Monday, September 7, 2015

September 2015


Planters Punchlines

Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield

September 2015

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Garden Club Kicks off 2015-16 Season

Monday Sept. 28 @ 7:00 p.m. Pitkin Community Center



Master Gardener and Club Vice President Howard Becker will discuss "Invasive Plants in CT".   He will cover what makes a plant invasive, the damage done to habitats, identifying the most common invasives, methods of controlling them, and available internet resources.  The talk is free and open to the public.   Spread the word.



2015-2016 Club Officers



President:    Tony Sanders      
Vice President:      Howard Becker    

Secretary:    James Sulzen       
Treasurer:             Richard Prentice



Compostable Matter

By Jim Meehan



Most of Mars and my lawn is the color and consistency of straw.  Bees roughly the size of the MetLife “Snoopy” Blimp are all over my sedum.    Our uninvited but prolific pokeweed is pumping out fruit at a rate just barely fast enough to keep the block-long line of berry-seeking birds moving along.   And our many-headed Helianthus sunflower is as high as an elephant’s eye.  It is September 2015 in Wethersfield.

             
(Actually, according to “Yahoo Answers”, the median height of an elephant’s eye is 8 feet two inches putting Mars’ and my helianthus at least 24 inches above and beyond – but anyway, you get the point.)

             
The last rain we had here was somewhere around the time of the Garden Club’s June picnic.  Beginning early July I actually began watering my lawn (something that I basically never do) – but even that early in the season it was too little, too late.  There was no way to rescue the fescue.  I haven’t mowed certain parts of the yard at all in over two months.  Meanwhile other sections act like they are deeply rooted in an overflowing, infinitely nourishing aquifer.  These scattered areas are really, really, GREEN!  Unfortunately their growing cycles seemed to peak smack-dab in the middle of each of the series of weekly heat waves that we’ve suffered through this summer.  Fortunately I actually like to mow.

             
The poke weed first appeared several years ago during the involuntary conversion of one part of our yard from a heavy shade garden to a full-on sun baked flowerbed.  The poke weed was one of the new bushes that we did not plant – along with the Roses of Sharon whose count is now up to somewhere in the high eighties.  It is colorful.  It feeds the birds.  We like it.

             
The sedum on the edge of our next-to-the-garage garden has become a bee magnet extraordinary in the past few weeks.  I’m not an apiarist but there seems to be several varieties.  And there are a lot of them – hordes – way more than the total number of teeth in the front row of a professional wresting match.  The sedum also appears to be taller and fuller than in previous years.  Even though we have to brush against the pink star-shaped florets in order to enter our back yard, we are led to believe, these stinging insects are good for our garden – and horticulture in general.  An African friend of mine once told me, “If you want the butterflies, then you have to have the bees.”  We are still waiting for the butterflies.

             
But the hands-down hit of the season is our ten foot and still growing sunflower that towers over pretty much everything except one or two oak trees on our property. Unlike last year’s slightly smaller plant which, Mars and I believe, most likely arose from some seeds we received in the mail, and which she randomly scattered in the tomato ghetto that is nestled within our garage-side perennial flowerbed – this years prize-worthy Helianthus and its lesser brethren are totally the byproduct of our resident squirrels food-storage and/or digestive system.

             
At last count the plant had produced thirty-some-odd flowers.  (Actually, since a sunflower is a composite flower, i.e. several hundred smaller flowers combine together to create the illusion of one massive flower; we may have millions and millions of flowers.)  Whatever the number I have been cutting the mega-blossoms off of the plant when the yellow petals start drying up and leaving them on the ground at the base of our principal feeder – from whence they came originally.

             
 Usually within an hour the food offerings have disappeared – presumably into one of the squirrel dreys in the immediate vicinity.  Where else?  Maybe squirrel wives like it when their husbands surprise them with flowers.  Perhaps they are insulating the nest for the upcoming cold weather.

            
 Or they could be transplanting them somewhere else on our property.  If so I hope it is in the dead parts of our lawn.  A windblown field of Helianthus surrounded by pockets of neatly mowed green grass would make a might nice looking landscape for next September – rain or no rain.



Can Be Deadly But Oh So Delicious: Poke weed (excerpt)




Poke weed will challenge your commitment to foraging.

            
 It is not the most commonly eaten food from a poisonous source. Tapioca or cashews would probably take that prize. But poke weed’s in the running. If prepared incorrectly or carelessly it can make you quite ill, or worse, put a ‘k’ in front of ill as in kill you.  But when picked and prepared properly, as millions have done over the centuries, it is perhaps the most delicious pot herb of all, one that makes you look forward to next season.

             
Phytolacca americana (fy-toe-LAK-ah  am-er-i-KAY-na) is native to the eastern United States. Americana means of America. Phytolacca is an international construct combining phyton (Greek for plant) and Lac (French for a dark red pigment.)  The word “poke” comes from the Virginia Algonquian (Indian) word “pakon” or “pucone” first recorded in 1708. Pakon refers to a plant used for dye or staining, and indeed a red coloring from the poke weed’s berries has been used as a dye for centuries. Indians used the juice to color feathers, arrow shafts, garments, even their horses. Berry juice was also used at one time to color wine, but that practice has been discontinued. In a modern twist, red dye from poke berries doubles the efficiency of certain solar cells.

             
While coloring foods with poke berry juice has been banned, because it is reportedly poisonous, Dr. Julia Morton says on page 51 of her “Wild Plants for Survival In South Florida” 1982 edition,  “The strained juice of ripe fruits may be safely used for coloring foods.” During her lifetime, Professor Morton was the most authoritative source in Florida on toxic plants and her works still the main references. In theory the juice could be made into jelly. While the berries are the least poisonous part of the plant, never eat the seeds or the root. Accidental poisoning have happened by people getting a little root with the shoot. And never eat a mature poke weed. What’s mature? For safety, I would consider any poke weed over 7 inches mature and off limits. And, or, any poke weed with deep red stems no matter how short it is.

             
Poke weed grew a good reputation centuries ago despite its dangerous side because it’s one of the first edible greens in spring, at a time when folks have been living on non-greens for several winter months. Many attempts were made to move the weed into the mainstream vegetable market — as it is in parts of Europe —  but it just never took off in North America. However, the demand for it was enough to keep two companies canning it up into the 1990’s. That southern tradition ended in the spring of 2000.  In April that year the Allen Canning Company of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, canned its last batch of poke sallet. The reason why they stopped canning poke weed was there were not enough people interested in picking it for them. So, if you want poke weed you really do have to pick it yourself or order it through Wild Pantry.Com.

             
A third alternative I’ve heard of which I haven’t tried because I live in Florida — where houses don’t have basements — is dig up a poke weed root and bury it in a sand box in a lightless area of your basement. In the spring it will send out white shoots which some say only need to be boiled once. While that may be theoretically possible, it would take a lot of roots to get enough shoots for even one meal. You’re better off harvesting it or collecting the seeds and growing your own. More on that in a moment.

             
When I go collecting poke weed, I take a ruler with me. It’s called my hand. From the tip of my middle finger to my wrist is about six inches. If the shoot is six inches or under, into the pot it will go, taller I leave it be. The second rule is pick nothing with red stems but that’s not so hard and fast because even two-inch shoots can sometimes be pink to red. And when I gather it I don’t pull it up, I cut it to avoid the possibility of getting any root. And do not handle raw poke weed if you have any cuts or abrasion on your hands.  It has mitogens which I will explain later.

             
Three historical notes: James Polk was a dark-horse candidate for president in the 1840’s. In one of the first PR gimmicks, his supporters wore poke leaves on their lapels. He became the 11th president of the United States. That’s Poke Power. And when the Constitution was written Tom Jefferson wrote it with ink made from poke berries on hemp paper… still legible after all these years. And during the US Civil  War many a letter was written home with a bird feather and poke berry juice. These letters, too, are extant for us to read because an herb called poke weed was valued not eradicated.

             
To make ink remember those ripe berries you brought home to rot for the seeds. You crush the berries, strain out the seeds, and let the rest ferment for a couple of weeks.  There is natural yeast on the berries or you can add a little wine or bread yeast. Then strain the liquid, once or twice depending on the thickness. You now have ink worthy of a constitution. You can mix fresh, filtered juice with vinegar to make a purple ink but it will fade. Fermenting turns the ink brown but sets it.

             
Lastly, I am doubtful about the presumed history of poke weed consumption. Poke weed certainly has been eaten for a few hundred years and that adds up to a lot of people. But I’m not sure about its use before the Europeans arrived in North America, that is, how the Native Americans used poke weed.

             
Consider: The Alabama Indians referred to Europeans as “those who eat poke weed.” That sounds as if the Alabama Indians did not. In fact, of the dozens of tribes we only know of four that used poke weed as a food, and those uses seem to break down into pre- and post metal pots. Also consider that boiling was a difficult task before the introduction of metal pots, particularly for a green that has far less nutrition than say a rat. I’ve got a suspicion that poke weed was medicinal (worth the difficulty of boiling) but not a food until it became easy to boil poke weed in changes of water in metal pots. In their different uses you can read pre- and post-metal pot use.

             
The Cherokee crushed the berries and sour grapes together, strained, mixed that with cornmeal and sugar to make a beverage. Leaves were gathered into a bundle and dried for future use. Those two uses do not require cooking. Crushed berries were used to add color to canned fruit. Young shoots, leaves and stems were parboiled, rinsed, and cooked alone or mixed with other greens and eggs. Peeled stalks cut lengthwise, parboiled, dipped in egg, rolled in cornmeal, fried like fish. Those require cooking. The Iroquopis, Malecite and Mohegans also ate poke but how was not recorded.  That’s not a lot of ethnobotanical evidence that native were eating a lot of poke weed long before Europe discovered America. I personally know two people who swallow one berry whole (no chewing) to treat arthritis. Beyound personal testimony I have no idea if it works or not.



Poison “Volunteer” Squash: Be Warned!




Well, we had an interesting experience with squash this past weekend…. We got poisoned! Here is our story….. I usually rototill up the garden at the end of the year and invariably there are a few extra dried-up, overgrown squashes that get mashed into the soil. This spring a “volunteer” squash plant appeared presumably from these left over squash seeds. Even though this squash plant came up in the middle of a row (very inconvenient for weeding), I thought it would be fun to let it grow and see what it produced.

             
This volunteer plant started putting out copious amounts of light green squash in the shape of a straight-neck summer squash (the variety I planted back in 2013).

             
All seemed well.. so far. This weekend, we picked a ton of squash and included one of these seemingly innocuous little green squash as well. The squash was sectioned and boiled all together in a medley along with some onions. It looked delicious. But the first bite soon gave a different impression. This squash side dish was extremely bitter.. to the point of being completely inedible. A few folks choked down a bite or two… and they were rewarded with stomach pains and explosive diarrhea later in the evening! Yours truly spit out the squash immediately and was spared any gastrointestinal distress…. I think I lucked out and bit into a “green squash” where the intense bitter flavor made it absolutely impossible to eat. Perhaps the others got a bite of a normal squash with only the juices of the poison squash mixed in. This made the taste somewhat more palatable.. and thus edible (but barely).

             
A bit of internet research pointed me to the fact that hybridized squash will sometime revert to a more “wild type” and produce copious quantities of a bitter compound called “cucurbitacin E.” I also read that some “normal” squashes will produce this if water stressed. Curcubitacin E is bitter, and poisonous with the symptoms of ingesting being… stomach cramps and diarrhea. I am convinced this is what happened! So to all those with a garden out there… let this be a warning! Do not eat squash from “volunteer” plants and be very careful if you save seeds from curcurbits… unless of course you enjoy spending all evening on the toilet.





Horti-Culture Corner

by Carl Sandburg



Hydrangeas



Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas

turn rust and go soon.



Already mid September a line of brown runs

over them.



One sunset after another tracks the faces, the

petals.



Waiting, they look over the fence for what

way they go.





The 10 Stages of Clueless Gardening

By Jayme Metzgar - Thefederalist.com

             
If society ever collapses to where my family has to depend on my gardening skills, we’re in serious trouble.

             
A few years ago, I decided it would be a good idea to learn to grow vegetables. As a slightly-crunchy mom of four, I was on board with the idea of serving my kids fresh, organic produce, but the cost seemed prohibitive. Why not grow my own? Plus, it fit nicely with my overall “save-money-by-doing-everything-yourself” life theme, which I’ve also applied to cooking, family haircuts, and my kids’ education.

             
I confess that my desire to learn gardening had some political underpinnings as well. As a libertarian-leaning conservative who cares about economic issues, I’ve watched the country’s fiscal health rapidly decline from “middle-aged and overweight” level to “chain-smoking, 500-pound diabetic” level. So I’ve become more interested in hobbies that might help my family live through the undesirable event of a total economic meltdown.

             
No pressure, right?

             
Well, I’m happy to report that I am now in my fifth year of organic vegetable gardening, and I am more committed to our nation’s economic success than ever before. Because if society ever collapses to the point where my family has to depend on my gardening skills, we’re in serious trouble.

             
But although gardening’s perceived value as a survival skill has waned, I still keep going back out to the garden every year. I’ve learned that gardening is—and probably always will be—a continual cycle of defeats and triumphs, ups and downs. In fact, I’ve made a few discoveries that I’d like to share here as a benefit to other clueless gardeners like myself. (Not actual tips on growing organic vegetables. There are about a million better sources on the Internets for that.)

             
No, I’m talking about something I call the 10 Stages of Clueless Organic Gardening, which I’ve identified after my four-and-a-half years of extensive, hands-on research. Much like Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, I believe that being able to recognize these 10 stages of gardening can bring perspective, hope, and sanity to your fledgling attempts to grow your own food.

             
Stage 1: The Audacity of Hope

            
 It’s early spring, and heck, you’re in a great mood just being outside. Plus, you’ve learned from your failures of last year and have been faithfully reading your big organic gardening manual, so you’re pretty sure you’re going to kill it this year. And let’s just be clear, by “kill it,” we mean “keep it alive.”

             
Stage 2: Expenditures

             
This is the part where you buy compost, soil amendment, seeds, and a few plants (having previously learned you don’t have the knack of starting tomatoes indoors). It’s a bit painful to see the money going the wrong way, i.e. out of your wallet, but it will all be okay in the long run, because these bad boys will give you a great return on investment once you’re harvesting your own vegetables instead of buying them at the grocery store. Booyah.

             
Stage 3: Agnosticism

             
You spend an exhausting, sweaty day preparing the beds and putting the seeds in the ground. You stand back to admire your handiwork, and you see . . . dirt. Really. It looks pretty much the same as it did before. With the exception of the tomato bed, there is not a lot of visual gratification going on. You start to doubt whether you really even did anything at all. Over the ensuing days, you go out frequently to spray expensive town water on the beds of dirt. Your doubt grows. Is anything even happening out there? Does life exist under the dirt? Does anyone really know?

            
 Stage 4: Childlike Wonder

             
Your seeds have sprouted into beautiful seedlings! Yes, even the carrots! (At least, you think those are carrots; there’s a slight possibility they’re tiny weeds.) But the point is: wow! Life is miraculous. Seeds are miraculous. Nature is miraculous. You lavish more expensive water on the miracle.

             
Stage 5: Martha Stewart

             
You just made a salad using hand-picked lettuce from your quaint kitchen garden. While picking lettuce, you pulled the few stray weeds that were marring the aesthetic wonder of your neat, orderly beds. The children wander through the walkways, picking early vegetables to eat al fresco as they play. Tomorrow you will collect the first crop of sugar snap peas. You will put them in a white bowl, snap a photo of them in natural sunlight, and post them on social media, because a garden is a source of nourishment for the soul as well as the body.

             
Stage 6: General William Tecumseh Sherman

             
You just saw a squash bug on your zucchini plant. Yes. Somehow the enemy has infiltrated the carefully-sealed tulle barricade you constructed to protect your squash plants this year. Gingerly unsealing the netting, you check the underside of every leaf. Your jaw tightens. There it is: that little tell-tale, v-shaped bunch of eggs clinging to one leaf, a sight you came to know so well that terrible year you tried to grow pumpkins. Looking more closely, your jaw clenches even more tightly. (You’re starting to resemble a tetanus patient at this point.) The tell-tale entry point of a vine borer larva is clearly visible near the bottom of the stem. Your zucchini are under a double-pronged assault.

            
 Things look dire, but you refuse to let this six-legged enemy prevail. You shall grind them into the dust. You shall mercilessly wield your duct tape (for egg removal), your deadly jar of soapy water, and your knife (for vine-borer surgery), hunting down the rebels and all their cohorts wherever they may be found. You shall grant no quarter and shall relent for nothing less than unconditional surrender.

             
Stage 7: Bargaining

            
 “All right,” you say, “you bugs can have the zucchini, but just leave me the yellow squash, for the love of Pete.”

             
Stage 8: Depression

             
Gardening sucks. It’s not even worth it go out there and see your beloved plants, once so full of life and promise, baking in the 95-degree weather and serving as a thriving bed and breakfast for pests. You’re just trying to forget the garden exists at this point.

            
 Stage 9: Darwinism

             
You finally go back out there and see that your green beans are doing pretty well, actually. You can probably get enough to serve with supper. You also find a couple decent cucumbers and a few tomatoes that haven’t been sucked dry by stink bugs. The squash? You pull them all up and end their misery. And you feel remarkably better. Survival of the fittest, baby. If a plant can live through the onslaughts of nature without your constant attention and still produce something edible, it can stay. If not, buh-bye.

             
Stage 10: Historical Revisionism

             
Winter approaches. The season’s first late-October frost has finally killed off the last few garden plants, and there is something eerily peaceful about their shriveled forms. Before cleaning up the beds for the winter, you walk through the garden one last time. You fondly remember all the good times, the weeks of lettuce and peas, the strawberries the slugs didn’t eat, the green beans, the faithful basil, the small but edible crop of carrots, the six jars of diced tomatoes you managed to can for the winter (well, they should last through November at least). Thanks to these humble beds of earth, your children were sustained by fresh, nutrient-rich foods. You have grown your own food on your own land, and by doing so, you have connected in a deeply primal way with the independent, pioneer spirit of America. As for the struggles and setbacks, they were just opportunities to grow. To better yourself. To go into next spring armed with knowledge and ready to triumph.

           

Cross-pollination making you cross?

The Garden Professors

Science-based garden information


           

No, your cucumbers have not hybridized with your melons.

             
I’ve been fielding different versions of the same question a LOT lately.


Three different people have sent pictures of “cucumelons” telling me they planted cucumbers next to their melons, and now the cucumbers look strange, so they’re concerned that they have cross pollinated with the melons. One person planted what was supposed to be a red raspberry next to their yellow raspberry, but the new plant is producing yellow fruit, so they think that it must be cross pollinating with their yellow plant, causing the fruits to turn yellow. Not to mention similar queries about tomatoes, peppers, and watermelons. It seems like every time a piece of produce turns out looking differently than what people expect, they blame pollen from the plant next to it.

             
I’m sure the highly educated readers of The Garden Professors know this already, but to clarify, there is a very simple reason why you don’t need to worry about one plant pollinating another plant and changing the quality of your produce UNLESS you are planning on saving seeds to grow for the next year.

             
When a flower is pollinated and starts developing into a fruit full of seeds, it is only the seeds themselves that combine the genetics of the two parents to develop into something new. Everything else – the flesh of a tomato, or cucumber or melon or raspberry – is produced solely by the mother plant, and the daddy of those seeds inside doesn’t matter a bit. Think about when a woman is pregnant… the identity of the father of the child inside her doesn’t change the character of the skin of her belly.

             
If you want to save seeds of your plant for next year, it is another matter, and you should be sure to isolate or (better yet) hand pollinate different varieties of the same species from each other to make sure they don’t hybridize unintentionally. You still don’t need to worry about your cucumbers and melons, however – they won’t hybridize by chance in your garden. If a plant doesn’t produce the right colored fruit or flower, most likely it was just mislabeled at the nursery. Grow a strange looking cucumber, chances are it was left on the plant too long. Cucumbers are harvested and eaten when young and immature, leave them too long and they get… strange looking. No need to blame it on the melons next to them.

             
There IS one exception to this, one common plant in the garden where the source of pollen makes a huge difference in what you harvest: Corn. Corn is the exception because what we’re eating is the seed itself, not the fruit produced by the mother plant surrounding the seed. That’s why if your sweet corn gets a dose of pollen from the field corn the farmer is grown next door, it comes out starchy and not sweet.




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