Six Less Common Veggies You Might Like
Posted on Sunday, May 17, 2020 · Leave a Comment
I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but if it will grow in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire, I’ve probably tried it. Scorzonera? Sure, once, but I was not enthralled by this long, thin root. Peanuts? Once, didn’t get many. Gilfeather turnips? You bet. Many of the things I try I don’t continue to grow – they have to taste good, and be productive to qualify. Let’s look at a few that I do like, and that you might not grow – as yet.
Celeriac with carrots, leeks and Brussels sprouts3
One of my favorites is celeriac, or celery root. This is a close cousin to celery, but less attractive to slugs and snails, and easier to grow. It is a funny looking root crop with many fat roots. It tastes very much like celery in a soup or stew, though it is not usually eaten raw. I peel the roots, and chop the round bulb into chunks for cooking. If stored in the vegetable drawer or a cold cellar with high humidity and cool temperatures, it will store all winter.
Celeriac grows best in rich moist soil. I start it indoors in March and plant it outside in late May, spaced 6 to 8 inches apart. If crowded it will not produce well. It also needs lots of moisture, so don’t plant it in dry, sandy soil. It takes a long time to grow to transplant size, so look for it at good garden centers – some will have starts for sale.
Kohlrabi is another funny-looking root vegetable. This has much of the bulbous root above ground, with leaves popping out on stems from the bulb. I’ve heard it likened to a space alien. But it’s delicious! Crisp, with a nice snap, it’s in the same family with broccoli and kale. It’s good in salads as well as stir fries. There are purple varieties, and white or green ones, which tend to be slower growing and good for long-term storage.
Try growing kohlrabi this summer
Kohlrabi germinates in less than a week and grows fast. Although you can start them indoors, you don’t need to. In most places you can start them now. Plant seeds outdoors 3 to 4 inches apart and thin every other one if all grow. They like consistently moist soil, so add compost at planting time.
Artichokes need a long growing season, so you should have planted them indoors back in early March. But more and more good garden centers are growing them, so might be able to find plants for sale.
They are big plants, up to 2 feet across with nice grey-green leaves. I sometimes plant them in the flower garden. In fact, the vegetable you eat is a flower bud. If you don’t pick them, they will open up and be quite pretty. I once saw them as flowers in an ancient abbey on the island of Iona, Scotland and they were quite striking. They’re related to thistles. Your artichokes will be smaller than store-bought.
In California artichoke plants are perennials, but even with mulch I have never had one survive a winter here. One called Imperial Star is an annual, and is best for growing here. They need rich, dark soil with plenty of compost and some organic fertilizer. Plenty of moisture is needed, too.
Although I once had a bumper sticker that said “Eat More Kale”, kale has become mainstream and needs no advertising. But I’d get one that said something like, “Rejoice in Rutabagas!” to put on my truck, if I could. They are easy to grow, mild and tasty, and don’t suffer from things that make potatoes problematic (potato beetles and fungal blight). I use them as a substitute for potatoes in stews.
Rutabagas are a good substitute for potatoes
Rutabagas are also relatives of kale and broccoli, members of the Brassica family. I plant them by seed in June, and thin to 8 inches as these are big root crops that will not produce well if crowded. Although flea beetles can bother them, I’ve never had anything eat mine. Cover with row covers if you have a problem.
The skin of a rutabaga is reddish purple, and the flesh is yellow or orange. They store well – all winter in a cold cellar or spare fridge. ‘Helenor’ and ‘Laurentian’ are the varieties I‘ve grown, but I imagine all are fine.
Leeks are some of the easiest veggies I grow. Buy them as small plants at a good garden center, or start them from seed indoors in March. Space them 4 to 6 inches apart in a trench 3 inches deep. Fill in the trench a month later. If you want more of the white part of the leek, you can mound up the soil around them.
In the fall I harvest leeks, wash them and cut off the roots. I chop them and put them right into the freezer. They are then available as an onion substitute, or to make one of my favorite soups, leek and potato.
Tomatillos are not commonly grown – even by me, but they are commonly required for Mexican dishes. They are big plants, like a tomato, but I have read that they do best sprawling on the ground, not in a cage.
The first time I grew them I just planted one, and got no fruit: you need 2 plants or more for cross pollination. So buy 2 or more plants, and plant them 2 weeks or so after you plant your tomatoes. Remember, they would much rather be growing in Mexico!
Think about digging up some of your lawn this spring to increase the size of your garden. Hungry times might be ahead, who knows? The good thing about that is, a new garden is much less likely to have tomato blight problems. So grow some tomatoes in your front yard. And since your garden will be visible from the street, you’ll do a better job weeding, I bet!
Henry Homeyer started growing vegetables with his Grampy in 1948 or so, and generally eats something he has grown every day of the year. He is the author of 4 gardening books. E-mail him at
henry.homeyer@comcast.net.
Is It Time to Plant Yet?
Posted on Sunday, May 17, 2020 · Leave a Comment
Some folks in my part of New England plant seeds in the ground on Mother’s Day and seedlings on Memorial Day weekend. Not me. Others use Mother Nature’s clues: plant spinach when the forsythia blooms, potatoes when the leaves of an oak are the size of a mouse’s ear. That sounds good, but who really knows how big a mouse’s ear is?
I start a lot of seedlings indoors, some as early as February, and (like any good mother) I am protective of my young. I only put out plants or plant seeds when I am sure that they will succeed. So I plant my tomatoes and other heat-loving plants in June, generally after the tenth of the month. Those heat lovers include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and all the vine crops – cukes, squash, pumpkins. Even broccoli, which is frost-hardy in the fall, does not go in early. It is much more sensitive now to frost.
A soil thermometer will tell you if it’s warm enough to plant
What I have found is that soil temperature is very important to success. Yes, you can plant peas or spinach “as soon as the soil can be worked” (as described on the packages), but those seeds won’t germinate and grow if the soil is in the forties. And the seeds can rot. Seeds have triggers that tell them when to grow. That’s why starting seedlings indoors on heat mats speeds things up. The seeds think it is summer when the soil is 72 degrees. Generally the soil must be 60 degrees to get a good quick germination.
So how do you determine the soil temperature? Buy a thermometer designed for it. Generally these thermometers look like a meat thermometer. The probe is 6 inches or so long. Push 3 inches into the soil and wait for a reading. I gather digital ones now exist, too.
What can you do to warm your soil up? If you’re in hurry, rake off winter mulch and expose the soil to the sun. Do that now. Then you can cover the soil with a plastic sheet, either clear or black. I’ve found clear plastic is best. Sun heats the soil directly and the plastic holds in the heat (but be sure to seal the edges of the sheet with soil to keep the heat in). On a sunny afternoon in the sixties, the temperature under the plastic can exceed 100 degrees.
Raised beds warm up quicker than flat beds in spring
Another advantage of warming the soil with plastic for a few days is this: you can cook and kill annual weeds. They are sensitive to high temperatures when they first come up. Dandelions or witch grass, which are perennial, have root systems you know and hate. A few hot days under plastic will only make them giggle.
I’m not keen on rototilling. Yes, it will make your garden look very pretty, not a weed in sight. But for some weeds, each scrap of weed will produce a new plant. Chop up some witch grass and watch it take off! And if you get the top six inches of your garden warmed up, and then rototill, all that cold soil below will cool down the rest.
I like to think of the all the living things in the soil as my friends. Earthworms, beneficial fungi and bacteria, little arthropods? All of these help to break down organic matter and make it available in a form useable by my plants. And I think of the layers of soil as the floors of an apartment building. Some people like the penthouse, others want a ground floor room. When you rototill, you jumble up the order of things and put the penthouse in the basement.
Hoe, garden fork, and potato fork are 3 useful tools for making garden beds
So how do I prepare my garden? I create wide, raised beds using only hand tools. I have a 5-tined potato fork or hoe that has been in my family for 50 years or more. I use it to loosen the soil and shape the beds. But you can use an ordinary garden fork and a hoe to accomplish the same. I pull up soil from the walkways to raise the level of the beds and shape them. I try to disturb the soil as little as possible.
Most of my raised beds are between 24 and 36 inches wide and are 6 to 8 inches above the walkways, which I keep narrow, so as to not waste space. Generally they have no wood sides, though I do use planks to contain the soil in a few. I like a wood-sided raised bed for growing carrots, as they need fluffy soil with no rocks in order to get to be 12 inches long, my goal each year. With wood-sided beds you can build whatever soil you want by mixing in the ingredients.
Before putting your plants in the ground, harden them off. Whether you bought your tomatoes or started them indoors yourself, they can get sunburned or wind-burned if they go outside to a full day’s sun without some preparation. Start with 3 hours of morning sun, then add some afternoon sun. Watch for signs of stress. After 5 to 7 days of protection from too much wind and sun, they will be ready for planting
I like to do some cold season plantings, and have a cold frame to get a few things growing in April. But I also know that my tomatoes planted in mid-June will catch up with any planted on Memorial Day weekend. Each of us has to figure out what works best.
Six Wildflowers You Should Grow
Posted on Tuesday, May 5, 2020 · Leave a Comment
I love wildflowers. Right now several species are blooming in my woods, and others are on their way. They are a demure smile before the serious romance of summer blossoms in the main gardens. But after winter, they are loved as much as the bodacious peonies and brilliant poppies that will come later.
White trillium or Trillium grandiflorum
One of my favorites is Trillium. That is both a scientific name and a common name, though the common wine red species, Trillium erectum, is also called Purple Trillium, Wake-robin and Stinking Benjamin. It does best in light shade and acidic soils. Its flower has three petals and stands up above the foliage. As it matures over the years, the clumps get bigger. A related species, T. grandiflorum, or white trillium is similar in looks, but with white petals that fade to pink. It’s very lovely.
Another favorite of mine is Jack-in-the Pulpit ( Arisaema triphyllum). The flower has a hood over a “preacher” that is hidden inside. It is designed so that little flies will crawl down inside the flower, pollinating it as they go. It has both male and female parts, but only one or the other are fertile at a time, to prevent self-pollination. They grow well in woodlands, in deep rich acid soil. As the plants grow older, they get larger, sometimes reaching two feet tall.
Jack in the pulpit
Hepatica is one of the earliest wildflowers to bloom in my woods. The common name, Hepatica, is also the scientific name, though there are two similar species: H. acutiloba or Sharp-lobed Hepatica, and H. americana or Round-lobed Hepatica.
Hepatica grows in light shade, and does best with a few hours of sunshine. They do best in rich, dark, humusy soil. They form tidy clumps, each about the size of a big African violet. The blossoms are numerous: an old clump in my woods has about 50 one-inch wide lavender flowers on it now, each with six petals. This plant does not spread much, so buy enough to make a statement.
Bloodroot is a beauty that spreads well by root, though is never obnoxious about it. This fabulous wildflower has blossoms similar to those on Hepatica, but bigger, and white with a yellow center. The blossoms are quite ephemeral, blooming and then littering the ground some days later with petals. The flowers close up at night (when pollinators are sleeping) or on cold, rainy days.
Bloodroot likes good drainage and more sun than most wildflowers
The leaves are dramatic. When they first appear, they are rolled up like a cigar, standing vertically in your forest duff. Later the leaves open and flatten out, getting large for a wildflower: six to eight inches wide. These persist much of the summer, creating a nice groundcover.
Bloodroot gets its name from the red liquid it oozes if you break a root. You can propagate the plant by diving roots when dormant in the fall and planting in light shade or morning sun in moist, well-drained soil.
Another of my favorites is Dutchman’s breeches ( Dicentra cucularia). This is a true spring ephemeral: it produces flowers and leaves, and then everything disappears after a few weeks until next year. It is in the same genus as Bleeding Heart, a dramatic pink or white June-blooming perennial. The flowers are white, and look like little pants hanging upside down, with several flowers on each stem.
Dutchman’s breeches
The foliage is as pretty as the flowers: it is finely cut, and reminiscent of its cousin, wild bleeding heart ( Dicentra exemia) which is sold everywhere as a shade perennial. When Dutchman’s Breeches dies back, the leaves just disappear without yellowing and lingering on, which is a nice feature. It does best in moist, rich soil in shade or part sun. The corms are tiny.
Finally, you should have some trout lily or Dog-toothed Violet ( Erythronium americanum). This diminutive plant has nice spotted leaves and spreads like a groundcover in shady, humus-rich woods. But in the wild, they bloom infrequently, and only after they have two leaves – and most of mine have just one. The flowers are yellow on 4 inch stems.
So how do you get started? Most garden centers do not sell these plants, and seeds are not readily available – and often need to be planted right after picking. You should not dig them up in the wild and doing so is prohibited in most states.
I called Barry Glick of Sunshine Farm and Gardens in Renick, West Virginia. His farm is 60 acres of flowers at 3,650 feet of elevation, so Zone 5. He agreed to put together a package of the plants I have featured here, three plants of each, ready to go in the ground for $89.10 as a special deal for my readers. They will be shipped free by Priority Mail. E-mail him at
barry@sunfarm.com for details and tell him I sent you.
In interest of full disclosure, Barry sent me a set of plants for free, but I am not profiting from his sales. The plants (or bulbs or corms without leaves) are not huge, but are 3 to 5 years old, and ready to bloom next year. They come in half gallon Ziplock bags, packed in peat moss and ready to plant. All mine looked great, and I planted them in an open woodland with rich soil.
So think about getting some wildflowers, and remember you shouldn’t just go dig them up in the wild! Wildflowers bring me great joy when they bloom, and I bet they will please you, too.
How to Improve Your Soil
Posted on Tuesday, April 28, 2020 · Leave a Comment
As we move from dreaming to planting, we all want to offer our plants the perfect soil. This leads some gardeners to buy a big bag of 10-10-10 and sprinkle it heavily on everything. For others, manure or compost is the answer to increasing soil productivity and plant health. And then there are bagged minerals, organic bagged fertilizers, rock powders and more.
What do plants need? Scientists agree that plants need minerals for health: nitrogen (N) for promoting green growth; phosphorous (P) for better roots and promoting flowers, seeds and fruits; potassium (K) for strong cell walls to survive drought and cold. These three elements are often called “the big three” and listed as percentage by weight on fertilizer bags (5-10-5, for example). Chemical fertilizers have just those three elements, plus inert fillers (which would be 80% in the example cited).
Additionally, there are elements that are needed in smaller amounts including magnesium, calcium and sulfur. In very small amounts plants need iron, chlorine, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum and nickel. None of those are found in chemical fertilizers, but are present in unlisted amounts in bagged organic fertilizers, and in good compost.
Organic fertilizers contain more healthy minerals than chemical fertilizers 002
Bagged organic fertilizers are made from natural ingredients, things like ground oyster shells and seaweed, or dehydrated chicken manure, or cotton seed meal and peanut hulls. Added to the mix are minerals such as rock phosphate (a good source of slow-release phosphorus) and green sand (a source of potassium from the sea).
These are slow release fertilizers. Most of the ingredients are not water soluble, but are broken down and utilized in concert with bacteria and fungi in the soil. That is good, as they are not washed away in rainy times the way many chemical fertilizers are.
Here in the Northeast most soils are a bit acidic due to acid rain, so adding limestone is good for getting your soil near neutral. But not all plants need the same things in the soil. Blueberries, for example, need very acidic soil. Instead of lime, they may need sulfur to make the soil more acidic.
Lots of blueberry blossoms tell me the soil is acidic enough
A simple soil pH test kit can be purchased for under $10, or you can send a sample to your state Extension Service for testing, Go online and search for soil tests in your state, and you will find how to collect the soil, and where to send it. A basic soil test will tell you much in addition to the soil pH.
I’ve been adding finely ground granite dust to my soil for 20 years or so, and a commercially prepared rock and mineral soil supplement called Azomite for nearly as long. I’ve done side-by-side trials of plants with rock powders and without them, and have seen dramatic differences. Soils with rock powders have helped plants survive drought, and have increased crop yield in my peppers.
The mechanism by which rock powders work is unknown. I interviewed a soil scientist who pointed out that every 10,000 years or so we’ve had glaciers come down and deposit ground rock, distributing obscure minerals in the soil. Maybe the rock powders I add are just mimicking what the glaciers have done – though not recently.
What about compost? It is pure gold, from a soil perspective. It has all the minerals needed by plants and good compost also has literally millions of beneficial bacteria, fungi and other living things in each spoon of goodness.
Beneficial organisms in compost work with your plants, sharing minerals with your plants; they benefit from sugars exuded from the roots each night. That’s right, over eons the plants and microorganisms have developed a mutually beneficial system.
Tomatoes benefit from a little slow release fertilizer at planting time
I should explain that compost is not high in nitrogen. But most vegetables and annual flowers don’t need a lot of nitrogen. Nitrogen will make veggies like peppers or tomatoes grow big plants, but often those big plants do not produce a lot of fruit. Most annual flowers do not need much nitrogen.
How much compost should you use? I have been putting an inch or two over my vegetable beds every year, and working it in. If you are buying it by the bag, even half an inch is good – with some extra in the hole with each tomato.
What about trees and shrubs? Most do not need fertilizer or those tree fertilizer spikes sold at hardware stores. Mother Nature does not provide fertilizer, she adds organic matter to the soil over time as leaves decompose and living beings of all sorts die and add to the soil.
That said, if you live in a new subdivision, your soil may be nothing but sterile subsoil with a thin layer of “topsoil” spread by the contractor. Adding organic matter to the soil in the form of compost will help it become biologically active. It will add minuscule amounts of the less common minerals.
Hay and straw make good mulches
Mulch all your beds with ground leaves, grass clippings, mulch hay or straw. These will break down with time, and add organic matter to the soil. Breakdown of that mulch is done by bacteria and fungi.
Treat your soil to some compost at planting time. And if you use fertilizer, don’t overdo it – more is not better. Read the directions of anything you add to the soil.
Henry Homeyer can be reached at
henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is a long time UNH Master Gardener and the author of 4 gardening books.
Oh Dear: Dealing with Deer, Woodchucks and More
Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2020 · Leave a Comment
My dog Daphne tells the deer a wolf is near
I’ve never had much trouble with deer eating my vegetables or flowers. I know gardeners who have wept when they saw that their lovely tulips had been munched by deer just when they were achieving perfection. But I’ve always had dogs, and dogs leave scents that are scary to deer. My little corgi, Daphne, leaves messages saying to the deer, “I am actually a wolf.” And they believe her.
So what do you do if you don’t have a resident wolf? Some gardeners use deer repellents. In general, they work for a while and then the deer get used to them, and come for lunch. Irish Spring brand soap, little containers with cotton balls soaked in coyote urine, rotten-egg based repellents. Yes, the work, but if you have a lot of deer and they want to come in, they will.
Garlic clips
The best repellent I’ve found are called garlic clips that I get from Gardeners Supply. These are little devices that hold garlic oil and clip onto branches. You must first puncture a seal with a little tool that comes with it. They’ve worked all winter for me on tasty shrubs.
But the only truly sure-fire solution is to put up an 8-foot tall fence. In recent years manufacturers have come up with good sturdy plastic fine-mesh fencing that weighs little and is affordable. But you still have to put up the fence posts – which is hard work or can be a considerable expense.
You can buy 8-foot steel posts that can be pushed and pounded into the ground. You can buy cedar posts and use a post hole digger. Ten-foot pressure treated 4 by 4 posts last forever, but may leach chemicals into the ground.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
I saw an alternative method once. The gardener bought lengths of plastic pipe, the kind used by plumbers. He cut it into 12- to 24- inch sections and buried them in the ground every 10 feet. He used either a crow bar or an auger to make holes big enough for the pipe.
Then he cut saplings of an appropriate size, say and inch and a half across at the base, and 10-feet tall or more. He just slipped the sticks into the pieces of pipe. They were a little loose inside the pipe, and wobbled a little, but the fence worked – and he didn’t have to buy fence posts.
The slick part of the whole operation was the “door”. He just put 2 extra pieces of pipe in the ground along the fence line, one at the end of the run of fencing, the other 10 feet back. He lifted the final pole (with the attached fencing), and walked it back to an empty pipe 10 feet away and dropped it in. The netting was attached to the fence using plastic zip ties.
I saw another alternative method at a public garden at Fort Ticonderoga, NY. They used electric fencing enhanced by little pieces of aluminum foil that were attached to the fence with clothes pins. Each piece of foil got a dollop of peanut butter, which attracted the deer.
When a deer licked the peanut butter it got a non-lethal but very unpleasant jolt. The power to the fence was turned off each day when visitors were present, and the fence was rolled up, along with the fiberglass rods that supported it. This system has an initial start-up expense of the fence charger, wire and 4-foot posts, but it worked perfectly. The deer did not forget the jolt, even if they were hungry and they certainly could jump the fence.
A less serious, but very aggravating problem is with your neighbor’s cat, who, at this time of the year uses your freshly prepared and seeded carrot or lettuce bed as its personal kitty box. An easy fix? Prune your roses or raspberries and place the thorny branches over them. Felix the cat will stay away, and before long your plants will make it look less inviting.
Then there are the rodents: woodchucks, chipmunks and squirrels, possums and raccoons. Again, there are repellents and fencing, with fencing working better. Every 10 or 15 years I am inundated with squirrels. The only method I have found to salvage my garden is to trap them in Hav-a-Hart traps and deport them 5 miles away (that may be overkill) on a lonely road, far from a house.
Woodchuck in Havahart
Trap size is important: a woodchuck or large animal needs a trap with a 12-inch square opening that is about 36 inches long. Squirrels do fine in something with a 6-inch square door that is 18 inches long.
In order to catch a rodent, it is best to use a trap that only has one door, or to wire one door shut if the trap has two. Put the bait food past the trigger, so the animal will have to step on the trigger to get to the food. Woodchucks like watermelon, apples or beans. Squirrels and chipmunks love sunflower seeds and peanut butter on a cracker. Chunky or smooth? They don’t seem to care.
Trapping is not a solution I like. Why? A released rodent has only a small chance of survival, I am told. Also, in some towns there are laws against transporting wild animals. Maybe we should all just learn to share our bounty with the critters.
Henry is a long-time UNH Master Gardener and the author of 4 gardening books. Write him at
henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364 Cornish Flat, NH 03746.
Early Edibles from the Garden and Woods
Posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 · Leave a Comment
Okay, you may not want to go to the grocery store so much anymore. Tired of eating canned beans? Want something new for your taste buds? Here are some early things I look forward to each spring. These plants are all perennials, so if you don’t have them, you will need to plant them this year for future years.
Parsnips
Parsnips that I planted the previous spring are always one of my first garden treats. I harvest them as soon as the soil thaws. Yes, it’s an old fashioned vegetable, but it’s tasty if prepared properly and easy enough to grow.
Plant parsnip seeds in early summer for next spring’s fare. But if you have seeds saved from last year, don’t use them. Although most vegetable and flower seeds are good for 3 years, parsnip seeds are only good for one year – as are onion and parsley seeds.
Parsnips take an interminable time to germinate – 3 weeks, on average. The roots survive winters in the ground, but the seeds like warm soil to germinate. And as with most root crops, no one starts them indoors to get them going early. Just plant them in the ground in late May or early June. Thin to 2 or 3 inches between plants by the Fourth of July.
As to eating parsnips, don’t overcook them. Steam lightly or sauté them in butter and coat with maple syrup at the last minute. The syrup will glaze them and make the dish fit for a queen. You can cook them with carrots or add fennel seeds for a change of pace.
Next I go to my woods for a real treat: ramps. These are also called wild leeks, and are related to onions, leeks and garlic. They grow wild in moist, dark soil, often alongside streams in maple and beech forests. They often grow in huge swaths, thousands growing in one area. But they are slow growing, so don’t over-harvest them.
Ramps growing in my woods
For several years I dug up and planted about 50 ramps plants each year in my woods, and they have multiplied by offsets nicely. Two or three years ago I started harvesting seeds in late summer and sprinkling them on the soil and covering with just a little forest duff. These have grown and are doing nicely, though they are still too small to eat.
If you want to start some ramps in your woods, find a friend who will teach you how to recognize them. Ramps have pointed green leaves roughly the shape of a canoe and 6 to 9 inches long. They grow from a single point, each plant having 2 to 4 leaves. Frequently the base of the stem is maroon, but it may be green. And the key is this: they smell like garlic. You need to dig down 4 inches or so in the soil to harvest the bulbs, which slightly resemble leeks.
I use ramps the way I use onions – I add them to stir fries, scrambled eggs and stews. The nice thing is, you can eat the leaves, not just the little bulbs.
Another early spring treat is a perennial green called sorrel. Although seeds are available, I recommend buying plants at your local garden center if possible because it takes a long time to get big plants from seed. This plant’s leaves are very tart and almost lemon flavored.
When cooked, sorrel leaves cook down to almost nothing. Fortunately, I found a recipe in Deborah Madison’s fabulous cookbook, Vegetable Literacy, which takes advantage of sorrel’s sharp flavor, but mixes it in with other veggies to bulk it up. Here is what you can do:
Sorrel in early spring
Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan, add 5 ounces of leeks (I always have some frozen from my garden) and 1 cup of water, and simmer 10 minutes covered on medium heat. Add 1.5 cups of peas and 3 cups water and simmer for 5 minutes. The stir in 2 to 3 cups sorrel, allow to wilt, and puree in a blender. Finally stir in a little cream, crème fraiche or yogurt.
The last of my early spring treats is another old fashioned one: rhubarb. Like sorrel, this has a tangy, sharp flavor. I love it in pies, tapioca pudding and jam. Some cooks spoil it by cooking with strawberries, but I feel that diminishes its flavor.
Rhubarb is easy to grow. You will need to buy plants or get roots from a friend – although rhubarb produces flowers stalks and seeds by the gazillion, it does not easily reproduce that way, though I’m told it can be done.
Amend the soil with lots of compost and/or aged manure. Add some organic fertilizer, too, as the roots will be in the same soil for decades – rhubarb lasts forever. I have some plants over 25 years old and going strong. Full sun is best, but like any leafy green it will produce in part shade. Four hours of sunshine will be fine.
One of my favorite rhubarb uses is to make punch. Chop up a few stems and boil in an equal quantity of water. Once it gets mushy you can strain it and add more water and some sugar until you have a nice drink. I just use a little sugar – I like the tea plenty tart. I like to use red stems for the tea, as it looks so nice in a glass or cup. Most people who grow rhubarb have plenty, so you might beg a few stalks if you don’t have your own – yet.
Get Ready to Grow Vegetables This Summer
Posted on Tuesday, April 7, 2020 · Leave a Comment
In uncertain times, one thing is certain: you can always depend on yourself. If you’re worried about having enough food, grow some vegetables that are nearly foolproof. Gardening is not rocket science. Here’s what you need to know:
- All vegetables do best in full sun. The minimum amount of sun is 6 hours, though you can grow herbs and greens in 4 hours.
- Good soil is very important. Yes, heavy clay or sandy soil will produce some veggies, but improving it with compost will improve your results. Buy some, work it in.
- You shouldn’t use any chemicals. Not insecticides, not herbicides, not chemical fertilizers. The fertilizers can be replaced with compost and organic bagged fertilizers that are made with all natural ingredients and minerals. Your plants will do fine without chemicals, and will be healthier for you to eat.
- Adequate moisture is also key. Newly planted seeds or seedlings cannot dry out completely and survive. Later on, when mature tomatoes or beans have roots deep in your soil, they can endure a period of drought. But if they start to wilt, they are in trouble and need a soaking. Visit your garden every day to see how your plants are doing. Buy a hose long enough to reach the garden.
- Weeds are not your friends. They compete for water and soil nutrients, and if big enough, sunshine. For most small gardens, you can keep weeds under control in 10 minutes of weeding – if you do so every day. Mulching will help with both moisture levels and weed control.
Fresh potatoes from one plant
What should you grow? If you’re worried about having enough food, grow potatoes. So long as you don’t have a swarm of potato beetles eating the leaves, or a blight (like the one that did in the Irish) potatoes are sure winners. They will provide calories better than anything else you can grow, and they store well. I’m still eating mine from 2019.
Next on my list of veggies to grow is kale. It produces a lot of greenery that can be added to any soup, stew or stir fry, adding vitamins A to Z. (Yes, I know, there is no vitamin Z). Unlike lettuce or spinach, kale freezes well. You can pack a lot of kale into a quart zipper bag and put it away for days you can’t to go the store. It’s great in a smoothie, too. I’ve never had a pest or disease on my kale.
Kale is full of vitamins and is easy to grow
Then there are the winter squash: Blue Hubbard and Waltham butternut will store well for many months – all winter, and into the next season. They can be stored on a shelf in the pantry, or cooked and frozen. Either way, they are nutritious, tasty, and very easy to grow. But they have long vines, and need space. Zucchini for summer eating are great, very productive, and take less space than winter squash.
Tomatoes are more problematic. Yes, every soup or stew I make uses tomatoes. I freeze them whole in zipper bags, I cook them into sauce and paste. But tomatoes get the blight sometimes. They will surely produce some tomatoes, but in terms of a guaranteed crop? Nope. That’s rolling the dice. My suggestion? Grow some cherry or cocktail-sized tomatoes.
The little tomatoes get ripe earlier, and many are quite disease resistant. My favorite is one called ‘Sun Gold’. Defiant is a red medium sized hybrid with good flavor, and high resistance to late blight – but not early blight. I will always plant some heirlooms for flavor – Brandywine and Oxheart are two of my favorites.
Lastly, I recommend planting onions. They are easy to grow, tasty, and keep away scurvy on long ocean voyages, as we learned in grade school. But of course they are inexpensive, and you can buy a 25 or 50 pound sack of them from a farmer. But I like having my own. Buy onion plants if you can get them, or sets (little bulbs) if you cannot. Plant 3 inches apart.
Even a small garden like this produces nice veggies
So how do you actually prepare a garden for planting? Pick a spot in the middle of the lawn. Get rid of the grass in the plot: Use a shovel or a garden fork to dig it out. Shake the roots to save the soil from the roots. This is hard work. Plan on spending half an hour every day digging out sod until the job is done.
You should not just rent a rototiller and chew up the lawn. Tilling won’t kill the grass, just aggravate it. The roots will produce new plants all summer long. So start early. Today, or this weekend. Don’t put it off (unless the soil is soggy).
How much garden do you need? Don’t bite off more than you can chew. A good starter size is a bed is 10 feet by 12 feet. Mound up soil to build two wide beds – 30 to 36 inches wide, with a walkway down the middle and a bare strip along the outside edge of the plot. You will need to improve the soil with composted cow manure as lawns are notoriously devoid of minerals and organic matter.
Here’s what I planted in 10 by 12 bed in the lawn a few years ago: 2 tomato plants with some early lettuce around them. Two peppers, 2 broccoli, 5 potato plants, a tripod of green beans, some carrots and cukes, and one zucchini. But that was a supplement, not subsistence. I’d say you would need 6 beds to produce enough food to make a serious contribution towards feeding a family of two. Let’s hope our farmers and grocers will stay in business!
Planting Bulbs Now for Summer Blooms
Posted on Tuesday, March 31, 2020 · Leave a Comment
If you’re home from work and champing at the bit to DO SOMETHING, planting some bulbs now for summer blossoms might be just your ticket. I recently got some calla lilies and sword lilies and planted them in pots.
Calla lilies come in various colors and white
Calla lilies ( Zantedeschia aethiopica) come in various colors and sizes. The blossoms are hard to describe: they are often called trumpet shaped, but they aren’t really. Each is an asymmetrical trumpet called a spadix with a yellow spathe inside. The spathe is a narrow, pointed protrusion made of tiny flowers. You’ve seen a spathe if you’ve looked inside a Jack-in-the-pulpit.
Grocery stores often sell pots of short callas with pink blossoms, or taller white ones. These beauties are not true lilies at all, but members of the Arum family which includes Jack-in-the-Pulpit, skunk cabbage and the house plants Dieffenbachia and Philodendron.
Calla lilies are perennial in warm climates, but, like dahlias and gladiolas, must be dug and brought inside before the winter here. They are relatively inexpensive. I paid $12.99 for 3 big rhizomes (a bulb-like modified stem) at Gardeners Supply (www.gardeners.com). Now is the time to start some calla rhizomes indoors.
The calla rhizomes I planted were, at first, mysterious. Unlike daffodils or tulips, there was no obvious top or bottom. No pointy end to go up. But I did a little research and found that the smooth, rounded side goes down and the gnarly side (covered with little bumps and protrusions) goes up. They should be planted 3 to 5 inches deep, and given a square foot of soil surface for 3 bulbs.
I planted 3 calla lily bulbs in an 11-inch pot, which is a little crowded according to the recommendation on the package. Others I planted solo in 6-inch pots. In either case, it’s important to have good deep pots full of rich potting mix. I had saved plenty of last year’s potting soil at the end of the season, and I mixed it with equal quantities of composted cow manure and added a tablespoon of organic fertilizer. Later I will occasionally add some fish and seaweed fertilizer to the water I give my calla lilies.
Everything I read indicates that calla lilies like rich soil and plenty of moisture. That contradicts what I have seen: in Portugal I saw wild calla lilies growing in dry places with poor soil – including right alongside railroad tracks. What is certain is that they do best with plenty of sunshine, six hours or more per day.
One of my favorite summer bulb plants is called a variety of common names: peacock orchid, sword lily, or fragrant gladiolus (even though this plant is not an orchid, a lily or a gladiolus). That’s why I like Latin names. If you ask for Acidanthera murielae, plant-knowledgeable people around the world will know what you mean. But for now, I’ll refer to it as sword lily.
Sword lilies are easy to grow and very fragrant
The sword lily has long, narrow leaves – like swords- that stand 18 inches or more tall. The blossoms are white with deep purple markings in the center of the 6-petaled flower, along with a little yellow at the very center. You get 2 or 3 blossoms per stem, and they are enticingly fragrant, particularly in the evening.
The smooth side of a calla lily goes down
Like the calla lily, sword lilies are tropical so we can grow them here, but they won’t overwinter outdoors. But the corms (bulbs) will survive in a 60 degree location all winter, and you can re-plant them next year. I have planted them in the ground, but favor them in pots because they are so fragrant, they are wonderful on the deck.
According to the directions, you can plant a dozen bulbs in a square foot of soil. So I planted a dozen in 12-inch pot, each bulb 3 to 4 inches deep. You can plant them directly in the soil, of course, but I like starting the early for a mid-summer bloom instead of a fall bloom.
Other summer bulbs include gladiolous, crocosmia, ranunculus and best of all, elephant ear. Those are all delightful plants, each with its own requirements and benefits. All need plenty of sun and to be brought inside before winter.
But in the space remaining, let me say that in Cameroon, West Africa where I spent nearly 4 years as a young man with the Peace Corps, elephant ear was a food staple. There it was called cocoyam, and it was the corm, or bulb, that was boiled, pounded and served as a main dish with a spicy sauce, and perhaps a little meat.
This elephant ear plant should get huge this summer
Elephant ear leaves get huge – three feet long and half as wide. The leaves are also edible, and substituted for the non-existing Tupperware container in Cameroon. Just wrap your lunch in a leaf, tie it up, and go off to the fields. They produce no noticeable flower.
Because of my long association with elephant ear, I often grow it. It likes full sun and wet soil, or at least moist soil. I have grown it in the ground, but mostly grow it in a pot. I have had one all winter, indoors. I had cut it back in the fall, and thought it might stay dormant, but it has been growing in a west-facing window, though the leaves are very small now. You can order corms and plant them now. Each bulb can weigh a pound or more.
So if you are suffering from cabin fever, get some summer-blooming bulbs, a bag of potting soil, and get going. It’ll give you something to look forward to!
You may reach Henry by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is a UNH Master Gardener and the author of 4 gardening books.
It’s Time to Prune Your Fruit Trees
Posted on Tuesday, March 24, 2020 · Leave a Comment
We are lucky this March: no deep snow to keep us from approaching our fruit trees, ladder and clippers in hand. Some years we still have thigh-deep snow in March, which is the traditional time to prune our apples, pears, peaches and more.
There is nothing magical about March as a time for pruning your fruit trees: you can prune anytime of the year without harming your trees. After the buds open up in late spring they are more easily knocked off, but that is not usually an issue for home gardeners – we have more fruit buds than needed. I think March is the time when, traditionally, farmers were less busy – so they pruned apples.
I recently took a good look at the fruit trees on my property. I have 2 pear trees and numerous apples, both crabapples and standard apples. Since I prune yearly, my trees are in pretty good shape.
Water sprouts need to be removed yearly
The key to good tree health and production is to allow every leaf on the trees to get sunshine. Shaded leaves don’t do much to produce food for roots or fruit, and those leaves also shade others. I like to say a robin should be able to fly through a fruit tree without getting hurt.
It’s important to recognize the basic nature of each tree. Most pears, for example want to grow tall and lean. However, picking pears on a tall tree is difficult, and you can reduce the height of a pear without damaging it. I have been known to lop off the top 10 feet of a pear tree without adverse results. Yes, the tree did try to send up lots of suckers, or vertical shoots, to replace the portion I removed, but they are easy to snip off each year.
How much can you prune from a tree each year? In the past experts said, up to one third of a tree. Nowadays, experts advise removing not more than a quarter of a tree. How do you calculate that? Leave your trimmings in a pile on the ground as you work. Then you can see how much you’ve taken. Try to calculate the percentage of leaves taken off. A one-inch diameter branch that is 6 feet long has lots of leaves, but a 6-inch diameter branch may have few.
Dead wood does not count in the calculation of how much you can remove. Even now, before leaf-out, you can recognize a dead branch easily: the bark is dry and flaky. If you take your thumb nail and scratch a small twig on a branch, it should show green. If not, it is dead and should be removed.
It’s important to know where to make your cuts. You should leave the “branch collar” on the tree. That’s the swollen and wrinkly part of a branch right where it attaches to the tree or a larger branch. It’s where the tree heals itself. Don’t cut flush to the trunk or a larger branch.
Crossing or rubbing branches need to be removed
Here is what you should remove: 1. Branches that are headed back into the tree or going through the middle of the tree. 2. Branches that are damaged, cracked or split. 3. Branches that are competing for light with another branch – either below it or above it. 4. If two branches that are rubbing, remove one. 5. Those pencil-thin “water sprouts” that shoot straight up.
A few words about water sprouts. These are numerous on some fruit trees, less so on others. If you have a nice open tree that gets good sunshine on all its leaves, the tree is less likely to produce many of those pesky sprouts. They are often a stress response – they may be indicating the roots are not getting enough food, so the tree responds by producing more leaves. So leave a few sprouts if you have many, but also work on training branches to reach out, away from the center of the tree to get more sun.
Fruit Spurs are Short
Where is fruit produced? Most fruit trees produce “fruit spurs” that blossom and also produce leaves. These spurs range in length from 2 inches to 6 inches. For apples, a fruit spur will not produce fruit the first year it grows, only in subsequent years. Most spurs are produced on branches that are on branches that are 30- to 60-degrees from vertical. So those vertical water sprouts will not produce fruit.
You can change the angle of a branch by tying it down, spreading it with a piece of wood or even weighing down a branch with a jar of water. Hang the jar (or 1-quart plastic milk jug) and add water until the mostly vertical branch bends down to a better angle. Remove the jar in mid-June and it should stay in place.
Some fruit trees produce lots of shoots around the base of the tree. Those are an unsightly nuisance, and should be cut right to the ground. Since most fruit trees are grafted to root stock, those shoots are not the same variety as the tree itself.
Later on, if you get a huge number of blossoms, you will need to thin out some of the fruit in early summer. If you don’t do that, your fruits will be small – no matter how nicely pruned your tree might be.
So get out your pruners and saw, and spend a sunny afternoon working on your fruit trees. Not only will your trees do better, you will, too.
How to Make a Spring Wreath
Posted on Tuesday, March 17, 2020 · Leave a Comment
The world seems to be in turmoil. Recent news is disconcerting at best. But I stay cheerful, and you can too, by being creative and/or by enjoying the outdoors. Being outside always perks me up. I love looking at my snowdrops, winter aconite and crocus. For creativity, I recently went out to collect materials for a spring wreath, then made one. I’m happy every time I look at it.
The wreath I made recently uses material from just 3 plants, though others can also be used. Here is what you need:
Several lengths of freshly cut grape vines, each piece 5 to 15 feet long and a quarter to a half an inch in diameter. Thicker vines are hard to work with. It is important to use living, not dead, vines; those I cut were a greenish white inside and flexible, so I knew they were alive. Dead vines are brittle and not suitable.
About 50 stems of red-twigged dogwood. Young stems 18 to 24 inches long with bright color are best. Branching stems are good, too.
About 25 stems of pussywillow. If the gray “pussies” are not fully open, place the stems in a vase in a warm place for a day to two and they will open up, getting fuzzier.
Wreath base ready for twigs
Begin by forming a vine circle 14 to 16 inches in diameter by overlapping (or twisting) one half of the vine over the other half – the same way you would start tying your shoelaces. Then grasp one of the sections of vine and weave it around the vine circle in loops, over and under, pulling it tight as you go. After each piece of vine is in place, squeeze the circle to make it a nice circle.
When you run out of vine, tuck the end into the circle and repeat the maneuver with the other part of the vine. Then use shorter, thinner pieces of vine – say 6 to 8 feet long and pencil-thick – and weave them around the wreath base until you have a circle about 2 inches thick.
The great thing about this grapevine wreath is that you don’t have to tie the decorative stems with wire, the way you do an evergreen Christmas wreath. You can just slide stems of pussywillows in between the vines and natural tension will hold them in place. In fact, I had to use a screwdriver to lift the vines at times in order to slide the stems in place.
Finished wreath looks great on a wall
I went around first with the red dogwood stems, poking them into the grape vine wreath every couple or inches, and almost parallel to the grape vines (not perpendicular). I wanted about 12 inches of stem coming out of the wreath and 6 inches woven into the grape vines and other stems. Both willows and dogwoods are flexible and easy to work with. I snipped the ends to a point with pruners to make it easier to insert them between the vines.
Then I added stems of pussywillow, poking them into open spaces in the grapevines, or using a screwdriver to open a space for my stems. When it was nearly done I hung the wreath up where I could work on it and was better able to see where there were gaps that needed twigs, and added a few more.
Where can you source the material for your wreath? If you don’t grow domestic grapes, look in your woods. Wild grapes climb trees in hardwood forests. You can pull them down and cut them up without guilt – they can choke out nice trees if they get big enough.
Red-twigged dogwood grows wild, often along roadside ditches and wet places. If the town road crew mows them down in mid-summer, they will be perfect – young and bright red. Older stems are a grayish red, and not as interesting.
I use a cut-and-hold pole pruner for collecting anything that grows in a swamp (dogwoods, pussywillows and later, winterberry). The pruner will grab the stem at the same time it cuts it, so I don’t get wet retrieving the stems (and even the most obedient Labrador retriever will not bring the stems to you). I got mine from The Wildflower Seed & Tool Company (
www.wildflower-seed.com or 800-456-3359).
Everyone should grow pussywillows. They are good for the soul at this time of year. The type I used in my wreath is called Japanese fantail or dragon willow, Salix udensis ’Sekka’. It is hardy to Zone 4, surviving temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees. It, and 150 other varieties, are available from Vermont Willow Nursery (https://www.willowsvermont.com). By the way, the nursery is for sale, along with 50 acres and a farm house, if you’re interested.
Fantail willow grows to be 10 to 15 feet tall and wide. They are fast-growing and I’ve read that, like most willows, they are weak-wooded and prone to breakage. I have not had any breakage on mine, however. The bark is a nice reddish-brown and quite handsome. They produce huge numbers of those fuzzy blossoms we love.
Finished wreath looks great on a wall
My finished wreath was about 36 inches in diameter, for placement on a wall, not a door. If you want a wreath for the door, you should use shorter stems. So go pick materials for a wreath. They’re quite easy to make, and sweet to the eye.
Henry has been a UNH Master Gardener for over 20 years, and is the author of 4 gardening books. Reach him at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.
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