Kim's Weekly Garden Newsletter August 20, 2013

August 20, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter

From Kim Willis

http://www.examiner.com/gardening-in-detroit/kimberley-willis

http://www.examiner.com/country-living-in-detroit/kimberley-willis

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.

Hi Gardeners

A days harvest, there's potatoes underneath.

The garden bounty is overflowing.  I can’t believe I’m saying this but I am actually growing a little tired of sweet corn.  But it still tastes wonderful when I get ambitious enough to cook it. Tomatoes can be fixed in a lot of ways so those are still interesting.  One of my favorite ways is to cut them in chunks, pour on some olive oil and salt or zesty Italian dressing and toss.  Then chill for an hour or so before serving.

Keep garden crops picked, even if you are tired of them.  Things like zucchini, other summer squash, green beans, cucumbers and so on will stop producing if you stop picking.  Donate extras to neighbors , food banks, maybe your church has a food program, or feed them to chickens or dump on the compost pile.  Of course there’s always canning and freezing to store the bounty.

My mums are really starting to bloom, maybe it’s the cool weather, but that may be coming to an end for a while.  I have a virtual wall of morning glories blooming this year along our back yard fence, which is about 6 feet high to keep the dogs inside.  They look nice now but I don’t like the dead stringy mess they leave in the winter.  These morning glories come back each year from seed.  The first seeds I planted were a wide variety of colors, and even some double flowered varieties.   After many years they have reverted back to purple-blue for the most part, I have one pink flowering one this year.

It’s time to do a fertilization of annuals and potted plants if you want color to continue well into fall, especially if you relied on potting mixes with fertilizer mixed in.  (Don’t fertilize houseplants now though.)   Fertilize on a cooler day and actually water the plants a few hours or the day before with plain water before adding water soluble fertilizers.  It’s better to use water soluble fertilizers now rather than slow release granulars.  This prevents root burn in potted plants with mature root balls.

The USDA has announced a new bug ID site.  It’s pretty easy to use but it doesn’t cover all types of bugs.  Instead they have compiled other sites bug keys that focus on certain species.  But it is helpful to ID the species covered, like ants.  Here’s the address http://www.idtools.org/  

I have been amazed at the size of my Jewelweed this year and with all the concern over bees I must say that this plant is a bee and hummingbird magnet.  Here’s an article I wrote on Examiner you can read :

http://www.examiner.com/article/how-to-grow-jewelweed-the-garden

At the Farmers market

Fall raspberries and some plums are being added to the list of good things to eat at the Farmers Market.  If you want blueberries better get them while you can as the crop is going fast.  Canning tomatoes are being offered in quantity now.  Some Michigan muskmelons are at markets now.  It’s still early for most apple varieties, although some early types are being sold, and for pears and grapes.

Time to start thinking about spring bulbs

The bulb catalogs are starting to arrive and if you are thinking of buying spring flowering bulbs to plant this fall you may want to order now while the selection is good, especially if you want heirloom bulbs.  Look over your flower beds while they are full of mature plants and try to remember where there were bare spots in the spring.  Pictures taken of your beds last spring can help.

The temptation is to place spring flowering bulbs in the front of the bed, because it’s easier to plant them there in the fall.  But remember the bulb foliage has to die down naturally if you want blooms the next spring and the drying foliage can look messy in the front of the bed.  Instead plant them in the middle or back of the bed, where summer foliage will quickly hide them as they dry.

Don’t bother to buy bonemeal to use when you plant bulbs.  Studies have shown it actually attracts animal pests to the places you plant bulbs, where they often eat or dig up the bulbs.

Groundnuts

One of the plants that is doing very well in the garden this year are the groundnuts.  Groundnut, Apios Americana, is a native plant, at least to the Eastern States, I’m not sure if it was native in Michigan.  If you ever wanted a plant with truly chocolate colored flowers the groundnut will fill the bill.  It’s a vine or sprawler if it doesn’t have something to climb.  This year mine have covered a good deal of fence, competing with morning glories.  The leaves are compound, reminding me somewhat of wisteria leaves. 

Groundnut flowers.

Groundnut flowers are intriguing.  The plants produce clusters of “curly” milk chocolate colored flowers, with a flared “hood’ consisting of two fused petals, two tiny petals near the bottom and a curious curved tube in the center that protects the pistil and stamens.  The end of the tube appears to be buried at the top of the hood but if you so much as touch the curved tube it will coil away from the hood wall and the tip will slowly split, first the pistil and then the stamens will poke out.  You can watch it slowly happen.  I imagine that an insect landing on the hood area or the curved tube would also provoke the reaction.  It may make the pistil actually touch the stamens for self- fertilization too.

After the flowers curved part has been activated the hood folds around the curved tube.  References say that a bean pod will develop from the flowers.  However I have yet to see any seed pods on the plant, maybe a certain type of insect is required to pollinate them.  It may also be too far north for the seedpods to develop here.  I will look again this year and if they form I’ll share the seed.

Groundnuts get their name from the swollen tubers that develop along the roots.  They range from the size of peanuts to egg sized, sometimes larger, and have firm flesh similar to a potato.  It is said that Native Americans dug them for food, and that they kept early European colonists alive through several starving seasons.  They are often a signal to archeologists that an Amerindian site is nearby, so maybe my yard is located on one.  An Indian name for them is hopniss.  Henry Thoreau is said to have eaten them when his potato crop failed.  They are said to have a nutty taste and they are very high in protein.  There has been research done in Louisiana to improve the groundnut to make it a viable commercial crop.

One problem is that some people are said to develop an allergy to the groundnut protein on the second or third time they eat them.  Not much research has been done on this though, it may be folklore.  If you are looking groundnuts up be aware that this is also a common name for the peanut, especially in other countries.

My groundnut plants are a legacy from the previous owners of the property (or the Indians).  They aren’t in the best spot, right where our trash box sits.  I have tried to dig out tubers and move some but without much success.  In some years like this they climb 8 feet and are loaded with flowers, other years they are spindly and have few flowers.  In the wild the plants prefer sunny, moist areas at the edges of woods and fields.  

Hosta seed

Most hostas flower, even though most people today grow them for their foliage.  After the flowers may come seed pods, although some people trim the flower stems off right after flowering and won’t see any seed pods.  Some hostas also do not produce seed pods, being sterile.  

If you want a hosta plant exactly like the plant with the seed pods, planting the seeds probably won’t get you what you want.  Hosta rarely come true from seeds.  But if you like experimenting you can plant hosta seeds and see what you come up with.  Who knows?  It could be something great.  You can even distribute pollen from one plant to another with a small paint brush if you want to cross certain plants. Here’s the way to grow hosta from seed.

Wait until the seed pods are dark brown and dry.  Don’t wait too long or the pods will split and the tiny seeds will scatter.   Collect the pods and shake in a bag to split the pods and release the seed. When the pods are almost dry you can cut off the flower stem and put it in a brown paper bag to finish drying and to collect any spilled seeds.  Be ready to plant the seeds soon after they fall.  Hosta seed has a lower germination rate than most plants and fresh seed germinates better than stored seed.

Use only sterile seed starting medium in clean pots or flats to start the seed.  Moisten the medium and fill the containers.  Sprinkle the tiny hosta seeds over the moist medium and press lightly into the soil.  You can spread the seed thickly because of the low germination rate.   Mist the medium and seeds and cover flats and pots with a plastic bag or top.

Hosta germinate best with warm soil and cool air conditions, rather like fall conditions.  Placing flats on the warm ground in a semi-shady spot outside can work as well as sitting the containers on a seed starting heat matt in a cool room.  The trick is to get the plants up and growing before winter weather and then getting them to over winter successfully.  If the plants have a good set of leaves started and can be planted outside before a hard frost to develop a good root system in the ground , they can be covered with mulch and will probably over winter well. 

If the plants aren’t very developed before a hard frost it may be better to keep them in containers and over winter them somewhere just above freezing, such as an unheated garage or porch.  They’ll need at least some light and careful watering so they don’t get too wet or dry out.  Don’t try to grow them on a window sill in a warm room although a cool greenhouse can work.

Green hosta and green variegated hosta usually produce 100% green plants.  Blue and gold hosta and crosses of such may produce a small percentage of blue or gold plants.  Crossing white variegated hosta may produce hosta with all white leaves, which will die shortly, as they can’t produce food.  But all new hosta varieties have to come from somewhere so keep plugging away.  Discard the plants you don’t like or give them away and keep those you do.

Most hosta are propagated from dividing the plants, or by tissue culture.  Hosta rarely grow from cuttings, although a piece of the plant with a bit of the basal area of the crown may grow under ideal conditions.

All genetic modification isn’t bad (Today’s rant)

For thousands of years our ancestors have been genetically modifying food crops by selection and by looking for mutant varieties and breeding them. In selection some genes are favored and some are basically discarded, altering gene expression in the crop.  When an interesting mutant plant is found those genes are often bred into plants artificially by preventing plants from breeding with normal plants.  Over thousands of years humans have changed most food crops so that they are vastly different from their ancestors.

Until about 2 hundred years ago carrots were white or purplish. Then a seed company found a mutant orange carrot and decided to select for it because orange was the color the royal family used on their coat of arms. Now we actually prefer mutant orange carrots and that modification made carrots a good source of Vitamin A.    

Humans have found new and advanced ways to genetically modify plants just as we have found new and better ways to communicate, travel, and protect ourselves from disease.  Some of those new ways do involve some risk.  For example those handy cell phones might be causing brain cancer and electricity can kill as well as light homes and power machinery.  But we embrace most of those advancements.  Why then can’t we embrace new technology that can bring us better food?

We do have to be cautious of course, all genetic modification carries some risk.  Genetic modification that endangers other species requires some special considerations and weighing of value against risk.  Some genetic modification such as Monsanto’s roundup ready products are basically profit motivated and are known safety hazards to several species we share the planet with.  The producing of glow in the dark bunnies and fish is genetic manipulation with no known benefits and is not good science.

But there is good science at work in some places that involves genetic modification.  The Golden Rice Project took the genes from naturally occurring soil bacteria and yellow “color” genes from corn to produce a golden color rice that had Beta –carotene, which in the human body is converted to Vitamin A,  a crucial nutrient for humans.  Lack of Vitamin A can cause blindness, reproductive problems and lowers the immune system response to disease.  The deficiency of Vitamin A causes misery and death for millions of people each year in the world, 1.7 million people in the Philippines alone, mostly under the age of 6, suffer from Vitamin A deficiency. 

A non-profit coalition of scientists have worked together to produce a golden color rice that would help alleviate Vitamin A deficiency.   Rice is a staple, affordable crop that most poor people consume in countries with this deficiency and that the farmers there know how to grow.  Golden rice tastes like other rice, cooks like other rice, has the nutrients of other rice with the added benefit of making poor people healthier by adding Vitamin A to the diet. 

Scientists and the companies involved in producing the golden rice seed have pledged to take no royalties, the seed will be comparable in cost to other rice seed, and there are no restrictions on farmers saving seed for planting the next year. 

Over many years, safety and nutrition tests have been done in many countries, including the US.   It was found that about a cup of golden rice would provide half of the adult daily requirement of Vitamin A (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2009), and that modest amount would translate to about 100% of a young child’s need.  Since the inserted genes are harmless to humans it was a pretty good bet that the modified golden rice would also be harmless and many safety tests have proved that. 

This year several test fields of golden rice were planted in the Philippines. They were to be evaluated by that countries Plant Health Division for safety and nutritional value.  One of the fields was near harvest when on August 8, it was destroyed by ignorant Philippines activist groups, stirred up by equally ignorant US groups.  The motivation seems to be that some of the companies who worked to help produce the golden rice also produced genetically modified crops that the groups oppose.  The knowledgeable people don’t want the companies to get any credit for doing good deeds, because they feel it may soften people’s resistance to genetically modified crops, so they stir up resentment and fear among less knowledgeable folk by suggesting that they are being harmed in some way.

I do oppose some genetically modified crops, and I deplore the hold on agriculture that some big companies such as Monsanto have with their patents on crops. I think the people who produce glowing animals for our amusement should be banned and the people who buy such animals shunned.  But not all advancement in crop improvement even by modern genetic modification is bad; some of it has the potential to make the world a better place without damaging other species that live on the planet with us.   Our country seems to have the idea that rewarding someone for good behavior is more desirable than punishment when we want to change a behavior.  So why aren’t the activists groups applauding golden rice?

It’s time to use common sense and reasoning when we evaluate genetic modification and modern science instead of making everything a witch hunt.  There is going to have to be change if we are to feed a future world and some of that change will be by methods we didn’t know about a hundred years ago. 

Cilantro recall

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 16, 2013 – August 17, 2013, Willard, OH – Buurma Farms, Inc. is voluntarily recalling 465 boxes of Cilantro Lot #02D312A4. Buurma Farms recalled this product due to possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination, an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.  Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

Buurma Farms, Inc. has not received any case of reported illness related to this product to date.

The Cilantro was sold to distributors in Michigan on August 3, 2013. The product was also shipped to retail stores in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. The Cilantro, which was distributed through Meijer and Ben B Schwartz and Sons in Michigan the week of August 5-9, could be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.  The Cilantro has a Buurma Farms twist-tie on it.

Product affected by the recall is:

Heritage glad "Atom"

Cilantro, fresh, UPC #4889, Lot #02D312A4, GTIN: 0 33383 80104  Product is sold in ~4 oz. bunches with a Product of USA Buurma Farms #4889 labeled twist tie, Consumers who may have purchased this product should return or dispose of the product.

What’s on your dinner plate tonight?  Anything you grew?

Kim

Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent