It’s Trimming Time

5 March, 2013 Reply

Amazingly enough I’ve got almost all the vegetable beds ready. Only one big one and one small one to go. I should have them all cleaned out and amended in time to start planting my early spring crops next week, as we’re supposed to have a pleasant warm weekend, without rain, coming up.

Trimming trees so that they'll grow for better crop production is important.

Trimming trees so that they’ll grow for better crop production is important.

One task that many of us need to be about right now is trimming back some of our fruits. Now that the killing frost are quickly becoming a thing of the past grapes, strawberries, and fruit trees need trimming.

The fruit trees will also get their first neem treatment to kill viruses and bacteria that might have overwintered on them. I can use the neem to keep invaders at bay until the weather gets warmer. Then I’m going to switch to a product call Surround. I have to make the switch because we get too hot here to continue to use the neem. If it gets hot, humid, with intense sun, neem will scald the fruits and burn the leaves.

Surround is clay based and is supposed to keep diseases and pests from fruit trees, while still allowing them to grow. I bought apples from a farm, when we were visiting Virginia a number of years ago, that had the clay on them. It’s easy to remove and they swore by its efficacy. After my fruit trees have been devastated by disease and pests for the past few years I finally found a source of Surround and bought a bag. It’s setting ready, waiting for the warmer weather.

I’ll wait until the middle of March to trim back the perennials, especially the roses, because by then if we’re going to have any really nasty weather it’s usually happened. They are predicting possible snow for tomorrow, but it’s only supposed to be an inch at most. It will melt off by later in the day, as the roads and soil have already started to warm up.

So, if you have fruit or nut trees, grapes, or berry bushes on your property check to make sure when you should trim them back. It will vary by zone and your local agricultural extension should be able to tell you the best dates for your area.

Preventing Winter Damage To Fruit Trees

10 January, 2013 Reply

This past spring we planted quite a few new fruit trees. In doing research about how to take care of them, I found that there were some important things I needed to do to ensure they would survive the first winter.

Small trees are very vulnerable to attacks by rodents, rabbits, and deer, so it is recommended that you protect them. They can strip the bark off of them and kill them. There are several different ways you can do this. You can buy protective plastic tubes to put around them, or special white wrapping tape that will cover the trunks completely and protect them. Another thing that you can do is to use white latex paint and paint the trunks up to where the first branches are.

The latex paint does other things that the other protectors don’t do, and that’s why I chose to paint the trunks of my trees.

Protect your fruit tree trunks in winter.

Protect your fruit tree trunks in winter.

In some more southerly areas the temperatures can sometimes rise suddenly during winter months. For instance, we’re going to have a weekend of temperatures at or near 70, after several weeks where the highs were in the 40s. When this happens the dark tree trunks warm up. If they stay warm long enough the sap will begin to flow in the trees.

This can cause two things to happen. First, your trees can bud out and bloom early, which is something one of my peach trees has done for the past couple years. Second, if the sap rises and there is a sudden hard freeze, it freezes the sap in the tree and it can actually cause the trunks of the trees to explode. This damage is not usually noticeable until spring when the trunk thaws. If it is bad it can actually kill the tree. Painting the trunks protects them from the sudden warming (as will the other two methods).

It also protects from certain boring insects, and some fungal diseases, which the other two will not do.

Lastly, all I need to do is slap a new coat of paint on them each fall. With the plastic protectors you have to be careful that the tree trunk doesn’t get too big. The wrap has to be taken off and redone each year and sometimes more than once if the tree grows rapidly. Both those sounded like too much work and we always have a bit of white latex paint hanging around…

After watching my peach tree bloom in February the past couple years and wanting to ensure the survival of my baby trees, once I found out the weather forecast, I was out there dutifully coating their trunks with paint. Oh, I know I said you should do it in the fall, but we got busy and had to go to Costa Rica for dental work, etc. So, I picked a nice warmer day, with no threat of rain, and painted away.

Warning, do not wrap your trunks with anything that is not white, as it will only help heat them up early.

Now I feel like I have a “real” orchard.

Tiny Pear

30 October, 2012 1 Comment
A tiny Bartlett pear on my sapling.

Even little plants have an amazing will to live and reproduce!

I think I just learned not to tease my plants, or maybe it’s the other way around. In August when the weather cooled down one of the pear trees I had planted this spring put out a blossom. I teased it about being off in it’s timing, why didn’t it do this in the spring, etc. Actually I was just having some fun and marveling at how a pear would try to get things going when it was almost the end of the season.

On Sunday I was out in the garden putting in the last of the strawberries before the first frost hit. On my way past the pear trees I notice a perfectly form, albeit tiny, pear hanging from the tree that had bloomed in August. Maybe my teasing it made it want to prove to me that it could make a pear if it wanted to!

It is amazing how something unexpected can make your day so much lighter. I had been dreading planting the berries, because there were at least a million weeds needing to be pulled before I could even plant one of them.

Yesterday, because we’re getting the winds of Sandy and supposedly rain today and frost tonight, I picked the tiny pear, just to see if it was far enough along to ripen. It will only be about two bites for each or us, but it would be fun to be able to say we had our first pear!

What amazing surprises have your plants given you!

Preserving And Storing Your Harvest

16 October, 2012 Reply

Fall is upon us. The trees are starting to change daily, and the gardens are giving up the last of their bounty, except the fall greens and peas. My kitchen and dining room are filled with a bounty of dried and drying foods. So, what can you do to preserve your food for later consumption?

I recommend dehydrating over freezing or canning. Mainly for the convenience. With freezing you have to prepare the foods for freezing and then hope that you don’t have a power outage during winter storms. It is tenuous at best. Canning is a major process, needing special jars and equipment. Not only that, if you don’t do it properly it can be dangerous as contaminants can grow in the preserved foods.

With dehydrating you’ll need one piece of equipment, a dehydrator. This is a little bit of an investment, but purchasing a good quality dehydrator will last you literally decades. I own and recommend the Excalibur dehydrator. We’ve had tremendous success with it and since it’s temperature controlled we can dry our foods at a low temperature and preserve enzymes and flavors that are destroyed at higher temperatures.

Here’s a quick look at what the Excalibur has to offer.

The other harvestables you’ll need to preserve are those that are already dry, beans and seeds. The biggest problem there is harvesting them. Most of us no longer have barns or outbuildings that we can do the traditional threshing and winnowing that was done in days gone by. Figuring out a simple way to do the same indoors is quite a trick. I have bowls of dried beans setting around waiting for me to shell them. If I find a fast way to shell them, I’ll share it with you.

Herb seeds can often be put in a pillow case and hit until the seeds come free. Then you can run them through a sieve to get the small particles and dirt off of them.

This is the first year I’m actually trying to harvest some of my sunflower seeds and they are being very tough to get out of the head. I’m doing research to see if anyone has a quick and easy way to get them out, as I have quite a few to harvest. Usually I just put the flower heads outside for the birds in the middle of the winter, but this year I had several varieties that I want to grow again, so I need to save seed.

Once dried, dehydrated foods and dried beans and seeds can be put in glass jars that have been cleaned well. They will keep that way almost indefinitely. As long as you keep them out of the sun, dry, and closed when not in use. I have some beans from a couple years ago and I’ve kept dried veggies and herbs for up to five years and they’ve still been in perfect shape.

2012 What Did Well & What Didn’t

13 September, 2012 Reply

So, I’m looking at the overall success of my gardens this year, and there were some definite winners and losers.

Hot pink carnation

Carnation ‘Chabaud’ did great this year. It was worth the wait!

A Look At The Winners

Last year I started a seed packet of carnation ‘Chabaud Mix’ and ended up with 36 plants. I planted them in the garden last fall and quite a few of them made it through the first winter. These guys produced an abundance of frangrant flowers up until August when the heat finally stopped them. Now that it’s cooling down it looks like they’re getting ready for another round. Next year I’ll need to have some props for them, as they are floppy, but worth it, what a heavenly scent!

Anise hyssop is another one I started from seed last year. Planted the babies in the fall and this year was rewarded with 3’ tall plants covered in blossoms that were constantly being visited by bees, butterflies, and goldfinch! It does die down in the middle of the hot spell, but is again getting ready to do a whole round of blooming now that it’s cooler.

It looks like all the fruit trees we put in this spring are going to make it. It’s still a little touch and go for the prune plum, but it’s trying hard to put on at least a few leaves to gather some nourishment before frost puts it to sleep. So, now we have all but one fruit tree planted and will be able to start harvesting within a couple years.

All the perennials that I moved to the woodland garden are still hanging in there and most have started to sprout new leaves, so we got a good start there.

My herb garden is a smashing success. The herbs absolutely love the deep mulch we planted them in and they have doubled or tripled in size over last year.

The deck roof is the number one winner in the non-plant category. We can finally sit outside without being baked. I’m finishing up the painting this week, while the weather cooperates. Getting that done has been problematic with our frequent severe thunderstorms in August.

Onto The Losers

The biggest loser in the whole garden where the deep purple petunias I planted this spring. They never did much of anything and when the heat hit they died. I’ve not been much of a petunia lover (except the wave and million bells), but it was so beautiful I decided to try it. Hopefully I’ve learned my lessons. I just don’t care for regular petunias and they don’t seem to like the heat here.

Planting annuals in the middle of the summer. I had some annuals get eaten by the resident bunny and when I found some available for the ridiculous price of 25 cents for a 4-pack I indulged. However, they never even got off the ground and are still just little sticks with a tiny blossom on the end. They might end up looking nice by the time it frosts, but that garden definitely looks terrible right now.

Covering my summer squash with frost barrier didn’t work very well. Next year I’m going to try using window screening. There just wasn’t enough airflow, and all kinds of diseases and small pests (aphids) took over. I hardly got anything from the vines, but what I got was wonderful. Also, need a place where they can wander without covering the lawn.

My melons and winter squash were a bust, too. I got tons of small melons, all tasteless. The watermelons only got about as big as a softball and never ripened properly. The winter squash just never put on any female blossoms. So, I need to figure out what it is they want. I even tried hills this year, to no avail…

I wrote earlier about my fiasco with the tomatoes. They did produce some, but not nearly as well as they would have if they hadn’t been swallowed alive by the beans and then infected with early blight.

As the season winds down I’ll continue to write about what I’ve learned from my garden this year. Would love it if you’d share your thoughts, too!

Blah Melons

6 August, 2012 Reply
Row of delicious looking cantaloupes

I was dreaming of delicious sweet tasting melons. They smell great, but taste blah! Help!

Drat! Here I was all set for some super sweet melons and they taste totally blah. I’ve been searching the internet trying to find out what makes a blah melon (these are the small melons like cantaloupe, sharlyn, etc). However, I’ve not gotten a definitive answer.

Some people say it’s the water, too much gives a dilute flavor. If that is truly the case that is my problem, because I’ve got them planted with plants that need regular watering. However, another post says its the soil, another that you need the right fertilizer, etc.

I think the answer for me is to contact my local agricultural extension. I know I mentioned this in my first blogs, but it bears repeating regularly. Agricultural extension agents have knowledge that is perfect for your area. Asking on a forum can be tricky. The answers may come from entirely different climates or even different countries! Someone’s success can be a fluke, without any science behind it. There are all kinds of reasons why what worked for one person might not work for you. Agricultural agents work with farmers right there in your area. They know the soil, weather, and any other mitigating circumstances that could be affecting your crops.

Even though they work with large scale farms they will take the time to make sure a small home grower has the right info. At some extension agencies they have a horticultural agent that will work more with homeowner’s, but someone in the agency will certainly have the answer you need. As it stands, I may have overwatered my melons. They sure smell heavenly, and I’ll eat them even if they are bland, because I grew them, but maybe next year I’ll have to work with the nature spirits to plant them with something that doesn’t need so much water and I’ll have sweet treats.

Any ideas for me and others to consider when growing melons?

Unrecognized Pollinators

2 August, 2012 Reply

Almost anyone who does any gardening has heard about the plight of the honeybee. Many of us sit with baited breath waiting to hear if they are going to make it or not and fearing that if they don’t we’ll not have anything to eat, because there won’t be any pollinators left.

Quite by accident I found information on other bees, in particular mason bees (Osmia), that do even more work for pollination than honeybees. Almost no-one knows anything about them, because, alas, they don’t produce honey, they just help produce much of all our other produce, especially early spring fruiting plants.

Orchard Mason Bee

Orchard Mason Bees are much better pollinators than honeybees.

I even watched a special where one of the bee drivers; these are folks who drive huge trucks filled with honeybee hives around the USA helping to pollinate the vast fields of fruit and nut trees; spoke on how without the honeybee we won’t have most of our fruits and nuts and many of our vegetables.

After reading about the mason bee I realized that he was dead wrong. Mason bees are much more efficient pollinators, but they don’t like to be bused around, so the bee driver can’t take them all over the USA. They can pollinate 2000 more flowers in the same amount of time than a honeybee. The common name of one species is Orchard Mason Bee (Osmia lignaria), because it is so well know for its ability to vastly increase the production in orchards. The horned mason bee (Osmia cornifrons) can pollinate 15 flowers in one minute.

As a matter of fact there are over 4000 species of bees in the US. Of the Osmia genus there are 300 species across the Northern Hemisphere and 150 indigenous to the US. That’s a lot of different bees.

Also, these bees don’t look like a honeybee. They usually have a green or blue metallic back, sometimes black, not striped. So, it pays to get to know all the insects in your garden, as you may be killing the very insects that are pollinating your crops. Some of them are smaller than honeybees, etc. They are very docile creatures, too, so they aren’t easily angered to sting you. They will only sting if they are being crushed and fear imminent death.

There are ways that you can help to cultivate a larger presence of the mason bees in your garden. They lay their eggs in tubes. It can be hollow grasses, straws, holes in wood, etc. There are very easy ways to build houses for them. I’ll collect some good sites on that and put that in my next blog, so that you can start increasing the number of pollinators in your garden.

Have you built a mason bee home? Did you see an increase in your plant production once you put it out? Any interesting stories about mason bees? Please share.

Fresh Citrus In My Own Yard

21 June, 2012 Reply
Future fresh orange juice.

Nothing is better than an orange fresh off the tree!

Every once in awhile I get a hankering to be able to grow my own tropical fruits. I still remember the orange I had when I was on tour with my college symphony. It had been fresh picked from the tree that morning. As I ate it, it dripped all down the front of me, it was so juicy. We had a lot of laughs over that, and I had the best orange I’ve ever had.

Different areas provide different opportunities for growing plants. Here in the mid-Atlantic our acidic clay soil provided us with at least 5 pounds of blueberries this morning, and that was primarily from just 2 plants!

The idea of walking out on a warm, sunny morning and picking a fresh orange, grapefruit, lemon, or lime right off my own patio, since they have many patio trees available for citrus, is intriguing. Looking at new homes in tampa and visualizing myself sitting on the patio with a sparkling swimming pool and my own little tropical fruit stand growing around it, has crossed my mind once or twice, especially on cold, icy winter days when the powers gone out and we’re trying to stay warm under quilts until it returns. Florida looks really good right about then.

Of course I’d have to try my hand at other tropical fruits, as well. Especially mangos. I love mangoes. Did you know there are over 60 varieties of mangoes? All we get here in the state, at least for the most part, are two. So, I would include a couple different mangoes, as I don’t think I’d have space for all 60. I’d also try some bananas, papayas, date palm (oh my goodness that would be good, really fresh dates), and coconut trees.

My neighbors might not like it in the beginning, but when I start to share the harvest with them I’m sure they’d change their tune.

Another thing about Florida is all the ocean front to play in. Here I have to drive 5 hours just to get to any ocean, and then it is often so windy that the sand stings you and the sand flies bite like crazy. I’ve been to Florida a few times and really enjoyed their clean sandy beaches. Oh, and don’t forget the cool seashells you can find down there. I was there once, right after a storm and found dozens of the coolest shells ever. I’ve got them stored and when I redo my second bath I’m going to cover the frame of the mirror with all those shells to make my bathroom look like a seaside cottage bath.

It’s always fun to imagine what it would be like to live in some new, exotic place. What plants you’d like to grow. Who knows, maybe someday I might just reside in Florida, but for right now I think I’ll go grab a bowl of blueberries, something I’d not be able to grow in Florida. There are always tradeoffs, so remember to enjoy the bounty your area has to offer. Every location has its specialties.

Garden Overflowing With Color

18 June, 2012 Reply
Hydrangeas freshly cut from my garden

It’s always delightful to bring a little bit your garden into your home. The hydrangea was just stunning this year. I had to bring some in to enjoy.

I’m fortunate. I have two sisters that love gardening as much as I do. We enjoying seeing and hearing about each others gardens. Each of us lives in a distinctly different climate: Washington state, North Carolina, and Germany. We’ve each enjoyed seeing what we can all grow in common and sometimes envying when something will grow for someone else, but not in our own climate. Our love of gardening was seeded by our mother. People used to pass our house and ask her who her landscaper was. She did it all herself, and it seems we have each inherited the gardener’s gene.

“Just wanted to share with you an email I wrote to them today. I was lamenting that I was missing being outdoors in absolutely perfect weather, because of a project that has hit its deadline. To console myself I took a few minutes on a break to wander the gardens and make note of what was in bloom…

This is turning out to be a banner year in the garden. All the vegetables are looking fantastic. I even picked my first cucumber a couple days ago! We’ll be munching yellow wax beans at any moment, as we finish off the spring harvest of sugar snap peas, broccoli, and lettuce. The tomatoes have buds all over them and look almost like miniature trees their stems are so stout this year. A far cry from the sickly plants I raised last year. I learned my lesson about overhead watering and tomatoes. I already have the drip hose in place, but have only had to use it twice, as we’ve had ample rain. Of course we’re still harvesting our quarter-sized blueberries and will be for the rest of this month. Unfortunately the critters found the marionberries so we might not get hardly any this year. They’re munching them before they are ripe enough for us to eat! Next year will have the berries all in place, penned in and we’ll have critter deterrents in place, so that we get to eat them.

Cosmos and anise hyssop growing in my front garden.

It’s always great when you find a new color and texture combination you like. I really like the cosmos with the anise hyssop. Do you?

I’m eagerly anticipating the harvest of peaches, but they just don’t seem to be growing! Ack! I think the cool weather has slowed them down a bit, as we harvested the few we had by this time last year. Much less bug damage this year, so I think that using neem is the way to go. I still want to try the Surround clay spray, as they say neem can’t be used in hot weather. The oil heats up in the sun and bakes the plant or fruits, but we’ve not had any problems so far this year.

The flowering plants are truly amazing this year. I have 37 different varieties of plants blooming in my garden right now. The spring and early summer bloomers are still at it, because of the cooler than normal temperatures, and the mid-summer bloomers are already having at it. It is a riot of color and textures. I’ve not had mature gardens like this before so it’s really a treat.

Right now I have 15 annuals in bloom; Impatiens, vinca, dianthus, pentas, pansies, victoria blue salvia (is an annual, but comes back almost every year, so the plants are getting huge), lantana, clown flower (1st blossom today, grown from seed), zinnia (Old Mexico volunteer), bachelor buttons (also volunteers, one in the middle of the lawn), petunias, cosmos (more volunteers), red salvia (they call it sage here), cherry pink zinnia. I have many volunteer moss roses and cockscomb plants, but they haven’t started blooming yet, just about to though.

Yellow and peach daylilies bloom profusely, while the shasta daisies peak over the top.

Yellow and peach daylilies bloom profusely, while the shasta daisies peak over the top.

The perennials include gladiolus (quickly becoming a favorite, even if I do have to dig them every year), hydrangea, chrysanthemums (thought they were supposed to bloom in the fall), catnip, carnations (started these from seed last year, blooming for the first time this year), snapdragons (same as the carnations) pincushion flower (x2), deep red lily, hollyhocks (were supposed to be doubles, but are singles (from seed), coreopsis (a dwarf variety & moonbeam), anise hyssop (which the bees adore, also from seed), blue salvia, day lilies (even the ones I transplanted are blooming), stokesia, ice plant, asters (another I thought was supposed to bloom in fall), bee balm, loosestrife (a non-invasive variety, it has stayed put in one nice clump and is so beautiful and the bees and hummingbirds love it), gallardia (2 varieties), shasta daisy, echinacea, and I think the hostas out back might has started to bloom, they had big buds on them, but haven’t been to the woodland garden today.

One of the greatest things about the garden is that I don’t think I paid more than $2.50 for more than just a few plants. They are either grown from seed, or I bought them from the distressed section of the local big box stores. Oh, I did buy some of the annuals, but the lady up the street is still only charging $1.25 for 4 plants, what a bargain.

Yesterday I had to do a sad job. I finally dug up the dead Colorado Blue Spruce that unexpectedly died this winter. I had grown it from a seedling. It was probably about 15 years old, but only about 3′ tall, because it had been in a pot most of its life. A couple years ago I finally got it in the ground and it was growing by leaps and bounds. Suddenly the ends turned brown and within a month it was a complete goner. I replaced it with a Japanese maple that was given to me as a seedling. Hopefully it will do well in the space. I see them all over town, and these were dug up from underneath someone’s huge tree, so we’ll see. I put lots of leaf mulch in the gigantic hole I dug, as I’ve been told they hate clay. I had to wait to remove the dead tree until the daffodils had died back sufficiently. It is a relief to have it removed, as it was a sad reminder, its barren skeleton sticking out of the middle of the yard.

I have a bit more planting to do, especially in the woodland garden, then it’ll be on to the roof on the back deck. I’m almost finished painting all the wood, so this next week we can start putting it up. I think I’m going to be able to convince Sarvasri to put on a metal roof. We can do the whole thing for less than $90 and it would be fairly permanent. He was wanting canvas, but it would cost up about half what the permanent roof would and it would have to be replaced every few years.

Hope you two are enjoying your gardens as much as I am this year.”

Attack Of The Giant Blueberries

5 June, 2012 Reply
Our Own Homegrown Blueberries

Where's the Quarter? Oh, there it is!

Of course I do not see this as a bad thing. We live in ideal blueberry country. It is a major crop in our state, but I’ve never seen blueberries as big as the ones we have on our bushes this year.

Could you find the quarter? That’s because they are literally as big around as a quarter. You can only get two on a spoon at a time. Just having giant blueberries doesn’t really mean much. If they taste terrible then you have too much of a bad thing. However, these berries are sweet and tender and lip-smacking good.

How do you grow big blues? In actuality, at least in this climate, you can almost abuse them and still get a good crop. Blueberries like very acidic soil. Our soil is around 5.5 if I’m not mistaken. I slather on a heavy layer of pine straw and limb chippings to keep it as acidic as possible. Other than that nothing, nada. No fertilizer, no pesticides, nothing except protecting them from the birds when the blueberries start to turn, well, blue!

This is the second year the blueberries have been huge, but their even bigger than last year. Maybe they’ll just keep getting bigger and bigger and soon we can harvest just one berry to make a meal. Hmm, think I let my imagination get away from me.

The one thing we did this year is we built a nicer looking and easy to install netting system. The mockingbirds have been angry with use every since. It’s just PVC pipe and bird netting. We used two sizes of PVC that would nest inside each other. We sunk the larger of the two into the ground about 9 inches, then cut the other to fit around the berries. We used 2 – 5’ pieces, two 45 degree elbows and one 3’ piece across the top. We see that the plants are going to outgrow this, so we’ve already devised a way to make it taller, so that we won’t have any branches poking through next year. All we’ll need are a couple straight-through connectors and probably about 1’ more of pipe on each side, snap the top back on and we’ll be covered, hopefully for good. Luckily the bird netting will easily cover this change.

At the end of the berry season we’ll just roll up the netting, bundle up the poles and store it away. It’ll take hardly any room. Since we’ll leave the larger pieces in the ground it will be easy up next year. Anyway, if you’ve got blueberries of your own and you don’t want the birds to eat more than you do, this is a very inexpensive and pretty nice looking way to cover them. You could even spray paint the PVC if you wanted something more decorative or that blends in with the landscape.

123 » Last