March 2017

Planters Punchlines

Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield

March 2017

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

“Important Tree Diseases of North America."

@ Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield March Meeting

Monday March 27 @ 7:00 pm in the Pitkin Community Center

Robert Marra, Ph.D. an Associate Scientist/Forest Pathologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station will discuss “Important Tree Diseases of North America."  Bring a guest.

Annual Plant Sale is May 6 

What will you donate?

How can you help?

This is our major fundraiser. CRITICAL NEED - Club members are asked to contribute “home grown” perennials to the sale.  If you do not have your own plants to donate – get creative.

Compostable Matter

By Jim Meehan

It Grows As It Goes

Mars and I have lived in "Ye Most Auncient Towne in Connecticut” for the past thirty-nine years, but our plan now is to relocate southwest to Santa Fe, New Mexico, established by Spanish colonists twenty-four years before the birth of Wethersfield – and the self-declared “City Different”.  

             

Even those totally unfamiliar with these two locales could probably identify many dissimilarities between them – Connecticut River Valley vs. high desert; English Colonial houses vs. Spanish adobe dwellings; lots of green vs., lots of tan; 59” annual rainfall vs. 14”; etcetera.  But they also resemble each other in many ways – at least as seen through the eyes of this amateur gardener and lay horticultural historian.

             

The official state motto of New Mexico is “Crescit eundo”.  I suspect that almost no one knows that –or its translation to “It grows as it goes”.   And even less people can explain what the phrase actually means. (It comes from the epic poem De Rerum Natura, “On the Nature of Things”, by the Latin poet Lucretius and refers to a thunderbolt increasing in strength as it moves across the sky – a symbol of dynamic progress.)

             

On the other hand just about every New Mexican can recite the Official State Question and Answer – and probably says it at least once a day.

             

Q. "Red OR Green?"

             

A: "Red AND Green” or “Christmas."

             

And every visitor quickly learns exactly what that means – just as we did twenty-four years ago.  On our first night in the Land of Enchantment we went for dinner at a local restaurant specializing in New Mexican food.  We explained to the waitress that we were new in town, unfamiliar with the food, and (coming from the moderately seasoned New England culinary tradition) pretty much spice-wimps.  After guiding us through some entrée selections she posed “the question.”  And told us how to answer it.

             

Most New Mexican food (including, as I discovered, Tuna Florentine) is served with chile – which in New Mexico means a sauce made from the pungent pods of either red or green chile peppers, not the concoction of spices, meat or beans known in other places as chili con carne.  Sometimes the red sauce is hotter – i.e. higher on the Scoville Scale of capsaicin sensitivity.  Sometimes it is the green.  So THE question with every meal is “red or green”.  And the most appropriate answer is “red and green” or simply “Christmas”.  Usually the sauce smothers the dish.  So, for those of us without asbestos covered taste buds, the waitress said to always ask for it “on the side”.  We did that night.  And a quarter of a century later we still do.  Leaving the sauce dishes 95% full at the end of the meal no longer embarrasses us.

             

Like the ubiquitous chiles in “The Land of Enchantment” the Red Onion is equally ever-present in Connecticut’s oldest village.  Wethersfield has no official question and answer.  But if we did it would probably not be “cash or credit card?” but rather “Can I pay for that with Onions?”  The answer to which would be, “Not since the 18^th century.”

             

From 1730 until the mid-1830's the major agricultural activity in Wethersfield was the cultivation of a flat burgundy colored onion that came to be known as the “Wethersfield Red.” – earning the town renown throughout the world, as well as the sardonic sobriquet of “Oniontown.” 

             

Strung together in long “ropes,” (or “skeins”) the onions were shipped all around the world, most importantly to the West Indies where they were used to feed the slaves on the islands’ huge sugar plantations in exchange for sugar, salt, tea, coffee and spices – as well as molasses from which we New Englanders made our own rum.  In 1774, its biggest year, Wethersfield exported about one million of these knotted bundles. In the United States, even President Thomas Jefferson grew “Wethersfield Reds” at Monticello. 

            

In like manner the chile industry may be the only business in which New Mexico is ranked first nationally.  With a direct economic value of more than $57 million in 2009, plus the indirect benefits jobs and tourism, the economic impact of the spicy peppers could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  No wonder that strings of drying red chiles – called “ristras” – commonly decorate adobe houses throughout the “Land of Enchantment”.       

             

Back here in Wethersfield onions likewise were everywhere.  Ropes of red onions, looking like Christmas ornaments, adorned the rafters and doorways of houses and stores.

             

Onions were even used as medicine – as fictionalized in the children’s novel “Witch of Blackbird Pond”, set in Wethersfield.  And you could actually pay for just about anything with the famous flat, red onions.  In 1764 the town leaders levied taxes to build the First Church of Christ Congregational meetinghouse. Many residents paid their fee in the form of onions, causing the building to be known as “the church that onions built.”   To this day our local historical society symbolically pays its annual rent on an 18th-century warehouse not with money, but with Wethersfield Red Onions – and tee shirts, ties and coffee mugs proudly display the beloved burgundy bulb.

             

From whence the Wethersfield Red?  The first Pilgrims brought their own onion sets with them from England.  And the initial Wethersfield settlers who came down from Watertown, Massachusetts Bay Colony to live and farm likely carried with them some of their own pungent, edible bulbs.  Native Indians also harvested wild varieties. The deep, rich soil along the banks of the Connecticut River was an ideal place for agriculture and the “Wethersfield Red” was developed here by the local onion growers themselves.  Producers such as the Wells Brothers began raising them commercially in the 1780s in heavily fertilized beds that were never rotated – the same technique used in the cepinae of ancient Rome. 

             

The demise of the plantation system in the West Indies and a Civil War-era blight known as pinkroot brought the reign of the red onion to an end.  In New Mexico the end of the chile is a long ways away from being in sight.

             

But even after the decline of the onion trade local seed companies including Comstock Ferre & Co. (still in business here in town under the ownership of the Baker Creek Heritage Seed Company) sold red onion seeds across the country and Europe – but from what I have read not in the desert southwest.  The 1856 Comstock catalog said, "It is the kind mostly grown at Wethersfield. It grows to large size, deep red, thick, approaching to round shape, fine-grained, pleasant flavored, and very productive. It ripens in September, and keeps well."

             

Some accounts assert that cultivated chile peppers were introduced into the U.S. by Captain General Juan de Onate, the founder of Santa Fe, in 1609.  Other historians suggest that they came with the Antonio Espejo Expedition of 1582 – 1583.  In any event, after the Spanish settlement in 1598 the crop spread throughout New Mexico.  Even in New Mexico’s dry climate, distinct regional varieties or “land races” such as Chimayo and espanola peppers have been adapted to their particular environments – and many are still planted today in the same fields in which they were grown centuries ago    

             

Mars and I have never attempted to grow either our local onions or our someday-local chiles.  However when we finally do relocate to the desert southwest I think I would to keep in touch with my east coast roots by trying to cultivate some Wethersfield Reds.  I have instructions on how to grow the eponymous edible bulb in a pot.  And I’m already planning on using one of the large blue glazed containers from Jackalope Pottery in Santa Fe.  The heirloom Comstock Ferre seeds are still available – so I think I have a better than even chance of becoming the first successful New Mexico harvester of what will by then be my former home town’s most beloved symbol

             

After all, Connecticut’s own State Motto does tell us “Qui transtulit sustinet”  – "He who is transplanted still sustains".  It is time for Mars, me, and “Wethersfield Red” to test the New Mexican waters (or lack thereof) – to go, and hopefully to grow.

14 Simple Gardening Tips and Tricks

http://www.hgtv.com

             

From using leftover coffee beans to preventing dirt from getting underneath fingernails, master gardener Paul James shares his top 14 tips and shortcuts to make spring gardening a breeze.

             

Here, the latest tips and tricks from Paul James, host of Gardening by the Yard:

             

1. To remove the salt deposits that form on clay pots, combine equal parts white vinegar, rubbing alcohol and water in a spray bottle. Apply the mixture to the pot and scrub with a plastic brush. Let the pot dry before you plant anything in it.

             

2. To prevent accumulating dirt under your fingernails while you work in the garden, draw your fingernails across a bar of soap and you'll effectively seal the undersides of your nails so dirt can't collect beneath them. Then, after you've finished in the garden, use a nailbrush to remove the soap and your nails will be sparkling clean.

             

3. To prevent the line on your string trimmer from jamming or breaking, treat with a spray vegetable oil before installing it in the trimmer.

             

4. Turn a long-handled tool into a measuring stick! Lay a long-handled garden tool on the ground, and next to it place a tape measure. Using a permanent marker, write inch and foot marks on the handle. When you need to space plants a certain distance apart (from just an inch to several feet) you'll already have a measuring device in your hand.

More Tips and Tricks from Paul 04:28

How can you use bubble wrap to keep your potted plants from stressing out? Find out from gardening expert Paul James.

             

5. To have garden twine handy when you need it, just stick a ball of twine in a small clay pot, pull the end of the twine through the drainage hole, and set the pot upside down in the garden. Do that, and you'll never go looking for twine again.

            

 6. Little clay pots make great cloches for protecting young plants from sudden, overnight frosts and freezes.

             

7. To turn a clay pot into a hose guide, just stab a roughly one-foot length of steel reinforcing bar into the ground at the corner of a bed and slip two clay pots over it: one facing down, the other facing up. The guides will prevent damage to your plants as you drag the hose along the bed.

             

8. To create perfectly natural markers, write the names of plants (using a permanent marker) on the flat faces of stones of various sizes and place them at or near the base of your plants.

             

9. Got aphids? You can control them with a strong blast of water from the hose or with insecticidal soap. But here's another suggestion, one that's a lot more fun; get some tape! Wrap a wide strip of tape around your hand, sticky side out, and pat the leaves of plants infested with aphids. Concentrate on the undersides of leaves, because that's where the little buggers like to hide.

             

10. The next time you boil or steam vegetables, don't pour the water down the drain, use it to water potted patio plants, and you'll be amazed at how the plants respond to the "vegetable soup."

          

11. Use leftover tea and coffee grounds to acidify the soil of acid-loving plants such as azaleas, rhododendrons, camellias, gardenias and even blueberries. A light sprinkling of about one-quarter of an inch applied once a month will keep the pH of the soil on the acidic side.

             

12. Use chamomile tea to control damping-off fungus, which often attacks young seedlings quite suddenly. Just add a spot of tea to the soil around the base of seedlings once a week or use it as a foliar spray.

             

13. If you need an instant table for tea service, look no farther than your collection of clay pots and saucers. Just flip a good-sized pot over, and top it off with a large saucer. And when you've had your share of tea, fill the saucer with water, and your "table" is now a birdbath.

             

14. The quickest way in the world to dry herbs: just lay a sheet of newspaper on the seat of your car, arrange the herbs in a single layer, then roll up the windows and close the doors. Your herbs will be quickly dried to perfection. What's more, your car will smell great.

The 7 Best Strength Exercises For Gardeners

nwedible.com/the-7-best-strength-exercises-for-gardeners/

(For videos of these exercises link to the above website)

             

Here are the 7 Best Exercises to do before gardening season gets going, so you’ll be ready when it does. You can perform these motions at a gym or at home – all you need are a pair of appropriately heavy weights or kettlebells and a little floor or garden space.

             

1. Dumbebell Deadlift

             

Mimics: Bending over to pull a weed, lift a rock or pick up a bag of compost. Really, any time you bend over and pick something up, you are performing a deadlift. Practice dumbbell or barbell deadlifts in the off-season and your lower back and legs will all be stronger when gardening season gets going.

             

Focus on: letting the dumbbells or the bar slide along your legs through the entire motion, and keep your back and shoulders strong so your spine doesn’t round down. As you add weight in the deadlift, you begin to work your grib strength as well, which is important for keeping hold of sledgehammers and heavy buckets.

             

2. Front-Loaded Squat

             

Mimics: Carrying bags of compost, soil amendments, rocks or kids in front of you. Strengthens your butt, thighs, and entire core. The squat and deadlift are, hands-down, the best all-over strength building exercises you can perform.

             

Focus on: keeping your weight in your heels – if necessary point your toes up toward the ceiling to ensure that you are squatting back rather than down. Keep your low back in neutral alignment through the entire motion; don’t let your back round forward towards the ground. Start with very little weight and work up as you get stronger.

             

3. Farmer Carry

             

Mimics: Carrying buckets of water, compost or soil amendments through the garden. If you’ve ever carried a bag of groceries in each hand, you’ve already performed a Farmer Carry. Up the weight you can handle through diligent practice of the farmer carry and you’ll strengthen your grip and forearms substantially and make hauling all those buckets all over the yard a lot easier.

             

Focus on: keeping your abdominal muscles tight and engaged and keeping the weight under control – no big swings. If you don’t have heavy enough weights to make this simple motion a challenge, grab a few large filled water bottles. I keep these 3 gallon bottles filled with emergency water in the garage. Topped up with water, they weigh about 25 pound each.

             

4. Diagonal Wood Chop

             

Mimics: chopping logs, rotating to weed, pull and reach items in the garden, overhead hammering of posts and tree stakes. Wood Chop is a great all-around exercise because it incorporates both strength and stability work. Wood Chop strengthens the entire abdominal girdle, arms, and back stabilizers, which means less fatigue and back pain after a long day in the yard.

             

Focus on: keeping a strong core as you perform a controlled but forceful diagonal lift of a manageable weight from the outside of one knee up and over to above the opposite shoulder and back down. Your torso should rotate but your feet should stay fixed (though it is ok for the active foot to pivot in place). Wood Chop may be performed with varying degrees of squat – I find the amount I squat in the motion is proportional to the weight I am using, with lighter weights requiring less squat at the beginning of the lift.  Performed dynamically, this exercise can quickly become a cardio-conditioner as well. Because of the dynamic torso rotation, be cautious if you are new to the Diagonal Wood Chop.

            

 5. Push-Ups

             

Mimics: pushing wheelbarrow loads and push-mowers through the garden. Push-ups work your entire upper body, including your chest, arms and core. Strength in pushing is important to gardeners because we always need to push something around the yard: compost, yard waste containers, lawn-mowers, etc. If challenges keep you motivated, take the 100 Push-Up Challenge and learn to rock this important upper-body exercise.

             

Focus on: keeping your body in a straight line from toe to head. Don’t let your back arch or sway. Keep your elbows tucked in against your torso to more fully engage the triceps muscle. If a full push-up is too challenging, perform a modified push-up. Remember to shift your weight off your knee-cap and up to the very bottom of your quadriceps (thigh) muscle, and to establish the same strong, straight body line in a modified push-up as you would have in a full push-up.

             

6. Renegade Rows

             

Mimics: raking, pulling-out well-rooted weeds, starting gas lawnmowers. Rows are sort of like inverse push-ups. Everything a push-up does for your chest and pushing ability, rows do for your back and pulling ability. Most people think of yard work as pulling – pulling weeds! But we gardeners pull recalcitrant rocks, re-bar stakes, tagled vines and brambles and more as well. Renegate Rows have the added advantage of working the core stabilizer muscles.

             

Focus on: just-like the push-up, you want to keep your body in as straight a line as possible. Pull your abdominal muscles in alternatively pull your weight up, keeping about a 90-degree bend in your elbow. Kick your feet about shoulder-width apart to make balance easier.

             

7. Lunges

             

Mimics: weeding. The motion you use to get down on one knee and propose, tie a shoelace or pull a weed is a lunge. Lunges work your butt and thighs like nothing else and are great for balance and stabilizer training. Gardeners who get strong in the lunge will avoid the temptation to constantly bend over with an arched back (which leads to a sore back!) when they need to get close to the ground.

            

 Focus on: a smooth down-up motion of the entire torso in the lunge. Try not to lean down and forward as you lunge. Instead, think of a smooth drop and an engaged lift. Don’t let your knee bang the ground; if you cannot control a full depth lunge right away, just don’t drop as deep until you build up your strength.

Zinnias: The Hardest-Working Flower in the Summer Garden

/www.chicagobotanic.org

             

In summer, gardening requires plants with three key qualities: low maintenance (it's hot out there), heat and drought tolerance (ditto), and brilliant color—the brighter the better.  Zinnias fit the bill on all three counts. And more. In fact, they're one of the best flowers that smart gardeners can put to work in their gardens.

            

 Zinnias work fast.  If there's an easier flower to grow, we'd like to know about it. Zinnias are annuals, meaning that they go from seed to flower to seed quickly. Zinnias' pointy seeds, shaped like little arrowheads, require only basic garden prep to sprout: sow them in well-drained soil, where there's full sun and lots of summer heat, and you'll have tiny seedlings in days, with flowers powering up in just a few weeks. No perennial can claim that speed!

             

One gardening friend doesn't even bother to prepare her soil—she simply sprinkles seeds wherever she'd like a few zinnias, waters those spots for a couple of days, and lets zinnias' easy-to-grow nature take its course.

             

Zinnias work wherever you need color.  'Pop Art'. 'Green Envy'. 'Persian Carpet'. 'Candy Cane'. With variety names like that, you know you're in for color. Zinnias come in a preposterous palette of every bright and pastel (except the blues), plus bi-colors, tri-colors, and crazy-quilt mixes designed for cutting, to attract pollinators, etc.

             

Aside from fresh color, many new zinnia series offer height and width options, too.While the tall versions of Zinnia elegans remain the classic choice for the back of the border, shorter series now challenge the low ground once ceded to marigolds and petunias. The Magellan Series stay close to knee high at 14 inches, while the Thumbelina Series of dwarf zinnias peak at 6 to 8 inches.

             

Creeping or spreading Zinnia angustifolia, such as the Crystal Series, are a revelation for the front of the border, raised beds, containers, and even ground covers. This Mexican native is the go-to species for hot spots like sidewalk beds or that no-man's-land beside the garage, since it's even more drought tolerant than common zinnias.

             

Zahara™ zinnias top out at just 8 to 12 inches—and are prized for their resistance to powdery mildew and leaf spot (see below). Zahara Yellow is short but sweet—we paired it with petite sunflowers in the entry beds at the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden.

             

Zinnias work as cut flowers.  Zinnias have style, in addition to long, strong stems, so they are naturally destined for the vase.

             

Wonderful language gets used when describing zinnia flowers: stars and daisies, dahlias and spiders, buttons and domes, and quill-leaf cactus. Flowers can be "singles," with petals lined up in a row around an open center, or semi-doubles, or doubles. All work marvelously in floral arrangements.

             

Of course, the tall varieties are the zinnias of choice for cutting: 'Benary's Giant' is famous for its three-foot-tall, sturdy stems and large flowers. Cut zinnia stems at an angle just above a bud joint. Zinnias are typically long-lasting in a vase—strip the stems of all but the most visible leaves before setting them in water.

             

Zinnias cut your workload. Zinnias are low maintenance. Since they're fast-growing, they shade out weeds. They don't require much in the way of fertilizing (just an occasional well-balanced mix), and they don't need mulching.

             

Deadheading helps to produce more flowers. No time to deadhead? The Zaharas mentioned in the sidebard are self-cleaning—a real time saver when it comes to a large bed.

             

Like Zaharas, the Profusion Series (hybrids between Z. elegans and Z. angustifolia) are resistant to the scourge of zinnias: powdery mildew.

             

Because zinnias are native to the grasslands of the southwestern states, Mexico, and South America, they know how to handle dry conditions. But wet summers (we've had one so far) can take their toll. And that can lead to powdery mildew and leaf spot. Three suggestions for dealing with wet conditions:

             

1. Water only when needed, and then only at the base of the plants. Wet leaves can promote mildew development, and splashing water can transfer fungus from the ground onto zinnia leaves in an instant.

             

2. Camouflage tall, more mildew-prone varieties with other plants in the foreground.

             

3. Do both #1 and #2 and live with the fact that zinnia leaves (but not flowers) are affected by wet weather—as one horticulturist put it, "Even when zinnias are covered in powdery mildew, they're covered in flowers."

             

Zinnias work year after year.  It's easy to save zinnia seeds. Simply let the flowers dry fully on the stem, then collect the seedheads and lightly crush them in your hand to release next year's seed crop. Store in a cool, dry place as you do other seeds. (And set some aside in a labeled envelope for our Seed Swap next February!)

             

One last reason to plant zinnias year after year: they're butterfly magnets. The bigger-flowered varieties act like landing pads for nectar-seeking butterflies. (Same goes for hummingbirds.) Try tall zinnias with red or hot pink flowers to get the biggest draw.

Horti-Culture Corner

If your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.  Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist)

The Moonlight Garden: A Composition in White (excerpts)

www.chicagobotanic.org

             

At dusk, vibrant flowers—the reds, oranges, blues and purples that were so striking during the day—begin to fade as shimmering white blossoms and silver and white-splashed foliage start to glow. This is the time when the moon garden, or white garden, comes into its own. You can plant a moon garden in a window box or in pots around a door, a gate, or at the head of a path. Silver, white or variegated leaves will work, too.

            

 Here are some favorites.  The jasmine-scented annual tobacco flower,  Moonflower vine (Ipomoea alba), White fall-blooming anemones, (sun lovers) Asclepias 'Ice Ballet', Buddleja 'White Profusion', Cosmos, Dahlias, Daisies, Gypsophila (baby's breath), Hydrangea 'Annabelle', Iris, Lilium 'Casa Blanca', Phlox 'David', Salvia, Snapdragon, Sweet Alyssum, Tuberose, Veronicastrum (Culver's Root), Viburnum, Korean spice, Zinnia, (shade lovers) Actaea 'Hillside Black Beauty' (black snakeroot), Aruncus (goat's beard), Astilbe 'Bridal Veil', Athyrium 'Ghost' (ghost fern), Begonia, Brunnera 'Jack Frost', Caladium, Dicentra 'Alba', Helleborus, Hosta 'Elegans', Tiarella cordifolia (Allegheny foamflower)