The Old Farmer's Almanac Garden Musings

Out of Your Gourd

Hard-shelled gourds, along with pumpkins, squash, and ornamental gourds, all belong to the cucurbit family. Unlike their soft-skinned cousins, however, hard-shelled gourds have a very tough outer surface that takes on the characteristics of wood when dried.

Gourds are among the first crops ever cultivated. They are thought to have originated in Africa and spread to the Americas on ocean currents, their seeds protected by the fruits’ water-resistant skin. Ancient man gathered gourds from the wild 10,000 years ago not for food but for the useful items that could be made from their shells. Small, round gourds were made into bowls, cups, and floats for fishing nets. Long gourds with bulbous ends became spoons or pipes, and large, thick-skinned ones were used to haul water and store food. Gourds have served as musical instruments, armor, jewelry, and even currency. In some cultures, they took on religious significance and became objects of art embellished with carvings, wood burnings, and paint.

Hard-shelled gourds can be grown anywhere that pumpkins can and have about the same requirements—a sunny spot, a long growing season, and plenty of food and water. Some growers in the North start seeds indoors in peat pots four weeks before setting them out in the garden. If you sow seeds directly in the ground, plant six to eight in each hill and then thin them to three or four. Hills should be spaced eight feet apart and prepared with plenty of manure and compost. Harvest gourds when the stems have completely dried and turned brown. Scrub them clean with soap and water and then wipe the skin with a 10% bleach solution to prevent mold. Dry them in a warm, dark room for one to six months, depending on their size. When completely dried, a gourd will be lightweight, with its seeds heard rattling inside; it can then be waxed or varnished.

Today, artists still enjoy working with gourds, and their work appears in gourd shows and craft fairs throughout the country. Varieties can be grown that resemble penguins, snakes, and swans, or that have the perfect shape to be turned into ladles and birdhouses. Now, we think that’s using your gourd.

Building a Butterfly Garden

The glimmering wings and graceful flutters of butterflies bring color and movement to the landscape while they aid in the pollination of flowers, fruit, and vegetable plants. Unfortunately, urbanization and other development are shrinking their natural habitat, leaving fewer places to feed, mate, and lay eggs. By making your yard butterfly-friendly, you will attract swirls of these colorful creatures to your home and at the same time help to preserve them.

Butterfly gardens don’t have to be large. You can grow plants in containers on a patio or even in hanging pots and window boxes. Butterflies need the sun to maintain body temperature, so place your garden in the sunniest location possible. The key to attracting butterflies is to provide them with lots of nectar sources; they also prefer to feed on open, tube-shape flowers. Choose a variety of fragrant, colorful flowers to keep your garden blooming from spring until frost. These can be perennials like asters, bee balms, and sedums, and flowering trees and shrubs including crab apples and lilacs. Zinnias, marigolds, and other long-season annuals will help keep your garden in constant bloom.

All butterflies start out as caterpillars that require host plants on which to feed. Many of these are native plants—weeds and wildflowers that may already be growing on or near your property. Some good choices include clovers, milkweeds, and violets. Consult a field guide or other reference to find out what butterflies are in your area and which plants they prefer.

After a rain, you may see butterflies congregating around a puddle or damp area in the garden to drink and extract minerals from the soil. Maintaining a puddle in the same spot will keep butterflies coming back. Plant a few shrubs or tall grasses to provide hiding places from predators and add a bench or rock from which you can observe these amazing insects.

Butterfly gardening has become big business. Butterfly farms offer live butterflies to release at special occasions, especially weddings. Who knows? Filling the air with butterflies might just lessen a few in the stomachs of the bride and groom.

It’s About Thyme

Thyme (Thymus spp.) is native to the sunny slopes of the Mediterranean and once grew wild from Spain to Siberia. The Greeks and Romans considered thyme a symbol of courage and style; they flavored cheese and wine with the pungent herb and bathed in thyme-scented baths before going into battle. During the Crusades, ladies embroidered sprigs of thyme on the sleeves of their knights to keep them brave.

The Sumerians wrote of thyme’s antiseptic properties 3,000 years ago. They stepped on it as a strewing herb and burned it in homes and public buildings to cleanse the air and ward off illness. Today, it is an effective ingredient in toothpaste and cough medicine and is used in aromatherapy to treat respiratory ailments.

In culinary circles, thyme is of the greatest essence. Its tiny leaves, fresh or dried, liven up salads and enhance the flavor of meat, fish, and poultry. Along with parsley, savory, and marjoram, it makes up the traditional French herbal mixture bouquet garni used to enhance the flavor of soups, sauces, and stews. All thymes are edible and many have their own unique flavors. Use orange or lemon thyme to add a citrus taste to seafood, caraway thyme for breads and meat, and lavender thyme to lend flavor and aroma to soups and casseroles.

As versatile in the garden as they are in the kitchen, the dozens of thyme varieties fill a number of roles. Their foliage may be bright green, gray, or yellow, and their spicy flowers range in color from purple to pink to white. Tall varieties like French thyme grow to more than a foot high and can be pruned into a fragrant hedge or tucked in between shrubs or perennials to fill empty spaces in a planting bed. Wooly thyme and creeping thyme, which grow only two inches high, thrive in dry, sunny spots and are perfect for use as a ground cover or a rock garden plant. Planted between the stepping-stones of a garden path, they perfume the air when walked upon.

Thymes are easy to grow, asking only for a sunny spot and well- drained soil that is slightly on the dry side. Plus, if you’re a gardener who also likes to cook, you will find that there is never enough thyme.

Beetle Mania

One of the most destructive garden insects is the Japanese beetle, a six-legged creature about one-half-inch long with copper-color wing covers and a metallic-green head. It has a voracious appetite for flowers, fruit, and foliage, and dines on hundreds of different plants from birches to poison ivy. The species feeds in groups, quickly stripping a rose of its blooms or reducing leaves to a lacy skeleton. To make matters worse, adult female beetles seek out the best grass available in which to deposit their eggs. Within two weeks white grubs emerge and start feeding on grass roots, causing areas of the lawn to turn brown and die. Japanese beetles overwinter as grubs burrowed about ten inches into the soil; when the soil temperature warms up in spring, they move close to the surface and feed for a short period before pupating and becoming adult beetles.

In their native Japan, the beetles cause only minor damage because their population is controlled by natural predators. Not so in the United States: Even though they are a favorite food of skunks and moles and are eaten by many birds, there always seem to be plenty of grubs around. While adult beetles show resistance to pesticides, the grubs are killed, but often at the risk of harming earthworms and beneficial insects. Fortunately, there is a wealth of weapons in the organic arsenal. Milky spore disease, a naturally occurring soil bacteria (Paenibacillus popilliae), kills beetle grubs while not harming valuable insects. It is sold in a powdered form that is spread on the soil and may control grubs for 15 to 20 years.

The adults may travel up to five miles for a meal. The presence of beetles on a plant attracts other beetles, so picking the early arrivals from plants will reduce infestation. Pheromone traps catch lots of beetles but draw in many more that are never caught. Place traps at least 30 feet downwind from the plants you want to protect. Botanical sprays containing pyrethrin, garlic, or neem oil will reduce Japanese beetle damage, as will planting chives, garlic, tansy, and other repellent plants among vulnerable plants. Using one or more of these safe controls will help protect birds, earthworms, and beneficial insects, and soon will have you saying sayonara to this garden troublemaker.

Kiwi:  The Down Under Wonder

Kiwifruits aren’t much to look at, but beneath the brown furry skin of this egg-shape berry lies succulent, translucent, emerald-green flesh with an irresistible flavor that hints of melon, strawberry, banana, and citrus. The fruit is high in fiber and low in calories; has twice the vitamin C of oranges; and contains more potassium than bananas.

A native of southwestern China, kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) arrived in New Zealand in 1906. Then known as the Chinese gooseberry, it was grown as an ornamental for its attractive fan-shape leaves, fragrant white flowers, and twining habit. As a taste developed for the fuzzy fruits, New Zealand became the largest producer of Chinese gooseberries. In the 1950s, as a marketing tactic, its name was changed to kiwifruit after the country’s comical, flightless, bird.

Kiwifruit is easy to grow, but requires a long growing season of 225 frost-free days in order for the fruit to ripen. Hardy kiwis (A. arguta, A. kolomikta) are cold tolerant to several degrees below zero and need only 130 days to ripen. They have grape-size fruit with a smooth, usually green, skin that doesn’t require peeling. ‘Arctic Beauty’ (a cultivar of A. kolomikta) is an extremely hardy kiwi that will grow to Zone 3 and survive winter temperatures to –40°F (–40°C). Like other kiwis, ‘Arctic Beauty’ is dioecious and requires a male plant to pollinate the female. One male will suffice for four to five females but the male plant is so colorful, you may want to grow more. Its foliage is a dazzling mix of hot pink, emerald green, and white.

Kiwis will grow in full sun or partial shade in almost any garden soil as long as it is well drained. Each vine may produce up to 100 pounds of fruit, so grow them on a sturdy arbor or on wires. Harvest fuzzy kiwifruits when the skin turns brown and seeds are black; pick hardy kiwis just before they are fully ripe. After picking, let kiwis sit a few days at room temperature to soften and sweeten.

Kiwis are great eaten out of hand, sliced up in salads, or cooked in a stir-fry. They are a natural for making an upside-down cake, which is no surprise for this treat from Down Under.

All plants have some ability to move, but most of these movements are on a scale too slow for us to see. Tropisms are the simplest plant movements. They are controlled by growth hormones and are a growth response to an external stimulus. A houseplant bending toward the light shining through a window is an example of phototropism. Roots growing from dry soil towards moist soil demonstrate hydrotropism. Other stimuli that trigger tropic responses are heat, gravity, and soil chemicals.

Nastic movements, or nasties, can be extremely fast. Although not fully understood, they often involve a rapid change in water pressure inside the plant that may be controlled by chemical and electrical mechanisms. For example, when a leaf of the sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica) is touched, all of the leaves fold up and the plant wilts to the ground. If the stimulus is strong enough, this can happen within the blink of an eye. The plant may have made this adaptation to make it less visible to grazing animals or to scare away insect pests.

Many carnivorous plants employ nastic movements to trap their prey. Probably the best known is the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). Its specialized leaves, resembling clamshells, are the traps. When insects, lured by a sweet-smelling nectar, enter the chamber, they brush against trigger hairs that snap the trap shut. Digestive juices are then released to dissolve the hapless victim.

Another insect-trapping plant is the sundew (Drosera sp.). Charles Darwin described them as being “animals in disguise.” Tentacles with bright-color tips dot the surface of the leaves and secrete a seductive nectar and sticky adhesive. Landing insects stick fast, their movements causing nearby tentacles to move toward and further entangle the prey. In some species, the leaves close around the insect, entombing it in a vat of digestive juices.

Plants capable of rapid movement and trapping their meals have long been the basis of science fiction novels and horror films depicting devious man-eating plants. While there is no proof that such botanical monsters exist, we would caution vegetarians to be watchful. After all, turnabout is fair play.

Many gardeners are finding out that by not following the straight and narrow they can triple, even quadruple, their vegetable harvest while spending less time weeding, watering, and feeding their plants. Gardens laid out in traditional long rows with packed-down walkways between may be pleasing to the eye but not necessarily to the plants that grow in them. Narrow rows restrict root growth and are prone to compaction and drying. Intensive gardening replaces rows with wide raised beds that are deeply cultivated and prepared with generous amounts of compost or manure, which creates an excellent environment for root growth, earthworm activity, and the microorganisms that break down organic matter into plant food. Plus, the soil in raised beds warms up quickly in spring, allowing for early planting.

You can surround the beds with cement blocks or timbers, or simply form six- to eight-inch-high mounds of earth. Each bed should be no more than three to five feet wide, so that you can work from each side without having to walk on the soil. Plants are grown close together so that they touch at maturity, forming a living mulch that shades out weeds and conserves soil moisture. While the plants are young, spread organic mulch, such as grass clippings or straw, between them.

You can take advantage of the space between slow-growing plants like squash or tomatoes by interplanting quick crops such as carrots, radishes, and lettuce; harvest them before the slow-growers mature. Succession planting ensures that every part of the garden stays productive during the entire growing season. Early plantings of lettuce, peas, and radishes can be followed by warm-season crops like peppers and beans.

Another way to coax more space from a garden and up its production is to go airborne. Growing tomatoes in cages and raising peas and pole beans on wire fences not only frees up ground space for other plantings, but also keeps the harvest clean. Cucumbers, squash, and melons can also be grown on fences and trellises to increase their yield, leaving a lot of gardeners thinking that they might just have a little growing up to do.

A Divine Vine

Whether growing on a trellis or left to ramble over the ground, a passionflower vine (Passiflora sp.) will add color, fragrance, and a tropical air to the garden, transforming it into a heavenly place. Priests who accompanied Spanish explorers to the Americas in the 16th century gave the passionflower its name to honor the Passion of Christ. They believed that parts of the intricate flower symbolized elements of the Crucifixion and that its five petals and five sepals represented the ten Apostles who did not betray or deny knowing Christ.

There are over 400 species of passionflowers, most of them tropical. One cold-hardy species, Passiflora incarnata, is thought to have gotten its nickname “maypop” from the loud popping sound the fruit makes when squeezed. The native plant grows from Virginia and Kentucky south to Florida and Texas. Native Americans knew of its sweet-tasting, egg-shape fruits and powerful medicinal properties. The dried, powdered vines were used to relieve back pain and induce sleep; the yellow fruits were eaten out of hand as well as fermented into an alcoholic drink used in religious ceremonies. Today, the herb is used in Europe to lower blood pressure, relieve tension, and treat insomnia.

Maypop seeds are extremely slow to germinate, often taking up to a year. Before sowing the seeds, soak them for 12 hours. Then plant them in flats or pots in a standard growing mix. Once germination takes place, grow plants indoors until the following spring; then plant them outdoors after the last spring frost. Stem cuttings may be taken from new growth in the spring or mature wood in early summer. Root them in a mixture of moist sand and peat moss. The cuttings will take about three months to root. As with seedlings, set the rooted cuttings outside when danger of frost has passed.

Maypop requires well-drained soil and full sun. It will overwinter as far north as Zone 5 if given a sheltered spot and mulched heavily. The vigorous vine may grow to 20 feet in a single season, producing dozens of magnificent two- to three-inch-wide purple and white blossoms that are sure to stir the passion in any gardener.

May the Force Be With You

For a fragrant and colorful preview of spring weeks before winter releases its icy grip on the landscape, try your hand at forcing branches from your favorite flowering trees and shrubs into early bloom. Simply put, forcing is a technique that supplies branches with springlike conditions, tricking them into thinking that it is time to produce leaves and flowers. The time to cut branches for forcing is usually from mid-January through early March, after the plant has completed its dormant period. Use sharp pruning shears to cut several well-budded shoots that are about the diameter of a pencil and about a foot or two long. Because late winter is the ideal time to prune most trees and shrubs, you can shape them as you harvest your future bouquets.

To break dormancy and initiate the flowering process, completely soak the severed shoots in a tub of warm water for three to four hours; then recut the stems on a diagonal and stand them in a bucket of cold water so that the bottom one quarter of each stem is submerged. To mimic spring conditions, keep the branches in a cool room (about 60° to 65°F/16° to 18°C), out of direct sunlight. When the buds start to swell, move them to a warmer, sunnier location. Change the water every day or two and recut the stems once per week. Blossoms and leaves should appear in one to six weeks, depending on the variety of the plant and the time of year.

Early-blooming plants are the easiest to force; the closer to their natural blooming time branches are cut, the sooner they will flower. Good choices for beginners are forsythia, spirea, witch hazel, honeysuckle, and flowering quince. Fruit trees like apple, peach, and cherry also are good candidates, as are dogwood, hawthorn, and crab apple. For an interesting effect, try forcing plants with colorful leaves like Japanese maple and purple-leaf sand cherry.

Forced branches are a natural for creating artistic arrangements or just filling a vase. Arrange them before the buds fully open to avoid damaging the delicate flowers and to add to your pleasure in watching the flowers open. The compliments that you will receive for your display of spring flowers in the dead of winter may just have you taking one bough after another.

Making Your Christmas Tree Last and Last

The tradition of bringing a tree into the house and decorating it for Christmas originated in Germany more than 400 years ago but didn’t gain popularity in the United States until the mid-1800s. In those days, trees were cut from the wild or from the family woodlot and weren’t as full and shapely as the trees we buy now. Today, family woodlots are rare, and with the demand for “that perfect tree,” almost all Christmas trees are professionally grown.

Many families still like to share in the experience of cutting their own Christmas tree by visiting a choose-and-cut tree farm. Harvesting your own tree is the surest way of knowing that it is as fresh as it can be.

Most Christmas trees, however, are purchased at garden centers or tree lots, making it difficult to know how fresh they are. Ask the seller where the trees were grown and when they were cut. If he can answer both of these questions, chances are you will be getting a tree that will survive the season with minimal needle drop. A quick test to determine the freshness of a Christmas tree is to grasp the tip of the branch between your thumb and forefinger and pull it gently. Very few needles will come off in your hand if the tree is fresh.

Even the freshest trees will prematurely shed their needles if not handled properly. Just before you bring your tree inside, cut off a 1/4-inch-thick wafer of wood from the bottom of the trunk; then immediately set the tree into a stand filled with water. The tree will probably drink a gallon of water in the first 24 hours. Check the water in the stand daily. If the reservoir is allowed to run dry, sap may seal the bottom of the trunk and reduce future water uptake.

Display your tree in a cool room, if possible, and never near a woodstove, radiator, or other source of heat. Even under the best of conditions, some needle drop is natural.

After the holidays, set your tree out in the yard and decorate it with popcorn, peanuts, and other snacks for the birds and squirrels. Back in its natural environment, your tree should remain beautiful through the winter.