Saturday, March 5, 2016

March 2016

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Planters Punchlines

Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield

March 2016

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" Easy Care Roses for the Home Garden "

@ Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield March Meeting

Monday March 28 @ 7:00 pm in the Pitkin Community Center



Marci Martin, Master Rosarian and President of the CT Rose Society, will be presenting on “Easy Care Roses for the Home Garden”.

Annual Plant Sale is May 7
What will you donate?
How can you help?

This is our major fundraiser.  Club members are asked to contribute "home grown" perennials to the sale.  

Compostable Matter

By Jim Meehan



It would happen every March on one of those weekends that start off cool – then become warm enough to make a gardener believe in the imminent probability of spring.  A day to go outside in a short-sleeve tee, a flannel shirt, and a down vest – and strip down to just the innermost layer as the work grew more strenuous and the sunlight became more intense.

             
The task at hand was the turning of the soil in Mars and my vegetable garden.  That piece of land is now devoted to (mostly unknown) perennials rescued from destruction in the town’s now-defunct “Heritage Garden” at the Town Hall, and gifts from friends who were not quite sure what they were giving us  – but were certain that we would like it.  Back in those days however it was the home to several varieties of easily identifiable and annually planted edibles.  And the yearly turning of the soil in that bed was my ritual equivalent of  throwing out the first ball of the gardening season.

             
And Nicole Marie – our fifty-five pound, black Labrador Retriever / Irish Setter cross was always there to help. 

             
My weapons of choice were a garden fork (aka spading fork, digging fork or graip) for loosening, lifting and turning over the soil; a bow rake to break up dirt clods and smooth out the area; and, to finish up, a Garden Claw to cultivate, loosen, and aerate, but mostly because it is such a cool, fun tool to use.  (It is an upright, three-foot tall, T-shaped, blue device with top handle which you twist back-and forth to manipulate the four-talon claw at the bottom.  The shoulder twisting was a good workout for my delts, and the turning motion actually seemed to loosen the muscles of my lower back, which by then were pretty sore and tight.)

             
Nicole’s implements were her snout and front, web-footed paws.

             
The garden was divided into three plots.  And I turned-over and raked each section three times.  I began my work on the west-most one with the graip while Nicole patrolled the grounds, nose down, inhaling the incipient aromas of the upcoming season.  Then she would lie down on the grass to watch me work.  Being a dog she of course did this with her eyes closed.

             
When my first pass was completed Nicole would rouse herself up and walk into the plot to burrow into the freshly turned earth with her dark, black snout – and sneeze. Often she would dig a small depression with her paws in order further investigate the ground’s contents. Then she would give me her signal for me to continue work by sauntering over and nestling her dirt-covered nose in my sweaty hand.  She usually repeated this ritual a couple more times before we were finished.

             
After the second or third iteration – about the time that my flannel shirt had just come off and the surface level of dirt had morphed from underground cold to sun enhanced tepid – Nicole would return to the garden, stake out a spot, and roll languorously in the lukewarm loam.  Then she returned to aroma patrol, and the important job of watching me with her eyes closed.  Sometimes when I would stop briefly to wipe my forehead or clean the perspiration from my glasses she would walk over and stand next to me.  After getting a quick pat on the head she returned to her post.

             
And when I was finished, and my tools were all put away, Nicole and I headed into the house for a well-earned cold gulp of water and a snack.

             
Today, over a quarter of a century later, this is what I remember at this time of the year. 



Plans for the New Year

BY Henry Homeyer – the gardening guy




I wonder why it is that so many of us make resolutions at this time of year: lose weight, keep a clean desk, be nicer to people working for political candidates that call us during dinner time … and so on. As a gardener, I don’t tend to think so much about resolutions, but more about what I hope to do in my gardens, come spring. What plants shall I try? What new gardens might I develop?

             
I recently got a catalog from a whole- sale plant nursery, Van Berkum’s of Deerfield, NH, and spent an evening drooling over their catalog and thinking about all the plants I wanted. I made three kinds of notations: a star for everything I simply must have, a check for everything I’d like to have, and a dot for everything that sounds interesting. Needless to say, there were way too many marks to buy them all – I just don’t have room. Here are some of the starred plants.



Meehan’s Mint (Meehania cordata). I’ve never seen this, so I’m intrigued. It is for shade or part shade, likes moist soil, and spreads slowly by stolons (roots). It has showy lavender-blue flowers in May-June, and is a native wildflower that comes originally from Appalachia. I know where to plant this: under some old apple trees where my primroses bloom in pinks, whites and magenta. The foliage is just a couple of inches tall, and the blossoms stand 3 to 4 inches above it.

             
Dulea Purpurea Missouri Botanical Dulea Purpurea Missouri Botanical Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea). Browsing the on-line photos that are not included in Van Berkum’s printed catalog, the photo caught my eye. Nothing like the clovers I know, it stands 24 to 30 inches tall, and has showy cylindrical cones covered with tiny magenta flowers. The blossoms remind me of teasel flowers in that only part of the cone is blooming at any given time. Native to Missouri, it is hardy to Zone 3 (minus 30 degrees) and needs full sun.

             
Geum Rivale Flames of Passion Geum Rivale Flames of Passion White Cloud Calamint (Calamintha nepeta). I’ve seen this and even planted it for one of my gardening clients. I love it, and although it is listed as a Zone 5 plant, the one I planted wintered over last year, even with a cold winter. It forms a globeshaped plant loaded with tiny white flowers, reminiscent of baby’s breath. I need one (or more)! Full sun, it tolerates dry soil.

             
‘Miss Manners’ Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana). I love obedient plant, but it is not obedient at all. It’s a thug! Tall, with wonderful pink flowers, it is great in a vase. But my goodness, getting it out of my garden was a struggle. But I miss it, and am tempted by this plant which is, allegedly, “not invasive”. Only 18 to 24 inches tall, it has white flowers and loves moist soil, and I have plenty of that. I’ll keep a sharp on it, and it if takes off, yank it!

             
Geum rivale ‘Flames of Passion’. This is a small perennial that does best in part shade and takes drought. I want it, largely, because it was introduced by one of my garden heroes, Piet Oudolf. One winter when I was passing though Holland I visited him at his home in the countryside; I loved the fact that he had commissioned someone to carve life-size stone sheep and had them “grazing” around his property.

             
Piet Oudolf is a garden designer extraordinaire; among his projects is the High Line, a garden a mile and a half long built on an abandoned elevated railway line in New York. I plan to go there this year on my 70th birthday, April 23. Let me know if you want to join me for a garden walk there. It would be great fun to walk it with interested gardening friends – new or old.

             
Feather Reed Grass, ‘Karl Foerster’. I’ve got to try this tall grass, having heard it lauded by gardening great Bill Noble when I interviewed him recently. It’s his favorite plant. It grows 36 to 60 inches tall in a big clump, and is lovely from early in the season till late. Full sun.

            
 I love delphiniums, but hate staking them up. There is a new group of them, the New Millennium Hybrids, that “shouldn’t need staking” if planted in full sun. I’ll give one or two a try, and see how they do.

             
Lastly, I absolutely must get an Itoh peony. This is a cross between a tree peony and an herbaceous peony, and at maturity can produce up to 50 blossoms over the course of a month. Expensive, but I’ve decided it‘s worth it. They come in a variety of colors, and I will buy mine when in bloom, so I will know exactly what I’m getting. I just need to figure out where to plant it. But, hey! I’ve got all winter to do that.

             
So make your gardening resolutions, or create a wish list for what you hope to plant. You can see photos of the flowers I mention on line at www.vanberkumnursery.com. They are strictly wholesale, but their website has a list of retailers that carry their plants.

             
Henry Homeyer can be reached at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.





Frost Against the Panes

From The Garden Lover – Liberty Hyde Bailey, 1928




It is in the dead of winter that the greenhouse is at its best, for then is the contrast of life and death the greatest. Just beyond the living tender leaf — separated only by the slender film of the pane — is the whiteness and silence of midwinter. You stand under the arching roof and look away into the bare depths where only the stars hang their cold faint lights. The bald outlines of an overhanging tree are projected against the sky with the sharpness of the figures of cut glass. Branches creak and snap as they move stiffly in the wind. White snow drifts show against the panes. Icicles glisten from the gutters. Bits of ice are hurled from trees and cornice, and they crinkle and tinkle over the frozen snow. In the short sharp days the fences protrude from a waste of drift and riffle, and the dead fretwork of weed-stems suggests a long-lost summer. There, a finger’s breadth away, the temperature is far below zero; here, is the warmth and snugness of a nook in tropic summer.

             
This is the transcendent merit of the greenhouse — the sense of mastery over forces of nature. It is an oasis in one’s life as well as in the winter. One has dominion.

             
But this dominion does not stop with the mere satisfaction of a consciousness of power. These tender things, with all their living processes in root and stem and leaf, are dependent wholly on you for their very existence. One minute of carelessness or neglect and all their loveliness collapses in the blackness of death. How often have we seen the farmer pay a visit to the stable at bedtime to see that the animals are snug and warm for the night, stroking each confiding face as it rises at his approach! And how often have we seen the same affectionate care of the gardener who stroked his plants and tenderly turned and shifted the pots, when the night wind hurled the frost against the panes! It is worth the while to have a place for the affection of things that are not human.



Horti-Culture Corner

A Boy Saw a Little Rose Standing

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Urchin blurts: “I’ll pick you, though,

Rosebud in the heather!”



Rosebud: “Then I’ll stick you so

That there’s no forgetting, no!

I’ll not stand it, ever!”





Shut Up and Dig

Learning To Say Goodbye—With Pleasure

Posted by Elizabeth Licata on gardenrant.com


Death is part of life, but this  fact is accepted with difficulty and nowhere more so than among gardeners. Perennials should be just that. Shrubs need to be so well chosen and expertly tended that they stand guard in foundation plantings for decades. Bulbs suck unless they come back year after year reliably. And the demise of a houseplant is reason enough to never buy another indoor plant again. It’s only among the serious rosarians that “shovel pruning” is a regular occurrence. They’re tough—if a rose isn’t working out, they have no problems getting rid of it quickly.
             
I’ve never felt this way—in fact, I probably go too far in the other direction. I embrace failure because it gives me a chance to try something else. For our front garden shrubs, I immediately got rid of the old yews that were there when we moved in. They say to wait a year on newly acquired gardens, but I doubt the yews would have improved in that time. (Of course, the idea of not waiting becomes more attractive when the snow melts and you discover you’ve inherited 4 beds of pachysandra.) The yews were replaced with some late-blooming rhododrendron and now I’m trying leucothoe. The rest of the garden has changed completely many times. A perennial bed became a pond; a rose garden a perennial bed, and various shade perennials and come and gone in my difficult front space. I’m still killing at least 2 a year.

             
As for bulbs. The hundred or so that are currently being forced indoors (many just coming into bloom) will eventually find their way into the compost bucket, as will the ones in large containers that I bring out in April. These are all hyacinths and hybrid tulips. The tulips rarely come back and I’ve nowhere to put the hyacinths. Anyway, I’m always happy to start over with new bulbs in the fall. Even the species tulips in the ground aren’t completely reliable—I have to add more each year.

             
Houseplants are where people really lose it. Houseplant owners need to face the fact that the American home is generally inhospitable to plant life. You must choose carefully and accept failure. The easiest houseplants are also the ones that clean the air most effectively, so don’t scorn sansevaria, pothos, dracaena, philodendron, spider plant, and the others most commonly found in offices. There’s a reason you see them there—even the lack of natural light and harsh dry atmosphere of the average office will not kill these. Chances are you won’t either. You might also get rid of formaldehyde, benzene, and trichloroethylene in your domestic atmosphere—brought in from carpets, cleaning products, scented candles, and so on. (Google this and you will find dozens of studies.) In the realm of houseplants, accepting death and soldiering on is actually a health issue.

             
It’s not that I don’t treasure my most venerable plants—a climbing rose that’s been here at least three decades, a very old sugar maple, the unknown hostas that have been raising their tall deep purple flowers since before we moved in, my thirty-year-old schlumbergera, and many more. But I wouldn’t love them as much if I couldn’t change and refresh so much else.



Home & Garden | Garden Q&A

Alternatives to the Usual

Stephen Orr in NYTimes.com



Q. I want to plant a small flowering tree in a sunny spot in my garden this spring. There are already dogwoods, cherries, plums and redbuds in my neighborhood. Can you suggest a few spring-blooming alternatives?

             
A. Even if you are in the mood for something unusual, you don’t have to resort to the exotic. There are several underused American natives that fit your request. They may not match the vividness of familiar Asian species in full bloom, like the frilly double-flowered Kanzan cherry, but their quiet beauty will draw many admirers. And most will grow no more than 30 feet high, the textbook definition of a small garden tree.

             
One of the most graceful, Carolina silverbell (Halesia tetraptera), has dangling hoop skirts of pure white flowers followed by lobed fruit. In “Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia,” Michael Dirr, a woody-plant expert, praises its merits: “The flowers, in a subtle, not boisterous way, are among the most beautiful of all flowering trees.”

             
Other Halesia varieties that may do the trick include Rosea, a pink form, and Variegata, which sports white flowers and variegated leaves. A shorter variety, Wedding Bells (above), has large white flowers and reaches 20 feet.

             
Another good candidate is the serviceberry (Amelanchier), a white-flowered shrublike tree with several useful varieties. They include the elegant Allegheny serviceberry, which blossoms into a cloud of white and looks at home in either a woodland or a small garden. According to folklore, the serviceberry got its name from 19th-century settlers heading West who knew that when the tree was in bloom, the ground had thawed, so it was time to dig graves and bury those who had died during the winter.

             
For a dramatic statement in the garden, the fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus) is sculptural even when not in bloom, thanks to its graceful, often-multiple trunks. In the later part of the season, in May and June, it produces a spectacle, covering its twisting branches with a fragrant threadlike bunting of delicate white flowers.

             
The Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) may not interest you because of its ubiquity, but consider its white variety, Alba, or Forest Pansy, a darling of plant aficionados several years ago, which has pink blossoms and dark purple leaves. A new, harder-to-find variety, Hearts of Gold, has vivid yellow foliage that leafs out after the decline of its hot pink flowers.

             
If you must have something exotic, though, consider two non-native trees: the Japanese snowbell and the yellowhorn from China. The snowbell (Styrax japonicus) resembles a Halesia and, like other light-colored flowering plants, looks best against a backdrop like a solid wall or a dark hedge. The yellowhorn (Xanthoceras sorbifolium) has shiny dissected leaves and scented white crepelike flowers with yellow and red centers. It is relatively rare but worth the trouble to find.





Why the Tomato Was Feared in Europe 
for More Than 200 Years

How the Fruit Got a Bad Rap from the Beginning

By K. Annabelle Smith on smithsonian.com


In the late 1700s, a large percentage of Europeans feared the tomato.
             
A nickname for the fruit was the “poison apple” because it was thought that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. Because tomatoes are so high in acidity, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning. No one made this connection between plate and poison at the time; the tomato was picked as the culprit.

             
Around 1880, with the invention of the pizza in Naples, the tomato grew widespread in popularity in Europe. But there’s a little more to the story behind the misunderstood fruit’s stint of unpopularity in England and America, as Andrew F. Smith details in his The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery. The tomato didn’t get blamed just for what was really lead poisoning. Before the fruit made its way to the table in North America, it was classified as a deadly nightshade, a poisonous family of Solanaceae plants that contain toxins called tropane alkaloids.

             
One of the earliest-known European references to the food was made by the Italian herbalist, Pietro Andrae Matthioli, who first classified the “golden apple” as a nightshade and a mandrake—a category of food known as an aphrodisiac. The mandrake has a history that dates back to the Old Testament; it is referenced twice as the Hebrew word dudaim, which roughly translates to “love apple.” (In Genesis, the mandrake is used as a love potion). Matthioli’s classification of the tomato as a mandrake had later ramifications. Like similar fruits and vegetables in the solanaceae family—the eggplant for example, the tomato garnered a shady reputation for being both poisonous and a source of temptation. (Editor’s note: This sentence has been edited to clarify that it was the mandrake, not the tomato, that is believed to have been referenced in the Old Testament)

             
But what really did the tomato in, according to Smith’s research, was John Gerard’s publication of Herball in 1597 which drew heavily from the agricultural works of Dodoens and l’Ecluse (1553). According to Smith, most of the information (which was inaccurate to begin with) was plagiarized by Gerard, a barber-surgeon who misspelled words like Lycoperticum in the collection’s rushed final product. Smith quotes Gerard:

             
Gerard considered ‘the whole plant’ to be ‘of ranke and stinking savour.’… The fruit was corrupt which he left to every man’s censure. While the leaves and stalk of the tomato plant are toxic, the fruit is not.

             
Gerard’s opinion of the tomato, though based on a fallacy, prevailed in Britain and in the British North American colonies for over 200 years.

             
Around this time it was also believed that tomatoes were best eaten in hotter countries, like the fruit’s place of origin in Mesoamerica. The tomato was eaten by the Aztecs as early as 700 AD and called the “tomatl,” (its name in Nahuatl), and wasn’t grown in Britain until the 1590s. In the early 16th century, Spanish conquistadors returning from expeditions in Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica were thought to have first introduced the seeds to southern Europe. Some researchers credit Cortez with bringing the seeds to Europe in 1519 for ornamental purposes. Up until the late 1800s in cooler climates, tomatoes were solely grown for ornamental purposes in gardens rather than for eating. Smith continues:

             
John Parkinson the apothecary to King James I and botanist for King Charles I, procalimed that while love apples were eaten by the people in the hot countries to ‘coole and quench the heate and thirst of the hot stomaches,” British gardeners grew them only for curiousity and fo the beauty of the fruit.

             
The first known reference to tomato in the British North American Colonies was published in herbalist William Salmon’s Botanologia printed in 1710 which places the tomato in the Carolinas. The tomato became an acceptable edible fruit in many regions, but the United States of America weren’t as united in the 18th and early 19th century. Word of the tomato spread slowly along with plenty of myths and questions from farmers. Many knew how to grow them, but not how to cook the food.

             
By 1822, hundreds of tomato recipes appeared in local periodicals and newspapers, but fears and rumors of the plant’s potential poison lingered. By the 1830s when the love apple was cultivated in New York, a new concern emerged. The Green Tomato Worm, measuring three to four inches in length with a horn sticking out of its back, began taking over tomato patches across the state.  According to The Illustrated Annual Register of Rural Affairs and Cultivator Almanac (1867) edited by J.J. Thomas, it was believed that a mere brush with such a worm could result in death.  The description is chilling:

             
The tomato in all of our gardens is infested with a very large thick-bodied green worm, with oblique white sterols along its sides, and a curved thorn-like horn at the end of its back.

             
According to Smith’s research, even Ralph Waldo Emerson feared the presence of the tomato-loving worms: They were “an object of much terror, it being currently regarded as poisonous and imparting a poisonous quality to the fruit if it should chance to crawl upon it.”

             
Around the same time period, a man by the name of Dr. Fuller in New York was quoted in The Syracuse Standard, saying he had found a five-inch tomato worm in his garden. He captured the worm in a bottle and said it was “poisonous as a rattlesnake” when it would throw spittle at its prey. According to Fuller’s account, once the skin came into contact with the spittle, it swelled immediately. A few hours later, the victim would seize up and die. It was a “new enemy to human existence,” he said. Luckily, an entomologist by the name of Benjamin Walsh argued that the dreaded tomato worm wouldn’t hurt a flea. Thomas continues:

            
 Now that we have become familiarized with it these fears have all vanished, and we have become quite indifferent towards this creature, knowing it to be merely an ugly-looking worm which eats some of the leaves of the tomato…

             
The fear, it seems, had subsided. With the rise of agricultural societies, farmers began investigating the tomato’s use and experimented with different varieties. According to Smith, back in the 1850s the name tomato was so highly regarded that it was used to sell other plants at market. By 1897, innovator Joseph Campbell figured out that tomatoes keep well when canned and popularized condensed tomato soup.

             
Today, tomatoes are consumed around the world in countless varieties: heirlooms, romas, cherry tomatoes—to name a few. More than one and a half billion tons of tomatoes are produced commercially every year. In 2009, the United States alone produced 3.32 billion pounds of fresh-market tomatoes. But some of the plant’s night-shady past seems to have followed the tomato in pop culture. In the 1978 musical drama/ comedy “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” giant red blobs of the fruit terrorize the country. “The nation is in chaos. Can nothing stop this tomato onslaught?”



Gourdzilla!! Growing Champion Pumpkins




Growing titanic orbs or gourds is a competitive cut throat sport. As recently as 16 years ago, the heaviest (official) pumpkin weighed a mere 403 pounds. Now in 2015 the one ton mark has been surpassed. That is a lot of pumpkin, not to mention how do you move one that size?? With a fork lift and pickup truck at the very least, so this is not something that any home grower can do. Champion pumpkin growers have their own methods and secrets that they guard closely in hopes of breaking the record books one more time.

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