Bite into a tree-ripened pear. Yecchh! It’s brown and mushy on the inside.

Pear is one of the few fruits that tastes best picked underripe, then ripened indoors — and there is as much art to picking and ripening a pear as to growing it. Perhaps more, because pears are relatively easy to grow as compared with other tree fruits.

Although the fruit has to be picked before it is ripe, you can’t pick just any unripe pear and then expect it to ripen into a juicy, sweet, buttery fruit, with the subtle flavor individual to the particular variety. The spicy flavor of Seckel or the hint of vanilla of Concorde pears, for example.

Passe Crasanne pear, ripe and ready for eating

To ripen well, a pear must have attained a certain degree of maturity before harvest. Otherwise, it merely shrivels without ever developing any sweetness or flavor. Of course, if you wait too long, you get that brown mush.

One way to tell when to pick a pear is by looking at it. The skin becomes paler, but only slightly so. Even better would be to look at the raised bumps, called lenticels, on the skin: they change from white to brown as harvest approaches.

A more direct way to tell when to harvest is to lift a fruit upward, with a slight twist. If the fruit is ready to be picked, it will pop off the branch. This operation has to be done gently, though, or else the fruit will be coaxed off the branch before it really wants to.

Harvesting Seckel pear

I’ve grown pears for many years and many varieties but have to admit to not thoroughly having yet mastered the art of picking the fruit of some of the varieties I have most recently planted. Seeing a few fruits that have jumped ship and are lying on the ground, barring some dramatic winds, is a good indicator for me. Then, quick gathering of the rest is needed.

Storage and Ripening

Harvested fruit can go into storage, or else can be ripened for eating. The refrigerator is a good place to store pears, as long as you maintain high humidity. I put my pears into white delicatessen bags, although plastic bags are also suitable if you punch a few holes in them so that gases given off by the living — yes living — fruits do not build up inside.

The closer to freezing the storage temperature, the better. In fact, some pear varieties, such as Anjou, Bosc, Comice, Eldorado, and Packham’s Triumph, will not ripen unless they’ve been first exposed to several weeks of cold temperatures.

Pay as much attention to ripening a pear as to picking it. Pears need more warmth for ripening than for storage, ideally a cool room with temperatures between 60 and 70 degrees. Drafts should be avoided, to keep the ripening fruit from drying out, but don’t put the fruit in a bag or it will ripen too quickly because of a buildup of the ripening gases (ethylene).

The moment for eating now approaches. Check the ripening fruit almost daily by gently pressing your finger against the flesh near the stem.

Passe Crasanne pear, ripe and ready for eating

I have found that when the flesh near the stem gives just a wee bit when pressed with a finger, the time has come. Get out the silver knife, light some candles, and experience the Queen of Fruits at her best. The window of perfection for a ripe pear is fleeting. Ralph Waldo Emerson knew pears when he wrote “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” Another writer whose name escapes me wrote something to the effect that if pears are not fully ripened, the flavor is grassy, if overripe, well, you’ve got browning mush.
If you get inundated with too many ripe fruits at once, dry them, marinate them in wine, or half, then bake, them topped with a slice of cheddar cheese.

No Brainer

If the above harvesting and ripening instructions seems too complicated or not worth the hassle, there are other options. The pear variety Seckel, for instance. It can be harvested fully ripe so you can just taste one to see if the others on the tree are ripe. 

Also, Asian pears, all of which reach their peak flavor only when allowed to fully ripen on the tree. You’ll know that day has arrived by the slight change in skin color, the ease with which the fruit stem separates from the branch, and the flavor.

Chojuro Asian pear

Another exception is the hybrid Kieffer pear which is a 100 plus year old hybrid of European and Asian pears. This variety is reliably decked with flowers and the loaded with fruit year after year. You commonly see old Kieffer trees loaded down with large, yellow fruits; unfortunately, they are hardly eating no matter what you do to them. Some people can them.

(Pears decorative, hardy fruit trees that I included in my book Landscaping with Fruit.)

One year my lawn felt particularly soft and springy. It felt pleasant at first, then that feeling gave way to panic once I looked down and saw tunnels pushing up just beneath the surface. A mole invasion!

Before contemplating turning a herd of these velvety, furred creatures into a mole fur garment, I consider why they were there and just what they were doing.

First of all, the “they” probably was an “it.” Moles are very territorial animals, so even if a lawn or garden is riddled with tunnels, it may be the work of just a single interloper.

And, while all those tunnels I saw were, in fact, feeding tunnels, moles might be considered garden and lawn allies, rather than pests. Only rarely will they enjoy a bit of vegetarian fare, perhaps a softened seed or a bit of root. Moles eat mostly insects, and among their favorite foods are earthworms and fat, juicy grubs. (Import moles to your garden to rid it of invasive, jumping worms?)

Earthworms generally are beneficial to the soil, but those grubs: the reason they are so fat is because they are dining on the roots of your plants, mostly lawn grass. After a year of feeding, grubs pupate to become the Japanese beetles that will dine on your roses, grapevines, and zinnias, as well as over 200 other plants.

No Food, No Moles

I’m not suggesting welcoming moles to your backyard as grub killers. Even though moles don’t eat roots, the tunnels do admittedly disrupt roots enough to kill seedling plants. Those tunnels also are sometimes used by mice and voles — who do eat plant roots. The tunnels also ruin the smooth look of the lawn.

Mole paw, good for digging

The most obvious way to dissuade a mole from living in your backyard is to get rid of its food, specifically the grubs. Milky spore disease or predatory nematodes are commercially available preparations that attack grubs, yet are nontoxic to just about everything else.

A quicker way to kill grubs is to strap to the bottom of your shoes special spiky soles that aerate the soil and spear the grubs as you walk around your lawn. Incidentally, watering the lawn all summer long to keep it green and lush also keeps the grubs happier — and makes for more mowing.

 Draw the Line

Another way to thwart moles is with some sort of barrier. The barrier could be small mesh fencing buried 18 to 24 inches deep in the soil, or — even better — bent into an L-shape to extend outward 6 inches at that 18 to 24 inch depth. Moles are not climbers, so the fence need not be more than a few inches high.

Some gardeners report success using certain plants as barriers. One plant used for this purpose is even called mole plant (Euphorbia lathyrus). Like other euphorbias, this one emits a caustic white juice when injured, and perhaps really does keep moles at bay.

Mole plant

I’ve grown this plant occasionally, and I no longer have moles here. (Possible correlation, not cause and effect.) I like the plant for its architectural structure, often a single upright stem with four thin, strappy leaves radiating outward at each node from the top of the plant to the bottom. Be aware that the plant is invasive in certain areas. Even here in New York’s Hudson Valley, plants were showing up in increasing numbers year after year. I got scared and removed all of them, and haven’t seen any since — until, after perhaps a decade now, a few small ones have showed up here and there.  

Castor bean is another plant that moles purportedly find offensive. The plant grows rapidly lush, so its effect on moles could be secondary, as it dries out the soil to reduce the number of insects — the mole’s food — present. Maybe it’s the plant itself, though, because some gardeners report that moles will not cross a strip of ground that has been watered with a mixture of castor oil and soap, and that a mole will avoid a tunnel into which has been dropped a castor bean seed.

More Innovative Controls

A contraption that might keep moles away are those little lawn windmills whose turning vanes make a wooden man chop wood. Moles have very soft skulls, soft enough so that they are stunned, or even killed, just from the shock wave when the surface of the ground is hit with the flat of a shovel blade. Perhaps a mole would naturally avoid ground that was thumped. Pinwheels might also work, and electronic versions of that mechanical wood chopper are now available.

Those were the gentler controls; there are quicker-acting and more surefire ones. For instance, you could flood the nest in spring. First you must locate one of the permanent tunnels, which are different from the feeding tunnels in being straight, deeper, and repaired within a day or so if disrupted. Once you find the tunnel, flood it with water for about 15 minutes. The adult will escape, but not the young.

Various traps are available that kill moles. Because the shallow, feeding tunnels are often used only once, there is more chance of a mole happening upon the trap if it is placed in a permanent tunnel.

And then there is the mole skin garment. Quick side note: Moles have been such a pest in Great Britain that Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII, ordered a mole-fur garment, starting a fashion trend that created a lucrative industry while helping get rid of moles. Single coats require hundreds of moles.

One final, quirky cure that I have come across for mole problems is baiting a tunnel with JuicyFruit gum. Unwrap the gum in such away that it does not touch your fingers, then drop it in a tunnel. Moles presumably like the taste, but after they eat it, their innards are gummed up. I’m not sure I would wish such a fate upon a grub killer.

Mole, Johann Andreas Wagner 1855

September does not seem a likely time for seeking out things called “mayapples,” but this when they are ripe. Obviously, mayapple is no ordinary apple. In fact, it’s not an apple at all. But you can eat it, I guess.

Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) is a native plant that blankets forest floors throughout eastern North America. Each spring, as soon as winter chill is out of the air, the perennial rootstocks send up new stalks. Each stalk grows about 18 inches high, then is capped by just one or two leaves. The leaves are like large shields, deeply lobed and held parallel to the ground.

The perennial rootstock spreads underground, so plants grow in ever expanding colonies. These colonies add another layer to the forest, one of green shields hovering above the earthen floor. Contrasting growth habits and leaf shapes make mayapple a nice companion to ferns in a woodland garden. Contain the wandering roots — in a bottomless pot, for example — if your woodland garden is small.

If you happen upon a colony of mayapples during a spring stroll through the woods, peek under the leaves. Right where the stem divides to make two leaves, you might just find a mayapple flower, a single waxy, white bloom about 2 inches across. Single leaved plants do not have flowers.

And Fruit, Now

Fruits are supposed to follow flowers, but in my experience, you will not find nearly as many mayapple fruits as you found mayapple flowers. Most plants have flopped down and begun to dissolve away soon after midsummer, so part of the reason might be that animals have gobbled up fruits lying on the ground.

Before you take a bite out of a mayapple, let me tell you something more about the fruit. Another name for mayapple is American mandrake, “mandrake” because this plant, like the true mandrake, has a root whose shape can be likened to a human figure. The shape of the true mandrake root supposedly imbued it with all sorts of medicinal and magical properties.

Mayapple does, in fact, have some medicinal properties. The roots, for example, contain podophyllin a compound that has been used as a cathartic, emetic, or purgative. It also has been used for topical treatment against warts. Other compounds in mayapple inhibit cell division, and a modified extract of the plant is used to make etoposide, an anti-cancer drug.

This plant is strong medicine, too easily taken in toxic doses by those not thoroughly familiar with its use. All parts of the plant are toxic — except the ripe fruit, mentioned earlier on. It contains some very toxic compounds. Native Americans used the plant medicinally, and for committing suicide.

Beware!!!

Ripe mayapple fruits look more like lemons than apples. They are yellow, and about the size and shape of eggs. The flavor also is more like that of a tropical fruit. It reputedly tastes something like passionfruit, citrus, quince, and/or strawberry. But bland. No one raves about the flavor, but some people like them well enough to eat raw, or at least to use for flavoring -ades or cooking into a sauce or marmalade.

Mayapple fruit in July

I have never tasted a mayapple, and do not intend to do so. My first opportunity to taste the fruits came when a friend in Pennsylvania mailed me a box full of ripe ones. I thanked him, but later admitted that the fruits — steeped in all that magic and medicine, and cradled in tissue paper in the box — seemed too ominous to eat.

Perhaps you are bolder than I am. If you do eat the fruit, make sure it is ripe, because unripe fruits are toxic. And don’t chew the seeds; they also are toxic. And don’t eat too many, which would be one for me.

“Root pruning” sounds like such a brutal way to treat a plant. Yet it’s a periodic necessity once any potted plant has grown as large as you want it to. Potted plants — like other plants — grow, and while a fifty foot tall weeping fig (Ficus benjamina) is a glorious sight on a Carribean island, my living room ceiling won’t allow such growth. Root pruning slows stem growth as well as makes room for new soil and new roots.

Root pruning — and stem and leaf pruning — of my own weeping fig “tree” has kept it, after 15 years of growth, only a few inches high! This bonsai gets its roots, stems, and leaves pruned twice a year, one of those times this week.

Weeping figs, Puerto Rico and windowsill

How often to root prune any potted plant depends on how fast the particular plant grows, or tries to, and any quirks it has about being root pruned. Angel’s trumpet (Brugsmansia spp.), for example, gets one severe root and stem pruning each and every year, in fall. Root and stem pruning are needed to stimulate new growth, which bears those eerily beautiful, pale apricot colored trumpets. 

In contrast, after nineteen years, I have yet to root prune my pony tail palm (Beaucarnea incarnata).

Ponytail palm

Who Needs Their Roots Pruned?

Plants have subtle ways of indicating that their roots need new soil in which to roam. Keep an eye out for plants that dry out too rapidly, or send roots attempting escape from their post out through their drainage holes.

Root prune any plant that’s beginning to look too tall or too crowded in its pot — or give it a larger pot. Exceptions exist, of course, such as clivia, which thrives cramped for years in the same pot until eventually bursting it.

The most foolproof way of telling whether a potted plant needs root pruning is to slide the root ball out of the pot and examine it. Thick roots pressed right to the the edge of a root ball, or circling its outside, indicate that the time to operate has come.

To root prune, take a sharp knife or a reciprocating saw fitted with a metal blade, grit your teeth, and slice a half to two inch layer of soil from all around and underneath the root ball. The larger the root ball, the more soil and roots can be removed. Then go over the whole root ball again, this time with a pronged hand cultivator or a stick, loosening soil and roots on the outside. Also prune back any lanky or damaged roots.

With roots pruned, a plant is ready to return to its pot. Put a stone or screen over any drainage holes, then shovel in enough soil so that the base of the plant’s stem sits a half to one inch below the rim. Or less; my bonsai fig is in such a shallow, small pot that I can only sacrifice a fraction of an inch below the rim for the soil level. Gradually fill the space between the root ball and the pot with potting soil, tamping it in place with your finger tips or a blunt stick.

Repotting my kumquat “tree”

Because root pruning temporarily cuts down on a plant’s water supply, this pruning should be accompanied by shoot pruning—to remove transpiring leaves—if performed on plants in full leaf. A dormant, leafless plant that has been root-pruned may automatically adjust the number of leaves it grows, when awakening in spring, to the amount of root loss suffered, so it does not necessarily also need its branches pruned.

Useful on Established Trees or Shrubs

You don’t have to confine your root pruning to potted plants. In the middle of the 19th century, root pruning was used as a way to dwarf fruit trees planted in open ground. In his book, The Miniature Fruit Garden (1866), Thomas Rivers described how he root-pruned his trees by either digging them up and replanting them, or by digging trenches around them, then backfilling with new soil.Great judgment, of course, was needed as to how much root pruning a tree could tolerate without excessively enfeebling or killing it.

Besides dwarfing a tree, root pruning also has been used to hasten fruiting; this traditional practice that recently has been shown to be of dubious, or no, value. Wisteria vines are notably tardy to flower, and one traditional recommendation for coaxing them along in this direction is to root-prune them. Personally, I’ll put my money on summer pruning wisteria rather than root pruning to bring it to flower. (And, of course, time—every plant must attain a certain age before it can flower.)

Root pruning young orchard

A bona-fide use for root pruning is to lessen the transplant shock of woody plants. An individual root responds to being pruned by growing new lateral roots near the cut. Root pruning a tree or shrub a year or more ahead of time reduces transplant shock by inducing the plant to grow masses of roots near enough to the plant to be taken up with the root ball.

Practice root pruning with moderation and don’t forget an important function of roots: to anchor a plant to the ground. Depending on its size and how much you prune, a plant might need a supporting stake until new roots grow.

Watering is also very important during the couple of weeks or more that a plant is recovering from root pruning. Right after pruning, give the plant a thorough soaking. When new growth begins, make sure all the soil stays moist, the old soil because even with its reduced size it must still support the plant, and the new soil, to encourage new root growth there. (Succulents are an exception: let their soil thoroughly dry between waterings, even after root pruning.)

Finally, prune the stems so that the reduced root system has less leaves to support, and if your goal has been to keep the plant from growing larger.

Rest assured plants can tolerate all this pruning. Just look at my bonsai tree and other bonsais whose heights can still be measured in inches after a hundred or hundreds of years.

For more about all types of pruning, see my book, THE PRUNING BOOK, available from the usual sources or directly from me at www.leereich.com/books.

Bonsai juniper

Complaints. Complaints. I’ve been hearing so many complaints about squash plants, how they looked healthy, then all of a sudden flagged and took a turn on the road towards death. I can help you deal with the problem — but mostly for next year. The best time for action was earlier this season.

Young zucchini, early in season

An insect called the “squash vine borer,” lodged in the stem, is responsible for your squash’s wilting. The saga of how that insect got there began in early summer, when a pretty insect with an orange and black body crept out of the soil, stretched its coppery-green and clear wings, then looked around for a mate. She evidently found one, and soon after sought out your squash plants. Instead of squash, she also might have settled for a gourd, cucumber, or melon plant, in that decreasing order of preference.

Adult squash borer

Upon finding a suitable plant, she proceeded to lay her fertilized eggs on the stems or leaf stalks near the base of the plant, eggs which within a week hatched into larvae. The larvae bored into the stems, and ate so much that there eventually was not enough stem tissue to conduct water to the leaves. Voila! The leaves went limp, and that’s what grabbed your attention. Take a look at the base of the stem now, and you will see a hole out of which has poured some sawdust-like frass.

Fighting Ms. Melititia

We can fight this pest in a few ways. Because the moth only lays eggs early in the season, late plantings never pick up larvae. Thoroughly composting infested stems also helps if it gets the larvae before they leave the stem to return to the soil, which they do after about 6 weeks of feeding.

Another approach is to turn the moth away before she ever lays an egg on a squash plant. A floating row cover — or any other lightweight mesh material — allows water, light, and air to pass, but not Melittia cucurbitae (that’s the moth’s real name). The covering is only needed early in the season, during egg-laying, and, anyway, needs to be removed later so that bees can pollinate the blossoms. Covering merely the base of the plant with straw, nylon mesh, even aluminum foil, can prevent egg laying.

A physical barrier is 100 percent effective, but you could, instead, try repellents. Some gardeners claim that Ms. Melittia will avoid plants that reek of camphor, black pepper, or turpentine.

Another line of defense is to kill the larvae. You can kill them before they even get into the stem if you repeatedly dowse the base of the plant with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) aizawai, a readily available “organic” insecticide. Once the larvae are within a stem, get at them with any of the above pesticides — or parasitic nematodes — by injecting the material into the stem near where you see the telltale hole oozing frass (their sawdust-like poop).

If you are the kind of gardener who prefers hand-to-hand combat with pests, rather than pesticidal or biological warfare, then make a lengthwise slit in the stem just big enough to find the larvae, and stab it.

My second to favorite method for dealing with Ms. Melittia is to keep the plant happily growing in spite of her presence. I merely place bricks at intervals over portions of my squash’s trailing stems, inducing new roots to grow at those points. Larvae only lodge in the portion of stem right near where the seedling originally emerged, so new roots growing further along the stem can support the plant even if this oldest portion dies.

Problem Solved . . . Easily

My favorite method for averting damage from Ms. Melittia is to choose with care what squash to grow. The ideal squash would, of course, taste good, yield well, and be resistant to the borer. Those squashes exist! 

The word “squash” — or “pumpkin” — brings in a number of Cucurbita species. C. Pepo  includes zucchini, acorn, crookneck, and spaghetti squashes, as well as a number of “pumpkins.” They’re all very susceptible to squash vine borer.

Slightly less susceptible are C. maxima, which includes blue Hubbard, butternut (turban shaped), banana, Kabocha squashes, as well as — again a number of “pumpkins,” typically the larger ones.

The species C. moschata are very resistant to borers because of their thicker, solid stems. They are the ones I grow: butternut (pear shaped) as a winter squash and so-called Korean squash as a summer squash.

Squash, Butternut

Squash, Korean fruit forming

If they have one flaw it’s their rampant vines; these vines are now flowing up over and through my fence out of the garden and into the outside area. Plants bear fruits in keeping with the vines’ vigor. The butternuts bear and store well enough to keep appearing on our plates through winter, on into March.

Squash, Korean escaping fence

If you like very sweet squashes, the variety Honeynut, a hybrid of butternut and buttercup, is very borer resistant.

For years I grew zucchini squash. And every year it would get attacked by borers. The vines didn’t stretch out enough to allow new roots to form along their length. No matter, though. By the time my summer squash plants slumped, I was always relieved. After all, how much zucchini can anyone eat?

I’m still harvesting plenty of Korean squash — and giving plenty away.

But Adam did bite the apple, and I did plant apple trees and we each have dealt with the consequences. I could have resorted to the season-long drench of pesticides recommended to kill every pest. Instead, I decided to research potential pest problems, then see how little, if any, pesticide I could use and still harvest an acceptable crop of high quality apples.

Home grown Esopus Spitzenberg apple

I should say at the outset that I no longer grow apples. For three reasons. First, my site, with cold, dank air in a valley, is a poor one for growing apples. Second, especially in a poor site, some spraying is needed; I grew tired of that. And third, I found a local orchard where I can buy excellent Macoun, Ashmead’s Kernel, and Esopus Spitzenberg apples, along with other favorites of mine.

With that said, I would definitely grow apples if I had a higher site with sloping ground, full sunlight, and acres and acres of forest not so close. Or if I lived out West or nearer one of the coasts.

Insect Culprits

The three major insect pests of apples are apple maggot, plum curculio, and codling moth. Here on the farmden, apple maggots are the worst of the lot, dimpling fruits and riddling them with brown trails of burrowing larvae. Given free rein, apple maggots damage almost every fruit beyond offering even one good bite.

Dimpled fruit from apple maggot

Thankfully, the apple maggot has its Achilles heel. When the fly stage of this insect emerges in the latter half of June, the females search around for the biggest, reddest apples in which to lay eggs. I used to hoodwink Ms. Maggot with ersatz apples, which were red, plastic spheres  that I coated with a very sticky material called Tangletrap — one trap per dwarf tree, two or three for larger trees, hung at head height in clear view.

After a few years of dealing with the messy business of cleaning Tangletrap off each sphere for use the next season, I came up with a better idea. Why not buy and use some real apples, very firm and very red Red Delicious apples. They do look and smell like apples even if their flavor leaves much to be desired. And they do keep for a very long time. I coated these apples with Tangletrap and pushed a wire through each for hanging in the branches. By winter, they shriveled to nothing and, with wire removed, can be composted.

Maggot trap, with real apple

Unfortunately, no good alternative to spraying exists for plum curculio. This insect can cause fruit drop early in the season.

Plum curculio, cute but a real pest in eastern US

Instead of the usual chemical pesticide sprays used against this pest for the six weeks that it is active, this pest can also be controlled with a spray derived from kaolin clay. It’s a special formulation of kaolin — marketed under the name Surround — that coats everything to disguise the fruit and clog insects’ eyes, ears and reproductive organs. All in all, the coating makes Ms. Curculio think twice about landing, feeding, or laying eggs.

Sprays of Surround also keep Ms. Codling Moth at bay. This pest is active for much of the season, but even unchecked, results in only 25 percent fruits with the signature big, fat worm. This is the half a worm (actually a caterpillar) you see after taking a big bite out of apple.

Codling moth in apple

The problem with Surround is that the tree needs a heavy coating (3 sprays, even before bloom), and then the spray needs replenishing to keep it dusty every couple of weeks or after just a quarter of an inch of rain.

Sprayed trees will have a white cast to them — a very Mediterranean look, commented one visitor to my garden.

All Creatures Great and Small

Turning to diseases, the three most common ones are fire blight, cedar-apple rust, and scab. A combination of strategies keeps disease damage within reasonable bounds. I’ve always kept a careful eye out for fire blight, so that I could prune out any infections as soon as they show. Fire blight, which causes leaves or whole branches to blacken as if they have been singed by fire, thankfully never reared its frightful head in my backyard. The ends of infected branches curl over like a shepherd’s crook.

Cedar-apple rust shows up wherever wild cedars (especially eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana) abound, defacing leaves, and sometimes fruits, with rusty lesions. The cedars are alternate hosts for the disease, without which the disease cannot complete its life cycle. This disease is difficult to control with sprays organically, so I chose to accept a certain amount of damage rather than suit up for an additional spray session. And forget about removing nearby cedar trees because the fungal spores from cedars can travel as far as two miles!

Cedar apple rust on apple leaf

Apple scab results in corky brown lesions on fruits and leaves. Defense against scab always began in fall, when I would smother fallen apple leaves — the source of next year’s infections — beneath a thick mulch of wood chips. Leaves that fell on nearby lawn were defused by mowing thoroughly. Chopped, the leaves decompose quickly and are rendered harmless.

Apple scab on leaf

Although apple insects have cosmopolitan tastes, disease organisms are finicky. So another way to control diseases is with resistant varieties. One variety that I grow, Liberty, is resistant to all the major apple diseases. Other varieties have varying degrees of resistance to one or more diseases.

Liberty apple, home grown

Even without paying particular attention to planting only disease resistant varieties, I was able to harvest reasonably good yields of reasonably clean fruit using my combination of cleanup, limited spraying, and traps.

Cosmetically, my fruits put on a poor show compared with the perfect apples you see in markets. But my fruits were pesticide-free, and the Macoun, Jonagold, Spitzenberg, and other select apple varieties that I grew were simply scrumptious picked at their peaks of perfection. I hope Adam’s apple was as good.

Home grown Macoun apples

Ripe tomatoes bring to mind tomato sauce; tomato sauce brings to mind oregano. You would think that all that you needed to do to get oregano would be to mosey on down to the local seed store to pick up a plant or a packet of seeds, or send away to your favorite mail order nursery, right? Wrong!

Pizza

Oregano is, botanically, Origanum vulgare, a hardy perennial that sometimes parades under the names perennial marjoram, wild marjoram, or pot marjoram. As you can see, confusion is already creeping in. Marjoram is also the name of another herb. (Pronounce “marjoram,” with the accent on the first syllable, so the word sounds much like “margarine.”)

Margarine…whoops, marjoram…is an annual herb, that was once botanically Majorana hortensis and then became Origanum Majorana. The botanical names tell you that marjoram and oregano are kin, and they do, in fact, taste quite similar to each other, with marjoram being the sweeter and less strongly flavored of the two. Although marjoram is a perennial, it is a cold-tender perennial, so is usually grown as an annual. Because of its flavor, this marjoram is more specifically referred to an sweet marjoram. Because of its lack of hardiness, it’s also sometimes called annual marjoram.

But we can’t yet untangle ourselves from marjoram — sweet marjoram, that is — to stay with oregano, which is what we are after for our tomato sauce. A flavoring oil called “origanum oil” is extracted from either oregano or sweet marjoram, and occasionally, to further the confusion, from thyme or calamint. And sometimes this oil is called “marjoram oil.”

Now back to oregano, O. vulgare. Oregano is a very variable plant. That variable growth habit has given rise to some very ornamental forms, such as Kent Beauty, with trailing stems and hoplike blossoms, and Aureum, which forms a creeping mat of golden leaves. To me, those yellow leaves make the plant appear malnourished.

Kent Beauty oregano

Flavor Is What Really Matters

Oreganos also are variable in flavor — that most important attribute for our sauce. Some oreganos are virtually tasteless, such as one that I planted years ago. Perhaps you have had a similar experience. Recognizing the plight of us gardeners, some seed companies have started commenting, in their catalogs, on the flavor of the oreganos they sell.

True Greek Oregano is a name that has a flavorful ring to it, and this is the oregano now being promoted for strong flavor by some seed companies. The catalogs and websites list the botanical name for this True Greek Oregano as O. heracleoticum, whose common name is not really True Greek Oregano (a marketing ploy). It has also paraded under the common names of winter sweet marjoram or pot marjoram. At any rate, O. heracleoticum is, obviously a different species from O. vulgare, oregano, even though you would have to be a botanist to distinguish them. O. heracleoticum is considered by some to be O. vulgare subsp. hirtum, a subspecies of oregano.

If you’re not thoroughly confused by now, let me help you along in that direction. At least one seed company sells seeds of both plain oregano and True Greek Oregano, and they claim that plain oregano has the stronger flavor of the two.

Finally, Oregano Nirvana

I ripped that insipid oregano out of my garden long ago, and, finally, planted a deliciously, strongly one I needed for my sauce. To get this plant, I didnt resort to sorting through botanical names or sifting through seed catalogs. A friend had a large plant growing in her garden; I smelled it, liked it, and we divided it up into a few new plants. With its pungent flavor, small white flowers, and compact growth, this plant may very well be ‘True Greek Oregano.

My oregano’s hairy stems and leaves

Putting together all the information I gleaned from the web, the flavor has led me to the conclusion that what I’m growing is, in fact, O. vulgare subsp. hirtum, that is, True Greek Oregano. For further confirmation, I looked at the leaves and stems under magnification and noted their dense coverings of glandular hairs, another characteristic of True Greek Oregano.

Of course, all this is academic. What I wanted is good-tasting oregano. I have it.

I no longer grow “stinking roses” but when I did, it was the one vegetable that I was most likely to forget to plant each year. After all, although garlic, “the stinking rose,” is planted at the end of the season along with lettuce, endive, and radish, it’s not harvested along with these other vegetables, which all ripen or are at their best in the cool moistness of autumn. No, garlic ripens almost a year after planting, in the heat of summer. Nonetheless, now is a good time to plant garlic — and here’s a reminder for you.

Separating garlic cloves in head

True, many gardeners plant garlic in early spring and reap decent crops. And those of you who are more savvy — or who have done some reading on the subject — plant in late fall, which is when gardening books and magazine articles direct you to plant.

But let’s examine the logic of planting garlic in spring versus late fall versus late summer. Garlic rarely makes seed, so is grown by planting individual cloves, which, together, make up a bulb or “head” of garlic. The cloves first grow leaves and roots and then, in response to the long days and warm temperatures of summer, heads. New leaves cease to develop once heads start forming, and the more leaves the plant has pumped out before this occurs, the larger the heads.

What we all want from our garlic is big heads. So although you can reap a garlic crop from spring-planted cloves, or a larger one from fall planted bulbs, late summer planting gives the cloves the most time to grow the most leaves. This should yields the largest heads. Leaves which poke up through the ground in late summer do take a rest or even die back a little when temperatures plummet in winter, but growth resumes in spring.

Planting garlic

(We’re as desirous for large cloves as for large heads, but clove size is determined in large part by variety.)

Late summer planting also gives roots the most time to grope further into the soil before cold weather strikes. Not only is the plant then able to drink in more water and minerals generally, but is ready to do so with the first warm breath of spring. A large root system early in the season is a special advantage in years when summer weather turns bone dry. All those roots taking firm hold of the ground also prevent freezing and thawing of the soil in the months ahead from heaving the cloves up and out of the ground. (This is one reason that mulching is so heartily recommended following late fall planting of garlic in the north.)

Ready availability of fresh cloves is one more plus for planting garlic in late summer. It’s surely a lot easier to plant now than to store bulbs in perfect condition until spring for planting.

A Confession

I have to confess that I no longer grow garlic. This is sacrilege but my main reason for not growing garlic is because I’m not an enthusiastic fan of it, especially when used raw. And cooked with other vegetables, it’s flavor is lost.

I do enjoy the mellowing effect roasting has on garlic.

One more reason is that garlic that home grown garlic tastes no better than that you can buy from a supermarket or a farmers market. Any difference from home grown is nothing like the dramatic difference you get from home grown peas, asparagus, lettuce, and sweet corn. 

Perhaps my tastebuds are unrefined, at least when if comes to garlic. And I’ve admittedly tasted less than a handful of the hundreds of varieties.

Actually, garlic does grow here. But I don’t cultivate. Many years ago I did grow garlic which evidently dropped its seeds into the gooseberry and grape beds adjacent to my garden. Every year hundreds of sprouts appear, go to seed, and then lie dormant until the following season. Occasionally, for some reason, I’ll pull out a small head for kitchen use.

Naturalized garlic

Advantages and Disadvantages of Earlier & Later Planting

One admitted advantage to planting garlic later in fall is that, until then, many late season vegetables, such as endive, winter radishes, and cabbage, are still “holding their ground” and not willing to move out and make room for garlic. And they keep well sitting there in the cool weather awaiting harvest at your convenience. 

One (alleged) disadvantage to planting now is that plants are likely to sprout and those green sprouts will be threatened by subsequent freezing weather. Not to worry. I’ve seen daffodils do this during a spell of warm fall weather, without suffering harm. If it makes you feel better, cover those green sprouts with wood shavings, straw, or some other fluffy mulch once freezing weather settles in in earnest. That mulch will also maintain some warmth in the soil, affording roots more time to grow. My uncultivated garlics offer more evidence for the viability of late summer planting, or earlier!

The only other disadvantage I see to planting garlic now is remembering to do so.

Naturalized garlic scapes (which I also don’t like)

Smut doesn’t sound like something that you would want in your corn patch — anywhere, in fact. The dictionary says that smut can be, among other things, obscene language or anything that blackens like soot. The smut I am referring to is a disease of grasses, and corn, being a botanical grass, can get smut.

You probably have at some time seen smut popping out of your ears. Spongy galls, looking like corn kernels that have been pumped up with steroids and painted silvery gray, ooze from between the husks. Within days, the galls darken, then burst open to release powdery, olive brown spores. Not a pretty sight to most corn growers.

But let’s look at those puffy masses in another light. They are the fruiting bodies of a fungus, which still sounds repulsive until you think of mushrooms, which also are fruiting bodies of a fungus. Corn smut, although the bane of corn growers, has long been considered a delicacy in Mexico. Huitlacoche, as it is called, is eaten boiled or fried, and its popularity has spread northward.

Take Your Pick, Disease or Delicacy

So we can look upon smut either way: as a corn disease to fend off, or as a delicacy to cultivate. As a disease, smut is interesting because although it typically infects 5 percent or less of the ears in most fields, infection rates may be as high as 100 percent in some patches of corn. Generally, though, it’s not a problem.

Insect or mechanical damage facilitates entry of spores, as can hail.

But weather conditions that influence the disease are not clearly defined. Hot, dry weather early in the season has seemed most conducive to infection, as has warm weather with moderate rain.

You can’t do anything about the weather, but you can take some action against smut if you are growing sweet corn to eat. Those powdery spores are what spread smut, so one step in controlling the disease is to pull off and discard infected ears. Tassels and stems can also get smutty, so remove them, too. The spores overwinter in the soil, from where they can be wafted up to plants by breezes or splashed up by rainwater, which is just one more reason to plant corn in a different location each year.

How you grow corn can influence infection. Lush growth is most susceptible, so avoid overfeeding with high nitrogen fertilizers. Attack by corn borers also makes plants more susceptible to smut, perhaps because infections spread most easily through injured tissue.

Cultivating Smut

Now let’s do a flip flop, and try to raise corn smut instead of sweet corn. Interest in eating smut has prompted agricultural scientists to study ways to actually cultivate the disease. Smut has been fickle, though, not readily amenable to deliberate infection and varying in its intensity with growth stage of the plant, perhaps the variety of corn, and other variables.

Merchant in Guanajuato selling corn husks, tomatillos, and huitlacoches

Again, we can’t do anything about the weather, but we can feed our plants plenty of fertilizer and plant corn where it grew recently. If I was serious about smut, I’d have to radically change my ways of gardening. No more thorough cleanup at season’s end, in the corn beds at least. No more laying down an annual mulch of compost, which would keep spores from wafting or splashing up. No more maintaining good fertility.

And if I was really serious about smut, I might want to try saving last years galls, then spraying a water suspension of spores from those galls onto this year’s silks. Timing is critical. For best results, spray the spores onto the silks just as they are emerging from the tip of an ear. Problem is that it’s been many growing seasons since I last saw smut on my ears. But I could, or you could, buy smut spores which are offered by many sources on the web. (The web being what it is, you’ll also be presented with other kinds of “smut.”)

If you inoculate your plants and you’re lucky, galls should be starting to form within two weeks of inoculation, and ready for harvest a few days later. Harvest the galls just as they erupt through the husk, which is about 2 weeks after silks appear. At harvest stage, they should be firm with just a little give to them, plump and silvery gray.

If you reap a bumper crop, you can freeze them — no blanching needed. Or refrigerate them unbagged — on the cob, with leaves, for up to about a week.

Obviously, you can’t expect to maximize harvest of both sweet corn and smut. I like my Golden Bantam sweet corn a lot more that I do huitlacoche. Perhaps you, like I, will content yourself with the occasional smut-infected ears that appear every year.

When you eat the galls, you probably will enjoy them more if you didn’t know the translation of the Aztec name huitlacoche: “raven excrement” or, simply, “black shit.” Think of them as their marketing names, Mexican truffles or maize mushrooms.

Huitlacoche lasagne

Some raspberries are for eating; others are mostly for looking at — the plants, that is. Although you might not want to pluck fruits from these lookers, you might want to plant them in your flower garden. Two different kinds of good looking raspberry plants were recently staring out at me from the woods along a roadside.

The first of these, flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus), also known as thimbleberry, could be mistaken for a wild rose.

Flowering raspberry

Its large flowers, however, have broader petals than those of a wild rose, and while the rose’s petals are — well — rose colored, a purple tinge makes the petals of flowering raspberry downright lurid.

Pretty flowers and summer-long season of bloom are two qualities that recommend flowering raspberry as an ornamental shrub. Don’t let thorns make you afraid to plant this raspberry in your flower garden. This raspberry’s canes are unarmed. And no matter if your garden is not particularly sunny. Flowering raspberry is native to the somewhat shady edges of eastern American woodlands.

Another Beauty

I had to look more carefully last week to see the other pretty raspberry. This one, called wineberry, is native to Japan, Korea, and China. It was introduced into this country about 1890 as breeding stock for blackberries. Over the years, it has spread throughout much of the east to the point of being considered invasive and, in some states, prohibited.

It was not wineberry’s flowers that caught my eye. Wineberry finished flowering earlier in the season, and the flowers are, anyway, inconspicuous. 

What wineberry shows off are its gracefully arching stems clothed from head to foot in bristly, rusty red hairs. Get out a magnifying glass and peer even more closely at the hairs, and you will see that each is capped by a cute little globular gland.

Wineberry stem close up

Occasionally you find flowering raspberry or wineberry for sale at a nursery, but the easiest way to get started with either of these raspberries is to propagate them from existing plants (with permission of the landowner). In early fall or spring, just dig up a clump and separate it into smaller plants for replanting in your garden. Wineberry stems form roots where the tips arch to the ground, so you also can peg the end of a stem to the ground, then cut off and dig up the rooted plant next spring.

Goes with Wine, in Name, Flavor, and Looks

Not that I’m suggested planting wineberry but if you did want to cultivate it, give it the same annual pruning as blackberries. The plants have perennial roots, with individual stems living only two years. Canes flower in their second year, then die, so each winter the stems that have flowered and fruited back in spring and summer can be cut back to the ground. You can recognize old stems by their cracking bark and flower remnants.

Flowering raspberry differs from other members of the Rubus genus in having perennial stems. So the only pruning they need is to have some of their oldest stems cut down to make room for younger, more vigorous and floriferous ones.

Flowering raspberry and wineberry do bear edible fruits. I’ve never tasted those of flowering raspberry, but from what I’ve read, they are rather tart and dry, with a flattened shape.

Flowering raspberry fruiting

Wineberry fruits remain tightly enveloped in a protective calyx until they are just about ripe. This calyx is particularly dense with those bristly hairs, which not only makes them look pretty but also contributes to their pest resistance.

As wineberry fruits ripen, the bristly calyxes spread open to reveal the berries within. When ripe, they are spectacular clusters of sparkling red globules.

Wineberry fruiting

As I wrote, I’m not suggesting planting wineberry. I can and do enjoy the beauty of the arching stems and the fruits in the wild. Oh, and also their taste. I have read and have no doubt that they are also delicious and beautiful also dipped in chocolate or wine.