Some Like it Hot

Some science behind our flavor preferences, with some practical advice to keep squirrels from birdfeeders.

Master Gardener Herb Garden

Please welcome a new contributor to the blog, Carol Kagan.  Carol recently moved to Franklin County from Prince George's County, Maryland where she was a Master Gardener for 8 years.  She is attending the current series of classes with the new set of Pennsylvania Master Gardeners.  She has a special interest in herbs and has been working with the herb team documenting the refurbishment/re-creation of the Demonstration Herb Garden.  Here is her post on that effort:

The demonstration herb garden has come a long way since last summer. After cleaning out the overly abundant herbs, the 44’x20’ plot was leveled.

The garden will be an informal design using raised beds, a different technique from the other gardens.

Wooden beds were built and installed that include a central octagon, small side beds and beds around the edges.

The beds were filled with manure donated by the riding center and top soil.

In the spring, the beds will be planted with various themes. A fragrance garden with lavender, roses and scented geraniums, a dye garden with lady’s bedstraw, betony and flax, and an everlasting garden with yarrow, wormwood and goldenrod are planned.

An historical theme garden will include herbs from literature and those used for medicinal purposes in the past. Kitchen and household gardens will include pennyroyal, flax and culinary herbs. Two front beds will be rotating themes such as Native American herbs and herbs for grilling.

Surviving Sandy and the First Few Frosts

Castor Bean Bloom (Ricinus communis)

I looked around my landscape this past weekend to see what survived the storm and the 3 or 4 light frosts we've had so far.  Here are the pictures.  Of course we were very lucky that there was minimal damage in our area, with only a short loss of power.

Castor Bean Seed Pod (Ricinus communis)

Castor Bean Plant (Ricinus communis)

So beautiful, but oh so Wicked. 



Rudbeckia hirta

Rudbeckia's - these are descendants from some seed heads I gleaned in 2003 from the area that is now used for the Perennial Demonstration Garden, back when we trialed ornamental plants there.




The variety was Rudbeckia hirta 'Cherokee Sunset' although you can see if you check the link, they've lost their double petals and picked up some color variations via natural crosses, or reverting to ancestral progenitors from the original hybrid cross, I assume.

Can't complain about the price, though.

The long season bloom time for a perennial is very welcome.

Rudbeckia hirta

Rudbeckia hirta

Rudbeckia hirta

Asclepias tuberosa - Butterfly Weed

Asclepias turberosa - Butterfly Weed

I collect seed from multiple sources, including the Wildlife Area, and anywhere else I see the seed pods for this native wildflower and butterfly attractor, so no telling the provenance.

Asclepias tuberosa - Butterfly Weed

Asclepias physocarpa or Gomphocarpus physocarpus Balloon Milkweed

Another milkweed, although native to South Africa.  Unique seed pods, leading to some interesting other common names.  Excellent larval host plant for the Monarch Butterfly.  Seed pods look great in dried arrangements.  This is my fourth year growing them, seeds originally saved from Steve's cut flower trials.  Although perennial in their native Zone 8 growing area, seeds started indoors in mid March allows for us to grow them as annuals here.  I always start a flat or two for the plant sale, so you can get them then.

Blue Salvia or Salvia farinacea

Another zone 7-8 perennial grown as an annual here in our climate.  These were grown from leftover seeds from earlier year cut flower trials.  They were simply marked "Salvia" in a cellophane envelope, so I had no information about them prior to growing them, which made them difficult to sell at our plant sale.  They have been blooming continuously since July and haven't yet succumbed to frost, and aside from planting them in late May, I've done virtually nothing to nuture them.  More information here and here.

Tithonia rotundifolia or Mexican Sunflower

I only have middling success growing these from saved seed year to year.  Luckily, Laurie Collins starts them, so when I have a failure, like I did this year, she always comes to the rescue with a few plants for me. 

I think this is a dwarf variety, 'Fiesta del Sol', although I didn't mark it when I planted it, so can't be sure.

Monkshood

My Monkshood, to go along with Mary's and Nancy's.

'Yummy' Bell Pepper

One pepper plant left, surviving not only the frosts and storm, but critter depredation as well.  This is an heirloom variety of small, tapered, sweet, orange-when-ripe bell pepper called 'Yummy' that I grow from saved seed every year.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit or Arisaema triphyllum

I think of Jack-in-the-Pulpits as an early, spring woodland species that normally, have gone to seed by this time of year, so I have no idea why this fella is coming up and just starting to bloom now.  All my established ones are gone, with just a few of the red berries visible on the ground.  I tried googling around for information that would explain this late blooming phenomenon, but came up empty.  If anyone out there has more information, please let me know and I'll share it here.

Update: 11:50 pm 11/6 - I sent the picture of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit to Dr. Linda Chalker Scott who responded that the phenomenon is probably an example of ecodormancy - a plant's reaction to somewhat adverse, or abnormal enviromental conditions.  Early season warmth?  Mid-summer drought?  Late season warmth?  I have been unable to find a good source to further describe and explain the term.  You can try here, and here.  There doesn't appear to be a Wikipedia entry.  I forwarded the picture to Dr. Bert Cregg, another one of the Garden Professors, who asked for examples in his post linked above.

Loading the Larder 2 - Onions, Winter Squash, and Sweet Potatoes

Onions, Garlic, and Glad

I brought the onions in from the garage last weekend, and cleaned them up today for winter storage.  White Glad picked just before the storm.




Onions from Barn









Here's how they looked before clean up.

Sweet Potatoes, Egyptian Walking, and Multiplier Onions

Butternut and one Spaghetti Squash

I planted the 2013 crop of garlic, Egyptian Walking and Multiplier Onions this weekend.

Larder loaded and a bunch of fall chores done.  Feeling good.

Loading the Larder 1 - Pickled Peppers

Colored Bell, Fish, Hinkel Hatz, Zavory, Black Pearl
 Red Habanero Peppers

I took advantage of the time the storm provided holed up at home to put up some peppers, and get some end of season chores done. 

Steve Bogash brought the bell peppers from the High Tunnel Colored Pepper Trials at Landisville to share with us late last week.  The green one is from my garden, picked just before the storm hit.

Here's the process.

Prepped Peppers Soaking in Salt Solution

Checking the Recipe (Cross Checked for Safety)

Accoutrements

Additional Ingredients - Hardneck Garden Garlic

Garlic Peeled and Prepped



Non-Reactive Pan for Heating Vinegar/Salt Solution



Water Bath Cannner

Pickled Peppers in Pantry

Voila!

Defiance!

Somehow this seems appropriate as Sandy bears down on us:

"I never see a great garden...but I think of the calamities that have visited it, unsuspected by the delighted visitor who supposes it must be nice to garden there.

It is not nice to garden anywhere.  Everywhere there are violent winds, startling once-per-five-centuries floods, unprecedented droughts, record-setting freezes, abusive and blasting heats never know before.  There is no place, no garden, where these terrible things do not drive gardeners mad...

So there is no point dreading the next summer storm that, as I predict, will flatten everything.  Nor is there any point dreading the winter, so soon to come, in which the temperatures will drop to ten below zero and the ground freezes forty inches deep and we all say there was never such a winter since the beginning of the world.  There have been such winters; there will be more.

Now the gardener is the one who has seen everything ruined so many times that (even as his pain increases with each loss) he comprehends - truly knows - that where there was a garden once, it can be again, or where there never was, there yet can be a garden so that all who see it say, "Well, you have favorable conditions here.  Everything grows for you."  Everything grows for everybody.  Everything dies for everybody, too.

There are no green thumbs or black thumbs.  There are only gardeners and non-gardeners.  gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises.  It sounds very well to garden a "natural way."  You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell.  Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners."

This from an essay called "On The Defiance of Gardeners" in The Essential Earthman, By Henry Mitchell (Indiana University Press, 2003).

My best wishes to all my gardener friends and gardens!

Mini Tomato Day Results - Blush





The September 11th "Mini" Tomato Day had 24 participants rate the 30 tomato varieties grown across the street.  The hands down winner was "Blush", obtained from Seeds of Change.

Blush Tomato - Picture by Steve Bogash

Blush is a recent, open pollinated (OP), introduction by tomato breeder Fred Hempel of Baia Nicchia Farm in the San Francisco Bay area.

Closeup - Blush Tomato - Picture by Steve Bogash

Mr. Hempel recently announced an agreement with A.P. Whalen Seeds to market a Bumble Bee Series of Round Cherry Tomatoes (Pink and Purple), and a Tiger Series of Elongate Cherry Tomatoes (like Blush, Maglia Rosa, and Green Tiger). 

Cherry, Grape and Blush Tomatoes from Eckhart Garden
(Black Cherry, Sun Gold, Five Star Red Grape, Solid Gold Yellow Grape)

Baia Nicchia Farm has also joined forces with Frogsleap Farm to make seeds available through Artisan Seeds.  That Captain Lucky sure looks intriguing ...

August 22, 2012 Tomato Day Results here.

Update 10/28:  Baia Nicchia Farms links to this post and gives us more Blush breeding background, including the wisdom of eight year olds over PhD plant geneticists. 

Wooly Bear Caterpillars

Wooly Bear on Farmers Almanac - Photo Credit Catherine Boeckmann 

Wooly Bear caterpillars are the focus of one of the items in this week's news column.  Dr. Michael Raupp of the University of Maryland (also known as The Bug Guy) featured them in his October 14th, 2012 Bug of the Week column.  In order to get a picture to accompany the news column, I sent out an email to MG's to keep their eye out and send me pictures if ones were spotted.  Folks came through beautifully, with these pictures from three sources - Bob Haffly through MG trainee Judy Scriptunas, Laurie Collins, and Mike Kusko. 

Laurie Collins Picture 1 from Fannettsburg

The Farmers Almanac runs down the history of the Wooly Bear as another peerless prognosticator of winter weather.


Laurie Collins Picture 2 from Fannettsburg

Supposedly, the width of the orange stripe predicts the severity of the on-coming winter.  The wider the stripe, the milder the winter.


Laurie Collins Picture 3 from Fannettsburg

Fannetsburg is predicting a mild winter.


Bob Haffly - Judy Scriptunas from Amberson

Amberson is predicting a severe winter (except this is the wrong species)
 

Bob Haffly Judy Scriptunas - from Amberson

Another wrong species, but sure would be nice if the winter is that mild.


Bob Haffly Judy Scriptunas - Amberson

Seems to comport with the Fannetsburg forecast.


Mike Kusko - Chambersburg

The Chambersburg area says really mild, too.
 

Mike Kusko - Chambersburg

Like Groundhog Day, there are several festivals throughout the country, celebrating the Wooly Worm:  Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio. 

Not to be a spoilsport or anything, but MGs are supposed to link to the science of it all, so here are Extension Fact Sheets on the subject from Michigan State University and the University of Illinois.

Turing Sunflower Update - Oh Dear

Back in August, I shared with you my love of sunflowers and linked to the Turing Sunflower Project.  I went ahead and registered with the program and committed to counting three heads.  August and September were very busy for me, given the unprecedented mosquito season we experienced this year, so I cut the heads from the stalks in late August and put them in the barn with the onions to dry for later counting.

What I stoopidly didn't count on, were critters.  When I went to the barn to retrieve the onions and start the sunflower seed counting this past weekend, here's what I found.

Oh well.  In this case, the best laid schemes went awry all right.  For the man, anyway.

You can follow the progress of the project here.