Harvesting Plums

People cannot believe that my husband and I have plum and peach trees.  The idea of growing your own fruit, in a Massachusetts suburb, seems impossibly exotic.  It is as if fruit were some kind of alien life form that only grows in California. 

Not true, as my friends, neighbors and family can attest.  Each August we harvest plums.  After the plums are the peaches.  Our pear trees died.  I read recently that they don't like wet roots; there is an underground stream in our neighborhood that may have caused their demise.

You do not need much room to grow fruit trees either.  We have less than a quarter acre of land, most of it occupied by a house and driveway.  All you need are two of each kind of fruit; they do not even have to be the same variety.  (You don't need two of a kind if a neighbor - say within a quarter of a mile, has the same type of trees.)

Two years ago we had a spectacular crop of plums.  We have two types, and they produce fruit that can be picked and eaten about two weeks apart.  Since there was so much fruit, I encouraged neighbors to help themselves.  Children seemed to love the fruit most of all.  There was even a local nun who came several times to take bags of plums back to the retired nuns at the local convent.  We were well prayed for that summer.

Last year, the harvest was not very good.  I bought the book The Holistic Orchard; Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way, by Michael Phillips, for my husband.  As with many gifts, I was the one who used it.  Luckily, my husband listened to the suggestions I got from the book (there are many; the book is very detailed).  One was to mulch the trees with ramial  wood chips (thin twigs from deciduous trees.)  Orchards, in their natural state, exist at the edge of deciduous forests, where there is lots of debris (i.e. twigs), from the established trees.  This wood has a high nitrogen content.  Thicker branches have a high carbon content (which is why they burn well, but is not a good mulch.)

The ramial wood mulch promotes a beneficial fungal environment for the tree, especially the roots.  The roots are able to work with the fungi to tap into many more nutrients in the soil than possible without the rich fungal environment.  I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understanding how and why to produce healthy, productive fruit trees.

Here is a picture of a plum right before I picked it.  The fruit ripens quickly.  If not picked, it either drops and rots, or the animals eat it.

The peach trees are full of fruit.  They will be ready to be picked in a week or two.

Hummingbird Heaven

I despaired that I would not see any hummingbirds this year.  All of the right plants are in my garden - buddleia (butterfly bush), lobelia cardinalis, garden phlox, and echinacea purpurea.  No matter, no hummingbirds.

Perhaps my cat, Jack Bauer, had scared them away.  We haven't had any goldfinches in a few years, after all.

Then, the other day, while I was picking green beans, I thought I saw a lone hummingbird startle and fly away.  Today, while waiting for a carpenter to fix part of my rood deck, I saw them - a pair of hummingbirds checking out the phlox, the buddleia, and, of course, the lobelia cardinalis.

  

As I wrote about last week, my lawn looks dreadful, I have garden patches that are way past their prime, and the most robust plants I have are weeds.  No matter, the hummingbirds are back, and I hope that they stay a while.

Not the best picture - it is hard to photograph hummingbirds.  I have been seeing one or two of them for the last several days.  The white-flowered plant is a ptatycodon (balloon flower).

Vegetables to the Rescue

My well thought-out flower garden, especially the part I see from my bedroom window, is a sad sight.  I had pinned my hopes on veronica speedwell 'eveline', a deep pink veronica, carrying on all summer long.  It will bloom again, in a week or two.  Now there are few blooms and little color.

The lawn is even sadder - full of dead and dried out spots.  My less than perfect lawn prep of 25 years ago always haunts me in mid-summer.  The lawn is uneven.  When mowed, the high parts are shaved rather than cut - leading to burned-out patches.

I always find redemption in my husband's vegetable garden.  Despite frequent, heavy rains that knocked the young fruit off the tomato plants early in the season, it looks like we will have a good crop.  My husband followed a neighbor's lead, and added several loads of compost, free at our town dump, to the vegetable patch.  Even though the tomatoes have not ripened, there are lots of them, and they look healthy.

We have been harvesting green beans, zucchini, and cucumbers. Butternut squash, a surprise plant, will be ready to be picked soon.

The squash blossoms are lovely to look at.  Some day I will try cooking them.  The zucchini will be ready in a day or two.

Worth the Bother

The middle of summer is a good time to talk about plants that are worth the bother, and those that aren't.  The red lily leaf beetle, a non-native, infests true lilies (not day lilies) in the US Northeast to such a degree that experts recommend not putting them in your garden.  The beetle eats all of the leaves, thus robbing the plant of its food source - chlorophyll.   Perhaps twenty years ago, before the arrival of the beetle, I planted several varieties of lilies.  Unfortunately, I do not remember their names.  Some of them have done well, although not as well as they used to.  My husband sprays them with pesticide in the spring. I believe that parasitic wasps, one of their only predators, have been imported from Europe, and may be controlling them naturally.

As you can see, the lilies that have survived are lovely.  They are one of my favorite plants.

A plant that I will probably get rid of in parts of my garden is phlox paniculata, or garden phlox.  The plant has a lot going for it - beautiful white, pink or magenta flowers in mid to late summer with a lovely fragrance.  What it has against it is mildew.  I have some phlox growing now that are mildew free and blooming profusely.  Others, despite careful pruning early in the summer, are full of mildew and have not started blooming yet.  I may change my mind if I get a good bloom, though.

One last note for this week.  I just dropped my oldest daughter off in Fargo, North Dakota for graduate school.  I noticed that there were no azaleas or rhododendrons - clearly the winters are too long and harsh for them to survive.  White hydrangeas were plentiful, thought, and a deep red shrub that I did not recognize.  I would have expected more prairie grasses, but saw few gardens with them.  

Wallpaper

I haven't posted in a few weeks because of the incredible heat in Boston, which made it impossible to work on my computer (3rd floor study), and because of a trip to Washington, DC to help my daughter pack up her apartment.  I am also not ready to give an overview of the season.

I titled this post "Wallpaper" because that is what one section of my border looked like - safe, coordinated, boring.

The plants in front are a violet-pink veronica (one of my favorite plants - well-behaved, easy to weed around, long-blooming, and good color choices).  The chartreuse flowers behind the veronica is Lady's mantle.  Even though shorter than the veronica, it is in the back because it is not well-behaved; it spreads.   

I added begonias with white flowers and burgundy foliage in front of the veronica.  I chopped back the Lady's mantle a bit (more will be done later).  Finally, I added two delphinium 'Black Knight" Pacific Giant.

Even though the begonias have not done much yet, they add enough of a contrast to this section of the border so that it no longer looks like wallpaper.  I hope that they grow a bit more prominent.

  
Lavender to the right and phlox to the left are getting ready to bloom.  I will give an update after my next trip - this one to Fargo, North Dakota, to help my daughter move there for graduate school.

More Color

Color hue is important in designing a garden.  So is the intensity of the hue.  Early this spring I placed three yarrow plants (achillea yarrow), in a section of border that is dominated by pastel shades.  I thought their yellow  flowers and silvery foliage, would look nice against the phlox and its white flowers.  The yarrow bloomed beautifully, and was very bright yellow - too bright for the spot.

The intense yellow dominated the space; my eye kept jumping to the yarrow, and was not moving around the border. 

I moved the yarrow to a section of border that has vibrant colors. 

 

The yarrow looks much better in its new spot, next to the brilliant orange flowers of  asclepias tuberosa (butterfly weed).

Next time, an evaluation of the season.

Color, Round 1

There are volumes written, and yet to be written, about color in the garden.  I will write about what I think is the most useful.

First, a few definitions.  Hue, is what a color is at its most basic:  red is a hue; pink is a tint of the hue red (a hue which has had white added to it.)  Burgundy is a shade of the hue red (a hue which has had black added to it.)

Below is a 12 hue color wheel - the one that I find the most helpful in my garden design.

Notice the way the colors are arranged.  Each color is opposite - or 180 degrees away from - its complement, or color which does not contain any of its opposite.  For instance, yellow is opposite violet.  There is no yellow in violet - violet is a combination of red and blue.

Complements are important in all color design, for they give the design balance, which the eye is always looking for.  An unsettling situation occurs when hues are used that are almost complements, for example, yellow-orange and violet.  This combination can (doesn't always) create simultaneous contrast.  In this case, the eye keeps hunting for balance which is almost there, but not quite.  Simultaneous contrast can most easily be seen in Op Art, where the image created can appear to be moving.  This phenomenon does not usually happen in the garden because there is so much green around.  The way to defuse simultaneous contrast is to add another color.

You can also use colors that are neither complements nor near complements.  Such a scheme might include red, yellow, and blue.  This combination would be boring if you were just to use these three hues, as you might in a graphic design.  This combination is less boring in a garden because of the presence of so much green.  The green actually helps tie the colors together because green contains yellow and blue, and is the complement of red.

Next time, I will write about intensity of color.