more people are spending more time at home; gather ‘round and let’s shell peas.) I recommend the very tasty varieties Green Arrow and Lincoln.

My pea plants grow right up the center of 3-foot-wide beds. I make two furrows a couple of inches deep, one on either side of a bed’s center, and 4 inches apart. The seeds go in a couple of inches apart.
Pea seeds in furrows
Pea plants are sometimes available as transplants, or, as my neighbor used to call them, “starts,” in cell-packs. Don’t buy them. Peas are a vegetable for which you sow the seeds directly in the garden. The reason is that the yield from a single plant, even six plants in a cell-pack is too minuscule to be worth it. And pea seeds sprout readily. Have some faith.

Once seedlings poke up through the ground surface, I put a trellis up the middle of the row. My trellis is temporary, able to move around the garden, just as do the pea plants, to a different bed each season. I pound a metal post into the ground at each end of the row, and then weave 3 foot high poultry netting (“chicken wire”), inch-and-a-half mesh, onto the posts. I use fiberglass electric fence posts, but any thin stakes woven at intervals into the netting and pushed into the ground keeps the fence from being floppy. After the final harvest, I pull up the pea plants, pull up the thin stakes, remove and roll up the netting, and pull up the end posts for use next year.
Peas on trellis
A number of other seeds can be planted on that seminal (for here) April 1st pea planting date. Those would include, except celery, the vegetables I mentioned above that have been growing in the greenhouse all winter. Radishes could also be included here, and spinach. And potatoes, as 2 ounce, whole tubers or pieces of cut tubers.

Best Tomatoes For . . . ?

Also significant about April 1st on my gardening calendar is that it’s my date to sow tomato seeds, indoors in seed flats. It’s not that tomato is my favorite garden vegetable; it’s just that it’s such a popular vegetable and perhaps the most versatile.

For a cherry tomato to just pop right in my mouth or put in salads, I grow Sungold. That’s all they’re good for, but they’re really, really good for that.

Sungold, hands down the best tasting cherry tomato

I dry many varieties, especially Amish Paste and Anna Russian. Some of them also go into jars, along with San Marzano, arguably the best tasting tomato for canning. (In Italy, cans of tomato made with San Marzano tout that on the label.) Blue Beech is another variety, this one with a unique flavor, that I both can and dry.
Canned tomatoes
For good, fresh eating and very pretty tomatoes, I’m growing Nepal, Carmello, and, with a bright orange skin, Valencia. All three varieties are round tomatoes with smooth, crack-free skins.

Valencia tomato

Valencia tomato

For the very best in fresh eating tomatoes, there are many to choose from. I’m growing Paul Robeson and Pink Brandywine this year, although many others, such as Belgian Giant, Cherokee Purple, or others with “Brandywine” in their name could also fill the bill. Extras of these and the previous mentioned “good, fresh eating” varieties go into sauce, but not, of course, the dedicated San Marzano batches. Besides being good for cooking and drying, Amish Paste and Anna Russian are also good fresh. Not San Marzano, though; it’s awful raw.

As with pea planting, my tomato-sowing date is not for everyone; what is for everyone is to sow the seeds about 6 weeks before the local “average date of the last killing frost,” a date that is available online or from the local County Cooperative Extension Office. Sowing on this date strikes a nice balance between plants being small enough to make a smooth transition out to the garden and being sufficiently large for a timely first harvest.

April 1st isn’t the date to start all transplants. I sowed onion seeds way back in early February, and pepper and eggplant seeds in early March. For an early crop of cucumbers or melons, I’ll sow those in early May for transplanting at the end of the month. Or I’ll plant the seeds directly in the ground sometime soon after the “last killing frost” date. (I made a whole chart of vegetables and garden sowing, indoor sowing, and transplanting dates, keyed to whatever anyone’s “last frost date” is, in my book Weedless Gardening.)

Take Care

The garden marches smoothly forward, snubbing its nose at the pandemic. We can do likewise if we stay home if possible, wash our hands frequently and thoroughly and keep them away from our faces, and protect ourselves and others if we must go out. Consider that everything you touch off-site could be contaminated, or could be made so by you.