Author: Henry Homeyer

Pull them, freeze them, dry them, eat them Pull them, freeze them, dry them, eat them

My vegetable garden is cranking out free food like crazy. Some things need to be harvested right away, some can wait and get bigger, and some will soon be so plentiful that I will be giving them away and freezing lots for use this winter.

Let’s start with garlic. Garlic produced tall, curly stems called scapes a few weeks ago. They can be used for making pesto (in lieu of garlic, but my basil wasn’t ready). My garlic bulbs will soon be ready to harvest, and by then I will have lots of basil and then I will make pesto.

How do you know when it’s time to pull garlic? Pay attention to those long green blades, the leaves of your garlic. Generally a garlic plant will have about seven leaves. When three leaves have started to dry up and turn brown, it’s time to harvest them. But don’t wait until all the leaves have browned, or the skin over the bulb will be dry and fall apart, letting the bulbs fall apart, and store poorly.

You don’t get to eat your garlic the day you pull it. It takes time — a week or more — for the outer skin of the bulb to dry up enough that you can pull the cloves apart and separate them. I mean, you can cut one apart in case of emergency, but it’s best to let them dry out a bit.

I generally hang my complete garlic plants in bunches (bulbs up, stems down) from the ceiling in my cool basement. I’ve read that some of the goodness of the garlic is in the stem and leaves, and that it will migrate to the bulb during the curing period, so best not to cut off the stems right away. After it cures for a week I’ll cut off the stems. Garlic will store well in a cool dry place for months.

People who don’t know me gasp when I tell them I grow about 40 tomato plants each year, including over a dozen Sungold cherry tomatoes. They ask, “What do you do with all of them?” Of course I eat them every day, often three times a day. But I put up most for winter: I freeze big tomatoes whole, and dry the cherry tomatoes in a food dehydrator.

The easiest way to freeze tomatoes is simply to put whole, clean tomatoes in freezer-grade zipper bags in the freezer. I put the bags on cookie sheets until the tomatoes have turned into “red rocks,” then can stack the bags. In winter, I’ll use them in soups or stews instead of buying canned tomatoes. Canning is way too much work for me.

The cherry tomatoes I slice in half and dry for several hours. It can take up to 12 hours, depending on the dryer, then store in the pantry in quart jars or zipper bags. I start the process at high heat — say 150 degrees — for 20 minutes, then drop the temp to 125 or 130 so that I don’t damage the vitamins in the tomatoes. You can take them out when brittle, or earlier when they are leather-like. They store well in a cupboard, in the fridge, or in a freezer. I’ll add a handful to a soup or stew and they will really provide a pop of summer when I bite into one. Apples and pears store well for trail snacks after dehydrating.

I have two dryers: a Nesco American Harvester and an Excalibur. I prefer the Excalibur because it is more energy-efficient and faster. But it costs more, and the Nesco does a fine job, too. There are plenty of others I haven’t tried.

People make jokes about gardeners sticking big zucchinis in parked cars because they don’t know what to do with them. The answer? Visit your garden every day, part the leaves to see what is growing there, and pick those squash before they get huge. Sauté them with a little garlic, onion or tomato and they are delicious. My dear dog Rowan sometimes gets some lightly steamed squash added to his dinner — he loves a bigger dinner, and it’s low-calorie.

Summer squash can also be stored frozen. Cut them into cubes and blanch them for 60 seconds. NOT MORE. That means you drop them into a big kettle of rapidly boiling water, then pull them out and put in cold water in the sink. Blanching pots are sold with an inner pot with holes in the bottom so you can remove the veggies quickly after draining the hot water back into the pot. The hot immersion kills an enzyme that makes food age and not store well in the freezer.

What other veggies need blanching? Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beans, kale. I don’t blanch tomatoes, peppers, apples, pears or leeks. Never blanch any vegetable too long: you don’t want to cook them; they will be soggy later. And for best results it is good to eat frozen foods in Year 1, not Year 4 or 5. If you eat your beans soon after picking, they don’t have to be blanched before freezing.

My Grampy was an amazing organic gardener back in the 1940s through the 1960s. His wife died in 1954 and he never remarried, but he had lots of lady friends that he visited each week in summer, delivering his tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers and more. He even shared his tomatoes with the checkout women who worked at the local A&P grocery store! “They are so nice to me all year, and probably they don’t have time to garden,” he explained to me. So, honoring Grampy’s tradition, I like to share my garden veggies, too.

Henry can be reached by email at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or by USPS at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

Go look at your tomato plants

By now, most of us have planted our vegetable gardens. My peas, onions, lettuce, spinach and potatoes went in early, and now our tomatoes and peppers have settled in and are starting to grow. Is it hammock time? No, now it’s better to do some maintenance so that we can go to the beach later on with a good conscience.

Many gardeners are looking for a magic potion to put on their tomato plants to prevent that nasty fungal disease that blackens the leaves and shortens the lifespan and production of their tomato plants. Alas, there is none. But there are a few things you can do to minimize it.

Right now go look at your tomato plants: Do they have any leaves that touch the soil? If so, take a sharp knife or scissors and cut them off. The spores of the disease are in the soil, unless you are starting somewhere that was most recently lawn or field. That first year you will probably have plants free of blackened leaves.

Mulch under your tomato plants now, before disease sets in. The spores get on leaves by splash-up when you water or get a heavy rain. Got a bagger on your lawn mower? Save the grass and spread it over the soil. Or you can buy straw (which is seed-free) or mulch hay (which is not, but is less expensive). Spreading four layers of newspaper on the ground before putting down mulch helps keep soil moist and keep weeds from germinating. I don’t recommend using chipped branches or bark mulch in the vegetable garden.

One last bit of advice on tomatoes: I have found that buying the biggest cages possible is best, 54 inches tall, with four legs, not three. They’re not cheap, but you should get 25 years or more out of each if you store them in the barn for the winter.

I have plenty of lettuce to eat right now, having planted it early. But I will start seeds now. Although I could sow seeds directly in the ground, I prefer to plant seeds in cells and keep them on a sunny deck where I will see them, water them and monitor them. When they have two true leaves, sturdy ones, I will plant them in the ground. That allows me to space them well. Small seeds are easy to over-plant directly in the ground, and then I’d have to find the time to thin them later.

That brings me to thinning, sigh. The most tedious job in the garden. If you planted carrots, beets and radishes early on, they are about ready to thin. Start now and thin to one inch apart. Then, a bit later, thin again, but to 3 inches apart. Crowded carrots compete with their cousins for water and minerals just as they would with weeds. Eat those thinnings. Young carrots are a real treat.

I don’t mind weeding. Some of you do, and I agree it can be tedious. Young people wear earbuds and listen to music, but I like to listen to the birds and the burble of my brook going by. Did you know that by adding stones to a brook you can tune it? In 2003 I interviewed Robert Irwin, an installation artist who designed the gardens at J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles, and he told me he personally “tuned” a recirculating brook he had installed at the gardens. Water falling over stones makes a pleasant sound that depends on the drop and quantity of water falling.

But back to weeding. The best time to weed is after a rain or a good watering. I use a CobraHead weeder, a single-tined tool that easily slides through the soil, loosening it so that weeds pull easily and weed roots are less likely to snap off. Right now is the time to weed because the bigger they get the more difficult they are to pull.

I used to do all my weeding standing up, bent from the waist. Now? Mostly I kneel. I use a “Garden Kneeler” I got from Gardener’s Supply Co. It has a padded kneeling platform a few inches off the ground and handrails on the sides that are a great help in getting up from the kneeling position. Turned over, it provides a seat, and it can be folded up for storage. Using mine, I just weeded a double row of onions 16 feet long, and felt no aches and pains from doing so.

To avoid re-weeding the same bed, over and over, there are two things you should do: (1) never let your weeds flower and produce seeds; (2) mulch after weeding. Same as above, newspaper covered with straw. In the old days, newspapers used toxic chemicals in the ink. Now? As far as I know, all the inks are made with soy products. By the end of the summer my earthworms will have mostly eaten the papers.

If you grow potatoes, it is important to watch for potato beetles. Go down the row, pawing through the leaves so you can watch for the orange egg masses under the leaves and scrape them off. Later, if you look for larvae or beetles every day or two and pick them off, you can control the problem in a home garden. Just drop the culprits in a jar of soapy water. There is also a biological control called Bt, which is a naturally occurring bacterium that you can spray; it sickens the larvae as they eat the leaves but will not harm anything else.

I’ve been picking and eating homegrown vegetables all my life, and I am convinced that it helps me stay young(ish) and healthy. And it gives me great joy.

Henry can be reached by email at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or by USPS at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

I’ve heard it said that June is the most common month for weddings. I’m not sure why, but my theory is that June, despite black flies and noxious ticks, is a great month to be outside for wedding receptions. Roses are in bloom, as are peonies, iris and so much more.

Roses have evolved considerably since I was a boy in the 1950s. Breeders have created modern hybrids that are disease-free and bloom almost non-stop all summer. In the old days rosarians sprayed roses regularly with various poisons to minimize damage from fungal diseases and insect pests.

Many old-fashioned roses bloom mostly in June and are deliciously fragrant. New hybrids will bloom more or less continuously all summer if in full sun, but most are not fragrant. And they are rarely attacked by insects as they have no scent that would attract them. Since I’m technically a geezer, I should grow the old-fashioned roses — but I like these new hybrids.

There are several lines of trademarked roses. I love the ‘Knock-Out’ roses. They are winter hardy (in Zone 4) and offer blooms until October for me. Everything the Proven Winner people grow — annuals, perennials, roses — does very well. Their ‘Oso Easy’ line of roses is well-regarded, but I haven’t personally grown any.

My wife loves heirloom roses and has had great luck buying some from Old Sheep Meadows Nursery in Alfred, Maine. And if they will grow in Alfred, Maine, they will grow where you are. According to his website, the owner, Raymond Graber, has been growing roses in Maine for over 60 years. He has a wealth of knowledge and he is happy to share it.

Three bits of knowledge I can share about roses: 1. They love — and need — plenty of water. Water daily in hot or dry times. 2. They like dark, rich soil and some added garden lime and slow-release organic fertilizer at planting time. 3. Although six hours of sunshine or more is recommended, most will do fine with four. You don’t have any roses? Go buy a few. We only live once.

Most plants have a finite lifespan. Many perennials will die out in 10 years. Some trees last a hundred or more. But I often say, “Properly planted, peonies will live forever.” My maternal grandmother, Anna Lenat, died in 1953 when I was just 7 years old. My mother dug up one of her peonies and brought it to our home in Connecticut. I dug it up again in 1984 and divided it, leaving half with my mom, and planting half at my home in Cornish, New Hampshire. The roots or tubers, presumably more than 100 years old by now, still produce plenty of blossoms.

I always recommend buying peonies in June when they’re in bloom — seeing is believing. Some are fragrant — even heavenly fragrant — while others are not. Some have stiff, strong stems, while others flop even on sunny days from the weight of their magnificent blossoms. “Single” peonies have just one row of petals so are less prone to flopping. But most common are the doubles: gorgeous, but with so many petals they flop when it rains.

Peony rings are wire cages sold to hold up flower stems even on rainy days. Most are too low to really do the job right. Plus, you have to remember early in May to install them. By now mature plants are too big to fit the cages over them. My solution is to poke three bamboo stakes firmly into the soil around each plant and then connect them at the appropriate height with green garden twine. If you were a Scout, you may remember learning to tie a clove hitch. That’s the knot you want.

If you bought a nice peony a few years ago and it no longer blooms, you may have planted it too deeply or covered the “nibs” (growing points) with too much mulch. Feel around the plant to see where next year’s growth will emerge from little pointy nibs. More than an inch of cover will often inhibit blooming. Yes, you will have a healthy plant — but no blossoms.

My great Great-Granny told me that peonies need ants crawling around on the buds for them to open. Not true. Peonies attract aphids, and ants come to harvest the sweet “nectar” that is their poop.

Other great June flowers in my garden include gas plant (Dictamnus albus), which has an intense citrus odor that is strongest at dusk to attract night-flying moths.

Delphiniums are wonderful plants with stalks often over 5 feet tall and loaded with blue, purple or white blossoms. But you do need to stake them to keep them upright in the rain. Scratch in some slow-release organic fertilizer each spring as they are heavy feeders. And if you cut them back to the ground after blooming, they probably will re-bloom in the fall.

Perennial bachelor buttons (Centaurea montana) are easy to grow and make good cut flowers. Blue to purple, they love sun and will make you feel like you have made it as a gardener.

All the flowering plants are wonderful. Think back to what your parents and grandparents grew. That’s a good place to start shopping. Or better yet, see if you can dig some plants from their gardens if they will let you.

Henry can be reached at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of four gardening books.

Featured photo: Bachelor buttons have unusual, spidery flowers. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Test your soil, make it better

Asking me to name my favorite flower is, perhaps, like asking you to name your favorite child or dog. But late May brings one of my top picks: the candelabra primrose (Primula japonica). It sends up a flower stalk with a circle of florets, then it grows a few inches and sends out more blossoms, getting taller and blooming sequentially for nearly a month. They grow best in deep, rich, moist soil in partial shade and ideally under old apple trees.

Late May will also produce early peonies I love, including two part-shade peonies, Paeonia obovata and P. tenuifolia. The latter is also known as the fernleaf peony for its finely cut foliage; the blossoms are a deep red. Neither is common in garden centers, but keep an eye out for them.

Spring is a good time to improve your soil. Most commercial farmers grow food by adding chemical fertilizer to the soil before planting. I am an organic gardener, meaning I do not use pesticides nor do I use any chemical fertilizer.

Chemical fertilizers are safe to use but only provide three of the 17 elements needed by plants to grow and thrive. Granted, most of those elements are needed in very small quantities and may already be in the soil, but I want to provide my plants with the equivalent of a full five-course meal.

Chemical fertilizers only contain nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and lots of filler. A 5-10-5 fertilizer is 5 percent N, 10 percent P, and 5 percent K; the rest — 80 percent — is filler. Nitrogen in the form of nitrate and ammonia ions is used by plants to make proteins, fueling green growth. Phosphorus promotes growth of roots, blooming, seeds and fruits. Potassium is important for growing thick cell walls to survive cold and excess heat.

Plants also need other elements in order to thrive: calcium (for cell metabolism), magnesium (for chlorophyll needed for photosynthesis), sulfur (for making proteins and fats). Also needed are micronutrients like iron, chlorine, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum and nickel.

All those elements are found in organic fertilizers like Pro-Gro, Gro-Tone and others. And while most chemical fertilizers provide water-soluble elements for quick absorption, organic fertilizers are mostly slow-release, providing key elements over a period of months, or even years. Most contain things like cotton seed meal, kelp meal, ground peanut shells and ground oyster shells.

So what can you do to improve your soil? Add compost. Don’t buy just a bag or two of compost and think it will improve your whole vegetable garden with some left over for new perennials. Borrow a pick-up truck and get a “scoop” from a front-end loader at your garden center. Or get it delivered. Alternatively, you can buy aged manure from your local dairy farmer. Even aged manure will have some weed seeds, but it will add good organic material that will be used by your plants.

Why is compost so good? Well-made compost is full of microorganisms that will work with your plants. Many produce organic acids that help to dissolve minerals from fine stone particles in the soil and make those minerals available to your plants. Compost is, or should be, biologically active: full of living bacteria and fungi. And it will improve soil texture making root growth easier for your plants.

Our soils were created back during the last Ice Age when glaciers a mile thick ground up bedrock, making sand and even the finer bits of stone that are in clay and loam. Fully 50 percent of all soil is made of ground up rocks. The rest? Anywhere from 1 percent to 8 percent is organic matter, and the rest, nearly 50% of soil by volume, is air. Oxygen is absorbed by root hairs from the air in the soil.

Two other key ingredients do not come from the soil. Plants get carbon, a major part of all plants, from carbon dioxide that is in our air. Nitrogen is in our air, but most nitrogen used by plants comes from decayed plant or animal material — or is made in a chemical factory and sold as a fertilizer.

I highly recommend getting your soil tested every three to five years. Each state university offers a service for gardeners and farmers. It will tell you soil pH (a measure of acidity), soil type, levels of some soil minerals and the percentage of organic matter. It will offer suggestions on what to add to your soil, though different plants have different needs. You should strive to have 4 percent or more organic matter in your soil.

You can perform a simple test to see how well your soil holds water or drains. Dig a hole 24 inches wide and 8 inches deep with sloping sides. Fill it with your hose and time how long it takes to drain. Sandy soil will drain almost immediately. Clay soil will hold water for several hours, even overnight. Good loam might take an hour or two, depending on how much rain you’ve had recently.

Adding compost to heavy clay or sandy soils will help them considerably. Soil texture and the ability to hold some water but drain well is important to most plants. Compost does both.

Improving your soil takes years, even decades. Yes, I do use some slow-release organic fertilizer at planting time, but my real success has come from years of adding compost.

You may reach Henry at henryhomeyer@comcast.net.

Featured photo: Candelabra primroses delight me each year, starting in late May. Photo by Henry Homeyer.