THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2007
The Payoff Is Spears For Years – washingtonpost.com
The Payoff Is Spears For Years
By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, May 17, 2007; H08Nothing is forever, even a good bed of asparagus. But as garden investments go, this one pays off richly for decades to come. Establishing a productive bed takes some work, and some patience as well, because the first real harvest won’t come for several years after planting. But after that, those little spears will poke up dependably every spring as long as the planting is well maintained. That’s the tricky part. Long after spring asparagus with hollandaise has given way to summer tomatoes with vinaigrette, this crop still needs your attention.
The most important thing is to keep it free of weeds, especially those with long tiller roots. My parents once lost a bed to orchard grass, with its powerful snaking rhizomes, and I lost one to the raspberry planting I thought I’d set at a safe distance. Not so. It was impossible to remove the berries’ wandering roots without disturbing the asparagus crowns, and there was nothing to do but start over with fresh plants.
Watering the bed in dry weather is important, too. Asparagus plants won’t wilt in dismay the way your lettuce will, but they’ll be less productive the next year if allowed to dry out. A good mulch such as hay, straw, shredded bark or chopped leaves will help keep moisture in the soil and deter weeds.
Keeping the plants healthy will pay off in beauty as well as in future harvests. A vigorous stand of fluffy green asparagus tops, aptly called asparagus fern, is a beautiful backdrop for a vegetable garden or even a flower bed. In autumn the foliage turns a sunny gold color. If your site is windy the plants may flop, and it is worth running a length of sturdy twine, held up by stout stakes, on either side of the row to hold the stems upright. In late fall, after you remove the dead ferns, you might apply a top-dressing of manure, compost or seaweed to help keep the crop vigorous next spring. Just brush the mulch aside and replace it after you’re done, adding more as needed.
If your asparagus seems to need a serious boost this year, stop picking it earlier than usual to give it a rest, and feed it with a liquid seaweed fertilizer.
In the summer days ahead, it will be easy to forget about a crop that has ceased to bear when others are screaming for attention. Just remember what spring asparagus tastes like when picked and eaten right away, slicked with butter. It’s a treasure that no amount of money can buy.
Source: The Payoff Is Spears For Years – washingtonpost.com
Garden-Variety Diversity – washingtonpost.com
Garden-Variety Diversity
By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, May 24, 2007; H07Lean, mean but decidedly green, my young friends were determined to rid their garden of tomato hornworms by picking them off rather than spraying them. “We killed the mothers!” they exclaimed in triumph and told how they’d sought out the fat green worms with rows of small white eggs on their backs. Unknowingly, they’d destroyed their best allies. Those eggs actually were laid by the parasitic braconid wasp whose larvae would have hatched to feed on their hosts.
No one expects even a seasoned gardener to be an entomologist, but we’re all learning more about the complex lives of garden insects. Most people know that although some are pests that bite, eat plants or spread disease, others play helpful roles. Insects such as bees, butterflies and hover flies are important pollinators. Others such as ladybird beetles and lacewings are hungry consumers of aphids and other plant-nibblers. Dragonflies feast on mosquitoes. Encarsia wasps eat whiteflies. Ant lions pursue ants. Ground beetles love cutworms. It’s a Salvation Army of aptly named troops: the spined soldier bug, the assassin bug, the minute pirate bug, the insidious flower bug, the robber fly.
Still, I’ve never liked the concept of good bugs vs. bad ones. “Beneficial insects” is a slightly better term; such creatures do confer benefits on us, but some voracious ones eat good and bad guys alike. And not many of us can tell the difference between good thrips and bad ones, good and bad mites, good and bad nematodes. They don’t wear white or black hats. Besides, even the so-called bad ones are essential. When their numbers dwindle, the helpful predators they feed decline, too.
Giving garden plants a rich organic soil, enough water and whatever else they need to thrive will leave them less vulnerable to pests. It’s also important to encourage insect diversity in and around the garden. Supply nectar-rich flowers such as butterfly weed, goldenrod, daisies and asters. Use flowering cover crops such as buckwheat and clover. Plant flowering herbs such as dill, mint, thyme and lavender. Creating a diverse environment is much more effective than buying and releasing predators. Above all, avoid poison dusts and sprays. It’s fine to squish individual cutworms or dislodge aphids with a water hose. But to release poison (which insects grow resistant to anyway) is to throw a bomb into the animal-plant marketplace and bring its intricate commerce to a crashing halt.
Source: Garden-Variety Diversity – washingtonpost.com
Indoors or Out, Borage Adds A Colorful Cure for the Blues – washingtonpost.com
Indoors or Out, Borage Adds A Colorful Cure for the Blues
By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, May 31, 2007; H06One of spring’s little sensory thrills is working the herb garden and discovering plants that have self-sown the year before. As you clear away weeds, debris and dead leaves, the seedlings of cilantro, dill and chamomile announce themselves to the nose even before they catch the eye. Borage arrives with much less charm: Its greeting is a prickling sensation on your winter-softened hands. All parts of the plant are covered with fine white hairs, just sharp enough to irritate, that may even produce a slight rash on skin that is especially sensitive.
In time, borage redeems itself with flowers of a rare blueness — much like that of Virginia bluebells, to which it is related. (There is also pink borage, but why grow that?) It blooms abundantly, offering valuable nectar to the bees that flock to it, thus ensuring pollinators aplenty for fruiting crops such as tomatoes and squash. The true-blue color is a perfect foil for the yellow, orange and red flowers I use to brighten up my herb plot: calendulas, nasturtiums, wallflowers, Shirley poppies and Lemon Gem marigolds.
Over the years, borage has been used medicinally for a number of ills, most notoriously as a cure for the blues, the blahs and a general failure of nerve, because of its antidepressant qualities. “Borage for courage” was once the catchphrase, and infusions of it were quaffed by Crusaders heading into battle. Now it’s more apt to be enlisted against PMS. But I’ve heard warnings about the ill effects of consuming too much and, besides, I’d need to have my courage already well in place to eat something so scratchy.
A few leaves tossed into a salad are known to be perfectly safe, and they lend a mild cucumber flavor. But it’s the star-shaped blossoms that make their way into my kitchen. I discard all but their blue corollas and sprinkle these over a salad or on vanilla ice cream. Some people float them atop cold summer drinks or freeze them in ice cubes.
By midsummer borage becomes annoying. It can grow to two feet or more, and unfortunately it does this horizontally. Armed with gloves, I cut back some of the straggly stems and try to drape the others gracefully among other plants, or over bare patches of ground where early dill has come and gone. This year there’s still time to sow it next to the roses, where I’ll guide it through the bushes’ unclothed lower branches. Blue is a dazzling complement to rose colors, and because I enter this seriously prickly territory wearing leather gloves, I’ll be well-armed for the job.
Source: Indoors or Out, Borage Adds A Colorful Cure for the Blues – washingtonpost.com
Seedlings to Spare? Time to Share – washingtonpost.com
Seedlings to Spare? Time to Share
By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, June 7, 2007; H08At the end of spring planting season I often think of the poem by Louise Bogan titled “Women,” which begins, “Women have no wilderness in them, /They are provident instead.” This comes to mind because all the female gardeners in my neighborhood, myself included, have spent those final weeks frantically finding homes for all our leftover seedlings.
It seems intolerable to throw out even partial flats of perfectly healthy tomato plants or cosmos, even if they are a bit leggy and overgrown. Surely somebody out there needs them desperately to fill a gap in the garden.
My husband, the ever-practical farmer, can see no pathos in discarding his extra lettuce or broccoli, so onto the compost heap they go. He treats our compost operation as a family member, another mouth to feed. It needs its daily ration of orphan plants.
He’s right, of course — being over-provident is often not worth the energy spent. And it’s not as if we were drowning surplus kittens.
Nevertheless, there’s something inherently valuable in the feminine instinct to conserve, the conviction that nothing in the household should go for naught.
This kind of mentality, born of peasant frugality, leads Italians to create grappa out of grape must, after the juice has been pressed out. Or the French to coat cheeses with the grapes’ seeds — why waste them? It’s part of a cook’s genius to use byproducts creatively.
Besides, this little flurry of community swapping between spring and summer is a pleasurable exchange. Certain busy friends, perennially behind in their planting, eagerly await our handouts, and if all else fails my friend Siri will help me find homes for the remains. Even when forced to compost them, she carefully sets them on top of the heap in hopes that someone will come by and rescue them before they are buried.
Some composted plants, of course, refuse to die: I’ve often inadvertently raised tomatoes or squash from seedlings that were tossed out. A big, deep pile of organic wastes proves to be the perfect place for them to grow.
‘Tis the season of serendipity. Yesterday when I was tossing the salad for our farm lunch and looking for the perfect seasoning, our helper Kennon walked in with a bowl of fennel plants just gleaned when she’d thinned the bed. They were tiny, just like spindly blades of grass, with a delightfully subtle fennel flavor, and all washed and ready to go.
A bit obsessive? Perhaps. And my kind of woman.
Source: Seedlings to Spare? Time to Share – washingtonpost.com