Consult the Strawberry Book

Day 61: I got a very early start with horticulture when at age two, I was introduced to the "Strawberry Book" by my dad. It became known in the family as such because one time when no one was looking, I took a crayon to the line drawing of a strawberry (my favourite of the illustrations). I was firmly chastised for the error of my ways, and thereafter was only allowed to peruse the Strawberry Book with supervision. The book passed to me when I reached adulthood, and despite its dated nature, has still proved to be a valuable resource for my horticultural experiments. Some things never change, like the fact that gooseberries can be propagated by soil layering (purportedly "easily," although that remains to be demonstrated). It was to the Strawberry Book that I returned when my weaving partner Ed bought property and wanted to begin putting in a garden. He so loves my gooseberry jam that he asked me for starts from my plants. After the twigs had lost their leaves, I scraped off the harder outer tissue to expose the cambium layer, treated the wounds with rooting hormone, staked the twigs down and covered them with soil, essentially the same method I used to propagate from my contorted filbert. Gooseberries certainly won't be as challenging as that was!

Joyful Unwinds

Day 15: My Adeniums were getting too leggy, so it was with great trepidation that I decided to prune one back in the hopes that it would sprout a new "head." Typically, the showy, large-flowered Adeniums sold by nurseries are grafted plants, hybrid stems grafted onto sturdier rootstock, much like what is done with fruit trees. I was careful not to take it back as far as the graft (pretty obvious, really), and then sat back to see if my experiment was going to be successful before jumping in to prune all the plants. I covered the cut with candle wax to ensure against rot or disease, and was heartened when six months later, a tiny leaf bud appeared just below the waxed tip. Leaves developed over the next several months, and then when the plant's blooming time arrived, it put out a few buds. Emboldened by my success, I pruned the other two plants, one "head" at a time over the seasons. Now all my Adeniums are under a foot tall, and each stem has its "Tina Turner" hairdo of leaves at the top of otherwise bare sticks, and all have bloomed again. "Joyful" is unwinding its pink minaret even as I write.

Which Of These...?

Day 359: Which of these objects is unlike the others? Or more to the point, why is it different? I was not expecting to find a 1" diameter berry on my hardy kiwis when I went out to pick a snack yesterday, but now that the leaves are beginning to fall, it's easier to see the fruit. Yes, I'm still learning the Art of the Kiwi, and have discovered that the berries come readily off the vine when they're ripe, even dropping to the ground of their own accord. Last year, I figured out that they don't really start to ripen until the leaves begin changing colour. This year, I noticed that the stems of the fruit start to wither and turn brown to signal their readiness for picking. But what happened here? Where did the big berry come from? You may recall that I originally planted two "Issai" vines, purportedly self-fertile, but not very interested in doing their job. Consequently, I planted a male/female pair of "Clark" and "Anna" so that I would at least stand some small chance of getting fruit, and hoping that "Clark" might also fertilize "Issai." I think it did. I think this one larger fruit is from "Issai." Okay, time for a re-think. I will abandon my plans to remove "Issai" and will see if I can encourage a leg of "Clark" to intertwine with it. And I'm wondering if, as more leaves drop, I might find a few more "Issai" bonuses.

Green Gold

Day 322: First frost missed me by a scant few miles and about 200' in elevation. For cryin' out loud! It's still August! It's way too early to be thinking about frosty nights! I don't recall that we've ever made it all the way through September without a frost, but neither do I remember it happening so close to me in what is historically our hottest month of the year. The occasion inspired me to prune back some of the kiwi foliage so that maximum sun will reach the berries, and in so doing, I discovered a few more on the east end of the tangle. Kiwis are vigorous (I repeat "vigorous") vines and need to be trimmed three times a year to obtain maximum yield. That said, "maximum yield" for me this year will be roughly 10 end-of-thumb sized fruits, as delicious as their large, furry cousins. Why so few? Cold nights persisted into late spring, and if that wasn't enough, they alternated every few days with temps at 90 or above. The poor vines didn't know if they were coming or going, and only produced a few blossoms.

The Entire Kiwi Crop

Day 295: There you have it, people: my entire crop of hardy kiwi fruit for the 2024 growing season, all three of them. I pruned the vines so very carefully last fall, opening up the tangle to allow for new growth, taking out the non-productive branches, doing it as "by the book" as I could manage. Theoretically, I should have been up to my eyeballs in fruit but for that wildly fluctuating spring weather, blistering hot one day, dipping close to freezing the next. It hit right as the vines were beginning to show the first inclination to bud. Only these few survived. The vines are too firmly established to move to a more protected location, but on the "up" side, they're dense enough to provide nice shade on the north side of the trellises.

Milkweed At Last!

Day 281: At last! The Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) has a few open flowers! This stem is the only one out of a dozen or so which carries an inflorescence (two, actually), but considering that it has taken three or four years to reach this point, I have hopes that at least some of the others will follow suit next year. As for the types of pollinators it may attract, I'm not expecting Monarchs. They are quite uncommon in western Washington, and I have never seen one. However, I'm sure they're not the only butterfly which finds Asclepias appealing. I can't imagine having to hand-pollinate the flowers, but I'll keep my little paintbrush handy because I want to grow these for the pods. I'll be watching for insect activity, although I haven't seen many butterflies of any species in the yard yet this year.

Kiwi Flowers

Day 263: I'll admit my memory isn't as sharp as it was when I was in my thirties, and that's one of the reasons I maintain my blog, specifically as a handy reference for plant phenology. My head was telling me the kiwi vines were blooming late, but according to my records, they're right on time. I'm not seeing as many flowers as I think I should, but whether that is due to the odd too-hot-today, too-cold-tomorrow weather we've had all spring or to my radical pruning of the vines last fall can only be conjectured. It's possible there are more buds still to come. Today I clipped out the long, thick, non-productive canes to open the tangle to more sunlight, crucial for ripening the fruit if and when it sets. I'm still in the learning phases of hardy kiwi horticulture, and it seems every YouTube video suggests a different method to achieve the best crop.

Let's Propagate!

Day 203: When a Parkie friend announced that she and her family were contemplating a move, I realized that I would no longer have access to medlars from her tree. I have not yet perfected the art of making medlar jelly, and don't know anyone else with a tree, so I asked her if I could take some slips. I did some research, came up with a couple of possible propagation methods, one of which involved grafting medlar scions onto either hawthorn or quince rootstock, both of which I have in the yard. It's been many, many years since I did a graft, so I reviewed the technique and went visiting with secateurs in hand. Two things were operating against me, though. The first was that they had pruned the tree of almost all the one-year wood. The second was that the new wood was all very small in diameter and would be difficult to graft. As a backup plan, I took cuttings, dipped them in rooting hormone and stuck them down in prepared medium. As anticipated, the grafting did not go well, but the slips appear to be in good shape. Time will tell if they hold their terminal leaves and form roots. In any event, it will be years before I can try making medlar jelly again.

Ruminating On Germinating

Day 200: Spring usually finds me digging out the seed-starting trays in mid-March, ready to plant those "8-10 weeks before last frost" species, but this year, I had decided to grow flowers for drying again, and both packets suggested planting dates merely a month in advance of when I planned to set them out. I was surprised when three or four days later, all the Strawflowers had sprouted. As soon as their first true leaves have formed, I'll be pinching out all but one or two in each cell. Soon, I'll be moving the tray outside when morning temps allow, bringing it back in at night until at least mid-May. Then I'll leave the seedlings out for a few nights to harden off before planting them in the garden where they'll be joined by the Chinese Lanterns which have yet to germinate.

Matchmaker To Akebia

Day 197: They had me worried! The white Akebia vine was blooming profusely, producing lots of pollen with nowhere to go. The purple vine...the bearer of fertile female flowers...wasn't doing so well. I'd pruned both back radically last fall when the trellis collapsed, and the purple one hadn't taken well to the haircut. It was only showing a few male flowers last week and, as you may recall, the cross must be made with pollen from the white vine's male flowers to the females of the purple. It doesn't work the other way around, as my experiments have shown. Last night, I discovered a few receptive female blooms, and dashed into the house to get my horticultural paintbrush. Okay, Akebia fruits are pretty strange and certainly not to everyone's taste, but they are secondary to the fun I get from cross-pollinating. That said, I vowed that this year, I wouldn't go overboard, limiting myself to no more than a dozen potential Akebia pods at full ripeness.

Moving Forward With Horticulture

Day 11: Over the years, I have allowed certain flowering plants to go to seed in my garden in the hopes that they would come up the following year. I've had some successes and some failures, the latter perhaps because my little avian friends enjoy them and pick them up as soon as I walk away. I have also saved seed from poppies, nigella, columbine and other florals to plant in the spring, again with success and failure running about 50-50. However, I have never collected seed from any edible to replant until now.

Although I had to train my taste buds to appreciate the flavour at first, cilantro is now one of my favourite seasonings and absolutely essential in such dishes as enchiladas and refried beans. For the past several years, I've grown it from seed in a pot so that I have fresh leaves available any time, and a few plants from this year's crop bolted and set seed. While cleaning out the garden yesterday, I gathered a handful of mature heads, brought them indoors and cleaned them of debris, and am now drying the seed for winter storage. Although I intend to use the leaves if I get a crop next spring, cilantro seeds give us the spice known as coriander, and is used extensively in Middle Eastern and Indian cuisine.

Filberts

Day 7: Some of you may recall that Harry Lauder, the contorted filbert, bloomed this last spring and began to set fruit. I had found empty shells under the tree at least once before in its thirty-year lifetime, but had never seen nuts hanging from its branches. Previous experience with filberts during my growing-up years suggested that it was highly likely that squirrels, birds or worms would carry them away before they could mature, so I built cages around several clusters as a horticultural experiment. Some critter outfoxed my efforts on all but two bunches, and these fell off naturally and were caught by the wires. They were still green when I brought them in the house, but are slowly turning the brown typical of the species. Will they have meats inside? If so, will they prove to be edible? Or will worms emerge at some point in the future, as they did from the acorns I had sitting in a basket? This experiment is not over yet, but at least it has demonstrated that Harry Lauder can indeed self-pollinate.

A Measure Of Success - Hardy Kiwis

Day 357: Sometimes even small successes are cause for celebration. Yes, my horticultural efforts finally resulted in a micro-harvest of hardy kiwis, and I think the key to ripening them on the vine was a night just short of a frost. They are roughly the size of raspberries, and eminently juicy and sweet, perhaps surpassing their larger cousins (at least those available in the grocery store) for flavour. The chipmunks nibbled a few while they were still hard, but for the most part, most of what hung on the vine through the heat of summer was undamaged. There are still some firm ones out there, almost as many as you see here...a small beginning, but proof nevertheless that my purportedly self-fertile vines ("Issai") actually do make fruit without a second variety to serve as a pollinator.

I Grew It Myself!

Day 312: I'm not the only horticulturist on the block. My kids have graduated from growing their own sunflowers to cultivating a plot of proso millet beneath one of the feeder trays. They're a bit lazy, though, leaving the weeding to me, but thanks to them, I shipped a specimen of Buffalobur off to the Burke Herbarium. It's not the only invasive which has come to me by way of birdseed, unfortunately. "Clean crops" are pretty much a thing of the past, what with supply running neck and neck with demand. That said, I am enjoying the birds' horticultural experiments. It will be interesting to see if the millet ripens.

Kiwi Culture

Day 283: While I am certainly not going to get the bushels of kiwi berries I thought my vines might produce this year, I do believe the road to horticultural success is beginning to smooth out. I've learned some things: kiwi fruit need sunlight to ripen, the vines should be pruned three times a year, fruit comes on year-old wood. Pruning correctly is essential to a good crop, and that's where I've fallen down on the job. This winter, my vines will get a serious haircut to open them out, and then in the spring, I'll clip back branches which shade out the flowers. Once the fruit has set, more maintenance will be in order to expose the berries to the sun. Sometimes manuals tell you all you need to know. Other times, horticulture is a matter of experiment. After all, it took me almost ten years to figure out how to get a successful rooting from a slip of my contorted filbert.

Matchmaking

Day 219: Ah, the matchmaking season has begun...in the horticultural sense, you understand. I've learned over the years that the two Akebia vines are only compatible when the females are purple and the males are white, so with a soft camel-hair paintbrush, I tease pollen from the anthers and transfer it to receptive stigmata, as evidenced by tiny drops of sticky secretion at the tips. This year, I improved on the system by first gathering the pollen into a tiny container (the bottom of an insect-magnifier box) rather than trying to carry it from one plant to the other on the brush. Last year, I got a little carried away and wound up with more Akebia fruits than I really wanted to eat (over 40!), so this year, I'm being a little more judicious with my hand pollination. While Akebia fruits aren't to most peoples' tastes, I rather enjoy having a few...operative word there: "few." A dozen will do nicely, thank you, and I may have already exceeded that number if all my attempts succeed. There does come a point, however, when matchmaking can become too fruitful (ahem!), no matter how much fun it is to pair up the boys and girls.

Opening Day

Day 198: The moment for which I have been waiting these last two weeks has finally arrived. The Fawn Lily was not open when I first checked before breakfast, but looked suspiciously close to bursting. At 9 AM, the petals were fully recurved and in full glory. A second bulb has put up a single leaf. I was worried that it might not have survived. Even if it doesn't flower, it will gain strength from that one leaf, and will likely bloom next year. I'm chalking this delicate transplanting operation up as a horticultural success. While we're on that subject, I'm pleased to announce that the last two contorted filbert twigs I soil-layered are also doing well. So is the wild ginger brought over from a neighbouring property. In fact, the latter is spreading with great enthusiasm, a fact which delights me no end.

Old Hairy Nuts

Day 307: The leafy foliage of Comptonia peregrina suggested that of ferns to early settlers on the east coast who dubbed the plant "Sweetfern," a term which also makes reference to the scent which rises from it. In its native habitat, it often forms dense colonies, but as a landscaping plant, it can be kept pruned back to be a manageable shrub. Some sources call it "invasive," but in my experience, the occasional runner which comes to the surface ten feet away is easily and permanently removed by cutting close to the parent plant. It is difficult to transplant or slip and should not be disturbed once it is established. My parent plant now sports a trunk as thick as my wrist, and I keep it pruned into a loose three-foot globe at the end of the flower bed closest to the kitchen door where its fragrance greets me when I step out to feed the birds. As the common name suggests, the odor is somewhat sweet, somewhat spicy, vaguely reminiscent of cinnamon or perhaps snickerdoodle cookies. It is particularly apparent on warm afternoons. It produces nutlets in hairy clusters near the tips of the branches. Each nutlet holds four seeds. My efforts to start Comptonia from seed have not been successful.

I Slipped

Day 263: Yesterday I began another experiment in horticulture. I slipped. Which is to say that I took semi-hardwood cuttings from a climbing rose, trimmed each one a little bit below a node and stripped off the thorns to create small wounds, dipped each slip in growth hormone and pushed it down into a rooting sponge. The sponges (five) were placed in a vented seed-starter, and now I'll sit back and wait for roots to develop. The rose flowers were leftovers from the process, so I put them in a vase. Why waste a good thing? Although I'm not big on roses as such, this one is an eye-catching, vibrant shade of blood-red. The photo does not do the colour justice. It is also a time-tested "heirloom" variety with a strong resistance to both disease and pests, perfect for someone who doesn't want to fuss with roses but wishes to partake of their fragrance. If the slips survive, this rose can ramble along the fenceline as another pollinator attractor.

Match-making

Day 202: It's time for me to play match-maker for the Akebia vines again. Experience has taught me that the purple male flowers do not produce viable pollen, so the cross must be made between white males and purple females if there is to be a crop of fruit, and even though the two vines are now intertwined to some degree, the downward-facing flowers will undoubtedly always require some pollination assistance on my part. To that end, I was up the ladder with an artist's round sable paintbrush a few days ago, tickling pollen from the anthers of mature white flowers and transferring it to the stigmata (receptive tips) of the purple ones. In the close-up photo, you can see where the pollen has adhered to the sticky substance of the receptive stigmata. In theory (and usually in practice), each one of these will develop a fruit roughly four inches long and about an inch and a quarter in diameter. They're not the easiest things in the world to eat, but I have developed a liking for the mildly sweet taste of the pulp. That said, I have been unable to find any recipes which use it, so I eat it straight from the pod.