The Strawberry Patch



I like strawberry jam the way rabbits like lettuce, but I never thought of growing my own berries any more than a bunny contemplates putting in a vegetable garden.  For many years I got my strawberries from the local produce auction. Once the auctioneer had sold all the fat fancy berries with fat fancy prices and would get down to the ones he called “small and mean” I would start bidding.  To me they were “sweet and cheap” and made by far the best jam.

Garden books claim strawberry plants are short-lived, lasting only three or four years, and that the first year you should pick all the blossoms before they produce fruit, and cut off all the runners so that the second year there will be a good crop.  That sounds like a lot of work for very little return, doesn’t it?

The year of our oldest daughter’s garden wedding, however,  I decided to plant strawberries at the top of the retaining wall in the newly landscaped backyard as a decoration. They were in full bloom on the wedding day, and because I hadn’t picked off the blossoms a few weeks later I was rewarded with a nice crop of berries.

 I still believed all those tales about the difficulties of producing a good crop, but the job of cutting off runners was done by the lawnmower as most of them crept out to the grass just beyond the bed.  I also discovered that picking the ripe berries was a joy for someone with a bad back as the bed atop the retaining wall was just four feet high. 

That bed was still producing berries ten years later as I replaced tired plants with those produced by runners I steered into the bed.  Each fall I covered the bed with pine needles, a mulch that supposedly enhances the flavor of the berries. I always got enough to enhance my morning cereal, and 5 or 6 jars of jam, but  by then I had a flourishing raspberries bed which makes jam almost as good. 

But the real reason I gave up raising strawberries was that after a few years the chipmunks were enjoying more berries than I was. These adorable critters are not very cute when they take a large bite out of any berry that blushes.  I had such a chomping of chipmunks that almost every morning during the strawberry season my Hav-a-Heart trap held a chattering chipmunk.  I always released them up at the Norfolk cemetery, far from Locust Hill.  But eventually I lost heart and gave up the strawberry bed.

I was inspired to try again after I acquired Gottoo, a Basenji, very fleet of foot, who chases my cat at any opportunity. I thought she might keep the chipmunks at bay, but it didn’t work.  Eventually I put netting over the bed, a very tedious job and not pretty looking either.  This year I’m planning to let the chipmunks enjoy those blushing berries, and just make jam from raspberries and jelly from the elderberries blooming in the sheep pasture.

Don’t let this tale discourage you from trying to raise these delicious fruits. Despite all the warnings in the garden books, they are easy to grow, provided you don’t have a family of chipmunks in your back yard.

The Garden Merry-Go-Round



I’ve just spent another day on what I call the Garden Merry-Go-Round.  It happens every spring when there’s so much to get done that I find myself jumping from one horse to another, so to speak. I leave one project to fetch a trowel and get waylaid by another needier project. 

I started by tackling the perennial border which I’d been mulling over all winter,  having decided it was time to make this 100 foot long bed easier to take care of in my old age.  I have already discovered that I’ve made myself a ton of work to accomplish this plan.  Just getting rid of three quince bushes that not only required the prickly job of pruning twice a summer, but were constantly sending up new shoots, sometimes as far away from their mother as a couple of yards, turned into a major job.

The other part of the plan to ease my old age involved removing certain plants that continually self-seeds in the wrong places. Phlox, Lady’s Mantle and  sprawls of black-eyed Susans were all growing in undesirable places. I’d already placed a bucket of compost every ten feet or so, waiting to be turned into the soil as I removed these unwanted plants.

Making the bed less work had turned into a lot of hard work, but since I always enjoy killing two mosquitoes with one slap (much nicer than killing two birds with one stone) my garden cart was ready with a pile of empty pots which I plan to fill with  the plants I dig up to donate to the Douglas Library in Canaan for their  plant sale.  It’s this Saturday, the 19^th from 10 to 3, the reason this column is early.  Besides plants they will have books and baked goods for sale. 

I’d filled almost a dozen pots with my  plants when I realized I should get the camera and a much-needed pair of garden gloves.  Since it was on the way, I took a buckets of weeds with me to the compost pile and got waylaid by the sight of the rugs I’d spread last fall to smother a carpet of weeds.  It was time to find out if this idea worked, but before I rolled up the rugs I took some pictures. 

It really did work, didn’t it?  But all that clear space… I couldn’t think about how fast it would turn back into weeds, so I returned to my border job.

By the time I’d  filled a few more pots with the  plants I’d dug up,  my back told me I should quit, but then I remembered another job that would be relatively easy, cutting the dripping vines of ivy that cover the Abitta’ garden's  stone wall, a nice stand-up job.  It looks so much prettier when you can see the wall,  doesn’t it?

As I took a bucket of ivy cuttings to the compost bin, I saw another job that needed doing.  This is always what happens on the Merry-Go-Round. But taking photos of everything is making this an easy column. Have you noticed the incredible amount of fungi that has sprouted on all outdoor wooden surfaces? My fences are covered with little red-capped moss and other scaly fungi.  

After I took a photo of the gate, I got the paint scraper and tackled the fungi problem.  Boring.  I put the scraper away and suddenly realized I hadn’t even planted my peas, something I usually do in April.  Ah, that allowed me to kill two more mosquitoes. Where my pea vines climb the fence there were a dozen forget-me-nots that could go to the Douglas Library.

Once I’d filled more pots with the forget-me-nots, I planted the peas, raked half the vegetable garden and got out string and stakes so I could put in a row of carrots and one of onions and another of bush beans.  By then, thank heaven, it was lunch time.  A restful hour reading the Wall Street Journal while I ate.  

  

I’m afraid you haven’t learned a thing from me today other than how hard I’ve been working.  This happens often, and now I know why.  Today’s  WSJ had an article which claims that talking about yourself activates the same pleasure zone in the brain as eating good food and receiving money!  Living alone, I rarely get to talk to people, so obviously I am often tempted to talk about myself through my columns.

I hope you’ve been on your own Garden Merry-Go-Round and reveling in the end of Winter.  But do take time out to visit the Douglas Library’s sale.

Advice for a Beginner



I’ve never been very enthusiastic about “how to” books, preferring to blunder my own way through my projects, no matter how ignorant I am about the job I’m tackling.  The big hazard with this approach is the volume of mistakes I can make – slipcovers that don’t fit, jams that don’t jell and blossoms that don’t bloom.  Even so, I believe that famous proverb “Experience is the best teacher,” as well as my own saying “Mistakes are the glue that makes new facts stick in the brain.”

Last week I received a request from a “Blooming Gardener” for advice on how to start a flower bed, so I put the sensible sayings above aside and have been reading several of the garden books on my shelves to get some “how to” advice besides my own.  I’d probably have saved myself a lot of mistakes if I’d read some of them fifty years ago.

My first flower bed grew like “Topsy” with nothing but “hand-me-downs” from friends and neighbors.  At that point my garden knowledge was limited to vegetables. I didn’t even know how to plant the iris corms my friend Bunny gave me, or what color and when to plant the box of unknowns (they were feverfew) my neighbor Jeanette brought me one April, or how tall a clump of something called phlox would grow.  Instead of reading a good garden book, I just stuck all these “hand-me-down” gifts in front of the sheep fence.

Reading about plants is definitely helpful, but don’t depend on the descriptions in the garden catalogs.  They always exaggerate a plant’s good points and rarely tell you about its bad ones.  Get some books from your library with good colored photographs and hard facts. Ortho Books - All about Annuals, All about Perennials -  are good basic books. No book can substitute for the real thing, but you can get enough of an idea to make some choices.  Read about their height, color, lateral spread and the time and length of their flowering.

If you’re as much of a beginner as I was, you may think that the word “perennial” means “lives forever” or “blooms all summer” but neither is correct.  Some perennials are so fussy they may only live a year or two, or so invasive you wish they would, and as for blooms, most will have only a few weeks of flowering, so to maintain a garden of continuous bloom requires careful study.  Annuals, on the other hand, are comparatively inexpensive and bloom all summer.

When I went looking for a good photo for this column  all the handsome flower beds I found were overpowering,  what you might only find on a garden tour of fancy estates.  They were all full of perennials with a mere smattering of annuals.  Even so, I would reverse that order and use primarily annuals with a limited number of perennials to begin.

A few well-behaved perennials include hostas, astilbes, tree peonies, day lilies and Asian lilies.  Once you’re made your choices of plants, visit a local nursery to look at them in the flesh, and then draw up a plan. Try to be as artistic and natural as Mother Nature, breaking up your planting lines.

Obviously the bed should be designed so that no large-sized plant hides a smaller one, but don’t just make rows, short, medium and tall. If your bed is a border, it needs a background, be it a hedge, a house, a wall or shrubbery. Whatever its color, be careful about your colors.  Don’t plant a red beebalm against  a red background, or a white phlox in front of a white  white board fence.

The border’s width should be determined by the height of the tallest plants.  A wide border that contains only bedding plants is as dull as a chorus line of flat-chested go-go dancers; a narrow bed lined with only tall plants is as gawky as a row of plucked ostriches walking a tightrope.

As for color, a flower garden is a place where you can run riot with bright splashes of primary colors or experiment with limited color - pink and gray, blue and white. When you’re planting annuals, use at least three of one kind in a cluster as single specimens get lost.  If the bed is to be multi-colored, no one hue should dominate and the strongest colors should be separated by planting creams and whites in between.

Despite the fact that the “blooming gardener” addressed me as Hasty instead of Hatsy, (actually I get called Hasty a lot, probably because I am)  I’ve tried to give her the basics. I’m sure she hoped I’d give her specific flower recommendations, but that would deprive her of half the fun of making a garden. 

Good luck, Blooming Gardener, and don’t forget my little saying “Mistakes are the glue…”

Plant a Tree

The last day in April is Arbor Day, which gives me an excuse to talk about trees.  Of all the plant categories – vegetables, flowers, herbs, vine, shrubs, trees – my favorite is trees.  My happiest moments in childhood were those spent climbing trees,  sitting on their sturdy branches surveying the world below and eating their luscious offerings of plums and cherries.

I inherited my love of trees from my mother, who planted them as compulsively as a dog buries bones.  When I was in college I heard a commercial on the radio advertising a Mother’s Day bargain – 200 tree seedlings for $5.95. Knowing my mother’s tree mania, I ordered them without a thought of the job I was handing my mother.

I rarely did anything that pleased my mother, but that present was a fantastic success, despite the agony that resulted from Mom’s marathon race to plant them all.  She was thrilled with all the varieties – tulip tree, smoke bush, yellowwood, ironwood, many of which still grace the family property.

Planting a tree on Arbor Day was started by J. Sterling Morton in 1872 in a state with a scarcity of trees, Nebraska.  There it is a legal holiday so everyone has time to dig a hole and plant something in it.  Here in the East we don’t pay much attention to Arbor Day.  My husband’s family preferred a different tradition, the custom of planting a “Life Tree” for each child the spring after it was born.

Watching a foot-high “whip” turn into a strong-limbed giant is almost as satisfying as raising a child, and far less work.  Trees have very few childhood diseases and don’t move away when they’re full-grown either.  Of course you may move way, as we did, leaving the life trees of our three daughters behind.

Hank’s mom and dad planted a butternut tree to celebrate his coming into the world.  Hank and Butternut grew up together, both breaking limbs frequently, and both looking pale and sickly from October until June.  Each in his own way was extremely untidy; Hank trailing clothes and toys in his wake.  Butternut dropping oily nuts covered with thick sickly husks in August that made the lawn mower shudder each time it tried to gobble them up.

A butternut tree’s compound leaves are similar to those of sumac, but they turn a spotty, washed-out yellow in the fall instead of the vibrant crimson of sumac.  They fall to the ground early, usually leaving a poorly shaped skeleton to decorate the landscape. 

When Hank and I moved into his family guest cottage after we were married, we inherited Butternut,  as it resided on our front lawn.  Unfamiliar with the life tree tradition, I suggested to Hank that we get rid of this homely free.  Since Hank had forgotten it was his life tree, he got the axe.

Young George Washington probably chopped down the cherry tree as gleefully as we did the butternut, but his father’s wrath couldn’t have been as hard to face as my mother-in-law’s anguish when she saw little Hankie’s life tree lying dead on the lawn.  Fortunately Mosie was a marvelous mother-in-law, soon admitting she’d never liked the scraggly old butternut either.

When we moved to Locust Hill we left behind all three daughters’ life trees.  The farm had few trees in the yard other than locusts when we moved in.  There was a weeping willow that we discovered had a hollow heart when it fell over in a big snowstorm our first winter here.  There was a very large Norway spruce which blocked all winter sun from the bedroom.  We cut it down when the little silver maple we’d dug up from the woods and planted under it got to be 15 feet tall and began to bend over to get some sun.

The third tree in the yard was a young sugar maple, its trunk about as big around as a gallon jug.  It grew as fast as the current national debt in the first years we were here because, unknown to us, our septic system did not include a septic tank and suddenly a family of five was feeding the maple tree on a daily basis.  Now that beautiful tree is dying and no tree specialist knows why.  My plan to have them cut down the poor thing this past winter, but the pond, where it had to land, never froze sufficiently

.

As you can see, I planted a replacement, a silver maple, to take the sugar maple’s place.  It’s just starting its third year, but is living a hazardous life as branches, bark and even big limbs come crashing down whenever there’s a little wind. 

I was planning to recommend a variety of trees you might plant on Arbor Day, but as usual, I got waylaid with my personal experiences.  There are dozens of reasons to plant a tree besides commemorating a child’s birth.  Plant a beautiful Kousa dogwood with its layers of white blossoms each spring.  How about a fruit or nut tree to provide September edibles and spring blossoms to make bouquets for the house? 

The locust pictured above was the only photo I had of a tree and even though it fills the air with perfume in May when its white petals resemble a small snow storm as they drift down to the ground, I wouldn’t recommend planting one.  Its limbs look positively tortured in winter and it provides very little shade in summer.  Its one virtue is that its leaves disappear each fall without needing to be raked. 

I hope you’ll look around your hard and realize there’s a perfect spot for a new tree, then pour over the catalogs (http://www.musserforests.com/  tel 800-64739893 is a good one), and picture what a graceful weeping willow or a white pine, or…  whatever you decide.  There’ll be a nice reward as you watch it grow.

The First Spring Edible



What a silly little snow we had last week, but it was hard on all the brave baby crocus blooms and eagerly dancing  daffodils who were fooled by the weather. One plant that had no trouble with that bit of white stuff, however, was the rhubarb pictured above, which pops up even faster than asparagus each spring.

I’ve always considered rhubarb a fruit, but even Webster  admits that there’s no clear distinction between fruits and vegetables.  “It has been held by the courts that all those which, like potatoes, carrots, peas, celery, lettuce, tomatoes, etc. that are eaten (whether raw or cooked) during the principal part of a meal are to be regarded as vegetables, while those used only as dessert are fruits.” (The Judiciary worries about such mundane things??)

Botanically speaking, rhubarb is not a  fruit, which is the mature ovary of a flower.  An apple is a pome fruit, a peach a drupe fruit, and a tomato is actually a berry fruit.  But looked at it that way, cucumbers, squash, peppers and eggplants are all fruits, not vegetables.  Brussels sprouts are buds, broccoli is an immature flower and rhubarb, like celery, is a stem.

Whether rhubarb is a fruit or a vegetable is immaterial when it comes to raising a plant or two in the backyard. They are very undemanding plants, requiring hardly any effort on the part of the gardener.  Since rhubarb seeds rarely produce plants true to type, the easiest way to propagate this perennial is the same way you would a peony – by finding a friend willing to divide one of her plants to give you  a piece of the rhizome full of new buds called  “eyes.”

Unlike peonies, however, which should be divided in September, the best time of year to start rhubarb is early spring.   The roots should be planted so that the red-budded crowns are just below the surface, If planting more than one, give each at least a four foot space, and spread a nice layer of well-rotted manure (or some 5-10-5 fertilizer) around each clump as they are greedy feeders. 

Pick a spot in full sun, but don’t plant your rhubarb in the vegetable garden where their roots may be disrupted by the rototiller.  And don’t put them where you may decide to eventually put the swimming pool or the tennis court when you can afford one, as these perennials are truly perennial, lasting for years.

You can start harvesting a few stalks the second year.  Grasp a stalk near its base and twist it away from the plant rather than cutting it. Leave the thin stalks and the tough outer ones to feed the rhizome.  When your peas are ready to pick, stop harvesting your rhubarb.  If you don’t grow peas… well, you really ought to.  Fresh peas are delicious.

The rhubarb flower stalk with its huge panicle of tiny flowers often grows taller than a man.  Garden books recommend cutting it down before it blooms as it supposedly limits the harvest.  I let mine bloom every year and always have a bountiful harvest.   

Rhubarb is a native of Tibet.  When it was first introduced to the western world a few cooks served up the leaves instead of the stems.  Many funerals followed as the foliage contains large amounts of oxalic acid, a substance poisonous to humans and animals.   I remember one spring when our sheep escaped from their pasture and were busy eating the newly sprouted rhubarb leaves.  They were staggering around, obviously feeling terrible, but fortunately had not eaten enough to keel over and die.

I’m not fond of rhubarb, but Hank adored it and froze a large quantity each year.  One summer several of my relations and I decided to hold a family reunion.  I had envisioned inviting just our generation and our children, but my cousins wanted to include all our relations, going back to our great grandfather Henry Robinson. 

When the party grew to over 100 participants, we chose to roast a pig for the event. Unfortunately it was the wrong time of year for fresh applesauce, a must as a condiment for roast pig, so our solution was to buy canned applesauce and combine it with Hank’s frozen rhubarb.  It was quite tasty, but as I stood in line with my empty plate, I overheard a small boy whisper to his equally small friend, “Skip the applesauce.  It’s really stringy!”    

Crowd Control



One of the things I enjoy most about living in this rural area of Connecticut is its lack of crowds.  Impatient people like yours truly don’t do well waiting in line at the grocery store,  getting caught behind dozens of cars on the turnpike because of some sort of tie-up, or being corralled into a zigzagged maze of people to get through Immigration as I did coming home from the Dominican Republic.

There must have been close to a hundred weary travelers ahead of us in that line, patiently shuffling along between the guide ropes. Everyone was extremely well-behaved, no pushing or shoving, but it took almost an hour to finally pass inspection and find our way out of the airport.

Here in the Northwest Corner I hardly ever experience crowd control, at least not one involving people.  My crowd control usually involves my vegetable garden.  It took me years to learn how important it is to plant delicate little seedlings far enough apart so they can grow to a proper size without crowding.

You don’t get great heads of broccoli if you’ve planted the slim little seedlings just six inches apart, but it’s hard to picture what monsters they can turn into by mid-summer. Those seedlings need to be spaced at least 2 feet part.  They not only grow up, they also grow out, and if the outside leaves are crowding one another, you won’t get that first head worth bragging about.  It’s the large outer leaves, not the roots, that supply the fast-growing head with food, so they need plenty of space and sunlight.

Tomatoes also need plenty of room, but not until July.  For the first month or so they can afford to share their places with radishes, lettuce or spinach.  Onions are the most polite  of all the vegetables, whether as sets or seedlings.  They can be lined up in a zigzag fashion, three inches apart in a double row, or closer if you plan to thin them.

Until last year I never worried about crowd control with my pea vines which climb the garden fence.  Unfortunately the daffodils and feverfew on the other side of the fence came up so early they shaded out the pea vines before they could start climbing.  By the time they’d gotten hold of the fence, the lilies  were blocking out the sun.  I had a very poor pea crop.  Live and learn.  This year I will be planting my peas on the east side of the garden against the stone wall.

Planting seeds is a little harder to organize than seedlings.  For very small seeds like carrots or lettuce, I dig a shallow trench, then mix the seeds in a can with sand and vermiculite and dribble it down the row,  which helps space them and also keep the row weed-free.   Radish seeds are big enough to handle individually, but remember to plant short rows.  That's  because when they’re ripe they should all be picked.  If left in the ground in a few days they’ll become tough and pithy.

The seeds of bush beans are easily handled and can be planted 2 feet apart.  At least that’s what I thought until the summer I had a job working in the vegetable garden at Stillwater Farm in Salisbury.  I was stunned when I saw the row of bush beans.  They were barely two inches apart.  When I offered to thin them, the head gardener shook his head "I like 'em close like that."

Those bean plants were more tightly packed than the travelers in the Immigration line at JFK, and each one produced only one or two clumps of beans.  Since there were four times as many plants as there are in a normal row, however, the resulting harvest was just as plentiful.  Furthermore, with such stiff and upright parents, the children were raised very properly, not allowed to play in the dirt the way mine do. 

The cleverest method of crowd control I ever saw was my friend Bruce Zinke’s technique of planting pole beans.  He puts in a row of sunflower seeds in early spring and a few weeks later plants two bean seeds next to each sprouted sunflower stalk.  The beans and the sunflowers grow up together.  No fussing with poles or string or any of that nonsense.

Have fun planting yourvegetable  garden,.  And if you don’t have one,  think about how convenient it would be to step out the back door for a truely tasty tomato for the salad, what a treat to have really fresh lettuce instead of that store-bought stuff, and what fun to sit in the sun and snack on a handful of peas while you're weeding, Oh, and don't forget how much money one saves on the grocery bill.  

Starting from Scratch



   

I was planning to write about all the exotic blooms I saw in the Dominican Republic today, but we (three daughters and I) were so busy playing tennis, sun tanning, swimming and eating that I only took a few photos, and most, like the one above, I couldn’t even identify.   

So, instead, I want to write about raising your own seedlings since March is when you should start.  The first year I decided to try this project, I filled a bushel basket with dirt from the vegetable garden in the fall and stored it in the cellar.  By March I’d read enough to know I’d better sterilize that soil to prevent “damping off.”  This disease is often compared to whooping cough as it only attacks children, but I think a more suitable label would be crib death, as it always kills the seedlings it attack.

I filled a large pan with my soil and put it in the oven to cook. Ten minutes later I took it out.  Wow! The smell was overpowering,  and I soon realized why.  My cat had preferred my basket of dirt in the cellar to her kitty litter.  After airing the house, I went and bought some sterile potting soil.

As a gardener I find playing in dirt as delightful as a violinist must feel playing a Stradivarius.  Unfortunately store-bought potting soil isn’t quite the same.  Some brands feel like sawdust, other like shredded Styrofoam.  But it’s all sterile.

Seeds need warm soil (65 or 70 degrees) to germinate, so if you’re starting your seeds in an unheated guest room, give them an electric blanket.  I always laid an old enameled table top upside down on my blanket so the flats of seeds can be watered without shorting out the blanket.

Once your seeds have sprouted you can turn the blanket from high to low. If there’s insufficient light, rig a fluorescent about 8 inches above the seedlings.  You can leave it on day and night as the plants don’t seem to resent being expected to work without a break.  With their feet warm but the air cool, they grow into nice, thick-stemmed, well-rooted plants.

It takes at least eight or nine weeks for seedlings to be ready to face the real world, so backtrack from the date when you expect Jack Frost to leave on his summer vacation to start your seeds,.  In New England it’s usually Memorial Day weekend.

Tomato vines need a real head start if they’re to produce ripe tomatoes before Jack returns in the fall, so when they’ve produced their first true leaves, they should all be transplanted to their own individual pots, and each given a nice drink of manure tea.  Other vegetables that need a head start include broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and onions. Most other vegetables do fine just being planted directly in the garden.

I will never forget the Memorial Day when I drove to New Hampshire to help Trum plant her first vegetable garden.  She and Clem had already done all the hard work– rototilling, raking, fencing.  The soil was a good loose loam, remarkably free of stones, and Trum, who has become a far more knowledgeable gardener than her Mom, had raised all her own seedlings, and I mean ALL. 

Every vegetable she’d planned to have in the garden she had started inside in flats.  Not just tomatoes and broccoli, and onions, but peas, beans, spinach, corn, pumpkins and even carrots!! She’d asked me all about what kind of potting soil to use, how much light and water the seedlings would need, how to “harden them” off,  but she’d never asked, and I’d never thought to tell her, which seeds to plant.

The last thing I wanted was to dampen Trum’s new enthusiasm for gardening, so we planted everything and by the end of the day we had 10 full rows of growing greenery, which we quickly dubbed “The Instant Garden.”

Of course it didn’t do too well.  The baby carrots were so crooked they could have been worn as bracelets. The bean plants had grown so fast indoors that they soon became as sick and spindly as a calf with the scours.  The peas and spinach also went into shock, and the pumpkins curled up and died.  Pumpkins should always be planted in their permanent home as they can’t take transplanting.

Trum still raises her own seedlings.  Me, I prefer a little Caribbean vacation this time of year.  Hope you’ve enjoyed one or the other.