Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter October 29, 2013

October 29, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter


These weekly garden notes are written by Kim Willis, unless another author is noted, and the opinions expressed in these notes are her opinions and do not represent any other individual, group or organizations opinions.

Hello Gardeners
Chickens like to carve pumpkins too.
Thinking of Halloween makes me realize we are reaching the dark time of the year.  All these gloomy dark days surely are giving us a preview of Michigan winter.  Unfortunately for trick or treaters we are supposed to get a good soaking rain late Thursday but as a gardener I think that it’s good because we are behind in precipitation for the season.  We really need to get some moisture in the ground before it freezes.   If we don’t get an inch or two of rain in the next few days you should water any fall planted trees, shrubs or perennials.

I had flocks of robins and red winged blackbirds around the pond this week, a sign that the birds are still here, maybe they went farther north this summer.  They are here now because they are migrating south and stop to eat the autumn olive berries.  On the few sunny mornings we had they were really noisy. 

My last apple tree to ripen, the ginger gold, is keeping me busy processing apples.  They are smaller this year because the tree is so loaded, but they still make dandy pies.  I have made a lot of apple butter and put up many quarts of frozen sliced apples for winter baking and still have a bunch to go.

My front yard is literally deep in walnuts.  They are having a bumper crop this year too.  A gentleman stopped and asked me if he could have some and I told him to take all he wanted.  I saw him put several large boxes full of them in his car. I thought I would be able to go out in the yard now and walk without turning an ankle but when I went outside I couldn’t even tell where he had picked up the nuts!

I should be a nice little homesteader and clean and crack those nuts for cooking.  My grandpa did.  But I know just how much work and mess it is from watching and helping him and I think I will pass, even though shelled black walnut meats sell for $30 a pound or more. (It takes a couple bushels of nuts to get that and about 30 hours of work.)

Annual trial results

Every year MSU’s horticulture department grows dozens of new varieties of annuals to see how they perform in the garden.  Seeds or cuttings are sent to them from all over the world to be tested.  MSU then publishes the results late in the season.  The plants are rated from 1- very poor to 5- very best.  Here are the plants rated a 5 in this year’s trial.

Annuals in fall.
Angelonia Archangel 'Raspberry Improved', the begonias; Dragone 'Dusty Rose',     Dragone 'Sunset', Begonia benarianesis Surefire 'Rose' and ‘Surefire 'Red' Calibrachoa Celebration 'Banana', Coleus 'Redhead', Coleus 'Sultana', Coleus 'Vino', Coleus 'Wasabi', Coleus 'Henna' and Pennisetum Graceful Grasses 'Vertigo'.

Ongoing native plant trial results

Native plants have become extremely popular with gardeners and in 2009 MSU began a trial garden of 18 kinds of commonly sold native plants.  These are perennial and the results from year to year were expected to differ.  Here are MSU’s notes on the native plants in their trial garden earlier this year.

Allium cernuum Nodding Wild Onion - 2013 still going strong
Aralia racemosa Spikenard - has survived and is very nice in fall
Eragrostis spectabilis Purple Love Grass - has struggled after a few years. A few plants remaining
Geranium maculatum Wild Geranium - still doing well
Heuchera americana Alum Root - still doing well
Koeleria macrantha June Grass - has not performed well in this site.
Lobelia cardinalis Cardinal Flower - still going strong - doing great for what is usually considered a short-lived perennial
Lobelia siphilitica Blue Lobelia - very nice performance every year
Monarda punctata Horsemint - has completely died out
Penstemon hirsutus Penstemon - very very nice in flower
Rudbeckia laciniata Green Headed Coneflower - lovely - large and showy
Senecio obovatus Round Leaved ragwort - blooms very early - and then looks a bit rough the rest of the year
Senna hebecarpa Wild Senna - very nice but seeds out very freely
Smilacina stellata Starry Solomon Seal - has done very well - even with half a day of sunshine
Solidago flexicaulis Zig-Zag goldenrod - interesting plant - not very showy in typical garden sense - but has not spread
Verbena stricta Hoary Vervain - has completely died out
Vernonia missurica Ironweed - doing very well - massive
Veronicastrum virginicum Culvers Root - very very nice garden plant

DDT and your grandparents- how it affects you

Interesting new research was published this month that implicates exposure of humans to DDT (a pesticide) with a large increase in obesity in their grandchildren.  We are learning more and more about epigenetics- the process where something that affects a person’s genes becomes apparent only in the third or later generations of their off- spring.  I have written about this before.  Now we have intriguing evidence that our epidemic of obesity may have some genetic connections to DDT exposure.  Research published earlier this year also linked exposure to DDT in grandparents to a higher risk of high blood pressure in women.

The results of research done at Washington State University by Michael Skinner, WSU professor and founder of its Center for Reproductive Biology, on the link between DDT and obesity were published in the October 2013 issue of BMC Medicine. Research done at the University of California, Davis, published online March 12, 2013 in Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to link prenatal DDT exposure to hypertension in adults.

In the past Skinner has found links to other health problems that occur several generations after exposure from other pesticides like dioxins and bisphenol-A or BPA (a substance in plastics).  However he says that exposure to DDT causes 50% of the third generation offspring of those exposed to develop obesity even though the second and third generation were not being exposed to DDT, which is quite a significant percentage.  Of course these studies were done on animals, where second and third generation exposure can be controlled.  But doctors have long thought that there must be some reason for the huge jump in obesity in humans other than our lack of exercise and exposure to junk food, which certainly contribute to the problem. This may be the cause.

The research on high blood pressure involves human subjects because DDT is still being used in some countries and because researchers used records from women exposed to DDT and tested their daughters against the daughters of women born after DDT was banned.  That research found that the risk was 3 times higher for female children to develop high blood pressure if their mothers were exposed to DDT in the womb  (grandmothers came in contact with it), than if they weren’t.  Research still needs to be done on male children.

If you had grandparents that were alive in the 40’s, perhaps serving in WWII, they were almost certainly exposed to DDT as were most people in the US prior to the ban of DDT in 1972.  The chemical compound DDT was actually developed in the late 1800’s but didn’t find use as a pesticide until the early 40’s.  This “modern miracle” pesticide was sprayed on people to control lice, sprayed aerially to control mosquitoes and sprayed on agricultural crops to control pests with great zeal.  I certainly remember both of my grandfather’s as being practically infatuated with the product, it was the answer to every pest problem that they had in home or garden.  As a child I was probably liberally exposed, my parents and grandparents certainly were.

DDT was thought to be safe because people do not absorb DDT very well through their skin.  And it is an extremely effective neurotoxin, with pretty immediate results.  Unfortunately we were absorbing DDT through what we ate, because it was absorbed by animals lower on the food scale such as fish and it was on vegetables and fruits that we ate. In 1968 a study showed that Americans were consuming an average of 0.025 milligrams of DDT per day.

By the 1960’s however, it was known that DDT affected reproductive ability, causing urogenital deformities in many species and thin shells on bird eggs.  It caused other birth defects and liver cancer in animals.  But research was scarce and ambivalent about the dangers of DDT to humans, although we now know that genetic damage was silently being done.

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, published in 1962, detailed the damage DDT was doing to birds and other animals.  It was the beginning of the modern view of environmental concern by the public.  After President Kennedy read the book he formed a committee to look into the use of the pesticide but it wasn’t banned in the US until 1972. 

You might think that DDT use has pretty much ended around the world considering what we know about it but that’s not the case. While the only places that are still using DDT as an agricultural pesticide are North Korea and possibly India, in 2006 the World Health Organization indorsed its use for mosquito control to control malaria.  In many countries DDT is still sprayed with abandon indoors to control mosquitoes.  People breathe it in, get it on food and eat off surfaces contaminated with it.  The WHO feels the war against malaria outweighs the risk of using DDT.  Incidentally a lot of the DDT used in other countries is manufactured right here in the USA.

The current generation of children will still have some exposure because DDT persists in the environment to this day even in countries where it has been banned for decades.  (I found some very old DDT in a cupboard at my mom’s just a few years ago.) It is also thought that DDT may be one of the chemicals that persists in the atmosphere, traveling from places where it is still used to places where it isn’t. But each generation of people in countries where DDT is banned completely will have less exposure.  If we could ban all use everywhere we would lower the exposure even more.

Halloween


The day is nearly upon us, one of the great holidays of the year for children and many adults too. Halloween began as an ancient tradition of dividing the year between lightness and darkness, with the last of October being associated with the end of the light period and November beginning darkness (winter).  On the night between the two the dead and supernatural beings were allowed into the world.  This time was known as  Samhain. The day (or night) was used to communicate with spirits and the dead and prophesy the future.  Early religions incorporated the holiday as All Saints Day or days to honor the dead. 

Food offerings were left to appease spirits or the dead so they wouldn’t “trick” you, and so that they would allow you and your animals to survive winter. Bonfires and torches made out of carved turnips warded off evil spirits and masks or costumes were worn so that any revengeful spirits or dead couldn’t recognize you.  The Gaelic/Celtic regions of Europe probably have the longest traditions with this holiday but much of Europe had some celebration by the 18th century.

Early settlers in the new world were very against celebration at “All Hallows Eve” believing it was tied to devil worship and witches. (Some of those people are still around.)  But the later immigration of Irish and Welsh people to the US brought the traditions here.  In the early 1930’s celebration of Halloween and the practice of “trick or treating” was just getting started in the US, but it was brought to a halt during the sugar shortage and rationing of WWII.  

After the war the tradition of celebrating Halloween slowly grew, spurred on by companies that sold candy and costumes.  Today Halloween is second only to Christmas in sales of decorations, candy and associated items.  This year’s spending on Halloween is estimated to be just under 7 billion dollars, which will continue the slight downward trend in Halloween sales that has occurred over the last few years.

Fewer children now go out trick or treating.  There are fewer children to begin with but parents seem to have much more worries that their children will be harmed going door to door than parents did a few decades ago.  As kids my brother and sisters and I were turned loose once we were about 6, to run the neighborhoods with our old pillowcases after dark, pounding on doors to collect treats. Some people think the demise of trick or treating is great but I think over coddled modern children are missing out on some great fun.

Remember when people handed out homemade cookies and popcorn balls?  We would rather have candy bars but we didn’t worry that someone was going to poison us.   There’s a lot of scary stories about poison candy but in the history of trick or treating in the US there have only been 2 recorded instances of children being given poisoned candy at Halloween and both of those involved relatives of the children giving them the poison treats.

I think the rumors were started by parents so that they could inspect what the little beggers brought home, removing the chocolate and other goodies they craved with the saying “  This looks like it’s been tampered with, you better let me take it.”

And by the way only a few instances of things like razors being inserted in apples or candy have ever been recorded either.  Most of the things actually found in treats got there accidently in the manufacturing process or were inserted as a prank or joke and were not distributed to children. And the few incidences of malicious tampering were once again, meant to hurt targeted people not random children.

Apple and pumpkin recipes

I promised some recipes last week so here they are.

Apple cake
Apple cake
Makes 9 x13 cake
Ingredients
6 cups of peeled and sliced apples
            4 tablespoons of butter
            1 cup of brown sugar, packed
            1 spice cake mix
            eggs and oil called for in the mix
            1 jar of caramel ice cream topping

Melt the butter in a large skillet, add the brown sugar and apple slices, cover pan and cook on low heat until the apple slices are tender, about 5 minutes.  Stir the cooking apples frequently.
Spray the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13 cake pan with cooking spray.  Instead of spraying a pan it could be lined with non-stick foil for an easy clean up.

When the apples are tender, pour skillet contents in the cake pan and spread them evenly over the bottom of the cake pan.

Prepare the cake mix according to the directions.  Pour the mix over the apples in the pan.  Bake the cake at 350 degrees until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean- 30-40 minutes.   

Let the cake cool about 5 minutes then poke holes evenly across the surface with the handle of a wooden spoon, skewer or similar item.   Pour the caramel ice cream topping over the cake evenly, it will be absorbed by the cake.

This cake is great served warm with cool whip or ice cream.  It also freezes well.

Pumpkin Bread Recipe
Makes one loaf

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup pumpkin purée ( see last weeks newsletter)
1/2 cup vegetable or olive oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Blend the first 4 ingredients together in a large bowl.

Blend the rest of the ingredients, except nuts, in a bowl until smooth.

Slowly mix the wet ingredients into the dry with a spoon or the electric beater on low speed. 

Don’t over mix, your batter should look lumpy.   

Fold in the nuts.

Pour into a greased 9” loaf pan.  Bake at 350 degrees about 50 minutes.  Insert a knife or skewer in the center.  If it comes out clean the bread is done.

Turn the loaf out on a rack or clean towel to cool before slicing.

Now there’s no excuse to not bake some comfort food!

Kim
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent

More Information

How long do plants live? I have a new article out on the lifespan of garden plants.  Here’s the opening and a link to read the rest.

If you are a gardener that shops for plants that are perennial because you want to plant them once and have them forever, you may be wondering why some plants sold as perennials fail to return after a few years in a garden. You may blame a hard winter, the nursery that sold you the plants or bad luck for the plants death when in truth it may just have lived out its normal life span.
The problem is that some perennial plants barely make it past the two year mark, and some of them are common garden plants. There are just some species of plants whose lifespan is short, even though they are classified as perennial. While they may give you a good show for a year or two they will need to replaced far more often than other types of garden plants. Gardeners need to be aware that not all perennial plants will last for a long time in the garden.



Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Kim's weekly garden newsletter October 22, 2013


October 22, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter


These weekly garden notes are written by Kim Willis, unless another author is noted, and the opinions expressed in these notes are her opinions and do not represent any other individual, group or organizations opinions.

Hello Gardeners

When I went outside this morning I found ice on the water dishes outside the barn.  I and the weather service officially declare the garden season over.  The weather service no longer issues frost and freeze advisories for the season.  Frost and freezes will be the rule rather than the exception from this point on.  And this week we have some really cold weather on the way.  Some people are even mentioning a four letter word.

Dahlia York and Lancaster
My beautiful dahlias were reduced to blackened limp corpses this morning.  I am glad I picked most of the flowers this weekend.  I’ll leave them in the ground another week or so before I dig up the tubers.  I will also be moving in some pots of bulbs this week. 

I caved and moved the huge bowl of coleus I had in the front yard inside although it’s probably not in a very good spot on the porch. It was just so pretty.  I have kept coleus alive by over wintering them inside for several years at a time.  They do get a bit ratty mid- winter but you can start new cuttings from them quite easily.

I have all my bulbs planted now.  I am really looking forward to spring to see some of the gorgeous tulips and lilies I planted.  Speaking of bulbs I had a bucket of potting medium outside that got filled with water and turned into a swamp.  I drained the water off to see if I could salvage some of the soil and found some daffodil bulbs sprouting down there in the cold mush.  They must have been left from last fall when I was trying to re-plant some of the hundreds of daffodil bulbs I dug out of one of my beds.

Now you would think that daffodil bulbs would rot in all that watery mess, not to mention that they must have survived last winter above ground in a pot or something.  But here they were perky and firm, putting up green shoots.  So I planted those survivors in the ground, maybe they will grow.

I brought in a streptocarpus plant that I have had since early spring several weeks ago. The plant had bloomed for months on a windowsill in early spring, bloomed all summer in a partly shady location and is still blooming its head off this fall.  It has pretty blue flowers and if you want a nice house plant I highly recommend it.

I got side tracked this week in reading about ants. I started with one research article which led to another, than another and so on.  Ants have so much in common with gardeners.  I have condensed some of the fascinating things I read in the article below.  Maybe I’ll write more about ants in the future.

World’s first and possibly best, gardeners

Before humans were even thinking about growing food several species of ants were actively cultivating gardens and modifying plants to feed themselves and provide homes for their colonies.  Ants fertilize, weed, prune and defend their gardens in amazingly complex ways.  It makes you wonder if human agriculture came about by people observing antsI can see some little hunter-gather girl watching the ants and saying “Hey, why don’t I grow some plants nearby so I don’t have to spend all morning out looking for them?”

Leaf cutter ant.
Probably the most extensive gardening ant species is the leaf cutter ant.  There are 39 -47 species (depending on how you classify them), 3 of which inhabit North America.  These ants are so dependent on their gardening that some species have lost the genes that would allow them to eat any other food than the Leucoagaricus gongylophorus fungus that they grow in special gardens.  It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement because the fungus cannot grow unless it is protected and cultivated by the ants.

In leaf cutter ant colonies special large sized forager ants go out and cut chunks of leaves and flowers which they bring back to the colony and pass to special gardener ants which are smaller.  The gardener ants prepare special plots in underground caverns where they seed the leaves with fungus and continually add new leaves for the fungus to feed on. 

The small gardener ants tend the plots carefully; their bodies have a white waxy coating that comes from another beneficial arrangement with bacteria. This bacteria produces pesticides which the ants use to destroy fungi that would compete with their preferred food.  The bacteria live in “holes” on the ants bodies and receive food as their reward for producing pesticides.
(Scientists studying the bacterial coating that leaf cutter ants use as pesticides have isolated one compound similar to the antifungal Nystatin that they are using in research to produce new antifungals for human use).

Other bacteria found on the ants fix nitrogen from the air.  The ant’s diet of fungus doesn’t give them enough nitrogen for life processes but they absorb the nitrogen the bacteria produce and fertilize the fungus garden with the excess. 

When one of the gardening leaf cutter ants detects a “weed” or intruder in the fungal garden it sends out a signal and fellow gardeners swoop down on the invaders and eliminate them. (Don’t you wish you could do that when you find Japanese beetles on your roses?) The gardener ants also remove debris and dead fungus to special compost piles. They constantly turn the piles to aid decomposition. The gardens feed the entire colony and if the crop is lost the colony usually dies.  As a colony grows there may be hundreds of “fields” of fungus in cultivation.

It’s not only leaf cutter ants that practice gardening.  There are some plants that have hollows in the stems and roots.  These plants are called myrmecophyte plants.  Several species of ants live in these “ant plants.”  The plants evolved the interior spaces because the ants are beneficial to them.  Since ants defend their homes aggressively they keep animals away from munching on the plants.  Even elephants back down from trees with ant colonies as the ants swarm over and inside their trunks, biting them viscously.  If you have ever been attacked by ants in the garden you know how effective their defense can be.

But the ant’s colonies often grow faster than the plant can provide new “rooms” for them.  The ants have developed a strategy that makes the plant grow faster, they prune off any flowers that develop. The plants then concentrate on vegetative growth, making more spaces for ants.  It seems counterproductive to the plant to remove its ability to reproduce but just as we remove the flowers from some plants to develop a stronger framework and root system, this pruning makes the plants stronger.  Eventually they outgrow the ants need for space and begin to reproduce as stronger, larger plants.

Ants are also known to prune back or destroy other plants that interfere with the growth of their home. If a vine starts growing on an ant’s home tree for example, the ants will remove it.  Ants that nest in the ground will also destroy plants that shade or crowd their homes.  A colony of ants may clear weeds and other species of plants away from a tree they are residing in, resulting in what some people call “devils gardens.”   

And ants have another way to modify plants that we are just learning about.  Some ants feed on nectar produced by plants and they have to compete with other pollinators for it.  Nectar can be composed of three types of sugar, fructose, sucrose, and glucose.  Some pollinators prefer one nectar sugar over another and plants may evolve their nectar to attract the pollinator they prefer.  For example hummingbirds prefer nectar high in sucrose, while ants like glucose or fructose.  But some ants carry certain yeasts with them, which when they get into a plants nectar glands, cause the sugar type in the nectar to change.  This may reduce competition for the nectar and may make ants the sole pollinator also. 

Nectar is also a reward for ants defending the plant from insect and animals that want to eat the plant. Ants defend a plant better than butterflies.  Researchers are still studying the relationship with yeast carrying ants and certain plants to see if it’s mutually beneficial or if ants change the biology and reproduction of the plants in a way that may not be helpful to them. 

Although it wasn’t mentioned in the article I read I wonder if the ants we see on peony buds are carrying yeasts to make the nectar in the flowers more palatable to them or if the peony already produces nectar that favors ant visitors that might protect the flowers.

Study identifies the best flowers to grow for pollinators

There are lots of garden articles out there that give lists of plants that are beneficial to pollinators and attract them to the garden.  Surprisingly this has mostly been based on casual observation and not research.  A new research project by the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex was just published in the October 17 issue of the journal Functional Ecology and adds scientific knowledge to our lists.

The study focused on common garden plants that bloom in summer, when the need for pollen and nectar is at its peak.  It covered 2 years of recording pollinator visits to plants in 21 special gardens on the University campus. Professor Francis Ratnieks and his PhD student Mihail Gaburzov found that flowers pleasing to humans were not necessarily attractive to pollinators and that some cultivars or varieties of garden plants were better for pollinators than others.

Bee on oregano, a favorite flower.
Bees were the most common pollinator attracted to these gardens, but hoverflies, butterflies and moths were also counted.  The study found that marjoram/oregano attracted the most pollinators.  (I can certainly add my observation that bees love the stuff.)  Lavender, even white and pink varieties, was also very popular. Flat flowered dahlias were very popular, although few insects visit double flowered dahlias. Borage and Bowles Mauve Everlasting Wallflower were the other top contenders. The least favorite flower in these gardens were pelargoniums (what we call geraniums).

The study only covered 19 species of summer flowering plants and of course this was in England.  But those of you who want to attract and feed pollinators might want to add oregano, lavender and flat flowered dahlias to your summer garden.

Iced tea can cause kidney stones

Iced tea has become a favorite beverage for many people hoping to give up pop and other less healthy drinks but it could lead to problems in some people.  Iced tea is high in oxalates, which can lead to kidney stone formation.  Dr. John Milner, of Loyola University, Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine warns that people who have a history of kidney stones may want to avoid iced tea.

Hot tea also has oxalates, but people don’t drink as much hot tea.  In the US, 85% of tea is consumed as iced tea.  Iced tea tends to replace other beverages like water in the summer when people are more likely to drink large quantities of fluids. Sweetened ice tea may be even worse as sugar also contributes to kidney stones.  Dr. Milner suggests lemonade from real lemons, not artificially flavored mixes, for a summer drink as lemon juice may actually help dissolve oxalates.

Preparing pumpkin for recipes

There’s more to a pumpkin than making a Jack O Lantern.  Pumpkin is high in carotene, antioxidants and vitamins and tastes great in a variety of treats like pumpkin pie, cheesecake, bread, cake, soup and much more.  But before you can make most of those recipes you need to come up with a pumpkin puree.  Here are some ideas for turning a pumpkin into that puree so you can prepare something scarily delicious. ( Hint: if you paint a face on the pumpkin you can recycle it to puree the day after Halloween.)

Before using any of these methods to make pumpkin puree make sure you scrub the outside of the pumpkin well to remove any soil that could contaminate the finished product. Cut the pumpkin in half and remove the seeds and the stringy “goop” inside.  A big spoon or an ice cream scoop are good for this. The pumpkin should still have firm flesh inside and not feel mushy.  It should have been fully ripe but it doesn’t have to be orange, white, tan, blue and other color pumpkins can be used.  The best pumpkin for cooking however comes from smaller, dense pie type pumpkins.

Pumpkin soup.  Photo from Northwestern.edu
To bake a pumpkin spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray and place pumpkin halves on it with the cut side down.  Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and a half, the pumpkin is done when it feels soft.  Don’t let it burn, that affects the puree flavor.  Use a fork and poke the pumpkin.  If it slides in easily it’s done.

You can also cut the pumpkin in chunks, put them in a big pan, add about 3 cups of water to a medium sized pumpkin, cover the pan and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.  Once again don’t let the pieces scorch and it’s done when it feels soft and the pieces have “collapsed”.

To use a steamer cut the pumpkin in chunks, place them in the steamer basket, add water to the bottom of the basket and cook until soft.  This is faster but your steamer probably won’t hold much at a time.

You can also use the microwave, cut the pumpkin in chunks, put them in a microwave safe bowl and cover it loosely with plastic or a vented cover.  Cook until soft, checking frequently. 
Once you have cooked the pumpkin remove the skin or rind by either scraping the “meat” off it or pulling the skin off the pieces with your fingers.  Caution Hot!  Then mash the pumpkin with a blender or mixer until it is smooth.  You now have pumpkin puree for all your recipes. You’ll need to season it to your taste.  Good seasonings include salt, cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg.

Five pounds of pumpkin pieces will give you about 4-1/2 cups of puree.  A 15-16 oz. commercial can of pumpkin puree is about 2 cups.  You can freeze this puree in freezer containers or bags but don’t try to can it.  The puree is too dense to safely can it.  You can pumpkin at home by cutting it in chunks, cutting the outer rind off the chunks, filling canning jars with chunks, covering the chunks with boiling water then processing the jars in a water bath canner.  Consult a canning book for detailed directions. 

Next week I’ll give some pumpkin and apple recipes.   

Cuddle up and stay warm
Kim
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Kim's Weekly Garden Newsletter October 15, 2013



October 15, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter


These weekly garden notes are written by Kim Willis, unless another author is noted, and the opinions expressed in these notes are her opinions and do not represent any other individual, group or organizations opinions.

Hello Gardeners

Woodland nicotianna and sedum.
Well it looks like the warm weather is going to fade.  We knew it couldn’t last but the upcoming weather looks seasonally warm, which isn’t too bad. Some rain is coming this week, which we need.  I just picked 3 ripe tomatoes from the garden, I think that might be the latest I have ever had ripe ones from the garden. 

The buzzards are still here and robins but most other birds are gone for the winter now.  The robins, much fewer than last year, are around the pond eating autumn olive berries.  I am seeing some goldfinches again on the sunflowers.  They like the seeds of the big annual sunflowers but really like the small seeds of the maximilian sunflowers.  They also pick out the seeds from Echinacea and a few other flowers, which is why I don’t cut them down in the fall.

I love how the salvias come into their own in the fall.  I have some small red flowered ones that are blooming their heads off and the black and blue salvia is gorgeous right now.  The marigolds are also vibrant now and my canna Ehemanii has a huge new spike of its lovely dangling pink flowers.  So many things are still in bloom, it’s wonderful.

I have some woodland nicotiana plants coming up in the flower beds.  They do this every fall. If they came up earlier they might have a chance to bloom.  I do love the fragrant white flowers this tobacco cousin has but I haven’t had them blooming in my garden in years.  The seeds must lay dormant in the soil and only germinate when the soil gets really warm.  I am thinking about potting a plant to see if I can get it to bloom inside.

I have herbs drying in my car.  If you still are drying things, weeds for arrangements, strawflowers etc.,  don’t forget the car makes a handy solar dryer.  Put them in bags so the sun doesn’t bleach them out and put them on the dash of the car or anywhere you don’t have tinted windows and let the car sit in the sun.  They will even dry in the trunk but a bit slower.  It makes the car smell good too.

It may be a “good” year for ladybeetles.  Every time I go outside it seems some land on me.  Little buggers can nip you too.  I am not seeing them in my house yet but that may come.  I am also seeing lots of wooly bear caterpillars and it seems they are much like our government in Washington, very divided.  Some are completely black, others completely orange.  Usually they are banded with both colors. The color is supposed to tell you what kind of winter we will have and it seems the caterpillars have strong opposing opinions.  Maybe there is something in our air causing these extreme viewpoints. 

Aphids can change color

Aphids come in a huge range of colors, it’s thought that the colors may help with camouflaging the insects from their predators.  Some predators prefer one color of aphids over another though.  Beetles prefer to munch on red aphids and wasps like green ones for example. 

It has been discovered that a symbiotic bacteria that exists inside some aphid species may use clues from the environment, such as what predators are present, the temperature and other clues to cause pigment changes in developing aphid larvae, so that they will be a different color from their parents when they mature, and hopefully more suitable for the environment.  This helps the bacteria survive also.

It’s kind of interesting that thousands of species of bacteria exist inside animals and plants, even inside us, and we are just starting to learn what important roles these bacteria actually play.  We may find out we are just “smart homes” for bacteria and they are pushing our buttons.

Hardy Cyclamen

I planted some sowbread cyclamen,(Cyclamen hederifolium)  this fall.  Where they get the name from I don’t know, maybe pigs like to eat them.  They have big flat tubers somewhat like tuberous begonias.  They have ivy shaped leaves with silver spotting.  The flowers appear in the fall, in shades of pink, purplish red or sometimes white.  Leaves will also appear until a hard frost, and will reappear in spring until the weather gets hot.  The flowers are the “shooting star shape” which you may recognize from florist type cyclamens which are not hardy, but readily available as a pot plant in winter. 

C.hederifolium is hardy to at least zone 6, probably 5.  There is another hardy cyclamen available sometimes, C. coum, but it is harder to find.  It’s similar to sowbread cyclamen but its leaves are generally plain green and it blooms in late winter- early spring.  Cyclamen are good companions for autumn blooming crocus and colchicum.

Like many bulbs and tubers from Mediterranean and Southeast Asia, cyclamen like dry summers and moist springs and falls.  Plant the tubers in early fall just below the ground surface and lightly mulch with leaves. Both hardy cyclamen like being planted in a woodsy lightly shaded area.  They are small, about 6 inches high so plant them along a path where the flowers can be seen.  They may not bloom the first year after planting but should produce foliage.

The cyclamen flowers are self- fertile and they will seed themselves in the garden, although seedlings may take several years to bloom.  Gardeners may fail to get nice cyclamen plants if they buy small, dried tubers in packages.  Instead buy large 2-4 inch tubers from a good mail order source and plant them promptly on arrival.  I got some huge tubers from www.oldhousegardens.com  There are some 20 species of cyclamen and except for the florist cyclamen C. persicum, most are endangered in their native lands, partly due to climate change.

In Europe cyclamen are said to have medicinal properties, boiling the roots and mixing the juice with fat made a salve for skin ailments, it was said to be an aphrodisiac and if pregnant women walked over it, cyclamen caused an abortion.   And get this- drinking juice from cyclamen with wine makes you drunk!

Cleaning Up Black Walnuts

Black walnuts leave a huge mess on the lawn when they drop in the fall.  They can damage mowers and twist an ankle.  You can rake them up but a golf ball collector makes the job more fun.  Put your collected nuts in a pail and dump them far from the house for the squirrels.  Don’t dump them around plants you want as they can inhibit the growth of or kill certain plants.   Use gloves when handling black walnuts or your hands will turn a lovely shade of brown.  Immediately remove walnuts from cement areas and pickup beds as they can stain those items for good.  Make sure you clean the nuts out of your gutters so they don’t clog them.  

Remove nuts and walnut leaves from horse pastures and watering tanks as they leach a substance that can cause horses to colic.

Keeping your pond fish happy in the winter

Do you have a small garden pond with fish in it?  With winter approaching you may be wondering what you need to do to keep the fish alive during the winter.  It’s a shame to let nice koi or goldfish die over the winter as they get bigger and prettier each year. There are two basic options- bringing the fish inside for the winter or leaving them in the pond. 

Koi in a large pond.
If the pond is 30 inches or more deep you can probably leave the fish in the pond.  In the winter outside fish go into a state of semi-hibernation and their needs for food and oxygen decrease.  They generally spend most of their time near the bottom of the pond and may even partially bury themselves in debris at the bottom. However in a pond it’s a good idea to clean out such debris before winter as it is a source of bacteria which can harm your fish.  The debris and decaying plant parts may also provide enough nutrients for algae blooms in sunny times during the winter, which then die off when it gets colder and cloudy, using up oxygen as they break down.

Decaying leaves and dying non-hardy pond plants also take oxygen from the water so they should also be removed before really cold weather sets in.  Native, cold hardy plants that are rooted should have all dead parts removed but can be left in the pond.  You can leave clay pots or rock formations for fish to spend the winter hiding in.  Even pieces of plastic pipe can provide hiding spots.

If you can aerate the pond in the winter this is generally a good way to keep the fish alive through the winter.  Even shallower ponds may provide safe winter harbor if they can be aerated.  In a really large, deep pond fish may survive without aeration or an open surface area but you are taking a chance when you try this. 

 Aeration can be provided by a pump that puts air into the pond or by a pump that lifts pond water and drops it back into the pond in a fountain or waterfall effect.  Both the aeration method and fountain method should keep a small area of the pond surface free of ice.

Another way to keep some surface area open to let oxygen in is to use a de-icer.  You can buy these in farm stores as well as pond supply places.  They may be called stock tank de-icers.  This is usually a heated circle or loop of metal that floats on the surface of the pond and melts any ice around it.   The larger your fish and the smaller the pond, the more surface area you will need to keep open.

Feed the fish that will be left outside well during the fall when they are still active but stop feeding when ice forms on the water.  If there is a prolonged warm spell and you see fish activity near your open area on the pond you can give them a small amount of food.  Otherwise resume feeding in the spring when the pond surface is free of ice and the fish are active.  Uneaten food in winter ponds is a big source of harmful bacteria and as it decays it robs the water of oxygen.

If your pond is shallow or above ground such as a tank or other container, you will need to bring your fish inside for the winter.  You can keep them in a warm room in an aquarium, or a spot just above freezing, such as in a basement, where they will go into semi-hibernation as they would do outside.  Aquariums for goldfish and Koi should not be heated, the cooler the water the better.  They will need aeration and filters.  They should be lighted for at least 8 hours a day or in a bright room. Feed the fish lightly over the winter period.

Stock tanks make good containers for holding fish over the winter in cool areas.  You can also use various other containers such as storage or muck tubs, wading pools etc.  I once made a large area for fish in my basement by stacking tightly bound piles of newspaper in a rectangle against one basement wall and using a pond liner over them.  Make sure you have about 2 gallons of water per inch of fish that you are overwintering.  You will want to aerate and filter this water also.  The holding tank should have at least minimal lighting.  If you are also over wintering non-hardy water plants in this area you should have good lighting.  Feed fish lightly and only if they are active in the holding tanks.

Experts say that many fish manage to survive winter in aerated ponds outside and tanks inside only to die in late spring as the weather starts to warm.  This may be because of sharp shifts in water temperature in the seasonal weather or because the weakened fish get bacterial infections as the bacterial count climbs in warmer water.  Make sure to keep the tank or pond cleaned up and don’t overfeed as the weather warms.

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds to Eat

Sure they make nice decorations but pumpkins have seeds which make an excellent snack that is tasty and nutritious. Clean the seeds out of one or more pumpkins and try to remove as much of the orange “goop” as possible.  Place the seeds in a colander and wash with cold water.  Drain and spread the seeds on a foil covered cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray.   Lightly spray the seeds with cooking spray and salt to your taste.  Put the cookie sheets in an oven set at 325 degrees and roast for about 20 minutes.  Stir occasionally and keep checking on them, don’t let them get too brown.  After roasting they can be stored in sealed containers.
Fall in the country.

For spicy pumpkin seeds try this recipe.  Mix 1 1/2-tablespoon butter, 1/2- teaspoon seasoned salt 1/8-teaspoon garlic powder and 2 teaspoons of Worchester sauce in a bowl and toss the seeds in it before roasting.  It will coat 2-3 cups of seeds.

It’s apple cider and doughnut time!  Support your local cider mill.
Kim
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent