M is for Marcescence on A to Z Blogger Challenge

Beech Leaves November 3, 2010

M is for Marcescence. Marcescence refers to  the retention  of dead plant parts that are usually shed.  We all know that trees lose their leaves in the fall. Some of us may have noticed that oak trees, and beeches carry their dead leaves will into the fall. And maybe until the new leaf buds give the old leaf a final shove in the spring. Over the past few years I have noticed that there seem to be a lot more beeches in our woodland than there used to be. They are easy to notice in the winter because they still carry so many of their dry brown leaves. They have not been abscissed or torn from their branches. I wrote about beeches and marcescence here.

Diorama of forest progression at Fisher Museum

I was also fortunate enough to meet Dr. John O’Keefe who retired recently from the Harvard Forest (maintained by Harvard University, not located in the town of Harvard) and he told me that it is possible that the reason there are so many new beeches, is because there has been a resurgence in the wild turkey population. Beech nuts are a very nutritious nut and appealing to turkeys. We all know that birds help spread seeds of all kinds of plant. I wrote about my fascinating talk with John O’Keefe here. The Fisher Museum at the Harvard Forest has a magnificent set of dioramas explaining the history of forest progressions here in New England.

Old beech leaf wtih new bud

If you look at a beech branch in the fall you will clearly see the tightly furled leaf bud that will  push the old leaf off in the spring. It is very firm and will feel like a thorn. But it is a leaf bud.

I like knowing the word marcescence. Will you find a way to fit marcescence into your conversation?

To see what else begins with M today click here.

Jono Neiger – Mimic Nature in Your Garden

Jono Neiger of Regenerative Design Group

Jono Neiger of the Regenerative Design Group which has its office in Greenfield, spoke to the Greenfield Garden Club a couple of weeks ago. His inspiring talk explained how gardeners could mimic nature, and require less work and inputs to create a garden that would give us what we desire out of our garden and what wildlife and pollinators require.

He gave some very specific advice beginning with the suggestion that vegetable gardens, and gardens that need substantial cultivating be sited near the house where their needs will not be forgotten. I can tell you how valuable this advice is from my own experience. The Herb Bed, the Front Garden, the Daylily and Rose Banks, all of which are right in front of the house get more attention because those south gardens warm up first in the spring and because it is easy to do a small job or two as I come and go, in and out of the house.

It is easy to remember to spread compost and other organic fertilizers on our vegetable and flower beds wherever they are, but remembering to weed or watch for problems is easier when the garden is right in front of us.

Water is becoming more of a concern as we often seem to have too much or too little. This has inspired many people to invest in rain barrels which collect rain off our roofs to use later in the garden when there is a dry spell. Those who have used 50 gallon barrels quickly learn that they don’t hold much of the roof run-off and add more barrels.

Neiger himself has arranged it so that the runoff from his roof runs into a small artificial pond that he has created below the house. The pond holds about 300 gallons of water. When the pond is full, there is an overflow pipe that takes water to a small bog garden that he planted when his son was young featuring pitcher plants. When that area is full water runs down to the vegetable garden. His goal is to get as much use out of all the water he can collect and keep it usefully on the site.

Those of us who don’t have enough room to move rainwater across our property could buy a larger water tank to collect more water off our roof. We can count on that tank costing about a dollar a gallon, so a 400 gallon tank would cost about $400. We can also plant a rain garden that will keep rain on our site and out of storm drains.

He also told us that gray water is now legal in Massachusetts. If we can separate out our sink and bath water that gray water can be drained into our gardens. We would have to pay attention to the type of soaps and detergents we use. His passion is to produce no waste and to recycle any waste elements of our house and garden as much as possible. Compost!

He is a proponent of permaculture, growing perennial plants for food, as well as for ornament. He explained the Edible Forest Garden in terms that I could finally understand. The idea is to mimic nature in the way the forest grows with tall trees, then understory shrubs and then groundcovers. An edible forest in my garden simply means to include a fruit tree or two, some berry bushes and then ground covers. Rhubarb and asparagus are familiar perennial edible ‘ground covers.’ How simple.

If you are interested in perennial crops Eric Toensmeier’s excellent book Perennial Vegetables: From Artichoke to Zuiki Taro, a Gardeners Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles will give you full information about familiar and unfamiliar crops, many of which are hardy in our area.

Those of us who live in town will not be able to, or need to, include the food, fuel, fiber, fodder, farmeceuticals, fertilizer and fun that make up Neiger’s productive landscape, but all of us can include several of these elements. In the acre surrounding my house I have food in my vegetable gardens, some fodder for my chickens who then supply some fertilizer, compost for fertilizer, an herb garden for farmeceuticals and fun in the Lawn Beds that include small trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and even some groundcovers. I want to point out bee balm, mint, yarrow and other pollinator magnets are among the perennials in the herb and flower gardens.

How many of these elements do you have in your garden. Begin with fun.

Achillea, yarrow, attracts pollinators

***********************************

While Jono Neiger gave us some new ecological ways to think about managing our domestic landscapes, Emily Monosson, PhD, teacher and environmental toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts will be leading a discussion at the Greenfield Library with those who have read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson on Saturday, February 2. This talk, The Relevance of Silent Spring after 50 Years, is scheduled from 11 am – 1 pm and is sponsored by the Western Massachusetts Master Gardeners Association to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of this book which could be said to have started the whole environmental movement and new ways of. “No book since then has had the impact of Silent Spring. Carson saw an acute toxic change . . . and synthesized an immense amount of research. The changes in our environment today are more insidious,” Monosson said.

Between the Rows  January 26, 2013

Dormancy – A False Death

Winter trees at the End of the Road

The leafless landscape seems dead, but dormancy is only a false death.  In the 1/24 issue of the New York Times Michael Tortorello takes us on a wintry horticultural tour of gardens in New York City and learns that death is not what winter brings. I grant you, the activity he sees in Central Park and other places is rather different from the dormancy I can see in my frozen snowy landscape, but still, his guides make a point.

An important lesson is that it is not really the cold that makes trees and shrubs lose their leaves,  it is drought. Plant respire through their foliage and lose  a great percentage of their moisture through their leaves. If the ground is frozen there is no more water being taken in, so the leaves have to go.

Rhododendron Foliage 1-25-13

Rhododendrons,  broad leaved evergreens, do not lose their foliage, but you can see how the leaves curl to minimize moisture loss. These leaves are still performing some photosynthesis. It is the look of these droopy cigar-like leaves that made me dislike rhodies for a very long time. I don’t know why the wonderful spring flowers did not make as big an impression on me when I was a young non-gardener as the winter foliage.

While there is no chickweed or knotweed or mugwort sprouting in my neighborhood as there is in Central Park, a close look will show tiny green buds on the lilacs, and the buds on the rhododendrons are not hard to see at all.

Dormancy is not death. We are all just waiting. I am more impatient than the plants.

Hemi-demi-semi Christmas Tree on Wordless Wednesday

Our newly cut Christmas Tree

We usually cut our Christmas tree from our own land. We are famous for having Charlie Brown trees. This tree strikes me as a hemi-demi-semi tree.

Our Christmas tree in profile

The only tree we could find was this section of a tree that had been damaged by the ice storm several years ago. It only has branches on one side.

I think this year, for the first time in over 30 years, we’ll be shopping for our Christmas tree.

For more (almost) Wordlessness click here.

John Bunker and David Buchanan on Cider Day

John Bunker and David Buchanan at Apex Orchard

John Bunker and David Buchanan gave a couple of talks on Cider Day all  about their experiences with finding and planting heritage apples. They also got to sell their books. I knew about David’s book, Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter,  but I didn’t know that John had also written, and illustrated, a book about the apples and orchards of Palermo where he lives in Maine.

Not Far From the Tree: The apples of Palermo 1804-2004

Not Far From the Tree: A Bried History of the Apples and the Orchards of Palermo Maine 1804-2004. After his wonderful and engaging talk I was delighted to find that he had written this book (he hadn’t mentioned it during his talk) and it was being sold at the Buckland-Shelburne Community Hall Cider Day site. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and really read the book but I did get past the Acknowdedgements page, where among other things, he siad that he had finally and with  the help of “the Apple Professor Tom Burford, idenitfied the ‘Blake’ apple as a Grimes Golden. This will be a good update to David’s book in which he describes some outings searching for the Blake apple.  As John said in his talk ‘exploring for apples is a project in process. It is something you are Doing all the time.” He said those who are exploring have to act like Sherlock Holmes, and that there are two different sorts of exploring. “Sometimes you are poking around to find a particular apples, and sometimes you are trying to find a name for an apple. Related, but two different processes.”

He also  talked about the Preservation Orchard that MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners) is planting, concentrating on apples that originated in Maine. Like David, John is interested in finding locally adapted crops. One of my neighbors also attended the talk and by the time we left the Apex Orchard Farm Store where the talk was held, we had determined to talk to our own Heath Historical Society about exploring our own apple history (Heath used to have a  number of orchards) and planting a selection of those apples on the Common or on Historical Society land.

You can learn more about John Bunker and his apple CSA by clicking here.

More about John Bunker and David Buchanan to come this week.  I have to read a little more of Not Far From the Tree.

Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

David Buchanan

David Buchanan and I met at the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD)  reunion in September where he gave a six minute talk about what he had been doing since he graduated in 2000. He talked as fast as he could, and I listened as fast as I could, but I was glad I could slow the journey when I received a copy of his new book Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter.

Buchanan’s book chronicles the last 20 years of his wanderings from Pullman,  Washington state with its USDA Western Regional Plant Introduction Station and its genebank, to Maine where he met characters like John Bunker who has an orchard with over 300 varieties of antique/heritage apples and an apple CSA. Even all those years ago in Washington he was interested in ‘preserving disappearing agricultural traditions” and Taste, Memory relates the questions he asked himself about whether agricultural diversity is relevant in “our modern world of supermarkets, giant tractors, and irrigated megafarms? What role can the individual play? . . . How do we summon the energy and will to keep this bounty alive?” As his journey has led him across the country he has found some answers.

As suggested by the title of his book it is taste and flavor that have guided him He became involved with the Slow Food Movement and helped found the Portland, Maine chapter of Slow Food. He now serves on its national Ark of Taste Biodiversity Committee, which evaluates and helps preserve endangered heritage foods from around the country. Slow Food is about more than cooking from scratch, which is what I thought it was. Briefly, Slow Food is a formal organization whose aim begins with encouraging the enjoyment of locally and sustainably grown food, maintaining biodiversity, and caring for the land that food grows on so it will be healthy for future generations. There is more, of course, and much more than simply roasting my own chicken and making my own blueberry muffins without a mix.

The book is filled with personal connections to other individuals and organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange .  In fact, in the mid nineties he spent a year working with the Austrian counterpart to the Seed Savers Exchange, where he produced seeds to maintain the thousands of vegetables and grains in their collection.

Taste, Memory by David Buchanan

Taste, Memory is the kind of book that I end up reading to my husband while he is trying to read the newspaper at breakfast, or in the evening when he is trying to read the paper he never got through in the morning. I can’t stop myself from reading sections like that about Turkey winter wheat, an old wheat that grows to six feet tall – just like the heritage wheats I have seen Eli Rogosa grow in Colrain. Both Rogosa and Buchanan see the importance of grains that require less irrigation and petroleum based fertilizers.

This book, with its tales of exciting searches for heritage apples, Buchanan’s own inventiveness, and cooperation between various groups of people and organizations, presents a wonderful vision of how our food system can shift. It is possible for us to eat better, for biodiversity to be protected, and for farmers and market gardeners to make a reasonable living.

Buchanan did put his CSLD experiences to good use including landscape design with a focus on urban parks, native habitat restoration, agricultural sites, community gardens, and multi-use trails. Past projects include lead designs for redevelopment of the 25 city parks of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and a master plan for multi-use trails on the 4000-acre former Fort Devens in Devens, Massachusetts.

He has finally ended his wanderings and bought a small farm in Pownal, Maine, about 20 miles from Portland. “I’m planning expanded orchards there and a cider house, to produce small batches of hard cider. I’ll run it as a conservation center, a permanent place to collect and experiment with rare foods.

“I love Maine, and particularly the Portland area, for its vibrant and creative food scene. This is the best place to eat, and work in a specialty food business, that I’ve ever found,” Buchanan said.

His book is beautiful and compelling, inspiring all of us to think about our meals, and our gardening from a slightly different angle, that can be fun and delicious while doing good work. He quotes his friend Polly Tooker who often says, “You’ve got to eat it to save it.”

David Buchanan is coming our way to celebrate Cider Days, November 4-5, with John Bunker, the heritage apple man who was featured in the October issue of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. Buchanan and Bunker will be talking about identifying and conserving heritage apples at the Deerfield Community Center on Saturday, November 4 from 10 am – noon. On Sunday they will have a heritage apple tasting and discussion which requires a ticket.

Lots of other events, most free. There is an amateur hard cider making competition, The Bittersharps, the Heirlooms, and the Macs – Learning How to Taste the Apples in your Hard Cider with author/educator Robert J. Heiss, given twice on Saturday (once before each session of the Cider Salon) at the PVMA Teachers’ Center (10 Memorial St) in Old Deerfield, tasting dried apple varieties at Apex Orchards, food and apples at the Shelburne Buckland Community Center, cooking and tasting apples at Clarkdale Fruit Farm and much more. For full information about all programs go to http://www.ciderday.org

Between the Rows  October 27, 2012

Barren Branches – and Yet . . .

Yellow Birch on October 18, 2012

The  barren branches of the old yellow birch in my field retain a certain majesty this frosty morning.

Thomas Affleck Rose October 18, 2012

But the Thomas Affleck shrub rose that grows at the end of the entry walk is resisting the closing of the bloom season. The days have been chilly and windy, tearing dying leaves off many trees, but Thomas just laughs and says, “Look at me!”

I bought this rose from the Antique Rose Emporium in Texas and it has been hardier and has a longer bloom season than I ever dared hope for.

The Gingko Drop on Wordless Wednesday

Gingko Drop

All dropped. All at once.  For more Wordlessness click here.

Bug on the Bridge of Flowers! Emerald Ash Borer

"Emerald Ash Borer"

When a 5 foot tall bug appears on the Bridge of Flowers we all take notice. Especially when it is a shimmering shade of emerald green

"Emerald Ash Borer"

I wasn’t the only one taking photos of this beautiful creature. But beauty is as beauty does, and the Emerald Ash Borer is no beauty infesting and killing ash trees. The USDA Forest Service has created a website with full information about how to watch  ash trees for damage. These bugs are only half an inch long with  metallic green backs. They lay their eggs only in ash tree bark where they hatch and eat their way to an exit hole. Watch for extra woodpecker activity and damage, as well as sprouts from the root of the tree and branches dying from the top down.

Fortunately, no one has found the Emerald Ash Borer in Massachusetts yet, but infestations are in the adjacent states of Connecticut and New York. We all have to be aware of threats to our trees before the damage is so great that the only cure is the wholesale removal of our trees which is happening in Worcester, Mass. due to the Asian Longhorned Beetle.

The Emerald Ash Borer is not a native insect. It originated in eastern Russia  and northern China. No one knows how it arrived in North American, but it probably came as ash wood used for stabilizing cargo is ships or in crating for heaving products. The Emerald Ash Borer and the Asian Longhorned Beetle are not unique invaders. The Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health has an excellent website naming hundred of invasive insects, diseases, plants, fish and more. We must all be on the alert, and not complain when we have to take routine precautions when we have to wash the bottom of our boat when moving it from place to place.

Do you battle any invasives where you are?

Mother’s Day – The Family is Coming

Sargent crabapple

Mother’s Day has arrived and children and grandchildren are on their way.