Category: The Gardening Guy

We’ve already had some chilly nights here in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire. Frost is still a long way off, but a few leaves are already turning and I’m thinking about my fall chores and getting a few done now. Let’s take a look at some chores you might wish to add to your list.

First, have a good look at your lawn. If you have bare spots or areas where your grass is thin, this is a good time to “over-seed” those places. You’ll be helped by temperatures that are cooler and rain that is usually more frequent.

I recently called Paul Sachs, a lawn expert and the owner of North Country Organics, a Vermont-based organic fertilizer producer. Paul suggested scratching up the area that needs help with a rake, sprinkling some seed over the area and tamping it down to ensure good contact with the soil. I use a metal tamper that does this well: it is a thick metal plate 8 inches square on a 4-foot handle. Lift it a few inches, drop it. Thud. Done.

Lawn seed needs light to germinate, so don’t cover your seed with soil. You can mulch lightly with straw to shade it and reduce evaporation. Seed needs to be kept lightly moist in order to germinate. In hot dry times, water daily. I generally use a “conservation mix” for the seed — it’s a good mixture of grass types. Paul Sachs told me you can over-seed through the end of October. I say do it sooner rather than later, preferably right after a rain.

If you haven’t harvested your potatoes yet, do so soon. If they have bloomed or if the leaves are yellowing and dying back it is time to do so. Try to avoid damaging your potatoes when digging. If your soil is loose and fluffy, you can tug gently on the main stem while loosening soil from around the plant with your other hand. If your soil is heavy, push your shovel into the ground at a 45-degree angle to get well under the plant, and pry upward. Potatoes store best unwashed and cured in the shade for a couple of days before going in a storage fridge or a cool, dark basement. Mice love potatoes, so make sure they can’t get to them.

Recently I planted another batch of lettuce, and I recommend you do, too. Lettuce seeds need sunlight to germinate, so you shouldn’t cover them with too much soil. A sprinkling of agricultural vermiculite (instead of soil) works fine. But if you plant seeds directly in the ground and you press down the seeds, it can form a little gully that fills up with soil when watering. I did that once this year and got only three seeds to germinate in a double 4-foot row. (Shame on me, I know better.) When I planted seeds in my waist-tall raised growing bed I was able to water gently and had germination in five days! I thinned out some seedlings and replanted, but I need to thin the rows some more.

Fall is a good time to move things around in the garden, including trees and shrubs. Scientists have determined that woody plants extend their roots after leaf drop in the fall. If you transplant now, be sure to water daily for the first week or so, and at least weekly after that, or more often if it’s hot and dry.

I recently dug a mature honeyberry shrub (Lonicera caerulea) and gave it to some new friends. It was about 5 feet wide and 30 inches tall. It had provided birds with nice snacks in early summer, but I got only a few berries since birds eat them earlier than I do, and I refuse to use netting.

I pushed a long shovel (sold as The Root Slayer) into the soil and pried up the soil all the way around. I tried to get the shovel under the middle of the plant from all four sides before gently lifting it and placing it on a tarp we used for moving it to my friend’s truck. Fortunately honeyberry has no tap root, which would have made the digging more difficult. Oaks (and most nut trees) grow deep tap roots making transplanting difficult after their first year and requiring severing the tap root.

This is a good time to do a little planning: If you plan to plant spring-blooming bulbs or garlic, buy or order them soon. Seed garlic often sells out long before planting time in October. Visit your local farmers market or gardening center to buy garlic now unless you plan to sacrifice some of this year’s harvest for planting.

Lastly, take a walk around your property and ask yourself, “Do I really like this plant? Should I pull it and replace it with something else?” I’ve run out of space in my garden, so I am doing that now and sharing plants with friends to make space for new plants.

Henry has been gardening in Cornish Flat since he bought his home in 1970. You can reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

By mid-August many of us have sighed with relief and settled into a comfy chair in the shade. Planting is done. Weeds? Either under control or not going to be controlled until Jack Frost comes along. We pick our tomatoes, fill a few vases with late bloomers and generally relax. But this is a good time to work on controlling invasive plants. Let’s look at a few of the culprits and what we might do. Three shrubs or small trees I have been working on are buckthorn, multiflora rose and bush honeysuckle.

Buckthorn is difficult to eradicate because if you just cut it down, the roots send up dozens of new plants. If you are patient, you can double girdle a trunk with a small folding saw, cutting through the bark and green layer beneath it but not cutting into the core wood beneath that. This prevents the leaves from feeding the roots, starving them. I’ve done this, but generally it takes three years to kill the tree. No new shoots come from it. But I’m 80 now and don’t want to wait three years.

So what have I been doing? Digging out the plants, roots and all. It’s slow but generally doable. I shall see next spring if the inevitable fragments of roots left in the soil send up new shoots. But if they do, they should be easier to get out. I am working on plants no more than an inch and a half in diameter at the base.

I start with my CobraHead weeder, raking through the soil, exposing roots and teasing them out. I then rock the main stem to loosen up the roots some more, and I try to get roots exposed on one side and pull them out of the ground, then tip the small tree over the other way. I then get a long shovel under the center of the tree and try to pry it up. If there are deep roots going straight down, I slice them off and try to dig them out after I have removed the tree and the surface roots.

Buckthorns are showing ripe fruit in my neighborhood right now — dark shiny berries that have a pit like a small cherry in the middle. Birds eat them and excrete the seeds, starting new plants. Common buckthorn has male and female plants, and only the females have berries. Glossy buckthorn is self-pollinating, so all produce fruit. I have a male common buckthorn and although it has not made fruit it has sent up about three dozen root sprouts in a radius of 6 feet or so, all interconnected.

Most trees have either alternate or opposite branching of leaves and branches. Not the buckthorns; they have “sub-opposite” branching. Twigs are not quite opposite on the branches, one just a little below the other. That’s a good way to help identify buckthorns.

Multiflora roses (Rosa multiflora) were introduced by the USDA in the 1930s for use in erosion control and as living fences. They were used by highway departments in the 1960s in divided highways as crash barriers and a way to screen headlight glare. Unfortunately, they escaped and became a dreadful noxious invasive. They can strangle trees and make it impossible to walk through areas where they have taken over.

Birds introduced multiflora roses to my property just a few years ago. I had seen it elsewhere and knew it, so I began digging it out before it became a serious problem. But it will be on my “to do” list, I fear, till the day I die. I have found its roots spread far and wide, and the thorns are dreadful. This is a job to hire out if you can find someone willing to take it on, and must be done every year.

I try to at least cut it back before animals spread the seeds found in the rose hips. Digging it out is a “later in the fall” project for me so I can wear heavy canvas jeans, jacket and gloves. The roots, in my experience, are not particularly deep. However, that may vary according to the type of soil you have. Digging out roots is always easiest when the soil is moist, not dry.

There are many species of honeysuckle, both native and foreign invasive that grow in New England; of these, four bush honeysuckle are invasive. If you have honeysuckle and didn’t plant it, it probably is one of the invasive ones. I have honeysuckle as a problem plant at the edges of my property. Right now it is displaying juicy red berries that have three small hard seeds inside. If you cut the stem, it has a hollow center, or a dark area at the center.

In my experience digging up a honeysuckle is much easier than getting out a buckthorn or multiflora rose. This is due, in part, to the fact that the roots seem to stay closer to the surface and can be exposed by digging with my CobraHead weeder. Sometimes they break when I pull on them, and I don’t really know if those bits will create new plants. I will mark where the honeysuckles were pulled, and revisit the sites where they were growing next spring to see if new plants are growing.

The list of invasives is long but most gardens have some of them. Both New Hampshire and Vermont have good websites with complete lists. New Hampshire will identify invasives for you from photos you send in. The most important things to do are to learn about your invasives, and to work every year to remove some.

Removing invasives is hard work but very satisfying. I recommend getting rid of root systems and fruit in household trash or in your fireplace — never in your compost pile, where they may survive and thrive.

Henry’s column appears twice monthly. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.

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.