Author: Henry Homeyer

Start small to build up your garden

Tired of mowing your lawn, but afraid to stop? What would it look like, and what would the neighbors say? I was on a panel discussing “re-wilding” the lawn on New Hampshire Public Radio recently. Here are a few of the points we discussed.

First, a lawn is the easiest, least time-consuming way to maintain your property. If you want a meadow of flowers for birds, bees and pollinators of all kinds, lots of work is involved. You can’t just quit mowing, or rototill the lawn and broadcast some wildflower seeds, and then step back to enjoy. You would get some nice flowers, but your yard would also fill up with weeds and invasive trees.

My advice? Start small. A little corner of the yard, say something four feet wide and 15 feet long, would be a good start. Decide how much time you can commit to it, and how often you want to work in the garden. Can you dedicate half an hour each morning before work? An hour after work? Good gardens are built by people who do something in the garden every day.

Get a soil test done. New Hampshire and Rhode Island have stopped doing tests, Vermont will do them for Vermonters, and Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut accept samples from out of state. Get a home gardener test with as much info as possible.

Next, you have to remove the grass. That means slicing through the lawn to create one-foot by one-foot squares that you can remove and take away to your (new?) compost pile. Don’t try to do it all at once. Do a little at a time.

Do your homework. Read books and go online to see what will work in your yard. Do you have full sun (six hours or more each day), part sun, or shade? Is your site hot and dry or cool and moist? Select flowers that will work in your climatic zone, and get a variety of bloom times: some for spring, others for early summer, late summer and fall.

Improve your soil. All soil can be improved with compost. Buy it by the truckload, not the bag. Get it delivered if you don’t have a truck. Work the compost into the soil after the grass is removed.

If you want to support butterflies, birds and bees, think native plants. Native plants are those that co-evolved with the wildlife. And let wildflowers be part of the mix. Right now Queen Anne’s lace is in bloom along the roadside. It’s a biennial in the carrot family and is loved by the bees. Learn to recognize the small first-year plants, dig up a few and plant them. Once established, the flowers will drop seeds each year.

But what about the neighbors? One of the panelists had done a study in Springfield, Mass. She asked homeowners to mow their lawn either weekly, every two weeks, or every three weeks. So that the neighbors would be more understanding, they put signs in the yards telling others that they were part of a scientific study.

They counted insects and found a two-week schedule for mowing was best for bees and pollinators: clover and dandelions had time to bloom and to provide food without being hidden in tall grass.

To create a sustainable non-lawn, you need to introduce not only those tall, bright flowers like black-eyed Susans and purple coneflower, but groundcovers that will fill in between plants.

One of the panelists, Thomas Rainer, is the co-author with Claudia West of the book Planting in the Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes. In their book they explain that in nature there are plant communities: plants that need roughly the same soil and light, and that co-exist nicely. If you want a balanced plant community, you need a diverse, supportive collection of plants, including groundcovers.

Groundcovers can act a bit like mulch: They can prevent soil erosion and suppress weeds. It is often tough to find good native groundcovers like groundsel or goldenstar for sale, but they are available if you look hard enough. Winecup is a good groundcover for hot dry, sunny places, and is often available. Oregano and thyme can be used as an understory ground cover that bees love, and they are readily available.

And Creeping Charlie? It’s that “weed” hated by lawn-lovers because it can “spoil” a nice lawn and spread like crazy in part shade. But it is a native plant with nice flowers and is loved by bees. Think about letting it proliferate in your “non-lawn.”

Lastly, if you want a landscape that is beautiful and low-maintenance, think about planting trees and shrubs. Many bloom nicely and all are useful to wildlife. Some native shrubs that I grow and love are fothergilla, blueberries, elderberry, buttonbush and our native rhododendron and azalea.

If you stop mowing the grass and want flowers, put up a sign. I recently saw one that was very simple: it said “Butterfly Crossing.” Hopefully that appeased the neighbors a little.

A sign like this lets neighbors know you are not lazy, but letting the lawn grow for a reason. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Three plants to avoid

Three plants you don’t want on your property are wild parsnips, purple loosestrife and Norway maples. The first causes severe skin reactions in many people, the second can take over our wetlands and the last can outcompete our native sugar maple — and eventually take over our woods.

Wild parsnip is in bloom now. It’s a tall plant, 24 to 60 inches, and has yellow blossoms arranged in flat flower panicles at the top of the stems. It looks a lot like Queen Anne’s lace. It is genetically the same plant as garden parsnips but has escaped and become a weed. Some people are horribly allergic to its sap.

Here’s how you and your kids can stay safe. Learn what it looks like, and avoid it. Sap from the stem, if on the skin and exposed to direct sunlight, can cause horrible burns. Not everyone reacts, however. Assume you do. If you get sap on you, go inside immediately and wash the affected area thoroughly.

Wild parsnip has a two-year cycle; the first year it stays low and develops a deep tap root. The second year it bolts and produces a tall flower stalk. If you have a field of wild parsnip, get it mowed before the flowers set seeds, and re-mowed until it gives up. The sooner you mow it, the less likely the flowers are to produce viable seeds after they are cut down.

First-year plants growing now will send up flower stalks next year. And each year, for a while, seeds in the ground will grow new plants. But each year there will be fewer, and eventually they will be gone.

This is the time of year when swampy areas often are ablaze with tall, pink-purple flowers that dominate the wetland. These are the flowers of purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), an invasive plant that you should not encourage — but that you probably can’t get rid of once established.

But why worry about it? It’s such an aggressive grower that it out-competes native plants. It moves into shallow wetlands where fish and frogs lay their eggs among native plants, creating dense monocultures. Biodiversity is healthy for the environment, and purple loosestrife inhibits many other kinds of plants from growing.

Mature plants develop massive root systems that can’t be dug out. They also develop long side-roots that will easily break off and start new plants if you try to remove the clumps.

A big clump can produce up to 2.7 million seeds in a year. And like time-release cold capsules, the seeds become active over time, not all in one year. And since they grow in wetlands, you can’t use herbicides.

If you have big, established plants the best thing to do is cut them down every summer, just above the soil line, preferably more than once. Do it now, and this should prevent them from producing seeds this year. It will also reduce the vigor of the plants. It won’t kill them, but it will keep them from spreading. A string trimmer will do the job, if you have one.

First- or second-year plants often show up in my garden near my stream but can be hand-pulled. Look for plants with a square stem that quickly get 18 to 24 inches tall and may have a reddish-brown tinge to their stems. Older plants get to be three to seven feet tall or more. Leaves are long and narrow with a smooth edge, and they attach directly to the stalk — without an attachment stem. Leaves generally appear in pairs, across from each other on a stalk. Many flower stems arise from the main stem.

Beetles from Europe have been introduced in some places to eat purple loosestrife, reducing populations by as much as 90 percent. But those beetles are not available for purchase, at least not yet. So if you have it, cut the plants down. Today!

Lastly, there is the Norway maple, a maple that will thrive anywhere — wet, dry, shady or sunny. It sends roots long distances, sucking up water and soil nutrients. It produces massive numbers of seeds, seeds that blow or wash away and end up in our woods. It can out-compete our native sugar maples, and will. Fortunately, it is now against the law to propagate, sell or transport these bad boys.

The most popular Norway maple is a cultivar called “Crimson King.” It has leaves that are a deep purple — almost black. Many cities and homeowners bought these 50 years ago and installed them. Removing them is difficult and expensive.

Here’s another problem: Crimson King is a hybrid, and its seeds rarely produce trees with that distinctive purple color. So they pass themselves off as sugar maples.

The leaves are a bit bigger and wider than sugar maples, but you can I.D. a Norway maple by picking a leaf. Look at the place where it snapped off: if it oozes a white sap, it is a Norway maple. If you have one, please consider having it removed.

Saving the world starts with small steps. If we each do what we can, we can leave the world a better place.

‘Crimson King’ Norway maple. Photo courtesy of Henry Homeyer.

Why tomatoes rule

If I could only bring the seeds of one plant with me when exiled to a distant island, I would bring tomato seeds. Tomatoes are the center of much of my cuisine from soups and stews to sandwiches and salads. They are tasty raw or cooked, are healthy to eat, and are relatively easy to grow and propagate. My tomatoes are ripening up now, and I’m not only eating them two or three times a day, I’m putting them up for winter use.

My mother and grandmother slaved over a hot stove in August and September to can whole tomatoes or to make sauce and store it in jars. I rarely do. Mainly I freeze tomatoes whole. I call them my “red rocks” and store them in zipper bags for use in soups and stews.

To prepare red rocks I simply rinse them off, allow them to dry, and slip them into gallon freezer-grade plastic bags. I use a straw to suck the air out of the bag after I have the zipper closed 99 percent of the way. That minimizes frost on the tomatoes in the freezer.

To use frozen tomatoes, I just run hot water from the faucet over them. The skin thaws quickly, and rubs right off. Or I’ll drop a few in a pan of hot water. That helps to thaw the tomatoes and makes them easier to chop up for use. If I freeze cherry tomatoes, I don’t bother removing the skins before cooking with them.

I have a couple of food dehydrators that I use to dry tomatoes, too. The Cadillac of dehydrators is the Excalibur. Mine is a $300 deluxe model that blows hot air sideways equally over all nine trays. My other is the NESCO American Harvester, a serviceable machine that pushes air up or down through a stack of trays.

The downside to the NESCO model is that you must rotate the trays to get equal drying. And it uses 1,000 watts of energy per hour, while the Excalibur uses only 660 watts. Still, at about $125 for the basic machine, it is more affordable. You can stack up to 30 round 15-inch trays over the fan and heating element, but the more trays you add, the longer it takes to dry all the food. I find about eight trays is as many as I want to stack.

Most summers I grow eight to 12 Sun Gold cherry tomato plants, and each is prolific. Most of the fruit I dry in my dehydrators. I cut them in half and dry, cut side up. I store them in zipper bags in the fridge or freezer, and use them in soups and stews. Dried tomatoes can be stored in the pantry, too.

Sometimes I dry plum or slicing tomatoes. I cut them about 3/8 of an inch thick. They tend to stick to the trays, so be sure to buy the special no-stick screens to put on the trays. That makes cleanup much easier.

A sandwich is not really a sandwich, for me, without slices of tomato. One way to save slices of tomato for winter use is to roast them. I do so in the oven at low heat until they are caramelized and soft, not tough and dry. Then I place them in zipper bags and freeze them — but just one layer of tomatoes per bag. When I crave a tomato in my sandwich, I pull out a few slices and heat in my toaster oven until warm. Not a fresh tomato, but better than most sold in the grocery store in January.

I also make tomato paste. Lots of paste. I store it by freezing it in ice cube trays, and then putting it in zipper bags when frozen. No more half-used cans of purchased paste going fuzzy in the fridge for me. To make paste I use imperfect tomatoes — and I usually have plenty. I cut out the bad spots, then core them. I squeeze the cored tomatoes in the sink, which gets rid of most seeds and lots of juice. Then I quarter them, place them in a food processor, puree, and then add to a large enameled iron pot and cook them slowly for hours. I know they are done when I can literally stand up a spoon in the pot. I let it sit all night, uncovered, to cool and lose some more water. In the morning I spoon the paste in the ice cube trays. When it’s frozen, I empty the trays and put cubes in zipper bags.

Canning tomato sauce the old-fashioned way is hard work and takes hours of work. Part of that work is blending the tomatoes and herbs, salt and pepper to get the flavor and consistency just right. In addition to pureed tomatoes I use onions, garlic, basil, oregano, parsley and thyme. I cook it for 45 minutes or so, as I like it nice and thick.

But then there is the canning itself. First you have to boil the jars and lids to sterilize them. Once they’re filled with cooked sauce, one needs to boil the sauce in sealed jars to kill the bacteria that causes botulism, a potentially fatal disease. Forty minutes at a rolling boil is recommended. All in all, making seven jars of sauce — which is what a canning pot can hold — takes an evening.

The Lazy Guy technique for making sauce is to freeze it, not can it. I have an aversion to using plastic for storing food, but make an exception for tomato sauce. I have quart plastic containers with screw tops, though one can also use zipper bags. Since I have two large freezers, I have plenty of space for garden produce.

People raise their eyebrows when I tell them I grow between 35 and 50 tomato plants each year. But since I eat my own stored tomatoes all year, I can barely grow enough of the Queen of the Garden.

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Making your garden a very special place

By Henry Homeyer

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My garden is the place I go in times of sadness, worry or stress. It makes me feel better. I took a few moments one morning recently to really look at what was in my garden to see what made it so special. I saw that in addition to the plants (and who cannot be happy snacking on red raspberries or Sun Gold cherry tomatoes?), I have many things that remind me of friends and of good times. Let’s take a look at my garden, and perhaps you’ll get some inspiration for yours.

I’ve been working on my gardens for about 40 years and have created some nice stone projects. As a young man I built a low 80-foot stone retaining wall to create a terrace that would allow me to plant some fruit trees — most of my full-sun space was near a small stream with a high water table, which is not good for fruit trees.

I worked with my stepson, Josh Yunger, who was a young teenager at the time. It was fun working with him, finding stones on the property and from a tumbledown wall a neighbor, George Edson, had allowed me to pick through. I knew little about walls but had the basics. One stone over two. We mostly found stones with rounded shapes, not flat stones.

And I didn’t know to use crushed stone, not round pebbles, to act as drainage and support for the wall. So those round stones sitting on round pebbles, over time, moved and the wall has slipped and fallen in places. But now it is mostly hidden by plants, and its ramshackle appearance doesn’t bother me. And I feel good when thinking about the work Josh and I did.

If building a stone wall is too much for you, how about placing a long, thin stone standing vertically as an accent in the garden? I have a few of those, and they look great all year round. Just stand up a 36- to 60-inch-long pillar of a stone in a hole 18 to 24 inches deep. Add some loaf-of-bread sized stones in the bottom, and dump in a bag of dry concrete mix. Fill in the rest with soil and pack it well.

I have three nice Japanese red maples that bring fond memories. Two came from my parents’ home in Connecticut, another from a friend. I dug two of them as foot-tall saplings, one bigger. One of these I planted in the early 1970s and it is now 10 feet tall and wide with a 6-inch-diameter trunk at the base. I see it and often think of the 60-foot-tall “mother plant” I climbed as a boy.

Other things are easier than stone projects. I have two nice blue ceramic bird baths. They contrast nicely with the flowers around them, even though no birds ever bathe there. But I love the water in them, and that my wife Cindy Heath floats cut flowers in them. (Yes, my longtime partner and I finally got married July 1 in a Zoom wedding attended by loved ones all over.)

I have a lovely high-temperature fire urn in the garden, a birthday present from Cindy this year. It makes me happy every time I see it. It has a drainage hole and the potter, Stephen Proctor of Brattleboro, Vermont, tells us that it can stay outside all year. Always a bit of a worrier, I will bring it inside before Christmas. It’s too nice to risk having it crack.

A new garden this year is just an oval 7 by 10 feet. I put in a Y-shaped path so it looks like a peace sign from the 1960s. One section is dedicated to milkweed plants for the monarch butterflies. The milkweed will, I suspect, eventually take over the entire garden. But for now? I love seeing the peace symbol —‌ it reminds me of my activist youth.

Then there is my 16- by 20-foot barn. I had a barn raising event in the late 1990s and had more than 30 friends show up. My late friend Bernice Johnson, then in her eighties, showed up with a little hammer in her hand. It makes me happy when I think of that day, and that we got the walls up and rafters on in one day. And now Cindy keeps it tidy inside —‌ something I never managed to do.

Speaking of Cindy, this year she built a gravel walkway down that 80-foot terrace I built for fruit trees in the ’90s. She did an amazing job, lining the path with old bricks I had salvaged from chimneys I removed. The path has a crushed stone base, landscape fabric and then a pea stone layer on top. And of course, Cindy has removed the weeds along the sides, and mulched the beds nicely. It makes me happy to walk along it.

I love the perennials I have gotten from friends and from gardeners I have interviewed. I remember every plant given to me, who gave it to me, and often when I got it. It’s part of what makes my garden so special to me. Now I tend to add little white plastic tags labeled with that information so it will be available even if I am not always around to provide that information.

I recently saw two Doric-style white wood columns free by the side of the road. I stopped. Garden art? Sure. I was in my old green truck, so I loaded them in, and now I have a new project. Not sure how I’ll use them, or where. But they’ll make me happy and remind me of traveling through Europe back when I was a young man. Gardens are good that way. Mine provide plenty of happy memories.

Featured Photo: Peastone walkway. Photo by Henry Homeyer.