An Owl Ally

 Although I’m primarily a gardener, I’m for the birds, too.  Master Gardener Richard Demick shares this story.

“I was very happy to see a special visitor in the backyard in mid-November. I was at the kitchen counter cooking at about ten in the morning. I looked up from my project and there was a Barred Owl sitting in the river birch tree about 50 feet across the yard.  I stopped what I was doing and ran for the camera. Thankfully the owl visitor waited for my return. I got a couple shots before it dropped off the branch in a long, low swoop heading for the neighbors’ spruce trees.

The Barred Owl call, which I didn’t hear, is said to sound like “Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks For You All?! This is one of more than a dozen Barred Owl calls ranging from a “siren call” to a “wail” to a “monkey call.”  We had seen signs of a “big bird” out back the past few weeks. One day it was seen dropping from an old white pine and sweeping up into the poplars in the wetland. Another day it flew from the back lawn followed by two small companions into the nearby woods. Seen from the back flying away it was a dark colored bird with large wings.

I haven’t seen an owl in years. This was a real treat. It may also be the solution to clearing the lawn and garden beds of an explosion of voles, mice and moles. The vole tunnels run from the native border along the brook across the lawn into the catmint and lady’s mantle perennial border. The steep lawn along Route 43 has conical piles of soil that look like mole excavations. There are spots in the lawn proper where your foot sinks as though stepping on a soft mattress. More vole activity?

Then the problem expands into the garden shed. Chicken feed is stored in plastic bins. An avant-garde chicken coop is attached to the shed. Three gasoline powered yard machines are stored in the shed. Today I started the snowblower and a cup full of oat seeds blew out of the muffler. Lifting up the garden tractor seat exposed another cache of seeds. The yellow bucket hanging from the ceiling used for oil change collection also contained oat seeds.

Oat seeds are in the scratch feed for the chickens. They prefer the cracked corn and don’t eat the oat seeds. The mice are collecting the uneaten seeds from the chicken run or are getting them directly from the plastic bins. A trap was set but not strong enough to eliminate the seed savers. So, no human solution to the destructive rodent activity yet.

I’m hoping the Barred Owls will clear the lawn and garden beds of voles, mice, and moles. Traps, screen and weather stripping will help with the mouse invasion in the garden shed. Sorry to go the trap route but mouse damage to power equipment is costly to repair and if unnoticed can totally destroy a gasoline engine.”

Spice Up Christmas

My first spicy Christmas memory was of sticking cloves in an orange in Sunday school.  While I’ve never discovered the significance of that Advent exercise, I do know peppermint candy canes, scented candles, and especially the office party punchbowl add zest to the holidays.  Our recent batch of spice cookies, featuring cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice, was rather lost on me due to my middle-age allergies, but I still find fascinating all the scents and seasonings the plant world provides.

Pumpkin pie, that most Yankee of desserts, would be rather bland without a West Indies native called Pimenta dioica.  Just who discovered that the fruits of this tree could be ground and eaten is lost to history, but the English thought the powder tasted like a combination of cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and nutmeg and called it allspice.  Once traders got their mitts on allspice, it traveled the world over and become a staple flavor in dozens of far-flung cultures.  Caribbean cuisine adds it to jerk seasoning, mole sauces and pickling.  In the Middle East, it is often found in stews and meat dishes, while in Germany commercial sausage-makers rely on it.  The British like it in desserts, while Ohioans claim their Cincinnati chili just isn’t right without it.  Interestingly, allspice can also be used as a deodorant:  could that be the inspiration behind the Old Spice I used to give my dad?

I know anise from the Norwegian krumkake cookies my grandmother made for Christmas; if I was Italian it would have been pizzelles, or German, pfeffernusse.  Anise, or Pimpinella ansium, is an herbaceous plant growing to three feet, native to the eastern Mediterranean and southwest Asia.  The small fruits have a distinctive scent and flavor similar to liquorice, fennel and tarragon.  If anise-flavored cookies don’t do it for you, there are stronger alternatives; anise is an ingredient in the liquors absinthe, anisette, pastis, Jagermeister and raki.  Years ago, I tried but never learned to drink anise-flavored sambuca with my Italian friends after a meal, perhaps because I thought my cookie-toting granny was watching.

Nutmeg may be the spice with the most turbulent history.  Seeds of the tree Myristica fragrans yield both nutmeg and mace, and were native only to the Banda Islands, a remote chain in the Indian Ocean.  Arab traders kept the source secret for centuries as they sold these spices to Europeans for astronomical prices.  In 1512, the brave and crafty Portuguese explorer Afonso de Albuquerque learned of nutmeg’s source and sent three ships to the islands.  While a trade developed, the Bandanese people still retained control.  Later, the Dutch took over, but their reign was challenged by the Bandanese and the English; war, massacre, and exodus ensued.  At one point the Dutch gave the English control of Manhattan in exchange for tiny Run Island and its nutmeg.  Later still, the Brits came in again, took trees to Grenada and Zanzibar, and broke the nutmeg monopoly.  

All so we could put some nutmeg in our eggnog.

Wise Men Gift Green

I’ve long maintained that Christmas is a horticultural holiday.  There’s the tree, obviously, and a large supporting cast of plants, including the Poinsettia, mistletoe, cyclamen, holly and ivy, various greens and even the Christmas cactus. Dig even deeper, back to the first Christmas, and we find the Wise Men offering gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  While I have a good grasp on the first gift, I’ve always been a little fuzzy on just what the last two are all about.

Both, it turns out, are plant products.  Nineteen species of a tree called Boswellia, which grow from the west coast of India along the Arabian Sea and through central Africa, give us frankincense.  Its name comes from the Old French moniker “franc encens,” for noble or pure incense.  The principle species is Boswellia sacra, a tree growing to about 25 feet tall.  No stranger to tough conditions, it lives on dry, rocky hillsides in limestone soils.  It has pinnately compound,  crinkley leaves, a spreading, vase-shaped form, bark similar to parchment paper and is often multi-trunked.  The racemes of white flowers turn into small seed capsules.  Frankincense is made by first wounding the tree’s bark, then collecting the gummy sap which exudes from injuries.  The palest frankincense is said to be the most desirable. 

Like many good things found in nature, Boswellia trees have been over-tapped and are now threatened in some areas.  Boswellia plants aren’t easy to find in the nursery trade and seed viability can be low, especially if the mother tree had been wounded too often.  Horticulturists in the know say that Boswellia is one of those plants which will grow only where it wants, and so presents a real challenge to produce in cultivation.  And while frankincense has been employed in perfumes and religious ceremonies for centuries, modern science is showing that it’s medical uses may be both beneficial and harmful.     

Myrrh is made from a tree called Commiphora myrrha.  It has many similarities to Boswellia; in fact, botanically speaking, they are both in the same plant family, called Burseraceae, or the incense tree family.  Other plants in this group, which include members with colorful names like gumbo limbo, Mexican elephant tree and the tabonuco, can be found worldwide and tend to contain many powerful chemical compounds.   There are at least 190 species of Commiphora, which are found from Africa to Vietnam, but C. myrrha is native only to parts of Africa and Arabia. It reaches a height of about fifteen feet, has tiny white flowers and small green leaves, and is a prickly character, being armed with very long, pointy spines.  It requires thin soils, hot weather and about ten inches of rainfall yearly.  Like frankincense, the marketable product is made from scoring the tree and collecting the resinous gum. 

Myrrh’s many uses included anointing and embalming oils, medicine in a wide variety of forms, perfume, and even as a vermifuge and fungicide.  The Magi were kings in knowing what to give.   

Trying Out The Trends

I generally try to be the person my dog thinks I am, but today I have to disappoint my canine Magnus and write about cats.  Felines, it happens, are the reason for one of the latest gardening trends, the “catio.”  Being more of a troglodyte than a trendsetter, I had to look this up, and found that a catio is an enclosed, outdoor room for cats.  While we are currently cat-less, I had to learn more.

Catios, it turns out, are available as building plans and kits, and are featured on numerous websites and blogs.  They can be small and windowbox-like, with the cats having access via a window, or much larger and taller, with one or more room-like spaces allowing full access for humans.  Construction is generally wood framing with wire mesh walls and at least a partial roof to keep out the worst weather.  Accessorizing, as usual, is a big part of the fun, and platforms, runways, sacrificial plants, and various toys can be added.  Cat parents report that their charges love basking in the sunshine, smelling the alluring breezes and watching wildlife, all from a safe vantage point.  Cranky kitties become more mellow and even happy cats think having a little outdoor time is purrfect.

As extravagant as at a catio sounds, keeping your pets safe from outdoor threats, and creatures like birds safe from cats, is a wonderful concept.  If we still had our tuxedo cat Roosevelt, master of demanding dinner, I’m certain he could pressure me into building a catio.  Sadly, he’s crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and I’ve developed allergies, so Magnus won’t have any new cat companions anytime soon.

I need to mask up and get out more, or at least spend less time in the dirt and more in front of a screen, if I’m to learn about gardening trends.  Interior designers love gray right now, and now it’s the color to use in the garden, too.  While l like gray-leaved plants (such as Artemsia ‘Silver Mound’), gray reminds me too much of ugly winter skies, so I’m bucking this fad in favor of any other tone or hue.  And if live plants are too much work, go plastic!  Artificial boxwood is drought tolerant, blight resistant, never needs pruning, and is guaranteed to put us horticulturists out of business.   

Succulents, those multi-colored, fantastically-shape plants of warm and dry climates, have been hot for a while, but now we’ve got dashboard gardening.  Why not grow succulents, or anything else for that matter, inside your car?  While it is suggested that cupholders might provide the best chances for needed stability, and that winter cold and summer heat might limit the season to spring and fall, the soothing presence of a potted pothos could reduce the stress of road rage and traffic jams.  Just remember to keep the windows clear of excessive foliage and the vines away from the accelerator pedal.  Soon AAA roadside assistance may offer to diagnose a scale-infested Subaru or a Mercury with mealybugs. 

Dead Wood Is Still Good Wood

 “Ideally, your forest should have four to six snags per acre,” says Kristi Sullivan, who hails from Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment.  This was news to me.  Anyone who works with computers, has a boss, or tries to organize anything is annoyed by snags.  I’ve hit snags when paddling my kayak and even snagged my jeans on a barbed wire fence.  But snags in the woods?  Kristi’s snags, in forestry parlance, turn out to dead, but standing, trees.  Once I’d gotten around that snafu, it all started to make sense. 

What looks like rotting timber to us is a multi-use opportunity for the wild things.  According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, “birds, small mammals, and other wildlife use snags for nests, nurseries, storage areas, foraging, roosting, and perching. Live trees with snag-like features, such as hollow trunks, excavated cavities, and dead branches can provide similar wildlife value. Snags occurring along streams and shorelines eventually may fall into the water, adding important woody debris to aquatic habitat. Dead branches are often used as perches; snags that lack limbs are often more decayed and may have more and larger cavities for shelter and nesting. Snags enhance local natural areas by attracting wildlife species that may not otherwise be found there.” 

Any tree species, including hardwoods and conifers, can become a valuable snag.  The process begins with a hard snag, or a tree which is partially or totally dead but still has its bark and inner tissues largely intact.  Woodpeckers are especially attracted to such real estate and start their excavating activities, earning themselves the moniker of primary cavity nesters.  Since woodpeckers become bored easily and don’t nest in the same hole twice, they move on and carve out new homes elsewhere.  Then avians including bluebirds, swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, house wrens, wood ducks and owls, who cannot excavate cavities themselves, move in next.  Meanwhile, the tree continues to decay, with fungi advancing and weakening the wood fibers, creating a soft snag.  Soft snags don’t have limbs and often lose their tops.  As the forces of weather, animals and fungi continue, the remaining hulk eventually falls over, but still provides food and shelter on the forest floor.  I’m sure foresters have a technical term for a dead tree lying on the ground, but I don’t know it.

This discussion sprouts two ideas in my gardener’s mind.  First, we are often much too neat.  Nature would benefit if we left more rotting stumps and standing snags.  When gardening friends raise an eyebrow over our apparent sloppiness, we could grasp the moment as an educational opportunity.  Secondly, snags could be a way to positively end my relationship with some Norway maples.  These invasives are growing on the edge of our woods, and while I know they should come down, that seems a daunting task.  By removing a four inch band of bark to girdle them, they’ll turn into useful snags, then eventually fall quite harmlessly (I hope) to earth.  That’s my plan, unless I hit a you-know-what.   

Shed Happens

As a gardener, I don’t have to choose my battles, they just appear before my eyes.  The latest offense was the mouse which chewed an entry hole into my shed.  While mice have always gotten inside, they’ve previously politely slid beneath the door, so this creature’s wanton destruction was the rub.  On Saturday I replaced the threshold, armored the door with metal, and re-painted the area.  Lastly, I placed a trap in front of the door.  Said mouse couldn’t resist checking out the upgrades.  The little fellow, now squashed, was so fat he must have been trying to grow into a junior rat. 

I built my shed with own hands, to a design from daydreams.  With an overstuffed garage, a garden shed seemed necessary, but I wanted one worthy of a glossy garden magazine, not a pre-fab job from the DIY shop.  I had always admired small accessory buildings, and was beguiled by those seen at rustic Eastfield Village in Nassau and especially grand Boscobel in Garrison.  If I couldn’t have the main house there, perhaps the outhouse would do, a Greek-revival mini-masterpiece. 

The spark to start came in the form of two ancient classical columns, found at a local flea market.  Perhaps once on a stately Hudson River home, they would create a formal porch for my shed with Greek-revival style.  I found full-dimension timber for the frame at a local sawmill.  Much sturdier than the matchsticks sold at chain lumberyards, it was so green that sap oozed forth when it was nailed or screwed.  Locally-produced novelty siding which slide together, tongue-and-groove style, further strengthened the frame.  Old doors and windows found as roadside freebies provided an air of age.  With slowly increasing amazement, I made a building rise from a pile of pieces.  I spent most of the summer of 2002 working on my masterpiece, which evolved into more of a tiny house than a place to dump the tomato cages and deer netting.

Life can change suddenly, even for a shed.  Straight-line winds toppled our mighty white pine one July day in 2008, and it landed in the worst possible place.  Pine limbs violently punctured the roof.  While the shed stayed intact, it was pushed a foot off its foundations to the east, and stood leaning to the left like a drunken cardboard box.  Just cleaning up the tree debris took days, and for a while it seemed the little building was beyond repair.  Perhaps I should pull it down and haul it to the Colonie dump.

I didn’t have the heart for demolition, and by tugging carefully with my truck and a come-along winch, the frame gradually straightened – mostly.  Using a car jack, I leveled the floor – mostly.  After adding twelve cross braces, the shed was sturdier, but a little less straight, than ever.  I splurged and hired a roofer who installed a new red metal roof, scrounged another old door, then painted it all.  With people and sheds, I’ve decided being slightly crooked adds character.   

Warts, Ribs and an Empress

Halloween offers the opportunity for “normal” people to take on new forms, be it a Ninja Turtle, spooky ghost or an even spookier presidential candidate.  The holiday’s official horticultural ambassador, the pumpkin, is also available today in many forms beyond the standard orange globe.  Farmers grow triple the acreage of Cucurbits nowadays than they did 30 years ago, attempting to fulfill our desires for the weird and wonderful.  Here are just a few that have caught my eye. 

Warts, at least on pumpkins, are hot.  The ‘Warty Goblin’ sitting on my front porch is both cute and ugly, having an orange body splotched with bright green warts (top specimen in photo).  This hybrid usually weighs in between 8 and 20 pounds, is designed to be a good keeper and sports a strong stem, or “handle.”  ‘Knuckle Head’ is vibrant orange, rounded in form and freckled with orange warts.  These fruits average 12 to 16 pounds.  While it may seem that warty pumpkins must be a modern oddity concocted in a laboratory test tube, they’ve actually been around for centuries.  Also on the porch sits ‘Red Warty Thing,’ a vibrant red-orange specimen covered stem to stern in a multitude of lumps (on right in photo).  This Thing was introduced back in 1897 by the James J.H. Gregory & Sons Seed Company of Marblehead, MA, and was the result of a cross between and ‘American Turban’ and ‘Hubbard.’  Mr. Gregory, an entrepreneurial farmer, plant scientist and seed salesman, developed the most-famous and original ‘Hubbard’ way back in 1844.  These squashes have history.

 If green and orange warts are not your thing, how about grayish bumps?  ‘Marina Di Chioggia,’ a sea pumpkin of noble Italian ancestry, can range in color from aquamarine to blue-gray-green to very dark green, and has the surface texture of a heavily pimpled teenager.  Gourmands say its sweet flesh is among the best for a wide variety of dishes.  Of a gray-blue hue, and trading warts for heavy vertical ribbing is ‘Jarrahdale.’  This is an heirloom from western Australia, but I can attest it will grow well in the Hudson Valley, too.  New to me this year is ‘Triamble,’ another wonder from down under, a gray three-lobed pumpkin whose shape might qualify it for a contemporary art gallery.  Reportedly it can last in storage for more than two years. (left of “Red Warty Thing’ in photo)

Some pumpkins are truly sophisticated.  ‘Empress of Iran’ is mottled dark green, light green, orange and beige, with a svelte, rounded shape. (next to porch post in photo)  Perhaps this is the pumpkin that P.G. Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth grew, alongside his equally high-class but much fatter pig, “Empress of Blandings.”  The ‘Flat White Boer’ hails from South Africa, has a lovely cream-white skin and tasty orange flesh, and is rather flat and disc-like, but with ribs.  It is named for the Dutch Boers who once ruled the country and it will keep your fall porch display from being boer-ing (it’s the white pumpkin in the photo).  Also wheel-shaped is ‘Rouge Vif d’Etampes’ with a spectacular burnt orange skin.  Hailing from France, it is nicknamed “Cinderella’s pumpkin.”  What could be more cosmopolitan than that?            

An Old Job With New Twists

 “There’s more leaves out here than ever before!” my neighbor Mary exclaimed, as the yellow, orange and brown confetti rained down.  She should know, she’s lived here for 50-plus years.  I suspect it’s the frequent south winds blowing the autumn leaves in our direction, not unlike the winds of change which are getting us to re-think the ritual of putting the garden to bed.

The biggest change is neatness.  I’m accustomed to pulling up the remains of all annuals and chopping down every perennial stalk and stem, leaving the ground as flat as a nuclear bomb blast.  Tidiness removes diseased plant remains, makes the gardens less attractive to varmints like voles, and reduces the amount of work to do in spring.  But a plea for less grooming is now coming from those who know nature.  Pollinators and other creatures important to the planet’s function require places to spend the winter.  Red mason bees, leaf cutter bees and wool carder bees need to nest in cavities, so the hollow stems of plants like beebalm and ornamental grasses fit the bill.  Butterflies including the red-spotted purple, meadow fritillary and viceroy want to hide in seed pods, vegetation, and rolled-up leaves.  Hoverflies, which sound pesty but are actually important pollinators as well as aphid-eaters, must have the shelter of undisturbed soil or craggy tree bark to ride out the cold and snow.  As we become better attuned to the importance of these tiny and often unseen creatures, we’ve got to recognize their year-round needs.

Much more mundane is my take on garden hoses.  I used drain, roll up, and store each of the hoses, a laborious job, with the idea that water freezing inside would split them.  Then I got lazy, and decided one November to leave the long hose, which travels from the house to greenhouse, behind shrubs and under the sidewalk, in place.  It was an early 90’s model from the now defunct Frank’s Nursery chain, and its days were probably numbered anyway.  That was several autumns ago, and Frank’s hose, since undrained and totally neglected, is still working beautifully.  And while I still drain and store some of the others, I have one less pipe to put by.

Think politics is contentious?  Let me explain the fall mowing height issue.  North Dakota State University recommends your last lawn mowing of the season should cut the grass to two inches, to reduce matting and the disease called snow mold.  University of Kentucky takes a bolder stance, saying a lawn cut to a height of one and a half inches will have better color and quicker spring green-up.  But Wisconsin recommends keeping your lawn at its normal height of three inches.  Colorado State is having none of it, proclaiming “There is no reason to mow the turf shorter in late fall.”  Personally, I’m with Colorado.  While snow mold is worse on overly long grasses, mowing shorter than normal isn’t likely to help but will instead stress the lawn.  Mow your conscience.        

Spicebush: Pungent, Yet Modest

Spicebush!  I braked my mountain bike hard to take a closer look.  I was pleased to see dozens of Lindera benzoin scattered beneath the cottonwood trees, in a section of Schodack Island State Park not yet swamped by invasives.  The cottonwoods were bare, and the surrounding weeds still green, so the luminous yellow of the spicebushes gave them center stage on a cloudy fall day.  Bike botany, neat native plants, glorious autumn – by George, who could ask for anything more?

I first appreciated spicebush along another trail, the Bronx River Parkway, where it grows in profusion in the damp soil.  Indigenous to much of the eastern half of the country, it is a medium-sized understory shrub about twelve feet tall.  All parts of the plant have a strong aromatic odor, pleasing but perhaps a bit medicinal.  Flowering in very early spring, its clusters of small yellow blossoms are much more demure than brassy forsythia, but attractive nonetheless.  Spring flowers sell plants, but whereas you’ll find forsythia for sale in droves at the big boxes, spicebush is more difficult to discover in the nursery trade and sought out only by those in the know (such as me and you).  Someday, when the public gains a greater appreciation of our native flora, perhaps the sales figures on these two species will be reversed, with spicebush finding a place in just about every local landscape now occupied by a forsythia.

I’m happy to have a nursery-bought Lindera in my backyard, thriving in partial shade and soil of average moisture and fertility.  Although it is described as a facultative wetland dweller, meaning it usually lives where its feet are occasionally damp, mine came through last summer’s drought just fine.  Female spicebushes bear small red fruits in September, each about the size of a marble, but mine is decidedly barren.  It may be male, or perhaps just juvenile, but finding a confirmed female to plant nearby would be a worthwhile mission for next year.  And yes, I agree that being male and being juvenile are often one and the same thing.

Versatility also describes spicebush.  It can play a part in a shade garden, a rain garden, or a wildlife garden, too, since it’s fatty fruits feed birds like vireos, thrushes tanagers and robins.  The spicebush swallowtail butterfly, a beautiful creature of black, white and blue, lays eggs exclusively on spicebush and other plants in the Laurel Family and the larvae feed on the leaves.  The larvae sport large eye-spots, making them look like small snakes, so be prepared if you plant a spicebush.  Spicebush silkmoth, a large, handsome moth marked in browns and beiges, also uses it as a food source during its green and horny larval stage.  Native Americans and early settlers used the twigs and leaves for a spring tonic tea, found the fruits aided flatulence, bruises and rheumatism, and employed the bark to bring on sweats and expel worms.  For many, Lindera is the spice of life.   

More Bitter Than Sweet

Imagine an ornamental plant which grows quickly, with no insect pests or fungal diseases.  It produces highly attractive orange fruits in fall, perfect to pair with pumpkins and mums.  It requires no watering or fertilizer, grows in any soil, and thrives in sun or shade.  And best of all, deer don’t eat it!  Did these positive qualities run through someone’s mind as they brought the first plants of oriental bittersweet to the United States in the 1860’s?  Certainly they couldn’t have foreseen that this plant would grow into the environment-changer we live with today. 

Once you know oriental bittersweet, you’ll find it’s just about everywhere in our part of the Hudson Valley.  It’s a vine that can climb sixty feet or more into the trees, sometimes pulling them down as it spreads.  It grows on top of less aggressive vines, such as native Virginia creeper, smothering them, too.  It also forms dense thickets, leaving no room for woody plants or wildflowers to survive or regenerate.  It turns the landscape into a mass of indistinct, foliage-covered forms, making things look strange and degraded.  Oriental bittersweet covers natural places, like Schodack Island State Park and Papscanee Island Preserve.  Its abundant in cultivated landscapes too, often seen growing up chain link fences in the city and scaling spruces in the suburbs.  I’m pulling up seedlings like crazy at my place, trying to hold a line in the shifting sand.

A known problem in more than 33 states and covering thousands of acres nationally, how did oriental bittersweet become such a success?  A combination of traits make it bigger, faster and stronger than virtually anything in its path.  There are both male and female plants, as well as plants that bear both male and female flowers.  Abundant seeds are produced in fall, and these seeds are highly attractive to birds and small animals.  Migrating birds may retain what they eat for more than a month, so bittersweet seeds consumed here may be deposited hundreds of miles away.  Seeds germinate readily, grow quickly, and seedlings can produce flowers and seeds after just a year or two of growth.  Oriental bittersweet has hybridized with native American bittersweet to the point that scientists fear the native will become extinct.  Vines touching the ground can root and spread further, and cut vines re-grow quickly.  Climate models suggest that Oriental bittersweet is likely to benefit from warming temperatures and increasing precipitation in the Northeast, where it is predicted to increase and spread northward (watch out, Canada!).  And perhaps most cleverly, o.b.’s fall fruits are eye-candy to humans, who pick it, use it for their seasonal décor, then discard it in the backyard, aiding its march onward.  Truly, this is a cockroach-bedbug-Norway rat of a plant.

So is there any hope?  It seems unmanaged natural areas will be increasingly covered with oriental bittersweet indefinitely, making native woodlands invasive species ghettos.  In your own backyard, pull, dig and remove it any way you can.  Keep calm and garden on.

Calm Above, Trouble Below

All I wanted was some new photos for my lawn talk, but I got a bit more than that. Since my pictures of looking in a lawn for grubs date back to the film era, I headed into the backyard with my digital camera to get some new-century shots.  Scouting for grubs involves cutting out a one square foot section of turf, turning it over, and pawing through the soil in search of larvae.  Due to the droughty summer and my weedy lawn, I wasn’t expecting much, but a grub soon appeared; then more, and still more.  I stopped looking and counting after I had 13 Japanese beetle grubs writhing in a yogurt cup.  While a few grubs are of little concern, over eight per square foot can cause serious damage.  Lawns with high grub populations can turn to barren fields by spring.  This excited my inner entomologist while nauseating the horticulturist.

If you’ve somehow gotten this far in life and don’t know grubs, here’s the scoop.  Grubs are the larval stage of beetles, including Japanese beetles, Oriental beetles, and European chafers, the three most popular characters in the Capital District.  The adult mom beetles lay eggs in August, which quickly hatch into grubs.  The grubs are white, C-shaped, have six legs on the front end, and a brown head capsule.  They voraciously devour the roots of grass plants.  They survive winter underground, eat a little more in the spring, pupate, then emerge as the next generation of beetles in late June or early July.  

Crafting an action plan for an October gaggle of grubs is a head scratcher.  Beneficial nematodes, tiny eel-like creatures which can enter a grub and regurgitate a toxic bacteria, can provide good control in some instances, but are expensive and picky about their environmental conditions, making deployment a challenge.  A new nematode, developed by Rutgers University and given the scientific moniker Steinernema scarabaei, promises to be larger, hungrier, and easier to use.  Unfortunately, it is hard to find for sale, at least right now.  Another option, a “good guy” bacteria called Bacillus thuringiensis variety galleriae, which I’ll call Btg, has also recently come onto the lawn care scene.  Once the Btg is injested by a grub, it produces a protein which causes the grub to starve to death.  Btg controlled 70% or more of the grubs in trials at the Ohio State University, and it is sold under the name GrubGONE.  Unfortunately, Btg is better used in August or early September.

That leaves us with lawn insecticides, with perhaps the only choice those labeled “fast-acting,” since most of the others move too slowly into the soil to grub-level.  But if you abhor the chemical route, there is always the “do nothing” option.  Right now, moles are dining on the grubs in my backyard, and they might be joined by birds or skunks.  If it turns into a feeding frenzy, the lawn will look like a fraternity house on Sunday morning, and I’ll be re-seeding next spring.

A Positive Cover-up

Cover crops seem to be foreign territory to many home gardeners. It certainly isn’t because we aren’t in favor of the benefits they provide to the soil.  Who isn’t behind a plan to increase soil fertility, add soil organic matter and make better soil structure while reducing soil erosion and nipping weed problems?  I believe that gardeners just aren’t familiar with cover crops.  One way to get schooled is to visit the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden, located at the Robert C. Parker School in North Greenbush.  Nancy Scott and her Master Gardener friends have a great display of field peas, buckwheat, red clover, daikon radish, fava beans, oats and green beans growing right now!   You are welcome to stop by during daylight hours.

 

Simply stated, cover crops cover the soil between harvestable crops.  As they grow, they trap nutrients and break up soil compaction, and when they are mowed or plowed under they add organic matter and nutrients.  Increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil by just 1% will make the soil hold an extra 27,000 gallons of water when it rains, thereby reducing runoff into rivers.  More carbon in the soil also increases the fungi, bacteria and other wee beasties there, which in turn improves the soil “glue” and allows water to infiltrate more effectively.  Plowing, rototilling or turning over the soil (all forms of tillage) reduces soil organic matter, releases nitrogen and increases weeds, problems which can be stemmed with cover crops.  Eliminating or minimizing tillage and maximizing plant cover year-round protects the soil.  During the times of the year when a crop isn’t being grown, the soil should therefore be swathed in a cover crop.  Although these concepts are aimed at larger-scale farming, they apply just as well to our vegetable gardens, too. 

 

A variety of plants are used as cover crops.  Some are grasses, including rye, wheat, oats, and Sudangrass.  They grow quickly and are good at trapping nutrients and suppressing weeds in the next crop.  Others are legumes, such as cowpeas, vetches and clovers, famous for their ability to take nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil.  Sometimes grasses and legumes are mixed, so that the nitrogen captured by the legume can be further sequestered by the grass.  Two of the most interesting cover crop plants to me are the Daikon-type radish and buckwheat.  The radishes quickly grow huge root systems, busting through tough soils, then die over winter, leaving improved water infiltration, surface drainage, and soil warming in their wake.  Buckwheat is not a grass at all but a broadleaved plant which grows fast, loosening the soil and choking out weeds.  It is normally mowed before it fully flowers, but anyone concerned about pollinators will let it go, since it is a favorite of honeybees and other beneficials.

Fitting cover crops into a vegetable garden plan is tricky, and gardeners may be reluctant to fork over usable space.  Yet the many positives might just reap big rewards for a gardener willing to experiment.     

Taken With Turtlehead

It was a little scrap of a plant which no one wanted that May evening.  The dust had just cleared, literally, at the end of the Master Gardener Plant Swap, a night when all sorts of containers, trays, milk jugs and beer flats come into the Extension office loaded with a huge variety of plants.  The crazy spreaders are there, such as gooseneck loosestrife and obedient plant, as well as the vigorous self-sowers such as perilla and flowering tobacco.   Amongst the thugs, however, there were some gems like Margaret’s Japanese maples and Frank’s choice hostas.  The big thrill is getting some neat plants for free.

I certainly could understand why the plant in question was left abandoned - the three leaves in a blob of dirt in a paper cup were not attractive – but if the label, stating simply Chelone, was true, this was a superior native deserving a good garden home.

At my place, small, ailing or experimental plants live in containers next to the greenhouse in the convalescent zone.  They are watered daily with a dilute solution of fertilizer and given their choice of sun or shade.  This VIP treatment produces great results, and when large enough to compete in the real garden, the healthy patients are transplanted. 

The mystery Chelone took to this treatment immediately, and soon produced several stems covered with dark, healthy leaves.  I became convinced its tag was correct – it was a turtlehead, but which species?  Gardening books claim there are three native to the eastern US.  Chelone glabra has white flowers, which are sometimes flushed with pink.  C. lyonii has pink flowers and wider leaves with coarser teeth on the edge, and has the biggest native range.  C. obliqua is similar, too, but has a shorter petiole (the stem that connects the leaf blade to the main stem) and lives in wetlands.  Since mine has bloomed, I am pretty sure I’ve got C. lyonii.

All of the turtleheads like dampish soil, part shade to sun, and grow two and four feet in height.  Given a site to its liking, a turtlehead plant can grow into a large clump in three to four years.  It is beset by few problems, other than occasional powdery mildew, and can be pinched in spring to create a bushier plant. 

Even though it is a native, turtlehead is suitable not just for a woodland or streamside garden, but also perfectly fine in a perennial garden featuring some of the fanciest European and Asian hybrids.  Interestingly, plant breeders seem to have ignored this genus, as there are few cultivated varieties for sale.

The unique structure of the turtlehead’s flower makes it, well, a turtlehead.  The blossoms are produced on terminal spikes, are about 1 inch in length, and do quite resemble a reptilian head.   Late bloom time is also a big asset.  My plant started flowering in late August, and is in full show now in mid-September.       

If you can’t find an orphan, I’d recommend investing money in a turtlehead.

Rensselaer County Master Gardener Chipmunk Photo Gallery

 

Photo by Barbara Nuffer

Photo by Betsy Kauffman

Photo by Sharon Mann

Photo by Donna Reickert

Photo by Marthanne Linacre

Photo by Pat Thorne

Photo by Pat Thorne

Photo by Pat Thorne

Chipmunks Drive Me Nuts

Photo:  Donna Reickert

It’s easy to dislike most garden pests, including spittlebugs (ick!), slime mold (yuck!) and jumping worms (ew!) The rub comes when the pest is cute, and not much is cuter than a chipmunk. A chipmunk or two can add animal color to a garden – they screech, I jump, and I swear they laugh – but my tolerance decreases as their population increases. Yet who but a real jerk could hate a chipmunk?

So that’s the rub. But I do have some facts on my side. Chipmunks invaded my large planters and uprooted the transplants repeatedly, killing a couple of coleus at $6.95 each. After my sweet corn germinated, the chipmunks pulled up each seedling and ate the withering seed and expanding roots. I blamed the deer for sampling the tomatoes, but that turned out to be the chipmunks. I wouldn’t mind sharing, but why do they have to take a bite out of each ripe tomato, then leave the remains to rot, and sample the green ones, too? They’re taking their cheeky behavior a bit too far.

2020 first gave us a lot of nuts (I’m referring to the type from trees) and then an abundance of chipmunks.  Wildlife biologists tell us that two to four chipmunks normally inhabit each acre, but the number can sometimes climb as high as ten.  Each has a home range of about half an acre, and defends a perimeter around its burrow of about 50 feet.  The burrows can extend through the earth for up to 30 feet, and are not marked by piles of soil, since chipmunks cleverly carry the dirt away in their cheek pouches, concealing the construction.  A chipmunk mom can give birth to two batches of babies per year, each containing two to five baby ‘munks.

Photo:  Pat Thorne

If you’ve endured their damage, you might dream of a chipmunk-free garden, but that is probably unrealistic. Authorities recommend against having a continuous planting of trees, shrubs and groundcovers from wooded areas to around homes, and say to remove rock walls, deep mulch and wood piles, since these are great hiding places. A plant-free, gravel area should surround the house. While all this sounds great in theory, it isn’t easy to put into practice, and I don’t want to live in a parking lot. So, I’m learning (and re-learning) to tolerate chipmunks, and I’ll even chuckle at their antics when they aren’t eating the irrigation lines or landscape lighting.

Repellents do a so-so job with chipmunks, so that leaves exclusion and traps.  Hardware cloth enclosures can protect special plants and chicken wire cages are useful for bulbs.  Snap rat traps baited with peanut butter, nutmeats, raisins or corn are a lethal option; set them in a box with open ends to protect pets and children.  Box, bucket and multiple catch traps, which leave the chipmunks alive, are also effective.  But be aware that it is not legal in New York State to release chipmunks in a park, forest or other area without the landowner’s permission and proper permits.       

The Spices Of Life

If my head hurts, I go to the medicine cabinet.  When dinner is bland, I look at the spice rack. Using deodorant and cologne helps make me socially acceptable.  None of these actions require any knowledge of horticulture, but a few generations ago, none were possible without knowing how to grow, preserve and use plants, or at least having some servants to do it for you.  But thanks to modern manufacturing, all I need to do now is visit a store, and home cures have largely gone the way of sword fighting, butter churning and hoop rolling…or have they?

 

Not entirely, perhaps.  A few Master Gardeners are beguiled by herbal legends and lore, find modern ways to use herbs, and are turned on by the plants themselves.  This group takes good care of the herb display at the Demonstration Garden, located at the Robert C. Parker School in North Greenbush.  Four raised beds in a formal design hold a variety of plants prized for their usefulness, all surrounded by a picket fence.  In a “normal” summer, one of our evening herb programs would have the Master Gardeners showing off their lavender cookie recipes, experimenting with eyewashes and dry shampoos, and concocting refreshing elixirs.  But not this summer, of course. 

Nevertheless, our little garden is a good showcase of herbs that a creative modern person might use as well as a few plants which are as obsolete as flatirons.  Considering the former, a sprig of easily grown spearmint (Mentha spicata) in your iced tea is still refreshing, even if the tea comes from a store-bought powder.  Sage (Salvia officinalis) and thyme (Thymus vulgaris) are similarly easy and simple to use, too, in meat dishes and breads.  And many gardeners don’t consider it summer without basil (Ocimum basilicum), made into pesto or as part of that ultimate August cuisine, a homegrown tomato sandwich.

But we’ve got wormwood and marshmallow, too.  Before appearing as a character in C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” wormwood (Artemesia absinthium) was used to make absinthe, beer and vermouth, as an ingredient in various liniments, and for de-worming farm animals.  A sprawling, three foot tall plant with gray-green foliage, its concentrated oils can be extremely poisonous.  Given wormwood’s rather strong and not-unpleasant scent, it was used as a strewing herb in churches and other public places to make those without deodorant less socially unacceptable. 

A paste made from the roots of marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) was used in cough syrups, since it soothed the throat, and also yielded the first, totally organic, marshmallows.  Imagine the work those kids from yesteryear had to endure, digging, drying and processing a bunch of roots just to make s’mores! 

The recognition that many “wild” plants as well as ornamentals once had widely known herbal properties is as obscure as homemade marshmallows.  The pesky lawn plantain (Plantago major) soothed nettle stings and wounds, while shrubby, invasive barberry (Berberis vulgaris) cured jaundice. 

Would I remain socially acceptable by trading my “Old Spice” for a mixture of lavender, peppermint, tarragon and anise?    

Green In The City

Sometimes it is easy to overlook the beauty that’s right in our own backyard.  That was one of the ideas behind the “Tour of Troy Gardens” that our Master Gardeners took themselves on this past Wednesday.  Since many of us don’t want to travel too far during this Pandemic, it made sense to stay close to home and visit two of the sites Master Gardener volunteers spend hundreds of hours making beautiful in the Collar City each season.

Donning masks, toting hand sanitizer and checking boxes on health forms, we met at the 9/11 Memorial Park in Lansingburgh, standing six feet apart.  Owned by the City of Troy, the focus of the park is a dark marble and steel monument dedicated to the tragedy of that September day in 2001.  It’s a beautiful spot for a pocket park, adjacent to the Hudson River and just north of the 112th Street Bridge, but not that long ago it wasn’t so pretty.  Derelict house trailers stood here, and after their removal it was a rather ugly empty lot.  The monument was dedicated in 2011, and Master Gardeners have been involved with beautifying the park for the last nine years.  Knockout roses surround the monument, and daylilies line the walkways.  A mixed border perennial garden featuring a wide variety of plants, including redbuds, hydrangeas, coneflowers and ornamental grasses forms the north border.  While it is a very lovely garden today, the site still isn’t without challenges.  The steep riverbank makes weeding a death-defying task, since plants of all kinds easily take root on the slope and shoot skyward, threatening to block the view.  The soil occasionally yields peculiar trash, while less than upright park visitors and dogs leave their own calling cards.  The Master Gardeners have learned to take this all with a shrug and a chuckle.  Local companies have donated fencing and landscaping supplies, and the Master Gardeners receive support from the City via grant funds, trash collection and lawn mowing, making the maintenance of this urban gem a community effort.

Our second stop was Leslie’s Garden, located just south of Washington Park on Adams Street.

  The garden is owned by TAP, Inc., a local non-profit, and was named in honor of Leslie Adler, an ardent supporter of Troy whose efforts led to numerous State-sponsored community grants for neighborhood improvement.  Chico Christopher, a long-time Master Gardener and TAP employee, was the garden’s caretaker, but after his passing in 2017 additional Master Gardeners joined with TAP Board members and staff, as well as the Riverside Neighborhood Association, to keep the garden growing.  Today, Leslie’s Garden features a variety of perennials and small trees surrounding two open spaces with benches, which encourages small gatherings and neighbor interaction.  In high summer, a huge circle of colorful zinnas becomes an eyecatcher.  The garden is adjacent to the School Ten Apartments, owned by TAP, that are income-eligible homes in a former Troy public school.  It’s a wonderful harmony of plants and people cooperating to create a special place.    

Oh Deer, Finally Here

After 24 years, my gardening honeymoon is over.  While I’m nowhere near throwing in the trowel, I’m sorry to say that the deer have truly arrived.  While living with deer is standard practice for many gardeners in the Hudson Valley, I certainly have enjoyed my almost quarter-century gardening largely without them.

I must admit feeling rather smug in the past.  I figured that the busy road in front of the house, and the wooded cliff behind, were discouraging to deer.  While our neighborhood on the edge of suburbia is very green, most folks surrounding me are not gardeners, so there is little of unusual horticultural (and culinary) interest to attract the hungry horde, other than my place.  So while I certainly sympathized with my green-thumb chums who face deer damage daily, I also counted my blessings and thanked my lucky stars.

Gradually, though, things have changed.  A few winters ago, the deer ate the bottom four feet of my arborvitae hedge, which runs between our side yard and the house next door.  I didn’t notice this until one day when I could see Mr. Moore’s Pontiac much better than before.  After that, a few leaves might disappear here, a flower or two vanish there, but it was no big deal.  Then last winter, our giant backyard oak dropped an Armageddon of acorns.  The deer visited nightly, making deep hoof prints in the snow covering my hosta garden and the one good patch of lawn we had, turning it all into a minefield of mud.  Word among the herd must have gone out that this was the dining place to be.  Now this summer, the hostas have lost their leaves, the tomatoes their fruit, and I my patience. 

Deterring browsing by deer offers two primary options:  repellants and fencing.  For now, I’ve

gathered the stray bits of fencing from the shed and cordoned off some of the surviving hostas and all of the dahlias.  I’ve also invested in a jug of deer repellent.  I say “invested” since it cost almost as much as my first car, all for some putrescent eggs, thyme, garlic and soap.  And wow, does it stink, the kind of stench that stays in your mind’s nose for days.  But after deploying the smelly solution, we had the first night without a loss from the tomato patch, so I am pleased.

I’m also pondering a fence.  Deer can jump almost eight feet high with ease, as well as shove under or shoulder through a wimpy fence, so any construction needs to be well-planned and sturdy.  Black plastic mesh comes in various sizes and is a popular option.  I need about a 300 foot length to enclose most of the backyard, and at eight feet high, with 21 posts and two gates, this system would cost about $2,000, self-installed.  While I could buy a lot of tomatoes and hostas for that amount, this looks like the price I must pay to remain a gardener.