Category: Outdoors

Bring the colors of summer inside

Winter drags on, even though the days are getting longer. The sun is often lurking behind gray clouds, and on a good day we only get about nine hours of light. I do miss the colors of summer, so I keep fresh cut flowers on our table — even though I have to buy them.

Cut flowers are among modern America’s true bargains. For the price of a bottle of wine — or a couple of cups of fancy coffee — you can buy flowers that will grace your table for up to three weeks. But there are some things you should know about getting good table-life for your investment.

First, you need to buy fresh flowers that have been carefully tended — and you can’t beat a florist for that. A floral shop has trained personnel who trim each stem in the store every other day and change the water to keep flowers fresh. Cut flowers need to take up water to stay fresh and healthy. Stems tend to scab over after a day or two, which means they cannot take up replacement water, or not much, so they suffer.

Here are some things you can do to promote longer vase life. Cut off leaves that would enter the water in your vase. Leaves will rot, promoting growth of bacteria, which will impede water take-up. Cut off half to three quarters of an inch of each stem every few days, and change the water. Use the packets of white powder that often comes with flowers — it does help.

Keep your arrangement cool if you can. Putting it near a radiator or woodstove or putting it in a sunny window will shorten its life. If you have invested in pricey roses or tulips, you may wish to move the vase to the entryway or mudroom at bedtime to keep the flowers extra cool during the night.

Some flowers are better picks than others if you’re on a budget and can’t afford to buy new flowers every week. Here are my recommendations for good cut flowers:

Lisianthus. These look like silk flowers to me: perfect white, pink or lavender-colored bell-shaped flowers on long stems. Tough to grow in the garden, they are perfect in a vase — I’ve kept them for up to three weeks.

Miniature carnations. Each stem has two to four blossoms. They come in a variety of colors. Mix dark red “minis” with red roses to make a bouquet of roses look fuller. And even after the roses go to Valhalla, the carnations will still be good!

Chrysanthemums. These come in a variety of sizes and colors, from the huge spider mums to little guys. I love the scent of the flowers — it’s not overpowering, but it’s there if you sniff them.

Statice. I grow these for use as dry flowers, which tells you that they really do last forever, even out of water. They come in blue, purple, pink and white.

Spray roses. Instead of a single blossom per stem, these have two to five blossoms, giving you more bang for your buck. These will last about a week, or even more with proper care.

Alstroemeria. One of the best for long life. Each long stem has clusters of 2-inch lily-like blossoms in pinks and reds, with yellow throats. If you buy them in bud, they will look good for three weeks!

Orchids. While not cheap, orchids as cut flowers can last up to a month. I love dendrobiums, though they are not common, even in floral shops. Cymbidiums have bigger blossoms and also last extremely well.

Kangaroo paws. These Australian natives are fuzzy and cute. They come in pinks, reds, orange and brown, and last very well. Not every florist will have them.

Asiatic lilies. I recently got a bouquet of five nice stems grown in New Hampshire that was sold at my local Coop food store. For $12.95, they will bloom with great elegance.

You may wish to ask where the flowers you plan to buy are from. Holland, Colombia, Ecuador and Kenya are the world’s top growers and export much of what is available. Some foreign growers have been criticized for producing flowers using strong pesticides and poor labor practices. The Sun Valley group in California is an excellent major American grower of cut flowers — but there is still the environmental cost of shipping them 3,000 miles to us. If you can buy flowers grown locally in greenhouses, do it!

Everyone loves to receive the gift of cut flowers, even us guys. So treat your loved one or yourself to fresh flowers this winter. They’re cheerful and can make winter less oppressive for gardeners.

Featured photo: Alstroemeria is a long lasting, inexpensive cutflower. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

On a cold and snowy day I paused to think back a few years to a conference I attended run by the Ecological Farming Association in Pacific Grove, California. There were several sessions by scientists presenting research confirming what organic gardeners have always known: organic techniques yield plants that resist disease and insects better, and produce better-quality and healthier vegetables. I dug out my notes, and would like to share some of what I learned.

Dr. Larry Phelan, a research scientist at Ohio State University, explained that he wanted to see if organically grown plants attracted insect pests differently than those grown using conventional techniques. He collected soil from two farms that were across the road from each other. The soils were identical except for how they had been tended for the past several years. One farm was organic, the other conventional.

To reduce other variables, Dr. Phelan brought the soil to his greenhouse and potted it up in large containers. He then grew corn in the containers, adding chemical fertilizers in some, fresh cow manure in some, and composted manure in others, using both types of soil for each method. When the corn was at the appropriate size, he released corn borers into the greenhouse and watched what happened.

Not surprisingly, the corn borers preferred the corn grown conventionally. Not only that, but the long-term history of the soil also mattered. The soil from the organic farm had higher levels of organic material in it, and consistently was less attractive to the borers, even if used with chemical fertilizers.

Why should this occur? Dr. Phelan explained that plants evolved over the millennia getting their nutrients through the soil food web, depending on the symbiotic relationships between plants and microorganisms. Soils rich in organic matter provide much needed nutrients in a slow, steady stream, the way Mother Nature does it.

He said that when a plant gets too much nitrogen, the excess is stored in the form of amino acids, the building blocks of protein. For insects, this is like candy for kids: they can detect it, and go to the source.

Dr. Autar Mattoo of the United States Department of Agriculture Research Station in Beltsville, Maryland, also presented some very interesting findings. He compared the health of tomatoes grown with chemical fertilizer on black plastic to the health of those grown organically using a mulch of hairy vetch, an annual cover crop. He found that tomatoes grown with hairy vetch were dramatically better at resisting fungal diseases, especially those that cause blackening and dropping of leaves, which is often the bane of gardeners.

Dr. Mattoo explained that the vetch fixes nitrogen when growing. Which is to say it extracts nitrogen from the air and turns it into a form that plants can use. It was mowed down before flowering and allowed to stay on the surface of the soil, producing a considerable biomass to nourish soil microorganisms.

Compared to chemical fertilizer and black plastic, Dr. Mattoo found a 25 to 30 percent increase in yield using vetch. He explained that eventually the organic tomato plants would develop fungal diseases, but that for the first 84 days after transplant (late August for us), there was virtually no leaf blackening. At the same time, the tomato plants grown conventionally were severely damaged.

He attributed much of the difference to hormone signaling. Anti-fungal proteins can be produced when specific genes are activated, protecting leaves. He explained that depending on the environmental conditions specific genes are turned on or off. He was able to show this by photographing specific genes in the leaves of the tomatoes to see their size and thus their levels of activity. It appears that something in the vetch stimulated the tomatoes to produce those anti-fungal proteins.

What does all this prove? Being an organic gardener has many benefits, and scientists are just catching up with us! So as you plan your garden projects for the spring, think about giving up your use of chemical fertilizers.

Featured photo: This artichoke from my garden was grown without chemicals. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

It starts with a trip to the lumber yard

As I write this, the wind chill factor is well below zero, and summer seems a lifetime away. But if you are thinking about starting seeds indoors this year, this would be a good time to build a simple wooden plant stand. You don’t have to be a carpenter to build this, or have expensive power tools. Your local lumber yard will cut the pieces you need.

Mine is a simple A-frame, with one shelf, and the space for more plant flats on the floor. It stands about 4 feet tall, is 5 feet wide from end to end, and 2 feet from front to back at the base. It has space for four or five flats or trays, each of which will hold at least 32 plants — more if you buy the smaller six-packs that I avoid (some flats can hold 48 to 72 plants). And if at a later time you want to grow more plants, you can put another four flats or more on the floor and add lights above them.

The lumber for this cost me about $50 and the light fixture — a simple shop light with two 4-foot LED bulbs and a plug-in cord — cost $62, although often they are more expensive. Looking at catalogs, I see that one can easily spend much more for a pre-made plant stand. If you decide you like starting plants in the house, you could buy the extra lights next to illuminate more flats on the floor.

Here is what you need to buy for the model I built:

Four pieces of 1”x3” pine, 4 feet long

Four pieces of 1”x3” pine, 5 feet long

Two pieces of 1”x3” pine, 16” long, for cross bracing

One piece ¼-inch plywood, 18”x4’ (you can use thicker plywood if you have some)

One pair 3-inch strap hinges

4 feet of ¼-inch jack chain for hanging the lights and two small cup hooks to hang the chain

One 4-foot shop light with LED bulb and a plug-in cord

30 sheet rock screws (1¼” long)

Tools: portable drill with magnetic bit to fit the screws, and a measuring tape

Most lumber yards will cut all your materials to size for you but do not have small sheets of plywood. I found that Home Depot does have plywood in 2-foot by 4-foot sheets, and they cut mine to give me a piece 18” by 4’ for the shelf. You will need to ask them to cut the 1×3 pine boards as follows: four 60-inch pieces, four 48-inch pieces, and two 16-inch pieces.

Start by making two legs for your plant stand. Lay the 4-foot pieces end to end on the floor. Do it on your deck if possible, or next to a wall so that you can get them in a straight line by lining them up with something that is straight. Lay the hinges in place so that you will be able to fold them closed (most hinges only close one way). A cordless drill with a magnetic bit for Phillips screws will make your work much easier. To start the small screws on the hinges, make a hole first with a nail or awl, or a tiny drill bit.

Next close up the hinged legs and place them 5 feet apart on the floor. Place two of the 5-foot pieces on top of the first side. One should be screwed right at the top, one 24 inches from that. Flip over the stand, and do the same on that side. Stand it up, and spread the legs 2 feet apart at the bottom. Then add a cross brace on each end of the A-frame just below support pieces for your shelves.

Lastly you need to hang the light. Mine came with S-hooks and chain, which made hanging the lights easy. If yours do not, you will have to buy them. Most shop lights have slots and holes on the back side so that you can slip in S-hooks easily to hang them. You can also open a link of your jack chain and fit it in without an S-hook — just use two pairs of pliers to bend a link open. Screw two small cup hooks into a top cross piece and attach the jack chain. The chain will allow you to raise or lower the light — lights should be about 6 inches above the plants.

Starting seedlings indoors is miraculous for me — even after doing it for decades. I hold my breath waiting for germination, and fuss over the seedlings like a mother hen. And when I bite into my first tomato in August, I have the added satisfaction of knowing I brought that tomato into my world — with lots of help from Mother Nature.

Featured photo: The finished plant stand. Photo by Henry Homeyer.