Partial Success

The phrase "partial success" in gardening is about as exciting as the sports chant "We're Number 2,"  but partial success is what I have and partial success is what I will accept.  Last summer I had just come off a more than full-time, academic-year job and had sadly neglected my garden, including my peaches.  We got very few peaches and a lot of brown rot.  This year, I vowed to do better or to chop them down. We extensively pruned in winter and I sprayed dormant oil.  In spring, I sprayed organic caterpillar sprays and organic anti-fungals.  I sprayed Surround (tm) several times during the growing season and had my husband (a great guy) thin the young peaches severely.  This year, we have better yield, still too much brown rot to be happy with, but more good, whole fruit and, some damaged fruit that we can salvage. The photo above is an example of the best of the peaches- the white spots are the Surround (a kaolin clay spray that deters bugs).  So, no chopping down this year.  I intend to do the same routine, plus have better orchard clean up this year to reduce overwintering fungal spores and bugs. Here's to an ever better 2013 harvest!

Happy gardening!  Remember to click on the podbean link and listen to my podcast, or find it through itunes:  VirginiaOrganicGardener.

Fun Critter

I spent about 5 hours in the garden this morning (gone are the days were I could spend 8 or 9 hours gardening) and I have the sore muscles to show for it!  But, as I tell my husband, this is good sore.  I was puttering in the shade garden, near my fading voodoo lilies (Dracnunculus vulgaris) and saw a strange mass on one of the fading spathes.  I reached out to touch it, but stopped when I realized it was this cute frog!  It is amazing what you find when you look.
Happy garden discoveries!

Book Review: "Fifty Plants..."

Laws, B. (2010).  Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History. Buffalo, NY:  Firefly books.

It is not an exaggeration to say that plants changed the course of human history.  Indeed, plants are the basis for life. Without them, we would not exist as a species nor would most others.  Plants are the basis of our food supply: yes, even meat eaters need to thank plants for creating all the consumable flesh in the first place.  Plants do more then feed up: they house us (wood frame homes), fuel us (petroleum and coal are ancient, decomposed plant matter), clothe us (linen, cotton, ramie, even wool, secondarily as the sheep eats grass to produce it, and silk, as the silk caterpillars need white mulberry leaves), provide medicines (digitalis for heart failure, vinca for cancer treatment, caffeine...well I view it as a medicine!), dyes and pigments....  Plants can also harm us, poison us (neurotoxic mushrooms, poison ivy....), or cause mental confusion and addiction (marijuana, coca, opium).

This is an interesting little book.  I took it  a camping trip with my nephews and niece and it made for interesting conversation as we all tried to identify the 50 plants and explain why (they did a great job).  It is not a gardening books per se, though has some interesting factoids for gardeners (hops is related to cannibis, Anglo-Saxon warriors dyed their skin blue using woad, sunflower seeds can be used to make blue, black, purple and red dyes).  I liked the book because it it increased my general store of knowledge of the history and cultural significance of plants.

The one disadvantage of the book is its brevity.  At about 217 small-format pages of text with lots of illustrations (many of them quite nice), it does not have the space to get into much depth on each plant (it reminded me of one of those DK books: visually lovely, but a bit shallow).  But it does provide interesting info and whet one's appetite for more.  A good book to borrow from a local library or buy as a gift for a plant-loving friend.

Happy gardening!

Raspberries

Small fruits (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, blueberries, muscadine grapes) are much easier to grow than large fruits (apples, peaches, etc) and I find raspberries the easiest of all and they are my favorite.  I pretty much ignore my Nova raspberries.  I put compost around the roots when I have extra, cut back the canes after fruiting, pull out excess canes and weed around them.  They reward me with two flushes of fruit a year, a large flush in spring and a smaller flush, of often larger fruit, in late summer to fall.  Voles have done some damage, but not enough to really stop these vigorous canes.
Yesterday I made the jewel of a pie above:  freshly picked, organic raspberries, sugar and a homemade top crust.  There are many pleasures to gardening and eating the results is the greatest reward!
Happy gardening!  (A tip: you can thicken any fruit pie filling with minute tapioca, follow package directions).

Fire Blight

Fire Blight

Have you noticed that pear trees (ornamental and fruit-producing) look pretty bad this season?  If not, take a look when you are around and about and you may notice lots of blackened areas on the trees (the fruits-yes, even ornamental Bradford pears produce little fruits) might be blackened and shriveled and the new growth leaves likewise.  This is probably fire blight, and we have been having a hard time of it this season. There has always been a little of this bacterial disease in my yard- my apple tree gets a bit, but is mostly sturdy and resistant.  This year I first noted it on my fire-blight resistant Moonglow and Magness pear trees.  Last season Magness had it, almost enough the kill the tree completely, but seems OK this season.  This year, however, the Moonglow is more affected.  

Fire flight is caused by a nasty bacteria that can kill a tree, if the bacterial disease spreads to the root zone (and it probably will, especially on a small tree, if you take no action).  The first defense is the plant fire-blight resistant varieties, but as my experience has shown, these are resistant to the bacteria, not immune to it. Next, to keep your tree as healthy as possible, plant it away from other susceptible host plants, like many apple varieties (oops, I messed up there- my pears are too close to my apple tree!).  Use compost as a fertilizer to insure steady, not explosive, growth.  When you first see the signs of fire blight (leaves or stems that turn black) you need to out race the disease by selective pruning.  Cut the branch below the infected area (you will see where the stem turns black, and cut several inches below that).   Spraying an infected tree with an antibiotic spray or, early in the growing season, an organic, copper-based spray will also limit the disease. The copper spray is necessary to suppress the cankers which overwinter all over the tree bark, and which spread the disease in spring.

The photo above shows three cuttings from my pear tree to help identify fire blight. Look carefully at the cutting on the left.  See the sprout of leaves at the top and how that twig is black?  Then how the branch near to it is black too?  That is fire blight.  The cutting in the middle seems healthy, green leaves and brown bark.  The right most cutting has a black stem and one dead, shriveled shoot on the bottom right.  Though the leaves look good, this twig was destined to die, as it is infected with fire blight.  If you see new growth that is all black, leaves and stem, sometimes curled in a shepherd's crook shape, that is fire blight too.

 

Hope you are avoiding the blight and have a happy garden!

Garden Apps?

Look for an entry soon on garden apps for thr ipad, my new toy! And please let me know if you have some favorites I can try! Happy Gardening!

Sad plant, happy plant

Ah, my favorite theme: right plant, wrong place. Perhaps it is my favorite garden theme, because I do it so often: that is, I put a great plant in the wrong spot. Sometimes this is clearly my fault- I am running out of yard for certain plant types, but buy them anyway, and simply hope I can make it work. But other times, this error seems "thrust upon me," that is, the plant worked well where it was first placed, but conditions have changed: the neighbors trees (or mine) are larger and cast more shade, the weeds have invaded, etc. Above are photos of two plantings of the same plant, a lovely bearded iris.  In the first case, the trees overgrew and shaded the plant too much.  It produced few blossoms on spindly plants and tipped over pretty easily (though bearded iris are often guilty of this).  In the second, the plants are in full sun, are as happy as can be and have produced a huge number of blossoms.  So, I guess one corollary to the theme above is to move plants that are not working in their spot to a better place!
Happy gardening!