Planting Bulbs
Posted on Monday, October 5, 2015 · Leave a Comment
After a long winter like this past one, I am always grateful for my spring bulbs. Many of them pop up and bloom on schedule, no matter how cold and snowy the winter was. I’ve been planting bulbs around my property since the early 1970’s, and some of them are still flowering each spring. Others run out of energy and disappear with time. If you haven’t done so yet, now is the time to get some and plant them.
First, let’s look at the basics: what makes a bulb plant survive and flourish? Decent soil. It must be well drained. Soggy soil rots bulbs. If you have a heavy clay soil, it will stay wet and is not a good place for bulbs unless you add compost to the planting hole to help it drain better. Planting on a hillside helps, too, as water will drain off a hillside.
Bulb flowers take shade better than sun-loving perennials. Growing up we had hundreds of daffodils that bloomed along a woodland path behind the house. The leaves got sunshine and re-charged the bulbs before the trees were fully leafed out. Of course if you have plenty of sunshine, all the better.
Some people have had great luck planting daffodils in a grassy field or lawn. I’ve done that, but find that the bulb foliage is still green and producing food for the bulb when the lawn needs to be cut. If you cut the foliage too early, your bulbs won’t perform as well. I like to plant daffodils in flower beds between big clumps of hostas. They can bloom early, and then their dying foliage is hidden by the hosta leaves.
Planting bulbs
Some gardeners dig a little hole for each bulb, but that seems like too much work for me, even if you have one of those tools that are made for digging small round holes. I’d rather use my shovel to dig one oversized hole, one big enough for the 25 bulbs or more. For large bulbs like daffodils or tulips a hole 24 to 36 inches long and 18 to 24 inches wide is fine for 25 bulbs.
For the big bulbs I dig a hole 6 to 8 inches deep. Then I add compost and some organic fertilizer or “bulb booster” fertilizer and stir it into the bottom of the hole. I place the bulbs on the improved soil, pointy end up, and cover with more improved soil.
What about those hungry, bulb-stealing squirrels? They don’t eat daffodils as they are vaguely poisonous. They may dig a few up to see what you planted, but they won’t eat them. “Yech,” they say, if they inadvertently take a bite.
Glory of the snow
When I interviewed the White House gardener in 1999 he said they planted thousands of tulips each year, despite the rampant squirrels. He said they planted the tulips and covered them with soil, then put down a layer of chicken wire, then more soil. Oh, and he said they fed the squirrels all winter with cracked corn. Squirrels that are not hungry are less likely to try to steal your bulbs. Squirrel welfare.
Some people have great luck with tulips coming back, but I consider them annuals. In general, I find that the second year only half the tulips come back to bloom, the third year only half of those come back and so on. But I often plant 100 tulips, all one color for a blast of color in spring. I particularly like the tall ones that bloom a bit later.
‘Maureen’ is one of my favorite tulips. She is a 28 inch tall tulip, a creamy white that blooms in May. ‘Menton’ blooms at the same time and is rose-pink with apricot-pink petal edges and is 26 inches tall. Wow. They make a nice mix. I have already ordered 100 of each! That way I’ll have too many flowers, and can give away big bunches of them when they bloom.
If you consider your tulips annuals, you can plant them in your vegetable garden and pull them after blooming. Then you can plant tomatoes or something else there. And if you have a deer problem, you can easily fence a small plot for 100 tulips with 4 poles and some bird netting. If you want to mix them into your flower gardens, plant them where you’ll plant annual flowers. When the tulips are done blooming, it will be time to plant annuals.
The little bulbs are great early harbingers of spring, particularly snowdrops. Snowdrops are small white globes on 4 inch stems. Mine fight through frozen soil in early March. Some years (when we have deep snow) I shovel snow off the hillside where they appear so they can bloom on schedule. Each year I have more, so now, after decades, I have a thousand or more.
Winter aconite
Other early bloomers include winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), a small up-ward looking 6-petaled brilliant yellow flower. Another favorite of mine is glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa luciliae). This is a nice blue, with a yellow eye. It blooms shortly after the snowdrops in April.
I can’t praise the spring bulbs enough. I consider them essential for my wellbeing. So order some, or go to your garden center and buy some. You’ll be glad in a few months.
Henry is on vacation this week and will not be answering questions. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com
Fall Chores
Posted on Monday, September 28, 2015 · Leave a Comment
I love writing this weekly column. I do it 52 weeks of the year, and have been writing it since the fall of 1998 when I wrote my first column about putting the garden to bed. And the nature of gardening is such that I can write a column a little ahead of time so that I can, for example, go hike the Chemin de St Jacque de Compostelle in southwest France, which I am. Lucky me.
Here are some of the tasks I’d be doing at home this week, if I were there. First, I’d be weeding. Yes, weeds like to set their seeds in the ground in the fall for a new start in the spring. They seem to know that we are tired of pulling weeds now. But don’t let them get away from you. Pulling weeds now will save you lots of work next year – both in the vegetable garden and in the flower garden. A single weed might only produce a few hundred weeds – or up to a million for a mature purple loosestrife.
Removing goldenrod
Before I left I did extra weeding. I love goldenrods, and actually planted some short ones last year, and some shade-loving ones. But the big boys, those goldenrods that get to be 6 feet tall, are too big to co-exist with most garden plants, so they had to come out. I had been leaving them in the ground as bees and other pollinators love the pollen. But before I left they had finished blooming and I dug some out before the seeds got distributed.
A big clump of goldenrod is not something that you can easily just pull out – unless you have a backhoe. First I take my pruners and cut back the stems so I am not fighting them or getting poked in the eye. Then I go around the perimeter of the clump with a shovel or drain spade and try to get under the clump. I push the shovel in on angle, then push down on the handle to see it I can get it to lift a little. When I have gone all the way around, I push down hard, and (hopefully) the clump tips over and I can drag it aside. For purple loosestrife, which has a massive root system, it is better to cut off the tops and burn them (or put in the household trash) than to let the seeds be distributed.
Jewel weed takes over August
Before I left I also pulled out a lot of jewel weed (a.k.a. touch-me-not). Jewell weed has seed pods that explode when they are ripe, or if you touch them when they are almost ripe. Spring loaded. It is in the genus Impatiens, the same genus as our beloved shade annual. But this one will grow in the sun or shade. I let mine go to seed in recent years so my grandchildren could have the fun of touching them and seeing them explode. But now the population has exploded, so this year I worked hard to get them before seeds were set. They are an annual weed that is easy to pull.
Each fall I like to weed and prepare the beds in the vegetable garden for planting in the spring. I grow my veggies in wide, mounded beds. I like to loosen the soil in the walkways and then rake the soil into my beds. Then I add a layer of compost on top and stir it in. Finally, and I won’t do this until I return, I cover the beds with leaves and grass clippings collected by the lawnmower.
Hardneck Garlic ready for planting
Every October I plant garlic for the next year, and you should, too. Buy seed garlic from your local farmer or get some at the local garden center. Grocery store garlic probably has been chemically treated to keep it from sprouting, so is not good. It is probably not the type we can grow here, which is called hard-neck garlic. Buy it as soon as you can, as many farms run out. I don’t need to buy garlic as I save my biggest and best bulbs of garlic to use as seed garlic.
If you’ve never planted garlic, here is what you do: Prepare a bed and enrich it with plenty of compost. I use my CobraHead weeder, which has a single tine, to make a furrow and then sprinkle in some organic bagged fertilizer, and stir that in. I take a bulb of garlic and separate the cloves – usually 5 to 7 per bulb. The roots are at the fat end, and the pointy end goes up. I plant the cloves about 3 to 4 inches apart and a couple of inches deep. Rows should be about 6 inches apart.
The final, most important thing to do –in terms of saving labor – is to heavily mulch the garlic bed. You can use mulch hay or straw, a layer of the fluffy stuff a foot thick will pack down to 4 inches by the end of winter. Garlic will pop right though that layer, but most weeds will not. And don’t worry if some garlic sprouts before snow flies, it will still re-sprout in the spring.
Last winter I managed to avoid killing my rosemary plant that I had brought in last fall and potted up. So this spring I planted it in the garden, where it has thrived. Now I need to pot it up again. Pot it up in potting soil mixed with compost.
Here’s the trick about bringing in rosemary: Do it now, and let it stay outside in the pot just where it has been all summer. That way you are changing only one variable at a time. If you dig it up and bring it in right away, it not only must get used to life in a pot, but life indoors. In a week or so, bring it inside. . Rosemary should survive temperatures down to 24 or 25 degrees.
And speaking of life indoors, on the next warm day wash all your houseplants with the hose to get off aphids and their eggs. Then let them dry in the sun and bring them in. You’ll have fewer aphids that way.
Henry is on vacation this week and will not be answering questions. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com
Fermenting Foods
Posted on Monday, September 21, 2015 · Leave a Comment
Many people believe that fermented foods – sauerkraut, yogurt, sourdough bread, for example – are better for you than other foods. For thousands of years people have fermented foods as way to preserve them, and scientists today note that fermenting foods can increase their content of vitamin C, thiamine and niacin, among other nutrients. Fermented vegetables help to promote a healthy gut and introduce beneficial bacteria into our bodies. And fermenting food is another way of preserving it for winter use.
We live in a society that minimizes contact with bacteria. Hand sanitizer is big business. Now probiotics (microorganisms introduced into the body for their beneficial qualities) are being sold and promoted in “live” yogurt and other probiotic preparations. But you can use your garden produce to make easy, tasty fermented foods that do much the same.
I recently met with a passionate food “fermentista”, Leslie Silver of Middletown Springs, Vermont and spent an afternoon making sauerkraut and other fermented foods. It’s easy. Leslie also told me about the 3rd Annual Vermont Fermentation Festival on October 3 at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont. It is sponsored by RAFFL (www.rutlandfarmandfood.org) and organized by her. For $10 you can have a full day of learning!
Grating cabbage on a kraut board
Leslie explained that raw cabbage has naturally occurring bacteria that will ferment the sugars in the leaves without any introduction of bacteria on our part (most fresh fruits and vegetables has good bacteria, too). All we have to do is chop or finely slice the cabbage and add a teaspoon of salt for each pound of cabbage. The salt draws out the water and creates a brine. If you knead the salted cabbage like bread dough, soon there will be lots of liquid.
We packed chopped cabbage and other vegetables into wide-mouth quart jars and pressed out the air, allowing brine to cover the mix. Left open at room temperature the cabbage ferments and creates lactic acid and carbon dioxide that bubbles along, showing me that my sauerkraut is “working”. This kind of fermenting is called lacto-fermentation. (The lacto refers to lactic acid, not anything to do with milk).
Eventually the lactic acid brings the pH down to about 4.0, which stops the fermenting – and prevents other, harmful bacteria from affecting the food. Those same bacteria that cure the sauerkraut are beneficial to our gut.
If you want to learn how to make sauerkraut and other fermented veggies, I recommend working with an expert to really get first-hand knowledge of how to do it. We made 4 different recipes in 4 hours including 3 kinds of sauerkraut and a corn relish. All are delicious.
As an author (and a person of a certain age) I like to have a book in hand when learning a new skill. Leslie recommended Fermented Vegetables: Creative Recipes for Fermenting 64 Kinds of Vegetables in Krauts, Kimchis, Brined Pickles, Chutneys, Relishes & Pastes by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey, published by Storey Publishing. I got it, and like it. It has lots of good color photos and nice recipes. It explains the process well, without being overly technical.
The other book I got was a New York Times bestseller by Sandor Katz called The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World, published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This is also a great resource with information not only about fermenting vegetables, but also fruits, grains, milk, beans, meat and more. It has a glowing introduction from food writer Michael Pollan, who I trust. It’s excellent. The book is nearly 500 pages long, and seems to cover all aspects of fermenting, including lots of technical stuff.
Materials for fermenting veggies are minimal: You need a large bowl, containers and large sharp knife. Leslie also had a kraut board with 3 sharp blades. Run a cabbage across it and the shredded cabbage falls into the bowl.
We made small batches and put our krauts in wide-mouth glass jars. But, having fallen in love with specialty sauerkrauts, I have ordered from Gardeners Supply Company (www.gardeners.com or 888-833-1412) a 1.3 gallon Fermentation Crock kit, complete with lid and weights to keep the veggies in the brine (they tend to rise). I have old crocks, but this one has a water seal that allows the carbon dioxide to get out while keeping extraneous bacteria and yeasts out. For about $80, it seems like a good investment.
My krauts are tastier than any I’d ever had. In one I added fresh ginger, another has fennel seeds. It’s a good way to use kohlrabi, carrots, celeriac, too. I’ll be making more later this fall – once I get my new crock.
Henry is the author of 4 gardening books. He is not answering questions this week. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Tree-Related Fall Chores
Posted on Monday, September 14, 2015 · Leave a Comment
It’s that time again. Time to think about getting ready for winter. Some trees are showing signs of changing leaf color. Vegetable gardens are winding down. Summer flowers are finished with their blooms, and even fall flowers are beginning to decline. Sigh. Summer is just about over.
Last winter we had record-setting snows in many places. One of the consequences of that was that meadow voles and other rodents had good protection from owls and hawks. Voles feasted on the bark of apple trees, stripping the bark with immunity – and fatally damaging many trees. A tree will slowly starve to death if it loses bark all around the trunk, although that may take a year or more. The leaves continue to produce the sugars all summer, but the damage prevents the sugars from getting to the roots – and they starve.
Bridge grafting
When my partner, Cindy Heath, retired after 26 years as director of Recreation and Parks in Lebanon, NH a nice crabapple tree was planted in her honor near the community garden. But last winter it was girdled by voles. So I hired a grafting specialist, Jenny Wright of Unity, NH, who met me last spring to do some repairs. She did what is called bridge grafting, grafting 4 twigs to span the damage. Two of the four grafts “took” and the tree has been saved. Even one successful graft probably would have worked. It’s probably not a job you can take on without help, but there are people who can help you.
Of course, the damage could have been prevented, and I would like to recommend that you take steps to protect any young fruit trees from similar damage if we have another snowy winter. Buy some “hardware cloth” and wrap it around the bottom 24 inches of the tree. Hardware cloth is a wire mesh that comes in a variety of sizes. Quarter inch mesh is best. You should be able to buy a small roll 24 inches wide. You will need tin snips to cut it and some wire to tie the ends together. For a 2-inch diameter tree, make a 4-inch diameter cylinder around it. Be sure to remove the wire mesh before the tree grows into it. Older trees are rarely eaten by rodents.
Another job for the fall is to clean up all those fallen apples that litter the ground. You may think they are harmless, but if you had any apple scab on your apples it is important to pick them up. If you don’t, come spring the fungal disease that causes scab will release spores and infect next year’s crop.
Nut Wizard with apples
Raking up apples is tedious and often leads to damage to the lawn around a tree. But I have a “Nut Wizard”. It consists of a football-shaped wire device that turns on its axis when pushed across the ground by a long handle. The wires separate a little when going over an apple, which then enters the interior of the tool. When I have about 25 apples captured, I empty them into a wheelbarrow by separating the wires enough for the apples to fall out.
I got my Nut Wizard for about $50 from Elmore Roots Nursery (www.elmoreroots.com or (802) 888-3305). The greatest thing about it? My grandchildren love using it. Tom Sawyer would be proud of me!
If you have blackberries or raspberries, this is the time to cut down this year’s canes. Canes only produce for one year, and will only be in the way next year so cut them off near the ground. I use a pole pruner to cut the canes. I have a tool that works very well – it is lightweight and has a squeeze grip (like hand pruners). After snipping off a cane I can grab it with the blades (by squeezing very gently) and pull it out of the patch.
The tool I use is made by ARS, model LA 180 L1.8, which I got from OESCO tool company (www.oescoinc.com or 800-634-5557). It sells for about $100, but is well worth it if you have lots of berries and don’t like getting blood transfusions.
If you planted new trees or shrubs this year, it is important that they go into the winter well hydrated. Water them weekly as we go into the cold season if we don’t have a lot of rain.
Be sure newly planted trees are mulched with ground bark or wood chips. That will help keep the roots warm as winter approaches. Roots continue to grow even after leaf drop – until the ground gets too cold. A 3 to 4 layer of bark chips will allow them to grow longer into the autumn. But don’t let the mulch touch the tree – leave a donut hole around the trunk to avoid rotting of the tree bark.
Trees are my friends for lots of reasons, including the gift they bestow on me each fall. I don’t look on raking up leaves as a pain in the you-know-where. I look at leaves as a great source of organic matter and mulch for my gardens. I run them over with the lawn mower, and then rake them up. Once chopped and mixed in the some grass clippings, they don’t blow away. So keep that in mind when raking leaves instead of watching football!
Henry is the author of 4 gardening books. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Fall Lawn Care
Posted on Monday, September 7, 2015 · Leave a Comment
This is a good time to do some improvements on your lawn. If you have crabgrass, lawn ivy (Creeping Charlie) or bare spots where the kids played badminton, now is the time to get to work. I recently called Paul Sachs, owner of North Country Organics and the author of three books on lawn care. He gave me some good suggestions.
Wild parsnip
Testing pH is a good first step, Sachs said. If your soil is too acidic or too alkaline, minerals can be bound up and unavailable to your turf plants even if they are present. You can get a simple test kit at a garden center, or take a sample and mail it to your state Extension Service soil testing lab for a more extensive report.
He warned that the first time someone adds limestone to their lawn – and fall is a good time for that – they may see a remarkable improvement the following spring. But, he warned, don’t keep on adding limestone without testing the pH. If you keep adding limestone every year your pH can get quite alkaline, which is just as bad as being too acidic.
According to Sachs, fall is a good time to overseed your lawn if you have thin or worn places, or if you have crabgrass. The soil is warm now, so new grass seeds will germinate more quickly than in the spring. Crabgrass, an annual, is declining in vigor so you can crowd it out by adding seed. Crabgrass seeds are not going to germinate until the spring, but if you can establish a nice thick turf now, crabgrass will have a hard time competing with it next spring.
It is best to sow a mixture of kinds of seed – a conservation mix that contains something like this: 35 percent creeping red fescue, 25 percent turf type tall fescue, 10 percent Kentucky bluegrass, 12 percent turf type perennial ryegrass, 15 percent annual ryegrass and 3 percent white clover. That mixture is good for a variety of soils and will thrive in full sun or even moderate shade.
Sachs told me that before you overseed an area, you should lower the height of the blades on your mower and give it a good haircut. That will allow newly started grass seeds to get more sunshine, which is important when it is getting established. So when filling in thin spots, you want to cut the grass close and allow new plants to develop.
Fall is also a good time to thicken the lawn by providing some fertilizer. An organic fertilizer like Pro-Gro will help roots to bulk up and winter-over better. Paul Sachs told me that when adding fertilizer it is good to keep the blades of mower up high, allowing each grass plant to have more surface area for photosynthesis. That will help to pump up its roots.
Knowing how much fertilizer to add and then figuring out how to spread it at the proper rate is a job for Einstein, I always thought. Paul Sachs helped me with the calculation. In general, he said you should add 20 to 30 pounds of fertilizer per 1,000 square feet of lawn if using Pro-Gro or other organic fertilizer with a 5-3-4 nutrient analysis (5-3-4 means 5 lbs of nitrogen, 4 of phosphate, 3 of potash per hundred weight).
A 20 by 50 foot section of lawn is 1,000 square feet. Figure out the total square footage of your lawn, calculate the amount of fertilizer you need for the job, and then buy the appropriate number of bags. Start applying it in a push-type spreader. If you set your spreader for a low rate of distribution, you can go over the lawn more than once until you have used all the fertilizer. Done. If part of the lawn got a little more than another part, no big deal – so long as every part of the lawn got some fertilizer.
Compaction makes it difficult to for grasses to thrive – except crabgrass, of course. That’s why crabgrass invades areas where you frequently walk. Years ago Sachs told me a simple way to test for compaction: you should be able to push a screwdriver with a 6-inch shaft into the lawn with moderate force. If you can’t, the lawn needs help.
You could hire a landscaper to come with a core-aerator or you could try to do something yourself. On-line I found an aerator at Sears for about $100 that can be pulled behind a riding lawn mower. It has 10 sharp steel stars that rotate and poke small 2-inch deep holes.
And then were the aerator sandals that strap onto your shoes with spikes that poke holes in the soil – only $16 but it would seem like a lot of work to aerate the lawn that way. Sachs said, “If you stomp your feet into really compacted soil, the only way to escape is to undo the straps and pry them out with your hands. I learned what it must feel like when a fly lands on fly paper.”
What about that pesky lawn ivy, commonly called Creeping Charlie? It is in the mint family and will grow almost anywhere. Sachs suggested raking it out with a short-tined garden and then fertilizing and overseeding. I tried raking it out, but found I pulled out my lawn grass, too. So maybe we just have to live with it. After all, if it’s green and you can mow it, I say it’s a lawn.
Henry is a gardening consultant and the author of 5 books. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com. He lives and gardens in Cornish Flat, NH.
Putting Food By
Posted on Wednesday, August 26, 2015 · Leave a Comment
It’s a rare gardener who doesn’t grow at least a few tomatoes. We all love them. I eat them at least twice a day in season, and sometimes I even have one with breakfast. But the season is short, so many of us try to put up tomatoes to have their flavor in winter soups and stews. Our grannies slaved over a hot stove in August and September, canning tomatoes. But have I found freezing them is much easier.
Here’s what I do: I freeze whole tomatoes in zipper bags. I don’t blanch them or remove the skins. All I do is place clean fresh tomatoes in a gallon freezer bag and suck out the air with a straw, sliding out the straw and pinching the bag shut as I do so.
When I want to cook with a tomato, I hold a frozen one under the tap, run hot water over it while rubbing it, and the skin comes right off. I set it aside for a few minutes, then chop it and put in the stew pot. I know it is chemical-free and harvested at peak ripeness. I sometimes freeze cherry tomatoes, and those I toss into the pan with skins on.
In winter I long for tomatoes for my noon sandwich. I’ve found that roasting tomatoes first, then freezing, is a good way to have a substitute for fresh tomato in a sandwich. I thickly slice tomatoes and roast them at 350 degrees until they have given off most of their moisture and caramelized nicely. Then I carefully place them in gallon freezer bags in a single layer. When I need a few slices, I break off the frozen slices and put them in my toaster oven on aluminum foil. I heat them at 350 until thawed. They are not the same as fresh, but they’re the best substitute I’ve found.
A straw used to remove air from a bag of cherry tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes are highly prolific, and I generally have 10 plants or more. Although I eat plenty like candy, right in the garden, I obviously have more than I can eat in August and September. So I cut each in half, and put them in my food dehydrator. I set the thermostat at 125 or 130 degrees, and dry them for 18 to 24 hours, depending on water content and the ambient air’s humidity.
Food dehydrators are great for drying tomatoes, apples, pears, hot peppers and more. My favorite is the Excalibur. It has 9 trays, each 15 inches square, and a fan and heater. It uses 660 watts of electricity per hour, which is less than the 1000 watts used by my previous favorite, the NESCO American Harvester. The Excalibur blows sideways across the trays so everything gets dry at the same rate; the NESCO dehydrator blows from the top or the bottom, and one must rotate the trays to get even drying. The trays near the heater dry quickly, those farther away more slowly.
Tomato paste
I also make a lot of tomato paste. To do this I core full-sized tomatoes over the sink and squeeze out seeds and excess juice. Then I cut them in half and toss them in the food processor, which I use to puree them into a thin gruel. I cook the pureed tomatoes in a big enameled cast iron pot at low heat until the contents are thick enough so that I can stand up a spoon in the pot. It takes 2 to 3 hours of cooking to make paste.
I let the paste cool all night with the pot lid off, so more moisture evaporate by morning. Then I spoon the paste into ice cube trays and freeze them. When hard, I take the cubes out and put in freezer bags. One cube is a very nice quantity to add to a soup or stew. By freezing the paste in small units, there is no can of tomato paste left in the fridge to go moldy and blue. No odd flavors picked up in the fridge, either.
I also make spaghetti sauce. Not much, but I like to have some ready for a quick meal in March. I sauté onions, garlic and fresh green peppers to start with. I add fresh basal, marjoram and parsley from the garden. And of course tomatoes, black pepper and a touch of salt. I can one batch in quart jars each summer – 7 jars – and freeze more in quart yogurt containers. Canning must be done properly, cooking the sealed jars for a long time.
But if you don’t grow enough tomatoes to put up all of them you want for winter, don’t despair. Most farm stands take orders for tomatoes by the bushel at a very reasonable rate, much less than the per pound rate. So when the late blight nailed my tomatoes some years ago, I bought a bushel from a farmer and put them up.
I don’t generally grow a lot of peppers, so I often buy a half bushel of green, yellow and red peppers. I clean and slice them, and freeze in zipper bags. I find they freeze so well that I can even add them to a salad, and having 3 colors of peppers makes a very attractive winter salad. Put them in the salad right out of the freezer and eat soon after.
Gardening is fun, even the weeding. But eating the garden produce is even better. Fresh is best, but come winter, anything is good!
Henry is a gardening consultant and garden designer. He is the author of 4 gardening books and a children’s chapter book. His website it www.Gardening-Guy.com
Late Summer Plantings in the Vegetable Garden
Posted on Wednesday, August 19, 2015 · Leave a Comment
If you are like me, you have some space in your vegetable garden now. I have pulled all my garlic and my peas. Or maybe you planted a big patch of lettuce early on, and it’s been eaten or gone by. In any event, you could slow down and just mulch your empty beds, or you could plant more veggies for the fall.
One of my favorite items to plant now is a fall radish called ‘Red Meat’. It is also sometimes called the watermelon radish or Beauty Heart radish. It has white skin with green shoulders and a red and white interior. You probably will not find seeds for this radish at your local garden center or hardware store, you will have to order it from a seed company. I have gotten my seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, and see that is available from Kitazawa Seeds of Oakland, CA and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. All three companies are excellent.
Here is what is special about the watermelon radish: it grows to 4 inches in diameter without getting tough or woody. And you can only plant it in late summer, as it will bolt if you plant it in the spring.
It is fabulous added to a green salad, or made with into a salad with sweet onions and tomatoes and dressed with a vinaigrette sauce. And like all radishes, it is fast growing. Order now, plant by Labor Day, and enjoy them throughout the fall. Johnny’s catalog lists them as 50 days to maturity. Which means you can start eating the smaller ones in half that! I plant them 2 inches apart, then thin to 4 inches apart, eating the small thinnings. Unlike stronger-tasting radishes, you don’t have to be macho to pull and eat this radish straight from the garden. Yum!
Lettuce, of course is a good fall crop. I like to start lettuce seeds in those small plastic 6-packs left over from spring. I fill them with a good planting mix and lay seeds right on the soil surface, then cover with just a hint of soil mix or vermiculite. Lettuce, planted too deeply, will not germinate well. It needs light to trigger germination, just like many weeds. But that means you need to water regularly to keep the seeds from drying out.
By planting seeds in 6-packs with potting soil it is easier to separate the seedlings from each other than if you planted directly in the ground. I like to plant lettuce 6 inches apart in the garden so that each plant will develop into a nice head. Or if the roots are too tangled, maybe 2 or 3 seedlings can be planted as a clump without problems. Some gardeners like to sow lettuce seeds thickly in the garden, and then cut the leaves when small, particularly if using salad mixes. According to the Johnny’s catalog, which I know is accurate, lettuce germinates poorly in temperature over 75 degrees. So if we have a hot spell, start them in flats in a cool place indoors.
Kohlrabi
Kohrabi is another great veggie, one sadly unknown to many gardeners. It is in the Brassica or broccoli family, and develops a globe-shaped edible stem above ground with leaves emerging from the edible part. People often say, though I don’t know why, it “looks like a space alien.” It comes in purple and green-skinned varieties.
But here’s the great part: certain varieties of kohlrabi reach maturity in as little as 37 days! That said, read the catalog carefully: some storage kohlrabi like ‘Kossak’ can take 80 days to mature and get to be 8 inches or more in diameter. Most varieties should be eaten between 2 and 4 inches in diameter. Direct seed and thin to 4 inches.
Mostly I eat kohlrabi as a coleslaw. I use the grating blade on my food processor (it’s a flat grater blade up top on an extension, not the regular chopping/cutting blade in the bottom of the bowl). That makes quick work of the grating, which I used to do by hand. I mix it 50-50 with grated carrots and add a vinaigrette sauce, fennel seeds and dried cranberries or raisins. Kohlrabi can also be added to a stir fry or stews.
Daphne, my “killer corgi” normally keeps the deer away. No, I do not tie her up in the garden at night. Her very presence each day lets deer know that it is not a good idea to intrude, and generally they do not. But one night this summer a deer came in and ate all the leaves off my beets! The nerve! So I will plant some more beets for fall eating.
Beets are fairly frost hardy and mature in about 7 weeks from planting. So I should have a nice crop of small to medium sized beets in October if I plant now. According to Johnny’s catalog, the “scab” that sometimes appears on beets (raised brown rough spots) can be prevented by keeping beets well irrigated. A fall planting will most likely get plenty or rain, and produce some nice looking beets. The scab does not harm the beets – I just remove it with a potato peeler.
I haven’t even gotten around to putting up my hammock and might not this year! If you’ve been industrious all summer – weeding, thinning, watering and more, you’ve earned some time off. But I find I always want to push the limits, so I ordered more seeds and planed a few things for late fall.
Henry is a gardening consultant and the author of 4 gardening books. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Planting Trees
Posted on Wednesday, August 12, 2015 · Leave a Comment
Except when the ground is frozen, you can plant trees and shrubs pretty much anytime. Some experts recommend planting in the fall when trees are less likely to suffer from hot weather and dry soil as autumn is generally cool and rainy. Others suggest planting in spring so the tree can get established before our harsh winter. I say, plant when you have the time and the desire. Then take care of the tree, and it will be fine.
This spring I planted a kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) to replace a winter-killed mountain laurel. The dogwood is hardy to climatic Zone 5, meaning it will survive temperatures of 20 below zero, and I live in a Zone 4. Most winters we see minus 25. But I have it in a protected spot near the house, and I think it should survive. I’ll probably wrap in burlap its first winter. Of course, I am an incurable optimist – and I have always wanted a kousa dogwood, so I am willing to take a risk. That mountain laurel that died last winter gave me nearly 20 years of blooms and joy, and if the kousa dogwood does the same, I’ll consider myself very lucky.
One key to its survival, I think, is to get the roots to be well established by winter. And part of that is providing adequate water in its first year. So at least once a week I water it deeply. Now, in the heat of August, I water it twice a week. I have mulched the roots with bark mulch to keep the soil from drying out, and to keep the roots warmer this winter.
Redvein enkianthus
This summer I planted a shrub in memory of my sister, Ruth Anne Mitchell, who passed away 6 years ago. A friend told me Ruth Anne loved the redvein enkianthus (Enkianthus campanulatus), so I got one. I’d seen a nice specimen growing in the ground at E.C. Brown Nursery in Thetford, VT and was able to get a four-foot tall enkianthus from them. Since I had never noticed one before, I depended on my woody plant bible – Michael Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants to tell me how to plant it.
Dirr’s book has a page or more on every species of plant that grows in America, and is spot-on with its advice. In this case, it said the shrub needs acidic soil, like rhododendrons. So I mixed 2 to 3 cups of garden sulfur into the soil that went into planting hole, along with some peat moss. And I put down a layer of peat moss on the soil surface after planting and covered it with bark mulch.
The enkinathus is hardy to Zone 4, and I can’t wait to see it bloom next June. It should be loaded with creamy yellow blossoms with red veins. The fragrance, according to Dirr, is somewhat unpleasant. Huh. But he says it should have brilliant fall color.
I planted the enkianthus on a hillside, which is always problematical. One must plant trees and shrubs on flat places because they come with a rootball that must be in the ground and the tree must be vertical, not tipping. Perennial flowers are easier: they have smaller rootballs so they require a smaller flat place. And they will straighten themselves up to vertical if planted on a slope.
My remedy for the hillside planting is to dig into the hillside above the tree and to build up the hillside on the downhill side of it. For a shrub with a 16-inch rootball I created a 48-inch flat space. Roots do better if you dig a wide hole – three times the width of the rootball is standard. Then, after placing the tree in the hole, you refill the hole with the soil that you dug out. Why? Because soil in most places is hard-packed and dense. Digging out soil and replacing it creates a nice zone of fluffy soil for the roots to start out in.
Some gardeners think it is good to add compost and fertilizer in the hole. While that is a good plan for a perennial flower, it is not for a tree or shrub. Think of a tree as a wine glass sitting on a dinner plate. The glass is the tree, the root system in the plate. The tree must send roots out far from the trunk, and if you pack the planting hole with compost and fertilizer, the roots will not be inclined to spread out to the un-amended soil.
Stones used to level planting area
I decided in this case to build a little stone retaining wall to hold the soil from washing downhill in times of heavy rain. I didn’t do much – I just found seven flat stones and arranged them in two layers on the downhill side of the planting. I didn’t dig a trench and put crushed stone in it as a base, as I would have if the wall were bigger. This was just a 15-minute job. The stones sat on well packed, unexcavated soil and should not move.
If I were to build or buy a new house (though I don’t plan to), the first landscaping task I would tackle would be to choose trees and shrubs and get them in the ground. They take years to reach their peak beauty, and not every tree planted survives. But I keep planting woody plants now, 40 years after I bought my place. I just wish I had more land so I could try everything.
Henry is a gardening consultant and the author or 4 gardening books. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Daylilies
Posted on Wednesday, August 5, 2015 · Leave a Comment
Daylilies are wonderful. All beginning gardeners should have several clumps – you essentially can’t kill them. Like many plants, they prefer good rich soil and full sun, but some varieties will survive and thrive most anywhere. They come in a wide range of colors. They have been bred and grown for centuries and by now there are tens of thousands of named varieties. Now is the time when many daylilies are in their prime.
Olallie Daylily Garden
I like to buy flowers in bloom as that way I can better choose the ones that speak to me. So I recently drove to Olallie Daylily Farm in South Newfane, Vermont (www.daylilygarden.com). Chris Darrow, the owner, told me that he has grown at least 2,100 kinds of daylilies, some named varieties, other just bearing numbers from crosses he performed. The farm has about 5 acres of daylilies open to the public, and more daylilies in the 9 acres of field nearby.
Chris Darrow’s grandfather, Dr. George Darrow, was an internationally known daylily breeder, starting in the late 1950’s after retiring from the USDA. For more than 20 years daylilies were his passion. Chris inherited hundreds of varieties from him and has been breeding them himself for over 20 years.
I was interested to learn from Chris that daylilies are easy to breed. Each flower is open for just one day and most are never pollinated. The female part, the pistil, stands up above the male anthers (of which there are usually six), and bees and other insects can visit them and harvest pollen without ever pollinating them. The pollen is not commonly wind-blown often, either. So daylilies seem to wait for us to do the job.
Chris Darrow
Chris explained that all you have to do is snap off a one of the six anthers and touch it to a pistil. You can self-pollinate a blossom or go to another variety of daylily that you like. Plants that are self-pollinated will not usually produce offspring that are identical to the parent. They may, in fact, have a trait that is emphasized – a tall one bred to itself may produce offspring that are even taller, for example. This allows breeders to develop unique varieties – in several generations.
If you cross two different varieties you might get something that is all new and different, something that is fabulous or something that is absolutely ordinary. It’s a bit like throwing dice – you never know what will show up.
Most daylilies have just 2 sets of chromosomes and are called diploids. Some have 4 sets and are called tetraploids. There are plenty of tetraploid daylilies in existence, and often the blossoms are large and showy. But if you cross a diploid and a tetraploid, you will not get viable seed. So it best if you know your variety name. If you know the name, you can go on-line and look it up at the website of the American Hemerocallis Society (www.daylilies.org). There you can learn if yours is a diploid or a tetraploid. The website has a searchable data base of nearly 80,000 daylilies.
If you want to get seeds, do not snap off the spent flower after it has bloomed. Wait until the green seed pod ripens – it will typically take 40 to 60 days – at which time it will break open. Your job is to pick the pod a little before that happens. If you can squeeze a seed pod and it opens and has dark-colored seeds, it is time to pick it. Chris puts the seed pods from a particular cross into a paper bag. Obviously you will need some sort of numbering and recording system, and a way to identify the parents of the cross.
One of my favorites
Daylily seeds need to be cold stratified before planting. This is, essentially, mimicking a winter. Most breeders put seeds in a refrigerator for a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks. Chris Darrow wraps his seeds in moist paper towels for a month starting in February.
To germinate the seeds, Chris Darrow plants them in 32-cell flats in a 60-40 mix of Pro-Mix starting medium and Moo-Doo brand composted cow manure. He puts the seed trays in an unheated greenhouse and lets them warm up slowly. He told me that daylilies are sporadic germinators – seeds might start growing in a week or in a month. It takes 3 years for most daylilies to go from seed to blossom.
If you want to learn more about daylilies, you might want to join the American Hemerocallis Society for $25 a year. That will entitle you to 4 issues of their magazine and a way to connect with other daylily fans. There are regional and national meetings, too.
If you develop a daylily that you think is special, you can register the name with the American Hemerocallis Society for $20. Go to their website, fill out the form, and send it in with a photograph. This can be done on-line or by mail.
Chris’ grandfather lived to be 94 years old. Chris thinks part of Dr. George Darrow’s longevity was his desire to live another year to see what new daylily hybrids blossomed and what they looked like. Maybe that will work for me. I started crossing daylilies last week!
Henry Homeyer is a gardening consultant and author. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com. You may reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or P.O. box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. Please include a SASE if you want a mail response.
Plants to Watch Out For
Posted on Wednesday, July 29, 2015 · Leave a Comment
If you have a wet area or a stream on your property, you might be seeing some very pretty tall pinky-purple flowers blooming now, or soon. Those are purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), an invasive plant that you should not encourage. Mature plants develop massive root systems and can produce up to a million seeds in a year. It’s one of several plants you should watch out for.
So what can you do? First, learn to recognize purple loosestrife when it first grows, even before blooming. It has a square stem, and it is often reddish or brownish at the base. The leaves are long and thin. Each year I try to find time to cut back the stems more than once, reducing its vigor and preventing it from blooming. I pull new plants, but the established ones can’t be weeded out.
Purple loosestrife came from Europe long ago, and there it is not a problem – it evolved along with insects that eat it and keep it from becoming a pest. One of those beetles has been approved for release in the United States and is helping to control loosestrife in some places, but the beetles are not for sale. By cutting it back, I am acting like a big beetle.
Giant hogweed
Another bad actor is giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). It is a huge plant – often more than 6 feet tall, with huge palmate leaves (shaped a bit like maple leaves, or your hand) and numerous small white flowers arranged on umbels (umbels are like the stays of an umbrella) that can exceed 3 feet in diameter. I bought one once, before I knew it was invasive. It can grow anywhere – sun or shade, wet or dry – and has a tap root that goes down two feet or more. Worse yet, the sap is highly toxic to many people and can create severe burns and even scars – particularly if you get exposed to it in full sun.
Fortunately, I am not allergic to hogweed, and I was able to rid myself of it by digging it out with my long drain spade, a shovel with a blade that is only 6 inches wide, but 16 inches long. On the other hand, it is a fabulous looking plant and wish I could safely grow it. It is on the invasive species list in many states.
Wild parsnip
A similar plant growing by the roadside right now is wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa). This, too, has a sap that can burn the skin of many people (but not me). It only grows four feet or so tall, and has a yellow blossom like Queen Anne’s Lace. It is related to carrots – and giant hogweed. According to Sam Thayer’s wonderful book, The Forager’s Harvest, the tall plant we are seeing now is biologically identical to the parsnips we plant in the garden. It is a biennial plant, and Thayer eats the first year wild parsnips, but explains the second year roots are not edible. He states that wild parsnips look a lot like water hemlock, which is extremely poisonous. So do not take any chances!
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is another pest – but one that has its virtues. It can grow almost anywhere, but does best in rich, fertile and moist soils. It has tough little hairs that act as hypodermic needles, delivering a cocktail of chemicals that sting and can produce a rash. Cooking or drying the leaves, however, eliminates the sting and nettles have a long history as an edible plant and medicinal herb.
Stinging nettles with flowers
Nettles can be cooked and eaten like spinach early in the spring. At this time of year the stems and leaves have gotten tough and are not recommended for eating. The plant itself gets to be 5 to 8 feet tall with leaves in opposite pairs that have toothy margins. It is very nutritious – it is up to 25% protein when dried. When dried, it makes a tea that I don’t like very much. Nettles are a good source of Vitamin C and A. I generally leave stinging nettles alone, though I pull them, wearing gloves, if they get into a flowerbed or too close to a path.
Three lovely garden plants that I grow have potentially poisonous side effects: castor bean (Ricinus communis), angel’s trumpet (Datura spp.) and foxglove (Digitalis purpurea). All three have poisonous seeds and (to a lesser degree) leaves. I don’t worry about them because I can’t see anyone – even a child – eating them. Castor beans and angel’s trumpet both have spiny coverings on their seed pods, and foxglove plants have very tiny seeds.
Castor beans can be used to make ricin, a very poisonous powder that can be fatal if inhaled or ingested. In 2013 a crazy guy sent ricin in a letter to President Obama. Fortunately, like kings of old who had tasters, he doesn’t open his own mail. But the plant is big, with palmate leaves in tones of red or bronze. I find it easy to start from seed.
Foxglove
Angel’s trumpet is my substitute for Oriental and Asiatic lilies, which are so badly attacked by lily-leaf beetles that hand-picking daily can’t keep them looking good. Unlike the lilies, it blooms all summer! It comes in white and purple-flowered varieties; the white ones are much more vigorous.
Foxglove is an old favorite of mine. It’s a biennial that produces pink-purple blossoms on tall stems. If you let it, it will drop seeds to the soil, and, in two years will bloom again unless you have s thick layer of mulch, which will inhibit the seeds.
Knowing your plants – and any potential negatives – is important, especially if you keep animals who are likely to nibble on your plants.
Henry is the author of 5 books. His websites are www.Gardening-Guy.com and www.henryhomeyer.com.
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