November « 2017 « The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

November 30, 2017

Fall flowers of witch hazel

Filed under: Flowers,Native plants — bob @ 7:46 am

By the time mid-November in Michigan rolls around you’d think that we’ve seen the last of blooming plants until spring, that’s what I though anyway. Once again, I forgot all about our witch hazel bush that started blooming a week or so before Thanksgiving.

Witch hazel is a native plant in our area. Back when I was a kid I used to see them along the edge of the woods near our house and wonder; are those spidery-looking yellow things on that bush really flowers?

Like many other plants, witch hazel flowers are pollinated by insects, despite the fact that November is not the biggest month for insects in Michigan. With this warm November we’ve been having, there has to be a lot more insects around to pollinate the flowers. Maybe that will result in a larger than average crop of witch hazel seeds.

They’re not gaudy or even very showy but witch hazel flowers are still a nice surprise in the fall.

Although pollination happens this time of the year, the seeds don’t start to grow until spring. They are produced in easy-to-see, green, capsule-like structures that form where the flowers were. Later in the summer as the capsules turn brown and ripen, the seeds are explosively ejected up to 30 feet away. I’ve never had a chance to see this in person but might one of these days since our shrub is right next to the deck.

Witch hazels grow very slowly, the one in our yard is about eight feet tall and has been there for almost 15 years. That can be an advantage in smaller yards since they rarely get too big for a space and out-grow their welcome. They can get up to 20 feet tall but I’ve never seen one taller than around 12 feet in our neck of the woods.

Plant nurseries and garden centers sell potted witch hazel. But be aware that they often offer the imported Japanese witch hazel or Chinese witch hazel, both of which bloom in late winter rather than in the fall.

Bob

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November 27, 2017

Exploding lupine seedpods in the house

Filed under: Flowers,Native plants,Seeds — bob @ 7:43 am

I was a startled the other day as I was putting on my coat getting ready to go outside. It was quiet in the house and I was the only one home. All of a sudden I heard a snap and the clickey-clack sound of what sounded like small beads landing on the table and front entry tile floor. At first I thought maybe the cat had discovered something and was playing. I often blame the cat for things but to be honest, he very rarely is at fault. I looked up thinking a part the ceiling lamp had disintegrated or one of the lights failed however, everything was intact.

It took a few minutes of investigating but I found out what caused the mysterious sound. Scattered around on the floor and furniture I found a whole slew of seeds that I quickly realized were lupine seeds. Earlier this fall we collected some lupine seed pods from a roadside near us hoping to re-establish a Lupine perennis population on our property. When we got home, we put the pods in a bowl on the table in the front entry and just forgot all about them.

Plants have many ways of spreading their seeds. For example, squirrels bury acorns, maple trees have those little helicopters thingys and milkweed uses silky parashoots that are carried by the wind. Other seeds stick to animals or pass through the digestive systems of birds and are dropped far away from the parent plant.

Here’s a few lupine seeds that I found scattered around the house. They are explosively thrown from the fuzzy pods when they’re ripe.

Lupine seed pods explode when they mature, throwing seeds several feet in all directions. Botanists call this spontaneous phenomenon dehiscence. You may have seen this with other plants such as impatiens or sorrels. In this case, inside the house, it was very surprising.

I made a mental note to make sure I told my wife about it but, through the course of a busy day, I forgot about it. Later that evening when were binge watching Blue Bloods, all of a sudden we heard a snap! and the clicking sound of seeds bouncing off of the walls. Another seed pod exploded ricocheting seeds all over the place. It was then I remembered what it was I meant to tell her.

The mystery sound was solved and the cat was once again vindicated.

Bob

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November 16, 2017

Three impressive tomato varieties

Filed under: Disease,Vegetables — bob @ 12:12 pm

Earlier in this past growing season I took an informal survey of how a number of tomato varieties were responding to leaf spot diseases. You can go back and read the post to find out how things were going for them at that time.

I kept an eye on them through the season and watched their progress. In one garden I applied a couple of sprays of an organic fungicide, that didn’t seem to make much difference; it may have helped if I kept it up. As expected, on all of the plants, sprayed or not, the leaf spot symptoms got progressively worse as the fruit on the plants began to grow and develop. It takes a lot of plant energy to produce a crop of tomatoes.

A curious thing happened on one variety at the end of the season. The heirloom variety, Granny Cantrell, began to shake off the fungal infection. While the other tomato plants lost pretty much all of their leaves and most of them actually died back, the Granny Cantrell plants shed their infected leaves and grew very healthy looking replacement leaves. That was something I’ve never seen in a tomato plant. Sure, many varieties struggle to send out more leaves but they never seem to amount to much. Not only were they growing leaves but they were also ripening existing fruit and producing new tomatoes to boot! Our growing season is too short for the plants to continue to grow so I’ll never know if the new shoots would have continued to grow without leaf spot symptoms. It may be a useful trait that tomato breeders could use to develop a new variety.

Notice the new green foliage on the Granny Cantrell plant on the right compared to the defoliated tomato on the left.

Juliet was another noteworthy tomato. They had good resistance to the diseases throughout the growing season and produced a huge crop of tomatoes, far out pacing any variety I grew this year.

All of the tomatoes I grew were tasty, how could they not be? since they were vine-ripened and eaten right after picking. All the people who tasted the tomatoes; and there were quite a few, agreed that Cherokee Purple was their hands down favorite. Cherokee Purple however, had little disease resistance and didn’t produce very many tomatoes at all. They also have very thin skin making the very hard to handle without damaging them. They are not a typical red tomato so their coloring made it harder to distinguish when they were ripe. Also their flesh inside has a distinctive purple hue that, along with their taste makes the quite memorable.

Bob

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November 14, 2017

Canada geese and rye seeds

Filed under: Animals,Cover crops — bob @ 6:35 am

One of the best things you can do for your garden is to plant winter rye; the same crop that farmers grow for flour that eventually gets made into rye bread. Last year at this time I wrote a couple of posts about how to sow rye. You can scroll back and find those posts if you’d like to read about it.

This year I planted my rye about ten days later than usual — big mistake. Not only was it late for planting, it turned out to be the middle of the Canada goose migration.

I carefully prepared the soil by removing weeds and debris. Then I mowed the finer textured plant material that was left. Next, I roto-tilled to make a nice seed bed.Broadcasting the rye with a seed/fertilizer spreader works good, which is what I did. Since my original plan was not to rake in the seed, I doubled the recommended seeding rate. With that all of that done I was sure the garden was all set for a long winter’s nap.

A couple of geese had discovered all of that rye seed laying on top of the ground in my garden and decided to help themselves to a free meal. It wasn’t long before other migrating geese looked down and saw what was happening in my garden. It turned out to be a free-for-all once they landed.To a goose, the seed must look like an easy meal.

By the time I checked my garden a couple of days later, it was all over. Not a seed could I find, the garden looked like it had been used as a feed lot. Goose tracks covered every square inch. They ate all 100 pounds of my rye seed in one day.

I re-seeded again the next day only this time I raked in the seed and surrounded the garden with wooded stakes with twine strung between then. The twine is about a foot off of the ground and has some plastic ribbon tied to it. That seems to be enough to deter them.

Canada Geese are strong, graceful flyers and are at home on the water. But on land, they’re at a disadvantage. They can waddle to move short distances but can’t run very fast or negotiate obstacles very well. Being on land makes them more vulnerable to predators than when they’re in the water or flying. That twine is just enough to to make them nervous about getting tangled up so they stay out of the garden. A few strands of twine criss-crossed inside the garden reinforces the effect.

If we have a mild late-fall, my rye may have enough time to germinate and get established. If not I’ll have learned a valuable lesson about putting off planting my cover crop.

Bob

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