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.
