One Reason I grow...

 Botanical Art

I started gardening when I was a kid. Wherever I had a place where I could grow veggies, I did it.  In the mid 2000's, I began taking botanical art classes and earned a Certificate in Botanical Illustration a few years later.  Why? So I could document what I grew, and the produce of others.  In fact, fruits and veggies are my favorite subjects!  Here's one:

Asian Long Eggplant

(Sorry about the photo quality, I need to work on that!)

WTH is this?

 

I try to buy decent potting soil as I pot up a large number plants every year and have many house plants.  Quality, organic potting soil is expensive, so I will sometimes reuse old soil (if I think it is relatively disease- and weed-free), recharge it with finished compost and coffee chaff (a peat and perlite substitute).  In a pinch I bought a less expensive potting mix and did not read the ingredients for the dreaded "forestry byproducts," aka tree bark leftovers from making mulch (I suspect it is swept off the floor).   Shredded tree bark is a bad substrate in which to actually grow plants, it robs the soil of nutrients as it breaks down and provides a great habitat for various fungi.  Well, the photo above was from a purchase of one of these cheap soils.  It is mostly all shredded bark with a little dirt thrown in!  I hope this was a fluke in production, but I will not be buying this "container mix" again (plus the harsh chemical fertilizers!):

The Fig Gods smiled

 

Brown Turkey Figs

One of the first things I planted when we moved to our central Virginia home 20 years ago were three brown turkey fig trees. Positioned on the southeastern corner of our house to protect the roots in winter, they started producing fruit in about 3 years, really hitting their stride at the 5 year mark, producing hundreds of ripe figs per day for weeks. Then "the music died."  Late freezes damaged the young fruit (which is really a flower in disguise) and the subsequent fruit could not ripen in time.  For the last 4 years we got nada, zilch, nothing.

So, then I read up on unproductive fig trees. As the trees mature, they tend to fill in the center and send up straight, unproductive branches.  This shades the tree, reducing the potential for ripening. Last January, our figs trees had a date with a Japanese pruning saw.  I removed much of the interior growth, and the vertical, crossed and dead branches, and took off some of the height.  At first, I was disappointed, the tree grew back lushly and I though we would not get figs. But I think pruning, plus no late freezes, did the trick and now...THERE BE FIGS HERE!

It's....Pawpaw Time!

 

If my reader recalls, I have a thing for pawpaws, ever since discovering them while walking down by the James River...and reading about them, most notably Andrew Moore's book pictured below (a riveting read for us garden nerds):

The pawpaw, and in this case I mean Asimina triloba, not the other 10 species of Asimina, is North America's largest native fruit.  It is the northern most member of a family of tropical plants. The pawpaw is now in commercial cultivation, and many improved hybrids exist.  Fruit from wild trees can have variable taste depending on the tree (and by tree, I mean all the many trees that come from the same rootstock, spread by runners/vegetative growth).  The pawpaw fruit is exceedingly fragile; when ripe it is very soft and does not transport well (and they will not ripen up if picked unripe). You will not find them at your local grocery store, but may find some at a local farmer's market. The best way to have pawpaws is to grow them yourself.  The  flavor of pawpaws is often described as a combination of banana with mango and pineapple overtones.

I lucked out, I grew my pawpaws from seed collected from wild plants-talk about a wild card! Even if you taste the fruit, the flower was most likely pollinated by a genetically different tree, and you don't know what you might get from that cross. Pawpaws are seldom self fertile, as the female and male parts of the flower come out at different times.  I hand pollinate mine with male flowers collected locally.

An added bonus of growing pawpaws is that they are the host plant for the larva of the zebra swallowtail butterfly! 

The top photo shows the fruit, pulp, and the large seeds (do no eat the seeds or skin, they can make you sick,  And, like everything, some people are allergic to pawpaws).  The second photo is of pawpaw pudding, a traditional recipe, sort of a dense cake.  Some people claim that cooked pawpaw can cause digestive upset, but it never has for me, nor can I find good evidence for that claim.

For Virginia growers, Edible Landscaping in Afton, VA offers several named varieties of pawpaws.

Ginger Update!

 

Turmeric

 Ginger

I wrote last season about my success with growing culinary ginger. I was so happy with the outcome (pickled sushi ginger anyone?), that I also ordered organic turmeric rhizomes this year and started some of those plants. Both turmeric and ginger are in the same family, the Zingiberaceae.  

We had a very hot and dry July and I was watering often- the gingers do like their water.  Then we had a hot and wet August and the plants really shot up.  Stay tuned for the outcome, I hope to have ginger and turmeric to share with friends!  By the way, I order my fresh ginger and turmeric roots from Hawaiian sources in February and start them in my sunroom as soon as they arrive (next year I want to try another ginger: galangal!).

A few informational resources on growing your own ginger in Virginia:

http://www.laughingduckgardens.com/2013/04/03/growing-ginger-in-virginia/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gko7DlV_mm0

HOT HOT HOT

 

from https://weather.com/  7/27/21

Dear Central Virginians,

That recent reprieve from the hot weather was great, but, sadly, it is not going to last. More days in the 90's are ahead, plus limited chance for rain.  

This is a "do what I say..." post. For a number of years, I have occasionally used soaker hoses.  But, because I was leaving a fairly newly planted vegetable garden for over 3 weeks in June (what was I thinking!??!?) I set up a series of soaker hoses on a timer and I am glad I did! For shorter vacations, I often asked kind neighbors and friends to water my garden by turning on sprinklers for a couple hours every few days.  I was never gone for long, so did not worry about the water wastage and inefficiency of this watering. I just needed a way for friends to do this easily and it was sort of ok.  And I was too lazy to set up soakers and timers. BUT I KNEW BETTER!  High, overhead sprinkling wastes up to 90% of the water to evaporation. The higher the arc of the spray and the more fine the spray, the greater the waste. Try an experiment: set up an overhead sprinkler for an hour, then dig into the soil after it turns off.  You will see that the water did not penetrate far.  This encourages shallow roots which cannot support healthy plants.

My setup is not the greatest. I have hoses that cross the brick paths between the beds, that wasted water partly reclaimed by buckets to be used later.  I need a better solution.  But my plants are lush and healthier than usual, despite the hot, dry conditions. Typically by this time of year my tomatoes have leaf spot diseases, caused by overhead watering splashing fungal spores from the soil to the leaves, but not this year so far (compost mulch helps with this, too).

I am going to find a solution to the lost water, and really set up a great system next spring!

Not a Keeper?

 I really enjoy growing garlic. I plant softneck garlic in the fall, in late September or early October and it overwinters with little sprouts, starting to grow again in the spring.  Typically, I harvest it in June when the leaves turn yellow and a "test head" looks ready (not round, but forming distinct cloves). But, this June I was on vacation when my garlic was ready.  I missed optimum harvest by over 2 weeks. What happens then? See the head of garlic pictured above? The cloves have started to separate from the head. If I waited longer, the cloves would have fallen free of the head.  Why is this a problem?  Garlic that reaches this stage has poor keeping qualities, it will spoil in my usual storage in a dark, dry cabinet layered in newspaper. 

So what to do?  Thank goodness there are alternative ways to preserve garlic. The University of California, Davis, produced this helpful document:

http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/files/251548.pdf

Following their advice, I am separating the cloves, peeling and preserving them in the fridge in dry red wine, dry white wine, and white wine vinegar.  A bonus is that you can cook with this garlic-infused wine and vinegar!  I am also peeling and freezing them, roasting and freezing them (and smearing them on crusty bread, yum!), dehydrating them and making some of my own garlic powder and garlic salt.  (One thing I am not doing is preserving garlic in oil, due to the danger of botulism). As a consequence, my kitchen smells like a garlic factory!  I will still hold some of the better-looking heads in the cupboard, but will check on and rotate them often.