September 2011

Planters Punchlines
Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield
September 2011
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Garden Club Kicks off 2011-12 Season
Monday Sept. 26 @ 7:00 p.m. Pitkin Community Center

No agenda or speaker. Traditionally the Sept. meeting is to get reacquainted, talk over summer happenings, and discuss plans for the upcoming year. Let the arguing begin.

2011-2012 Club Officers

President: Tony Sanders
Vice President: John Swingen Jr.
Secretary: Fred Odell
Treasurer: Richard Prentice

Please welcome prospective club member Ben Nichols. Ben recently moved to Newington from the Syracuse, NY area where he was a member of the Men’s Garden Club of Syracuse.

Compostable Matter
By Jim Meehan

The bees seem to be getting really fat on our Phlox pollen this year. Really, really fat! Hindenbee fat! Supersize me fat! Heavy enough to bend the plant ninety degrees fat! Able to hang on to a fragile petal in twenty miles per hour wind fat!

This summer, for various reasons, I have spent more time looking out our front family room windows than I usually do. The view out into our yard is partially obscured by several pink Phloxes that have lived there with varying degrees of success for the past decade or so.

Marsha uses the growth of these tall perennials as an indoor guide to the passage of the gardening season. In early summer they make their first annual appearance barely peeking over the top of the widow sill. Then week-by-week they climb past the two white horizontal lines formed by the frames inside the windows panes. Finally they shoot up into the upper windows and sway calmly in the light warm weather breeze.

I didn’t really notice the bees until late July. They were, at that time I thought, larger than I remembered from years before. And now they seem to be considerably larger still.

Now granted “considerably larger” in a bee is a relative concept. According to www.bees-online.com the average size of a bumblebee is from 12 to 16 millimeters (1/2” to 5/8”) and their standard weight is one tenth of a gram or four one hundredths of a ounce. For comparison one M&M candy (regardless of color) is ten times heavier at 1.13 grams/ .04 ounce.

Periodically one or two of the little honey-makers sneaks inside our family room and hangs out at these self same windows looking longingly at these self same Phlox. This breach in our security has been going on for several years and Marsha and I have yet to figure out where the point of entry is. In any event the bees are quite passive – either hovering lazily alongside the glass or taking a break on the windowsill. My job is to capture our visitors in some paper product, usually a napkin, and (without crushing them) to transport them back to their native outdoor habitat. The wood pulp cocoon feels weightless and if it were not for the gentle vibrations I can feel in my hands I would have no idea whether I was carrying anything or not.

Once outside I open up the swaddle like a magician releasing a dove and the bee floats away into the ether. The audience in my family room politely applauds.

Still, in spite of their gravity-free state, the little humming insects seem to me to be transitioning from being quite easily seen, to extremely noticeable, to blocking-out-the-son enormous. So I decided to carefully observe what was happening in my family room garden. Here, combined with some supporting information that I gleaned from the Internet, are my findings.

All morning the Phlox is in the shade. There is absolutely zero bee activity.

At noon the sun begins to warm the tall pink perennials and shortly thereafter the bees, mid-sized and agile, arrive by the dozen. For about an hour they dart from flower to flower, somehow avoiding mid-air collisions. Then the majority (presumably younger guys with other things to do) leave. Two of them, whom I’ve named Cliff Clavin and Norm, settle in for the afternoon.

By two p.m. Cliff and Norm have attached themselves firmly to their favorite barstools and are growing both larger and logier as their bodies and brains become progressively more encased in nectar. This increase in size and lethargy continues throughout the afternoon until, fully satiated, they drag themselves slowly away from their afternoon hangout and head home where they are hailed as heroes and gently stripped of their temporary sweet outer skins by their fellow hive mates. Then, after sleeping it off, they come back the next day for another round, or two, or three.

Not every worker bee is cut out for it – witness all of the less experienced early afternoon dropouts. But if it is what you are meant to be, it’s probably not that bad a life being a “regular”.

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same;
You want to be where everybody knows your name.

Vertical Farming:Does it Really Stack Up? The Economist

Agriculture: Growing crops in vertical farms in the heart of cities is said to be a greener way to produce food. But the idea is still unproven

WHEN you run out of land in a crowded city, the solution is obvious: build upwards. This simple trick makes it possible to pack huge numbers of homes and offices into a limited space such as Hong Kong, Manhattan or the City of London. Mankind now faces a similar problem on a global scale. The world’s population is expected to increase to 9.1 billion by 2050, according to the UN.

Feeding all those people will mean increasing food production by 70%, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, through a combination of higher crop yields and an expansion of the area under cultivation. But the additional land available for cultivation is unevenly distributed, and much of it is suitable for growing only a few crops. So why not create more agricultural land by building upwards?

Such is the thinking behind vertical farming. The idea is that skyscrapers filled with floor upon floor of orchards and fields, producing crops all year round, will sprout in cities across the world. As well as creating more farmable land out of thin air, this would slash the transport costs and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with moving food over long distances. It would also reduce the spoilage that inevitably occurs along the way, says Dickson Despommier, a professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University in New York who is widely regarded as the progenitor of vertical farming, and whose recently published book, “The Vertical Farm”, is a manifesto for the idea. According to the UN’s Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas. So it just makes sense, he says, to move farms closer to where everyone will be living.

Better still, says Dr Despommier, the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides can be kept to a bare minimum by growing plants indoors in a controlled environment. Soil erosion will not be a problem because the food will be grown hydroponically—in other words, in a solution of minerals dissolved in water. Clever recycling techniques will ensure that only a fraction of the amount of water and nutrients will be needed compared with conventional farming, and there will no problem with agricultural run-off.

A wide variety of designs for vertical farms have been created by architectural firms. (The idea can arguably be traced back as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built around 600BC.) So far, however, the idea remains firmly on the drawing board. Would it really work?

“Without artificial lighting the result will be an uneven crop, as plants closest to the windows are exposed to more sunlight and grow more quickly.”

The necessary technology already exists. The glasshouse industry has more than a century’s experience of growing crops indoors in large quantities, says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Centre at the University of Arizona in Tucson. It is now possible to tailor the temperature, humidity, lighting, airflow and nutrient conditions to get the best productivity out of plants year round, anywhere in the world, he says. The technology of hydroponics allows almost any kind of plant to be grown in nutrient-rich water, from root crops like radishes and potatoes to fruit such as melons and even cereals like maize.

There are a number of ways to do it, but essentially hydroponics involves suspending plants in a medium—such as gravel, wool or a form of volcanic glass known as perlite—while the roots are immersed in a solution of nutrient-rich water. A constant flow of air keeps the plants bathed in carbon dioxide. Any nutrients and water that are not taken up by the roots can be recycled, rather than being lost into the soil. “You can grow anything with hydroponics,” says Dr Giacomelli.

He and his colleagues have created the South Pole Food Growth Chamber, which has been in operation since 2004. This semi-automated hydroponic facility in Antarctica is used to provide each of the 65 staff of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station with at least one fresh salad a day during the winter months, when supply flights to the station are extremely limited. The chamber has a floor area of 22 square metres and produces a wide range of fruit and vegetables with little more than the occasional topping up of water and nutrients. It does, however, require artificial lighting because the station is without natural daylight for most of the winter.

And that highlights a big potential stumbling-block for vertical farming. In the Antarctic the need to provide artificial light is a small price to pay for fresh food, given the cost of importing it.

But elsewhere the cost of powering artificial lights will make indoor farming prohibitively expensive. Even though crops growing in a glass skyscraper will get some natural sunlight during the day, it won’t be enough. Without artificial lighting the result will be an uneven crop, as the plants closest to the windows are exposed to more sunlight and grow more quickly, says Peter Head, global leader of planning and sustainable development at Arup, a British engineering firm. “Light has to be very tightly controlled to get uniform production of very high-quality food,” he says.

Indeed, even in today’s single-storey glasshouses, artificial lighting is needed to enable year-round production. Thanet Earth, a 90-hectare facility which opened in Kent in 2008 and is the largest such site in Britain—it provides 15% of the British salad crop—requires its own mini power-station to provide its plants with light for 15 hours a day during the winter months. This rather undermines the notion that vertical farming will save energy and cut carbon emissions, notes Mr Head, who has carried out several studies of the idea. Vertical farming will need cheap, renewable energy if it is to work, he says.

Some researchers, such as Ted Caplow, an environmental engineer and founder of New York Sun Works, a non-profit group, argue that even using renewable energy the numbers do not add up. Between 2006 and 2009 Dr Caplow and his colleagues operated the Science Barge, a floating hydroponic greenhouse moored in Manhattan (it has since moved to Yonkers). “It was to investigate what we could do to grow food in the heart of the city with minimal resource-consumption and maximum resource-efficiency,” says Dr Caplow.

The barge used one-tenth as much water as a comparable field farm. There was no agricultural run-off, and chemical pesticides were replaced with natural predators such as ladybirds. Operating all year round, the barge could grow 20 times more than could have been produced by a field of the same size, says Dr Caplow.

Solar panels and wind turbines on the barge meant that it could produce food with near-zero net carbon emissions. But the greenhouses on the barge were only one storey high, so there was not much need for artificial lighting. As soon as you start trying to stack greenhouses on top of each other you run into problems, says Dr Caplow. Based on his experience with the Science Barge, he has devised a rule of thumb: generating enough electricity using solar panels requires an area about 20 times larger than the area being illuminated. For a skyscraper-sized hydroponic farm, that is clearly impractical. Vertical farming will work only if it makes use of natural light, Dr Caplow concludes.

One idea, developed by Valcent, a vertical-farming firm based in Texas, Vancouver and Cornwall, is to use vertically stacked hydroponic trays that move on rails, to ensure that all plants get an even amount of sunlight. The company already has a 100-square-metre working prototype at Paignton Zoo in Devon, producing rapid-cycle leaf vegetable crops, such as lettuce, for the zoo’s animals. The VerticCrop system (pictured) ensures an even distribution of light and air flow, says Dan Caiger-Smith of Valcent. Using energy equivalent to running a desktop computer for ten hours a day it can produce 500,000 lettuces a year, he says. Growing the same crop in fields would require seven times more energy and up to 20 times more land and water.

But VertiCrop uses multiple layers of stacked trays that operate within a single-storey greenhouse, where natural light enters from above, as well as from the sides. So although this boosts productivity, it doesn’t help with multi-storey vertical farms. Even if each floor rotates its crops past the windows so that all plants receive an equal amount of natural light, overall they would get less light, and so produce less biomass, says Dr Caplow. He prefers the idea of the “vertically integrated greenhouse”. This idea involves the integration of vertical farms into buildings and offices, with plants growing around the edges of the building, sandwiched between two glass layers and rotating on a conveyor. Shrouding buildings with plants solves the natural-light problem for agriculture, acts as a passive form of climate control for the buildings and makes for a nice view. But the area available is much smaller.

The immediate opportunity may simply be to take advantage of the space available on urban rooftops, says Mr Head, and to pursue urban farming rather than vertical farming. BrightFarms Systems, a commercial offshoot of NYSW, is working with Gotham Greens, another company to emerge from the Science Barge, to create the world’s first commercial urban hydroponic farm in Brooklyn. When it opens in 2011, the 15,000 square-foot rooftop facility will produce 30 tonnes of vegetables a year which will be sold in local stores under the Gotham Greens brand name.

Although this is urban hydroponics, not vertical farming, it is a step in the right direction, says Mr Head. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we saw large retailers with greenhouses on their roofs growing produce for sale in the shop,” he says. A few examples of this have already sprung up. BrightFarms, for example, together with a firm called Better Food Solutions, began constructing a large single-storey glasshouse on the roof of a big supermarket in October. The supermarket agrees to buy the produce and owns the farm, while Better Food Solutions builds it and runs it.

The first fruit and vegetables are expected to go on sale in early 2011.

It is unclear how competitive this will be. Rooftop farming may not be able to compete with other suppliers in a global market unless people are prepared to pay a premium for fresh, local food, says Mr Head. And it is much less glamorous than the grand vision of crops being produced in soaring green towers of glass. But, for the time being, this more down-to-earth approach is much more realistic than the sci-fi dream of fields in the sky.

Grow food in winter without heated greenhouses
by Ian Aldrich (www.chelseagreen.com)

For more than 30 years, Eliot Coleman of Harborside, Maine, has successfully grown food in winter without heated greenhouses. Think outside your zone. Each winter, his gardens head south, to Georgia, without moving an inch.

How? For every layer of protection--a cold frame, for example--the growing environment shifts 500 miles. By doubling up, says Coleman, winter farmers never have to contend with frozen soil, not even when the mercury drops well below zero. "You might get a little surface freezing, but by 10 a.m. it will be unfrozen," he says. "The minute the sun comes out, all of a sudden it's 50 degrees in there. We've never had a day when we couldn't put seeds in the greenhouse beds."

For more on winter gardening, go to: Four Season Farm @ http//fourseasonfarm.com

Hoop Houses: Coleman says you can find simple, inexpensive options out there to protect your plants. If you're already using a cold frame, he recommends getting six unused 2x4s and building an A-frame around the structure, then wrapping the new enclosure in greenhouse plastic.

No cold frame? No problem. Coleman is also a big fan of "hoop houses," small enclosures made from semicircle- shaped strips of metal or plastic piping covered in plastic. "I've been doing this a long time, and I'm still like a little kid when I go in there and see what's happening," he says. "It's amazing that it just works."

Begin in August: Coleman's winter planting begins in early August and extends through mid-September, a period he likes to refer to as a "second spring." "You have to get the plants established while the growing season still has something left to it," he says.

Spinach for Winter: For all would-be winter gardeners, Coleman suggests going with spinach, which can be harvested four times, growing well into February. "It keeps renewing itself," he says.

No Weeds, No Watering: Unlike summer warmth, colder temperatures mean that pests and even weeds are nearly eliminated. Even better: Between November and February, says Coleman, gardeners don't have to water their plants. "The water table is higher," he says, "and because the sun is so low, there isn't much evaporation."

Baby Lettuce is Better: It's true, says Coleman: Small really is better when it comes to winter gardening. Baby leaf greens are not only hardier, they're tastier. "A full-size lettuce will freeze two or three times and turn to mush," he says. "A three-inch-tall baby lettuce leaf will freeze and thaw all winter long and recover each day."

Salad Every Night:Newbie winter gardeners can do just fine--and eat really well, too--with a simple 5-by-10-foot planting space. "With baby greens, if you plant them right--and you can put rows as close as two inches apart--you can have a salad every night all winter long."

Fall flowers and grasses for show-stopping color
www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com

Fall flowers - a lot of gardeners seem to miss out on them. As August comes to the perennial garden, they're ready to throw in the towel. It's a shame: for northern gardeners the growing season is short enough, so why not extend the flower show well into fall with some lovely late-bloomers and ornamental grasses?

Perennials and grasses star in the late season: I'm enchanted with the autumnal look pioneered by garden designers Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden in the United States, and Piet Oudolf, in Holland.I've designed my own garden to be at its peak in late summer because I adore fall flowers and the ornamental grasses that look so good with them. For the most part, plants that bloom in late summer and fall are tough, drought tolerant and many of them grow tall and dramatic. Another interesting thing about many of these fall flowers is how many of them are North American natives, which probably accounts for their toughness: they shrug off the drought, heat and humidity of our summers because that's the very climate that shaped their evolution.

Best fall flowers for the perennial garden:

ASTER: With their clouds of daisy-like flowers in pink, rosy-lilac or deep purple, asters are classic fall flowers. Robust and hardy, many garden hybrids stem from the native New England and New York asters. Old favorite taller varieties growing 3 to 4 feet tall include the glowing salmon-pink 'Alma Potschke' and the lavender-blue Aster frikartii 'Mönch'. The more recently introduced 'Purple Dome' grows a compact 18 inches tall. Asters thrive in full sun in moist, rich soil, but can look a little weedy during the growing season, so tuck them in among other earlier-flowering perennials. In late June, pinch or prune stems back by half to prevent floppiness and stake taller varieties. Keep asters vigorous by dividing in spring every two or three years. Some of the older varieties were plagued by mildew, but newer ones are resistant: look for Aster laevis 'Bluebird', with single violet blue flowers, Aster lateriflorus 'Prince', which has unusual dusky plum-purple foliage and tiny white star-like flowers with a raspberry colored eye, and Aster oblongifolius 'October Skies', which has blue flowers in September to October.

JOE PYE WEED (Eupatorium maculatum or E. purpureum ): Another plant I wouldn't be without has the unfortunate common name, Joe Pye weed.
But this North American native is not the least weedy. Its botanical name Eupatorium is much more gracious, just like the plant. Tall (in the 4 to 5 foot range) and stately, it's a real butterfly magnet for almost six weeks in late summer when its large heads of tiny, dusky pink flowers bloom. A widely available cultivar is 'Gateway'. For gardeners looking for more compact versions, a recent cultivar, 'Phantom', is supposed to grow only 3 feet tall. This perennials makes a terrific accent plant and mixes well with other late season stars, such as Echinacea, Rudbeckia 'Goldstrum', Sedum 'Autumn Joy' or 'Matrona' and ornamental grasses.

HELENIUM: For show-stopping daisy-like flowers in hot colors, try hybrids of the North American native, Helen's Flower (Helenium autumnale). 'Bruno', a Bressingham selection from England has crimson-mahogany flowers; 'Red and Gold' produces brick red and gold yellow flowers; 'Butterpat' has deep yellow flowers and 'Moerheim Beauty' bright, reddish-orange blooms. About 3 to 4 feet tall, heleniums complement autumn's palette of golds, crimsons and oranges. These late summer to fall flowers thrive in full sun in moist humus-rich soil. Regular moisture is important, so don't let them dry out in summer.

CROWN OF RAYS GOLDENROD (Solidago 'Crown of Rays'): The is one of the new generation of goldenrods that I hope will help gardeners overcome the prejudice against these plants as mere roadside weeds. Goldenrod is unfairly blamed for causing hay fever. Ragweed, which blooms at the same time, is the real culprit. 'Crown of Rays' is clump-forming goldenrod hybrid with many tiny, bright yellow flowers on dense, horizontal, plume-like panicles. This late summer to fall flowering perennial thrives in full sun and well-drained soil and grows about 24 inches tall. Plants may need to be divided every 2 to 3 years to control growth.

RUSSIAN SAGE (Perovskia atriplicifolia): Russian sage is a fall flower with a very long bloom time. The plant grows upright and has attractive lacy-looking greyish leaves that smell like sage. Violet-blue flower spikes appear in mid-summer and continue well into fall. This drought-tolerant perennial grows well in sunny, hot, dry sites. It is a good butterfly plant, and deer-resistant. Grows about 3 feet tall and 24 to 30 inches wide. Don't cut back in fall; wait until spring and then cut to 6 inches from the ground. More growing information on Russian sage.

PINK CULVER'S-ROOT (Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination': This is a lovely selection of a North American native wildflower. Growing tall - about 4 to 5 feet, but with strong stems that usually don't require staking - the plant bears large branching spikes of lilac-mauve flowers in mid to late summer and continue into early fall. The flowers arch gracefully at the tips - they look a bit like mermaid's tails - and make good cut flowers. Also attractive to butterflies, and deer-resistant. Adaptable to most soils; grow in full sun.

JAPANESE ANEMONE (Anemone x hybrida, A. hupehensis var. japonica)
For shadier spots in the garden, consider delicate-looking fall-flowering Japanese anemones. Growing 2-1/2 to 3 feet tall, these fall flowers grow on slender, branching stalks, and spread to form a large patch. Lobed leaves form attractive mounds of foliage, and the flowers look poppy-like. Favorite cultivars are silvery-pink 'September Charm', light pink 'Queen Charlotte' and glowing white 'Honorine Jobert'.
Plant Japanese anemones in rich, moist, well-drained soil, where they'll have afternoon shade. Anemones benefit from a winter mulch and regular deep watering in dry weather.
Add more fall interest with ornamental grasses: If you have a sunny garden, ornamental grasses are another great way to extend the season of interest into the late fall. Look for well-behaved clump-forming perennial types. The following are some of my favorites, and they all mix well with fall flowers:
* Dramatic and upright-growing Karl Forester feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Forester').
* The white and green variegated Morning Light miscanthus (Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light').
* Tall airy cultivars of purple moor grass (Molina caerulea) seem always to be in motion. Look for cultivars 'Transparent', 'Skyracer', or 'Windspiel', German for "wind play" - a terrific description of the wonderful dance of grasses on the breeze.
* Dallas Blues switch grass (Panicum virgatum 'Dallas Blues') and North Wind upright switch grass (Panicum virgatum 'Northwind') are two more excellent choices.

Horti-Culture Corner September (Excerpt) by Helen Hunt Jackson

The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.