Tips for Forcing Spring Bulbs Indoors
Posted on Sunday, November 4, 2018 · Leave a Comment
Forced daffodils
One of the easiest, and most satisfying, gardening activities I do each year is to plant tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and crocus in containers each fall. I keep them in a place that is cold, but not freezing, for 3 or 4 months, then bring them into the warmth of the house where I get gorgeous blossoms when snow may still be on the ground. I recently potted up a dozen containers with spring-blooming bulbs.
There are a few things you should know about forcing bulbs. First, you will need a cold dark place where you can store your bulbs after planting them in containers. Thirty-five to fifty degrees Fahrenheit is best, though if the temps go down below freezing for a while, that’s all right, too.
Second, it is important to select bulbs that are labeled “early” or “mid-season”, not “late-season”. It is important label each pot with the date you planted it so you can decide when to bring it into the warmth of the house. If you bring in tulips too early you will get leaves, but not blossoms. Always wait 4 months for tulips to be ready.
Daffodils only need to rest for 3 months before you bring them into the house. The smaller bulbs will do fine with even less. You will see the noses of snowdrops or crocus pop up out of the planting mix, begging for some sunshine so they can bloom.
Small bulbs can be planted close together
Planting bulbs for forcing is easier than planting them outdoors. All you need are a few appropriate containers and some potting mix. I use my window box each year, forcing 25 daffodils in a box roughly 36 inches long, 7 inches deep and 7 inches from front to back. It has holes drilled in the bottom for drainage, which is important – no bulb likes soggy, poorly drained soil.
When preparing any container for planting, fill it about half way up with a good potting soil. Or you can mix the potting soil with compost to make a 50-50 mix. Or you can make your own potting mix using peat moss, compost and perlite or vermiculite.
Perlite is the white stuff you often see in commercial potting mixes – it looks like Styrofoam. But it is actually an expanded mineral that has been heated until the moisture inside it makes it pop like popcorn. It is great for keeping soil mixes lightweight and holds air, which is important for roots. Vermiculite is another expanded mineral – this one from mica. It is lightweight, but holds water.
Daffodils planted in a window box for forcing
The soil mix you use should never be allowed to dry out completely when forcing bulbs. This means you need to check on the pots once a month. If the soil mix is dry, you need to water lightly. I like to start with a mix that is quite moist when I plant the bulbs. If you use bagged peat moss in making a mix, be sure to moisten it a few days in advance. Peat moss does not quickly absorb water when it is fully dry.
So you have your pot half full of potting mix. How many bulbs can you fit into the pots? I often use rectangular clay pots that are a foot long and 5 inches deep and from front to back. If using small bulbs like crocus, I plant 20 or 25. For larger bulbs like daffodils or tulips I plant 10 or 12 in the same size pot. In a round 8-inch pot I planted 3 hyacinths this year. I plant bulbs closer in a pot than I would outdoors.
Once planted, cover the bulbs with your potting mix and pat the soil with your hands to firm it up around the bulbs. Then give the pots a light watering and place in a cool place, as described above.
If you don’t have a cold basement, you might place them in a garage or even on the steps coming up outdoors from your basement. Just remember that they must develop roots and start growing in a cold, not freezing location.
Depending where you store your bulbs, mice or squirrels will eat tulips and other bulbs indoors just as greedily indoors as out. And I’ve even had them dig daffodils out of pots and leave them in disgust –they must wonder who would want to eat them.
The easiest solution to the rodent problem is to cover each container with a piece of plywood cut to the size of the container. Just be sure to check the containers often, come spring. I’ve had bulbs start growing, hit the plywood and get all bent over.
To maximize the number of blooms you get, you can plant two layers of bulbs. Plant crocus or other small bulbs over daffodils or tulips. Just cover the bigger bulbs with soil mix, then add the small bulbs and cover them. It can be quite dramatic. I have done this outside, too.
By mid-winter I am aching to see blossoms. Since I won’t be seeing them outside, I love to have them inside. If you have had trouble with animals eating your tulips, forcing bulbs indoors is a good way to enjoy them – without fear of squirrels digging them up or deer eating the flowers. Plant them now, or certainly by mid-December, and enjoy them in early spring.
Henry can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of 4 gardening books.
What Does a Gardener Do When the Rodents Are Out to Get Us?
Posted on Wednesday, October 24, 2018 · Leave a Comment
Like the Joad family in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, countless squirrels are on the move. Heedless of traffic, they cross the road in search of new sources of food. Steely-eyed gardeners bear down on them, thinking revenge for the destruction of their crops, particularly tomatoes, apples and pumpkins.
Last year was a “mast” year, meaning that our oaks produced a huge crop of acorns. This fed our squirrels, allowing them to produce more babies. We also had good snow cover last winter, which meant that rodents could hide from owls and hawks.
Squirrels need a crossing guard
Voles and mice are not often seen squished on the road, but other signs are evident to me: when I harvested my carrots and potatoes, for example, many had been chewed. And a grand influx of mice into homes has been reported this fall. What can you do to protect your plants and your harvest from all these rodents?
First, if you have fruit trees that are young, you should protect their trunks against rodent damage. Voles, those stocky, short-tailed mouse relatives are the worst culprits. They can reach sexual maturity in just 5 weeks after birth, so they can increase in numbers exponentially, given the right conditions. If hungry enough, they will chew the bark off young fruit trees, killing them by damaging the tender cambium layer all around a tree, girdling it.
To prevent that from happening, you can physically keep the voles away with fine-mesh screening called quarter-inch hardware cloth. It comes in 18- and 24-inch rolls, and I recommend the wider roll. A single layer of mesh screen around the base of the tree will keep the voles a bay. Remove the wire next spring to keep it from getting swallowed up by the bark as the tree grows (that would take a few years, but I’ve seen it happen).
Also available are plastic protectors. Some are tubes slit up the side, others are rolls of plastic to wrap around young trees to protect them from rodents. If your young tree has branches in its lower 2 feet of trunk, you will have to prune off those lower branches to fit the protectors. Mature trees have bark thick enough to deter the rodents.
A few words of warning: do not leave those plastic protectors in place forever. I’ve seen trees damaged by them when left on for a few years – the bark can rot, just as it will if buried in mulch.
Don’t create mulch volcanoes like this
As you get ready for winter, check the mulch you may have placed around trees to keep the grass from growing up around them. “Volcanoes” of mulch around trees can be lethal. Mulch holds moisture and often harbors fungal pathogens that will destroy the bark your trees. Instead of a volcano of mulch, create a “donut” of mulch. Leave a few inches of free space around your trees.
While checking the mulch around your trees, also look for the trunk flare. At the ground level you should see trees widen and “flare out”. In mature trees in the forest you will see what appear to be fat roots appear at the foot of the tree, roots that disappear into the soil.
If the flare in a tree you planted is covered with soil, it will damage the bark – and in 6 to 10 years it can kill the tree. You can save your trees from a slow death by pulling back the soil from the base of the tree, exposing the trunk flare.
Moles are commonly blamed for all kinds of atrocities, but they do not eat your plants. They are carnivores that eat grubs and earthworms. If you have a Japanese beetle problem, they will help you by eating the beetle grubs. But in winter or spring moles often cause problems by digging up soil and leaving mounds on the lawn. There are castor oil-based repellents that will discourage them. I do not recommend poisoning them as pets and wildlife can be injured or killed.
Humane traps are not always humane
Given the high squirrel population you may wonder if you should deport some before winter by trapping them with Hav-a-Heart type humane traps. Probably not, if you care about their well-being. According to what I have read, relocating rodents is not really humane. In a new location they are not likely to survive very long. They will either be eaten by predators or die of starvation.
As to the influx of mice in your house, there really is little you can do besides set traps – either humane ones, or snap traps. But if you store potatoes and carrots in a cool cellar, as I usually do, protect your food from mice and rats. The easiest way to do that is to store them in a second fridge. To keep them from drying out, put them in an open plastic bag with holes punched in it. Potatoes and carrots need to breath in storage. Check them from time to time, and eat them up before they go bad.
We share this planet with our little rodent friends, and I do brake for squirrels. Still, I do all I can to keep them from sharing my harvest or eating my plants.
You may reach Henry at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or by mail at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. Please include a SASE if you write Henry and want a response by US Mail.
It’s Time to Plant Bulbs for Spring Flowers
Posted on Thursday, October 18, 2018 · Leave a Comment
For decades I’ve been planting spring-flowering bulbs. Some come back every year, some disappear after a few years, and some I treat as annuals. The result? Just when mud season is about to swallow me whole, I am rewarded with flowers to enjoy outdoors – and indoors in a vase. Now is the time to plant bulbs.
First, some basics: All bulbs should bloom fine the first year. To come back, most need sunshine and well-drained soil. Most little bulbs will do fine in part shade.
Tulips are ephemeral, but worth trying
I treat tulips as annuals, even in the best of circumstances. Not only that, squirrels will watch you plant them, and then get right to work digging them up as soon as you settle into a chair with a cup of tea. Deer will eat the blossoms, come spring. Daffodils are a better bet.
At the end of Bill Clinton’s term I got to interview the White House gardener, Dale Haney. He told me that they plant thousands of tulips each year on the White House grounds. I noticed lots of big, fat gray squirrels that seemed quite fearless, so I asked him how they kept them from eating the tulips.
The trick he said, is to plant masses together, and then spread chicken wire over the bed before you finish filling the hole with soil. Lay out the wire mesh an inch or two beneath the soil. That way a pesky squirrel will run into a barrier. And somehow, the tulip buds will find their way through the holes.
If you do that, and I have, make rectangular beds roughly the width of your chicken wire. I first tried a circular planting, and cut the chicken wire – which turns into something like razor wire when you cut it. I should have worn elbow-high leather gloves! I have decided it’s not worth the bother.
The other remedy Mr. Haney suggested, is to feed the squirrels. A fat squirrel is a lazy squirrel, he said, so feed them lots of corn. Your tax dollars do that at the White House. Huh.
Daffodils are generally long-lived. They are mildly poisonous, so rodents don’t eat them. And although daffodils will bloom in shady or half-shade places, they really do a whole lot better in full sun, with good drainage. No bulbs want to grow under pine trees or other evergreens.
The best way to plant bulbs is to dig a big hole and plant a lot of bulbs all at once. For daffodils or tulips, dig a hole 6 to 8 inches deep, 24 inches wide to 36 inches long. Have a wheelbarrow or tarp to place the soil on, so you don’t make a mess on the lawn to clean up.
The long handled CobraHead weeder makes nice furrows without having to bend over
Add an inch or more of compost, and then sprinkle some bulb booster or organic fertilizer in the bottom of the hole. Loosen the soil in the bottom of the hole with a hand tool, mixing the fertilizer and compost with the soil. Next, arrange the bulbs in the hole. Plant them pointy end up.
I like a mass of blossoms, so I plant bulbs close together. I read the directions for the bulb variety I am planting, and then plant them a little closer together. Pay attention to planting depth, too. Smaller bulbs like crocus need much less depth than big fat daffodils.
Check the depth of your hole before planting
Most bulb plants reproduce by growing offsets, or little bulbs that develop alongside the mother bulb. After a year or two, the offsets will bloom, too, and you can dig up the bulbs and divide them after blooming if you want. I never have done that, but I remember my parents did when I was a boy.
What else should you try planting? Snowdrops bloom in early March for me, and are a must. Start with 50 bulbs – they are not very dramatic in a small clump. They do drop seeds and will show up downhill from where you plant them in a few years.
Glory-of-the-snow is nearly as early as snowdrops, but instead of white, these are purple or blue or even pink. And they look up, not down like snowdrops, so you can see their petals and interior better. Scilla, another favorite of mine, are a deep purple, and look down. Small, but intense.
Camassia
Last year I planted several Camassia, a late-spring or early summer blooming bulb plant. They were wonderful! Each plant produces a few flower spikes that are 2 or 3 feet tall, and are covered with blue or purple florets. Very dramatic! They are hardy to Zone 4. Unlike most bulb plants, they do well in wet or moist soils in winter.
Alliums are in the onion family, are wonderful, and are not bothered by rodents. Some are huge, with balls nearly a foot wide that are airy and open, filled with little florets. The big ones can be expensive ($4 a bulb or more) but last a long time and are very dramatic. Even a half a dozen big ones will make a statement.
So get off the couch, get outside and plant some bulbs. Do so, and come spring you’ll be sending me an e-mail saying how glad you are that you did!
You may reach Henry by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of 4 gardening books and is a lifetime UNH Master Gardener.
Tips for Growing Great Garlic
Posted on Tuesday, October 9, 2018 · Leave a Comment
Now is the time to buy garlic for planting – unless you have some from your own garden that you saved for that purpose, as I do. You’ll want to get your garlic planted a month before the ground freezes, so depending on where you live, you may want to plant some soon. Garlic needs to establish roots now, and is not generally planted in the spring.
Of all the veggies I plant, garlic is the easiest to grow, and a good harvest is guaranteed if follow my instructions. But please don’t sue me if something goes wrong with yours. I’ve never had a bad year in the past 25 years or so of growing garlic.
Garlic clove
There are two categories of garlic: hard neck and soft neck. Both will grow in New England, but hard neck is the type grown by most farmers, and the most cold-hardy. It produces a stiff scape or stem each summer that is edible. Soft neck garden generally comes from California, and is good in the kitchen; it is also the type braided and hung from the ceiling in Italian restaurants as decoration. Hard neck garlic generally has more flavor, and a wide variety of flavors are possible, depending on the type you grow.
Garlic does best in rich soil that drains well. If you have a heavy clay soil (one that is sticky when wet), you will want to add plenty of compost to your soil. Adding sand will not help, as sand added to heavy clay produces something like concrete that hardens up in dry times.
If you have poor soil, you may want to build a wood-sided raised bed, and add plenty of compost and topsoil that you purchase in bulk or in bags. I find Moo-Doo brand composted cow manure and topsoil are a good soil additives that are sold in bags in many garden centers.
When making a wood-sided bed, do not use treated lumber. Even though most treated lumber is safe to handle and much less toxic than 20 years ago, I don’t want any chemicals leaching into my soil. I use rough-sawn lumber from a local sawmill, preferably hemlock. It generally lasts about 10 years. Eight-inch wide planks are wide enough to make a nice box.
Plain pine boards will work, too, and metal corners are readily available at garden centers or from catalogs like Gardeners Supply and Lee Valley Tools. The corners make constructing a garden box easy even for non-carpenters. All you need is a cordless drill to drive the screws. Carrots and other root crops do well in garden boxes, so you can alternate them with garlic in subsequent years if you build 2 or more boxes.
The long handled CobraHead weeder makes nice furrows without having to bend over
Once the soil is loose and weed-free, I plant. I take my long-handled CobraHead weeder, a nice single-tined weeder, and make furrows in the soil of my raised bed. I keep the furrows about 8 inches apart. I sprinkle some organic bagged fertilizer into each row, and stir it in.
I generally use my own garlic for planting, as it has adapted to my soil and climate over the years. But if I see big, fat bulbs of garlic at a farmers market, I sometimes buy some. I don’t recommend buying garlic for planting at the grocery store as most has been treated to prevent it from germinating, and so it will last longer.
Where can you get garlic for planting? If there is none at your local farmers market, you can get organic garlic from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine (877-564-6697 or www.johnnyseeds.com). But don’t wait too long – they sell out most years.
Place your garlic cloves on the soil to establish spacing before planting
I break the garlic bulbs apart, separating the cloves – there are usually 5 to 10 cloves per head. I push the cloves into the loose soil, pointy end up, about 3 inches deep, and 4 inches apart. I cover with soil, and then pat it gently.
The last step is key if you want a weed-free garlic bed: put a foot of fluffy mulch hay or straw over the planted garlic. The straw will pack down over the winter and make a nice mulch that will keep most weeds from growing, but the garlic will push through it. It will be ready to harvest next July.
Depending on when you plant, the soil temperature, and when real cold weather comes, your garlic may send up a few green shoots this fall. Don’t panic! It won’t hurt your garlic. When cold weather comes, it will go dormant and do just fine next spring.
I believe that garlic is a healthy and tasty addition to my diet. It may even be medicinal – it has been used that way for centuries. Some believe that if you crush your garlic and then wait 10 minutes before cooking, it will generate cancer-fighting compounds. Who knows? Certainly it can’t hurt.
And this winter if you chew on a clove of garlic before going to the store, you’ll never get a cold – because people will stand back from you if they cough!
Henry lives in Cornish Flat, NH. He is the author of 4 gardening books and is a UNH Master Gardener. His e-mail is henry.homeyer@comcast.net.
Seven Fall Gardening Chores
Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2018 · Leave a Comment
For many years I was in denial. Yes, I refused to accept that fall and winter were on the way by October. I didn’t start fall clean up until November, and by then it was cold, raw, often wet and unpleasant out. Now, having reached a certain age, I prefer to work when it is warm and sunny – so I start fall clean up in September, and try hard to finish by the end of October. I recommend you do so, too. Here’s my list:
- Clean up the vegetable garden. This means pulling plants – and weeds – and covering the bare soil with mulch. I put things that might harbor disease or insect pests on my burn pile, everything else goes in the compost. So tomato and potato plants and all vine crops go on the burn pile.
As to mulching the soil, I do this for two reasons: First, I don’t want hard rains to wash away my topsoil. That is true everywhere on my property – bare soil invites erosion. Second, bare soil is open to receive wind-blown weed seeds. They would germinate next spring before I plant my tomatoes, if I let them.
What do I use for mulch? In the vegetable garden, I use fall leaves that I have chopped up with my lawnmower. They are great for improving the soil, too. I rarely have bare soil in my flower beds – they are full of perennials.
- Cut back perennials. Cleaning up the beds now, and doing a good weeding, will save me a lot of time in the spring – when I am busy with other spring tasks like planting my vegetables. I don’t cut back everything. I leave flowers with seeds that the finches and other seed-eaters will enjoy. Black-eyed Susans and purple coneflower are two they love. Sunflowers will get eaten in place, and most have already been eaten; if so, I cut down the stalks.
- Blackberries and raspberry plants need to be cut back now. Cut off the stems that produced berries this year and leave the new growth. These berries produce on second year growth.
This 5 foot pole pruner will cut and grab
I have a cut-and-grab pole pruner which helps me to avoid getting scraped by thorns. I just cut the plants at ground-level and the tool grabs on to the cut stem, allowing me to pull it out and place it in the wheelbarrow without getting bitten by the thorns. It is available from The Wildflower Seed & Tool Company (www.wildflower-seed.com or 800-456-3359). These tools come in various telescoping lengths.
- Add fuel stabilizer to your gas can now, so that your lawnmower and other power tools will go into winter with gas that will not go flat. Chain saws, rototillers and such need it too, and you may need to drain out the existing fuel, re-fill and run them for 10 minutes to avoid having gunky gas in the machines in spring. Ask at your local garage or auto part store.
Fuel stabilizer will help your small engines start in the spring
After you have tended to your power tools, take a few minutes to clean up and oil your hand tools, too. Before you put away your shovels and rakes, wipe the metal clean of soil and apply a little light machine oil to prevent rusting. Wooden handles benefit from an application of boiled linseed oil. I have one tool with a wood handle that has been in my family for over 60 years. I don’t leave it outside in the rain, and I oil it once a year. It’s as good as new – and has a lovely patina.
- Divide daylilies, iris, phlox, asters and other large clumps of perennials now. Cut the stalks to the ground, and then lift the clump with a garden fork by going around the clump and loosening the soil on all sides. Then pry it out and divide into 2, 3 or 4 pieces with a shovel or a hand tool. Don’t worry about cutting the roots, they will not be damaged. You can do this in the spring if you prefer. This is also the time to move peonies, if you must.
- Feed your soil and lawn. Fall is a good time to add compost, fertilizer and limestone to your soil and lawn. I test my soil pH with a little kit that costs just about $5. I aim to have my soil pH between 6.2 and 6.8, which is just slightly acidic. If the pH in your soil is lower than 6.0, you should add limestone to raise the pH (except for blueberries, hollies and rhododendrons, which like acidic soil).
Add compost now and work it into the soil
Adding compost will improve almost any soil. I added it to my vegetable garden for 30 years, and now have a soil so rich and black I need not add any more. Fertilizer? I only add organic fertilizers as they add all the micronutrients plants need, but that are not in chemical fertilizers. And organic fertilizers are slow-release.
- Lastly, mow your lawn before the snow flies. Bring the blades down lower, as a shorter cut will help to minimize risk of fungal diseases. Rake it if need be, so there are not clumps of grass left on the lawn.
Getting ready for winter is satisfying for me. It’s like tucking a child into bed. And I like looking out the windows and seeing a tidy garden, all ready for spring. Have at it!
Send comments or questions to Henry at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. Henry is a UNH lifetime Master Gardener, and the author of 4 gardening books.
Fall Mums and Asters: Joys of the Season
Posted on Tuesday, September 25, 2018 · Leave a Comment
Summer is over, officially, and the garden knows it. Tomatoes exist only in the kitchen, many flowers are looking lackluster, and trees are losing their leaves. What’s a gardener to do? I buy color in the form of chrysanthemums and fall asters. And I also enjoy wild asters that appear along the roadside and the edge of my woods.
Wild woodland aster
Let’s start with asters. My most comprehensive wildflower reference, The Illustrated Books of Wildflowers and Shrubs by William Carey Grimm, lists 29 native species of wild asters. Walking along a country road recently I spotted at least 5 of them. Some were tall and white or purple, others shorter and pink, purple or mauve. Some had wide rays in their flowers, others had delicate rays close together. And I wouldn’t begin to try to assign names to them. They were all lumped together in my mind as just asters. I like them all.
At garden centers there are nice purple asters for sale, short ones, either bright purple or pink. Their tags will say they are perennials, and they are. What the tags do not say is that yours won’t have a hundred blossoms or more next year and hug the ground. They will be taller, probably much taller, and have fewer blossoms.
The asters you buy that have been cut back repeatedly in the early summer so that the stems will fork, making them bushier, wider and shorter. Each little stem is capable of producing a blossom. If you want to get something next fall that resembles this year’s purchase, you will need to cut back the plants at least twice in early summer. Me? I leave that to the professionals.
Monarch on New England Aster
Of the tall perennial asters, I have some that are 5 to 6 feet tall and produce huge numbers of flowers. These are New England asters, a native species. They produce large amounts of pollen and nectar and are important to our butterflies and bees. Monarch butterflies often feed on mine.
In recent times those people who provide us with the botanical names of plants have changed the genus name of asters from Aster to Symphyotrichum . The species name of the common New England aster still remains novae-angliae. Why do they do that? I suppose because they can, and to show that they know a lot more than we do about certain things. Huh.
Another aster I love is the bushy or rice-button aster (Symphyotrichum dumosus). Its lower leaves don’t seem to be affected by the fungal disease that so often turn New England aster stems brown. Its leaves and stems are shiny and a very dark green. It is usually the last aster to bloom for me, only starting in late September or early October. The variety I purchased is known as ‘Wesley Williams’. It is 4-6 feet tall, with intensely purple-blue flowers about an inch across. Like many tall things, it needs to be staked to prevent flopping, particularly in rich soils where it grows tallest.
Each fall I treat myself to some chrysanthemums. The genus name of mums, by the way, has now changed to Dendranthema. I don’t buy them at the grocery store in an effort to get the cheapest price. I go to my local farm stand and buy the biggest, most beautiful pots of mums I can. I like to support local farmers and garden centers – and I believe I get better quality flowers from them. Mums that have traveled on a truck from New Jersey aren’t necessarily of bad quality, but those that were grown near home are less likely to have been stressed or damaged by too little (or too much) water.
Chrysanthemums
Sometimes I just plunk those mums down, pots and all, on the front steps. Doing so means I will have to water them every hot sunny afternoon, particularly if the mums are growing in peat pots instead of plastic ones. I like peat pots – they don’t use any petroleum products – but they do dry out more quickly than plastic. This is true even if you plant the pots in the ground. The lip of a peat pot will let moisture evaporate and dry out the roots unless the ground is pretty wet. So tear off the lip of the peat pot, or remove it entirely if popping them in the ground.
Mums, like the asters, are sold after extensive grooming and pruning throughout the summer. I once estimated that there were 300 blossoms on one 8-inch wide pot of mums. Left to come back next year, you might get a tenth as many blossoms. What you see when you buy your mums is what you’ll get: they will not grow anymore blossoms, but the buds should all open.
Other fall perennials currently in bloom for me include various black-eyed Susans, turtlehead, fall anemones and snakeroot (Cimicifuga ramosa). So I shouldn’t be lamenting the lack of color – besides, it won’t be long before the maples and other trees start their annual show.
Henry is the author of 4 gardening books, and a regular blogger at www.dailyUV.com. He lives and gardens in Cornish Flat, NH. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. If you want a letter response, please include a SASE.
Fall Is a Good Time to Plant (Some) Seeds
Posted on Tuesday, September 18, 2018 · Leave a Comment
Most of us think about planting seeds in the spring, but there are lots of plants that can be planted by seed now, especially wildflowers.
Jack-in-the-pulpit seeds
One of my favorite wildflowers is Jack-in-the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum). In the spring it produces a single well-hidden blossom beneath its large leaves. The plants are either male or female, and it is only the females that produce seeds. Right now in my woods and shade gardens the bright red seeds are visible in nice clumps and are ready to harvest and plant.
The seeds of Jack-in-the Pulpit contain calcium oxalate that can be an irritant to your skin. So you may want to wear latex gloves to handle the seeds. The easiest way to prepare seeds for planting it to put them in a blender with a cup of water and give them a quick whirl. The red mushy part comes right off, leaving clean white seeds. Once the seeds are clean and dry, they are fine to handle with bare hands. Removing the pulp on seeds removes compounds that inhibit seed germination.
Pat the seeds dry with a paper towel and plant immediately. Don’t let them dry out. I use my CobraHead weeder to loosen the soil, then place the seed on the surface and lightly cover with soil and forest duff. Next spring each seed will produce just a single round leaf, and it will be 3 years before a plant will blossom.
If you like eating ramps or wild leeks (Allium tricoccum), you should start a patch of your own. Go out now to the forest where you have harvested wild ones in the spring to see if you can recognize the plants and harvest seeds.
These tasty onion-family wildflowers show their leaves in early spring, then after the leaves die back they flower with dainty white clusters of blossoms just 5 inches above the ground. When the seeds turn black and the stems start to turn brown, they are ready to harvest in August to September. By now, most of my plants have dropped their seeds, but I found a few still good to pick this week.
I plant them by raking off the leaves of the forest floor, scratching the soil surface, and sprinkling the seeds. I pat the soil, and put leaves over the seeds. That’s roughly what Mother Nature would do (except the part about scratching the soil with a CobraHead weeder).
An old fashioned blender is good for cleaning seeds
Blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) seeds are ready to harvest and plant now. I have one big clump that I transplanted a decade or more ago, and it has gotten bigger every year, but no new plants have shown up. This year I decided to get proactive. The deep blue seeds are ready to pick.
According to my wildflower bible, Growing and Propagating Wildflowers by William Cullina, what appears to be a berry is actually just a seed with the fruit being the extension of the seed coat. He advises removing that by cleaning in a blender or to ferment the seeds in water for a few days until it falls off. The advantage to the blender is that it will nick or scratch the hard seed coat, making germination easier. Like Jack-in-the-pulpit, blue cohosh will produce just one leaf the first year, as it uses its energy to develop its roots.
Other wildflowers that I am collecting seeds from now include Japanese mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) and false Solomon’s seal (Smilacina racemosa). I bought my Japanese mayapple from The Fells, a nice non-profit garden and historic estate in Newberry, NH on Lake Sunapee. They offer a good variety of unusual plants each summer.
Japanese mayapple fruit with seeds
I particularly like the Japanese mayapple because, unlike our native mayapple, the blossoms appear above the foliage instead of hidden below the large leaves. By collecting and planting seeds I may be able to significantly increase my display with no added expense – so long as I have patience. Most wildflowers take 3 years from germination to flowering.
Wildflowers often require a period of “vernalization”. This means that they need a cold period between the time they are planted and when they germinate. This ensures they don’t start growing now, when winter is just around the corner.
Aside from wildflowers, this is a fine time to plant seeds from annual poppies and foxgloves. Just harvest the seed pods of poppies and check to see if they still have tiny black seeds – just tip a pod upside down and the seeds should fall out into your hand. I sprinkle them now, or in mid-winter, and they always produce some flowers the following summer.
At this time of year I often pick foxglove stems and shake them over bare soil where I would like more plants. Since foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) are biennials, it’s a two-year process. Next year a few of the hundreds of seeds I disperse will produce rosettes of leaves, and the following year they will flower.
Starting flowers by seed does take patience, and knowledge about how and when to do it. For more on the techniques and requirements of growing wildflowers I highly recommend Bill Cullina’s book, mentioned above. He notes that you should be careful not to harvest too many seeds of rare wildflowers, just gather a few. Good luck!
Henry is the author of 4 gardening books and is a UNH master Gardener. His e-mail is henry.homeyer@comcast.net.
Red-Leafed Trees and Shrubs
Posted on Monday, September 3, 2018 · Leave a Comment
Everyone seems to go wild for sugar maples trees in the fall because, here in New England, their leaves turn wonderful colors – yellow, orange and, best of all, red. But some trees and shrubs have reddish or purplish leaves all summer, and these, too, are very popular. Let’s take a look at a few of these.
My all-time favorite is the Japanese red maple. I grew up with a huge one in Connecticut, a great climbing tree for a young boy. The leaves are a deep wine red all summer and into the fall. It was probably 50 feet tall and wide.
Young Japanese Red Maple at my house
In 1970 I dug up a small specimen from under my parents’ tree and brought it to my newly-purchased home in Cornish Flat, NH. Now, 48 years later, I still have the tree, but it is only about 10 feet tall and 8 feet wide. Our cold winters have kept it small – less than a quarter the size of the parent tree.
The Japanese red maple does best in full sun and rich soil, but will survive in part shade and less than perfect soil. Mine now gets just a few hours of sun each day as other trees nearby have grown tall. The hardiest variety for northern gardens is one called ‘Bloodgood’.
So what else can we grow? I like the copper beech (Fagus sylvatica purpurea). This is a variety of European beech and starts out in the spring with deep purple leaves. As the summer progresses, its leaves become more green. It is hardy in Zones 4 to 7, and is much more tolerant of poor soils than the American beech, our native species of beech. I do not have one, but wish I did.
Red Majestic curly hazelnut
I do have a wonderful red-leafed curly hazelnut or Harry Lauder’s walking stick. It’s a variety called ‘Red Majestic’ of the European filbert (Corylus avellana). In the spring the leaves or a deep red-purple but develop a greenish tinge as the summer progresses. I have mine in a flower bed, and have been able to keep it to an 8-foot wide and 6- to 8-foot tall tree by annual pruning. Even in August it has wonderful color – all this year’s growth is a rich purple-red.
As beautiful as my Red Majestic hazelnut is, it is even better in winter against the snow. It has curled and contorted branches that stand out wonderfully against the snow. But it does not produce hazelnuts: these trees are either male or female, and both are needed to produce nuts. Mine is a male, lonely and unfulfilled. Sigh.
I have a purple smokebush (Cotinus coggygria) that I planted one in memory of a friend, Fritz Hier, who passed away in 1999. It is still small, and I often cut the branches to the ground in late winter. This stimulates it to send up long shoots with more colorful leaves than normal extensions. It does best in well-drained loam and sunny locations, but is tolerant of crummy soils.
Smokebush is named for the flowers, which are quite ethereal. Actually, the flowers themselves are not remarkable, but the pedicles and peduncles (stems of the flowers) develop hairs which create an open, airy mass of pink or purple haze. Because I cut mine back, I have never seen it blossom, but the leaves are wonderful.
Ninebark Diablo
Common ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) is a fast-growing multi-stemmed shrub that has a cultivar, ‘Diablo’ with deep purple leaves. I had two, but got rid of one because they grow so fast, and it was blocking a view I liked. They can easily send up stems 3 to 5 feet in a year. It blooms in June, so don’t prune it in the early spring or you will lose the blossoms.
Ninebark does best in full sun but will tolerate some shade and will grow in any soil – acid or alkaline, wet or dry. Do not give it any fertilizer – ever! It is so vigorous it does not need any help. I understand there is a miniature form of ‘Diablo’ called ‘Little Devil’ that only grows to 3- to 4-feet tall and wide. I haven’t tried it yet, but plan to.
Another nice reddish-leafed tree is a crabapple called ‘Prairie Fire’. It starts in the spring with prolific pinkish-red blossoms, followed by purple-maroon foliage. Later in the summer the foliage fades to a reddish green. The fruit persists into winter, bright red “berries” that are good food for birds.
I have not grown old fashioned weigela (Weigela florida), a medium-sized early summer shrub, but I know it comes in varieties with reddish or purple-tinged leaves. ‘Wine and Roses’ is one variety; other include ‘Fine Wine’ and ‘Midnight Wine,’ both compact varieties. In general old fashioned weigela is a Zone 5 plant that can get 6 to 9 feet tall, with a spread of up to 12 feet wide.
Last but not least is a purple-leafed rose, Rosa glauca. I had one years ago, but something happened to it – I’m not sure what. It is said to be hardy to Zone 2, much colder than where I am. The single pink blossoms in June were nice, but the real attraction was the foliage which was almost a gray-purple. The orange rose hips were nice in the fall.
So if you crave purple or red leaves, visit a garden center and see what they have. Fall is a good time to plant trees and shrubs because they extend their roots then, and the climate is less hot and dry.
Henry is a UNH Master Gardener, and the author of 4 gardening books. He is away this week and not responding to e-mail.
It’s Time to Harvest and Store Root Crops
Posted on Saturday, September 1, 2018 · Leave a Comment
I sometimes wonder if I’m part squirrel. No, I don’t bury acorns for winter, but I do love putting up food for winter, especially potatoes. They’re the ultimate “comfort food” as far as I am concerned, and I rarely have too many. If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to harvest and store your potatoes for winter.
If you haven’t dug your potatoes yet, don’t worry. Potatoes store well in on ground right up to frost, and even after frost. But don’t try to overwinter them in the ground – they’ll get soft and unappealing. By now the leaves on my potato plants have yellowed and begun to die back, so there is no point in waiting- they won’t get any bigger. And if I wait too long, the mice may find them.
Kennebec Red Pontiac and Magic Molly potatoes just harvested
It’s important to be careful when digging potatoes so that you don’t damage any. I use a potato fork that has been in my family for decades. It’s like an ordinary garden fork, but the tines are at a right angle to the long handle, and are sharp and long. To harvest I pull the soil to one side with the potato rake. Then I plunge my fingers into the loose soil to find the spuds. If I spear a potato it goes into a pile destined for immediate consumption.
It is generally accepted that one should not wash potatoes fresh from the soil. Their skins are soft and easily damaged right after digging them. Most experts suggest hardening the skins by spreading them out in a cool place out of the sun for about a week. I do this on a north-facing deck, and turn over the potatoes after 2 or 3 days so both sides get hardened off.
Storing potatoes is best done by keeping them in a dark location with high humidity that stays between 35 and 50 degrees. Storing them in a warmer place will turn some of the starches in the potatoes into sugars. This will cause the potatoes to burn easily if you make French fries, so commercial growers keep them cool.
Potatoes need to breathe while in storage. They are living organisms that respire, so putting them in a sealed plastic bag will suffocate them, ruining them. Traditionally potatoes were stored in a cool basement with a dirt floor, but losses to mice or rats was often a problem.
Cool box storage bin
I have a cool basement with a cement floor, and I have built a box there to contain buckets of potatoes and other root crops. It consists of two layers of blocks arranged in a rectangle, three blocks long and two wide. On top I have a piece of half-inch plywood. I call this my cool box, or root cellar. It will hold 6 buckets at a time. And so far, the rodents have not found a way in.
Carrots store well in my cool box. Like potatoes, they need a cool humid location for storage. I put an inch of moist sand in the bottom of each bucket to keep up the humidity.
Unlike potatoes, however, carrots will store well in the ground. In the past I have covered my carrots in the garden with a layer of straw or hay, then leaves. This acts as insulation and keeps the ground from freezing, allowing me to go out, shovel away the snow, and dig carrots in winter. Mice or voles have been an occasional problem, however. I put a stake in the ground at each end of the carrot bed so that I can find it in deep snow.
What else stores well in my cool box? Rutabagas, kohlrabi and celeriac – three less common root crops that I like – all store well cool, with high humidity. But onions do not store well in my cool box. They like a cool environment, but low humidity.
Orchard rack from Gardener’s Supply Co.
I store my onions and garlic in an area near the mudroom that stays cool but dry. I use a wooden “orchard rack” that I got from Gardener’s Supply many years ago. I also use it for winter squash. It has 6 large slatted drawers that pull out, allowing me to select what I need for dinner. It has excellent air circulation.
An old Vermont farmer I knew stored his winter squash upstairs under the bed in the guest room. He said he kept the radiator turned off so the room stayed cold, but above freezing. The humidity is naturally low in winter in most houses.
Last but not least, I have an ancient General Electric refrigerator in the basement that is not “frost-free”. This vintage fridge does not remove the moisture the way modern ones do, so ice will sometimes build up, requiring me to defrost it. But any vegetable that stores well in high humidity will do much better there than in a modern fridge which creates low humidity except in the two drawers at the bottom.
Part of my joy in gardening is spending time outdoors growing flowers and vegetables. Each fall I get busy putting up the vegetables for use in the kitchen all winter. And each time I make a stew with food I grew, I know my food is chemical-free and it tastes better to me because I grew it.
Henry Homeyer is a UNH Master Gardener and the author of 4 gardening books. See his blog posts at https://dailyuv.com/henryhomeyer.
Espalier Fruit Trees
Posted on Sunday, August 26, 2018 · Leave a Comment
When traveling in France and England I have often admired the fruit trees that have been pruned and trained to stay low and follow a wall or building. Their branches, like the extended arms of a scarecrow, travel horizontally – and are often loaded with fruit. I have wanted to try training a tree like this, a form called “espalier”. The word espalier is French, and comes from Italian meaning “something to rest the shoulder against”. It has come to mean not just the support, but the tree itself.
Trees in the espalier form are, essentially 2-dimensional. The branches are usually tied to wires or bamboo poles, often a foot or so in front of a wall. Branches growing towards or away from the wall are pruned off, as are most vertical branches. They save space and keep fruit low for easy picking. Walls protect the trees from high winds, and often reflect sunshine and heat to hasten ripening.
I was delighted to find an espalier apple tree for sale at Gardeners Supply Company in Lebanon, NH. Someone had already done a lot of the work training it for me, though it had many small water sprouts (shoots) that needed to be cut away.
My Espalier apple needs much pruning
My tree stands about 6 feet tall and has 3 pairs of parallel horizontal branches. Not only that, the branches are from three different varieties of apple – Zestar, Sweet 16 and Honey Crisp. That’s right, the branches were grafted on to the main stem so that, if all goes well, the tree will produce 3 different flavors of fruit.
Soon after planting my tree I heard about a workshop on espalier techniques, and I decided to go. Margaret Roach, a well-known author and blogger (www.awaytogarden.com) in Copake Falls, in upstate New York, was opening her gardens to the public through the Garden Conservancy, and she had asked Lee Reich, a well-known garden writer, to teach a class on espalier fruit trees. Lee is also the author or many books, including the best book on pruning that I have seen, The Pruning Book.
Lee began by explaining how plant hormones control growth and fruiting. It is essential to understand this if you wish to create an espalier, or even to prune a fruit tree to the size and shape you want.
Espalier apple with 3 kinds of apples
The tallest branch on a tree produces plant hormones called auxins that control growth, branching and flowering (and hence fruit production). If you cut off the tallest part of the tree, the apical tip, a tree is more likely to produce side branches, and these tend to be more fruitful and less vigorous. Vertical branches such as watersprouts rarely produce fruit. They seem to want to grow fast and tall, competing with the leader, or tallest stem on the tree. In general, the horizontal branches of espalier trees should produce lots of fruit.
Lee Reich explained that some fruit trees do better than others when creating an espalier tree. Asian pears do wonderfully, and are almost always a success. But we are much farther south than England and northern France where espaliers do so well. We are at about the level of Madrid, and creating espalier is tougher for us. No, we can easily shape our trees in the form of espalier, but getting them to flower and fruit is tougher- our length of day is different.
There are apple trees that bear on fruit spurs – little gnarly branches just 2 or 3 inches long. Others produce fruit mainly on the tips of branches. Spur-type varieties are the best candidates for espalier. Macintosh is a spur-type apple, and there is one that is even better, MacSpur. Anything with “spur” in the name is good, according to Lee Reich. But other spur-type apples include Zestar, Red Delicious, Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Fuji, Jonathan, Chieftain and Winesap.
The tree I bought has no fruit spurs as yet. And when I bought it, it had lots of watersprouts growing straight up. I was afraid to cut them all off now, as a tree needs leaves to support the roots, and to create the energy the plant needs in the spring to grow new leaves and flowers. According to Lee Reich, an apple tree needs 40 leaves to bring an apple to maturity.
Asian pear espalier at Margaret Roach garden
You can create an espalier starting from a whip – a simple bareroot plant with no side branches. Get one in the spring, plant it, and cut off the top third of the whip. That should stimulate it to set out at least two side branches in its first year. You can tie these to a bamboo, or along a horizontal wire. But in my opinion it is easiest to buy a tree that someone else has already shaped in the espalier form. Then all you have to do is cut off vertical sprouts, and keep the “arms” out to the sides.
Red currants and gooseberries work very well as espalier plants, according to Lee Reich. They are fast growing and flower well on horizontal branches. But not everyone is fond of their fruit. You can’t beat an apple.
I don’t know if my espalier will produce much fruit. But it is going to be fun trying to train it, and I look forward to winter when I will take off the rest of the vertical watersprouts that, right now, somewhat obscure the shape I’m hoping for.
Henry lives and gardens in Cornish Flat, NH. He is the author of 4 gardening books. His website is www.Gardening–Guy.com. He is away this week and not responding to e-mail.
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