General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
Last Saturday I attended the Seedy Saturday event here in Toronto. The turnout seemed to have grown since last year and of course so did my purchases. Where I will be gardening this year is up in the air so I have tried to hold back on making any plans, decisions or purchases. But who goes to a seed sale and doesn’t buy seeds? Here’s what I bought:
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Guest post by Beate Schwirtlich
A round this time each year huge pumpkins, some as big as a thousand pounds, are loaded–using either a forklift or a bunch of strong people and a tarp–into vans and trucks and taken to contests. Growers have spent months tending to these pumpkins that by now have become lumpy, flattened-by-their-own-unnatural-mass giants. This years’ heavyweight pumpkin of 1140 pounds was grown by Dave Stelts, and weighed in at Canfield, Ohio. Nine pumpkins grown this year joined “club 1000” (the informal name for growers who have “broken the barrier”), a record in itself. In the eighties, the heaviest pumpkin weighed in at just over 400 pounds-now a pumpkin over 1000 pounds is expected each year.
A guy named Howard Dill gets most of the credit for the size of pumpkin being grown today. He’s a Nova Scotia farmer who started growing pumpkins in the fifties and spent 30 years breeding them for size. He held the world record from 1979 to 1982. Today, he sells his own variety of seeds, Dill’s Atlantic Giant, by mail order. Pumpkins grown from his seeds are known to grow into the biggest pumpkins of any.
It’s supposed to be a hobby, but competition for first prize weigh-off contests is serious. The people who really want to win are always trying to concoct ways of giving their pumpkin the advantage-a special fertilizer mix, a certain way of a training the vines, a custom greenhouse… If it’s not money on the line, it’s skill and pride. One contest, held by the World Pumpkin Confederation, offers a $50 000 first prize, far more than any other. But there’s still cache in growing the biggest pumpkin, even if it’s not for the big dough. Other growers respect the skill of winners: they go to them for seeds and advice, and follow their methods of growing (if they are willing to share them) religiously. Howard Dill for example is actually described as the `guru’ of big pumpkins by other growers. Some even protect their prize pumpkins with elaborate security systems.
The people who are best at growing pumpkins muster all their human ingenuity and gardening know-how to give nature a winning push. A prize pumpkin doesn’t have to be pretty, edible, or even non-toxic. It just has to weigh a ton. The plants are monitored, measured, and treated scientifically but are at the same time coddled and even loved. They are fertilized according to a program, and liberally treated with fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, and anything else in the arsenal of old-fashioned, chemical-heavy style gardening—even before the grower notices a problem! These gourds are not bred to be pest resistant, that’s for sure. A site called The Pumpkin Nook pretty much expresses the feeling growers have towards the use of pesticides:
” If you are in search of the behemoth pumpkin, spraying to control insects is unfortunately a must…Fortunately those striving for prize winning pumpkins will not be eating the fruit, so health risks are lower. “
Theoretically, though, one fruit could supply the pumpkin for 900 pies. In “Training and Pruning your Pumpkin Vines” David McCallum tells a story of sacrifice in the quest to keep a giant squash safe from the weather:
” The squash was kept growing in the greenhouse with the aid of a propane furnace until November 4. The greenhouse even made it through a 4″ wet snowfall. By setting the alarm clock and getting up every four hours, my brother and I were able to keep the roof clean all night long. “
No wonder pumpkin growers describe their hobby as a sport-and he’s probably not the first to miss a good nights’ sleep over his pumpkin. One grower describes the nerves that accompany the late season, when the pumpkin is getting huge, as the time to start taking nerve pills. It seems the stress is incredible; the pumpkins grow 15 to 20 pounds a day, a rate of growth that can cause them to split without any warning, the growers’ worst fear.
Less earnest accounts tell of increasing the heft of pumpkins by injecting them with growth hormones (the story I’d heard about feeding pumpkins milk turns out to be a myth), filling the hollow with water the night before the weigh-off, patching up cracks with silicone and disguising signs of rot. But if the rules for pumpkin weigh-offs are to be followed, they mostly use every trick in the gardening book, many of them extravagant.
I always thought that this was an innocent hobby. It’s actually rather cutthroat and involves a lot of fertilizer and water in the name of being number one. If you ask me, it’s more a human accomplishment that happens to involve a plant. Here are some tips of the pumpkin growing superstars, things that may seem a bit odd to the uninitiated. If you ask me, only true pumpkin maniacs would go so far in pursuit of a giant, unedible vegetable.
I’ve realized that I don’t have the right personality type for this hobby. I’m not meticulous enough, I don’t own a pick-up truck to cart the thing around, and I think I’d rather have a messy pumpkin patch with lots of small happy little pumpkins for making into pie. Is there a contest for the happiest pumpkin patch?
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Hitting the road with a cup of coffee in a travel mug, my search for wild roadside apple trees begins. I find what I am looking for, a row of gnarled, unpruned wild apple trees growing side by side on a gravel road. I can see right away that some are red, others yellow, some big, some small. I pick some, open my notebook and make my predictions (or should I say guesses?). Which apple will taste best? Which will be sweetest? Which one will taste awful?
I doubt I will be able to predict which apple tastes best just by looking at them.
Smaller apples will be the most sour.
Larger, redder apples will be sweeter.
With seven apples collected, I made my on-sight predictions of how tasty I thought they would be.
1. Best tasting, crispiest. Like store bought?
2. Hard and sour, but tasty?
3. Sourest, hardest and worst tasting
4. Watery tasting, soft and mid-sweet. Pie apple?
5. Hard, tangy and flavourful. Like Granny Smith?
6. Hardest, but sweet and strong.
7. Sweet, tasty and crispy. Like Macintosh?
… drum roll …
Reordered from best to worst tasting:
6. (1) Best tasting apple. Sweet like red delicious. Not bitter.
3. (2) Very much like #2, but sweeter.
1. (3) Sour sweet taste. Slightly mealy. Is like store bought.
2. (4) Sweeter than #1 but a bitter tinge. Crispy.
7. (5) Juiciest but watery, bland and sour.
4. (6) Watery but sweet taste. Bitter aftertaste.
5. (7) Soft. Bitter smell. Bad tasting.
The apple I thought would be one of the worst tasting (it was so small) turned out to be much the best. The apple I thought would be one of the best, number 5, was awful.
Some apples were sweet, but still not that great because they were also bitter.
Usually the smaller apple of the two samples from each tree was the sweetest.
The larger apple is not the better apple. The smaller apples were as sweet or sweeter than the larger ones, and had more flavour overall.
One of the worst qualities of wild apples is a bitter tinge that otherwise sweet apples sometimes have.
All the apples were more tart and sour than many store-bought apples. However, they all generally had a stronger more intense flavour than store-bought apples ever do. Six out of seven of these apples were delicious. Next time I pick wild apples, I’m going to look for more of the hardy, small apples.
…
Comments Off“Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so much for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and bearing qualities, not so much for their beauty, as for their fairness and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of pomological gentlemen. Their “Favorites” and “None-suches” and “Seek-no-farthers,” when I have fruited them, commonly turn out very tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little zest, and have no real tang nor smack to them.” —from “Wild Apples” by Thoreau
Your parents probably tried to instill the virtues of sharing when you were in your formative years. The reasoning is that it’s a nice way to treat your peers and it teaches you to be unselfish and thoughtful. When it comes to gardening, sharing plants through propagation isn’t just a friendly gesture but is actually beneficial to your plants and an economical way to expand your collection. Propagation forces you to take a few minutes and give some individual care to a plant that may have been neglected otherwise. It also involves cutting back a plant that may have become unruly, or digging up a plant that may be too big for its current space. Economically, it provides you with a number of plants you didn’t have a few minutes before, which you can then use to expand your garden or trade with friends for new plants. There are many different ways to propagate new plants from your own plants. The following are a few simple methods to get you started.
Offsets
Some plants will literally do the work for you by producing little plantlets or offsets from the base or the stem of the “mother” plant. For instance succulents and cacti will often produce miniature versions of the parent plant around the base, which can be removed and planted in a new container of soil, or moved to a new place in the garden. Spider plants (Clorophytum) and strawberry plants will send off shoots containing small plantlets that can be pinned down to some moist soil, where they will grow their own roots. You can fashion a pin by bending a paper clip into a “u” shape. [see instructions on side]. Once the plantlet has produced its own roots, the shoot attaching the plantlet to the mother plant (an umbilical cord of sorts) can be cut, leaving you with a new plant that can be given away.
Division
Division involves pulling up large, overgrown plants and breaking them apart at the roots to produce several plants. Spring is the best time to divide indoor plants. Since it is the beginning of the growing season plants will just be coming out of a rest period into a huge growth spurt and could use the extra space in their pots. The best way to prepare for division is to water the plant the day before so that the soil is compact and easy to extract from the container. The following day, carefully remove the plant from the pot onto a surface covered with newspaper or sheeting. Smaller plants can be pulled apart by holding the plant in both hands and gently separating the stems and roots that have become entangled in one another. If the plant will not divide through gentle tugging it is better to use a knife or pruning shears to get the job done. Torn stems and roots can introduce diseases into the plant and prevent a quick recovery. Remember that propagation is similar to a delicate surgical operation. Open wounds can invite all sorts of diseases and pathogens into a plant that has just undergone a sensitive procedure.
Mid summer is the right time of year to divide garden plants such as irises after they have finished blooming, or spring flowering bulbs with exhausted foliage. Fall is the best time to divide most other garden plants. Perennial plants have had a full growing season to expand and become too large for their space, and the cool fall air is a relief from the scorching summer sun. The procedure for dividing outdoor plants is similar to indoor plants with the exception that you will need to dig the plant out of the soil instead of simply tilting a pot. Be sure to dig around the plant, taking care to avoid cutting off roots and hurting the plant. If a plant is really large, use a shovel to cut through and divide the roots instead of a pair of shears. Once you are through dividing the plant, put one piece back into the original hole and plant the rest elsewhere or put into pots to give to friends. Fertilize and liberally water the new plants to ensure that the plant settles in with strong root growth before the cold weather sets in.
Cuttings
Making new plants by rooting small pieces of larger plants is a lot easier then it seems. As a technique, it works on quite a lot of plants such as geraniums, fuchsia, hydrangea, and wisteria to name a few. There are a variety of ways to go about this task. It can be as simple as placing some stems of basil or mint from the grocery store into a container of water. Remove the lower leaves and snip the ends off with a sharp pair of pruning shears for a clean cut before you put the stems in water. After a time the stems will root and you can easily plant them in some soil indoors or out. This method can also be used to root stems taken from catnip or other plants growing wild in fields or abandoned lots.
Softwood Cuttings
Although most gardeners have rooted cuttings from the more popular plants such as geraniums, pinks or coleus, few experiment with bushes, vines, or larger perennials. Early to mid summer is a great time to propagate new plants from stem cuttings. Choose shoots that are semi-mature with a hard, woody base that is still soft enough to cut through with a pair of shears, and which has a soft tip with new growth. Cut ½ inch or so below a node, on an angle. The cutting from base to tip should be about 4 inches long. Remove the lower leaves to create a stem. Dip the fresh cut end into a dish of rooting hormone. Rooting hormone is a product that promotes root growth, and often contains fungicides that discourage the stem from rotting before it has the opportunity to produce roots. It can be purchased in powder or gel form. If powdered hormone isn’t coating the stem end properly, lightly moisten the end of the cutting. Fill a small container with some potting soil. Make a hole in the soil with a dibber, a pencil, a stick or even your finger. Place the cutting in the hole, being sure to avoid removing the rooting hormone. Gently press the soil down around the cutting and water thoroughly.
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There are a variety of reasons for harvesting your own seeds; some personal, some environmental. Perhaps you have a variety that you like and you are concerned that seed companies may discontinue stocking it. You saw some wildflowers while on an outdoor hike that you’d like to grow in your own garden. You have a heritage variety and you want to continue growing it in future years. You want to trade some of your seeds with some of a friend’s seeds, you want to grow organic seeds, or maybe you just want to save money and avoid buying new annuals next year. Whatever the reason, you don’t need to be a botanist or a farmer to do it. If you can grow plants, you can produce your own seeds. There are however, a few things you may want to know before you get started.
Plants either have all the parts to pollinate themselves, (called self-pollinators) or they are aided in accomplishing this by insects, the wind, or human intervention (cross-pollinators). Self-pollinators are commonly referred to as ‘perfect flowers’ as they contain all the parts to successfully pollinate themselves. The comparatively imperfect cross-pollinators produce all the parts to pollinate, but not all in one place. Parts are divided between blooms or are ‘self-incompatible’, identifying their own pollen as foreign material. Pollen must find its way from one plant to the next. This method is preferable for the survival of the species because it ensures that the plants produce genetically diverse seeds– seeds that contain different genetic information or traits then the original plant. This enables the plant to better adapt itself to the environment it is in, or acquire traits that will help it become more disease resistant. Self-pollinators on the other hand, essentially produce clones, which makes them more susceptible to any problems that may arise.
Be aware that if you want cross-pollination to occur in your garden, you need to make your garden favorable to pollinating insects or be prepared to do all the pollinating yourself. Grow plants nearby that attract pollinators–butterfly bush, Queen Anne’s lace, bee balm, salvia, and cleome are a few, and avoid using chemical sprays that will kill all insects both harmful and beneficial.
In some cases you might want to keep cross-pollination from taking place. Plants that are closely related, for example different varieties of melons, will cross-pollinate producing seeds that are a mix of the two varieties. If you want to keep your varieties true, plant similar species of plants on opposite ends of your garden.
Open Pollenated, Heirloom, and Hybrid
Before you decide to save the seeds from a particular plant you will need to know whether they are Open-pollinated, Heirloom or Hybrid. Open-pollinated plants are those pollinated–naturally or through human intervention–by the same species of plant. Heirlooms are older plant varieties that have maintained relatively unchanged in a particular region for several generations, and all are open-pollinated. Hybrids are plants that have been cross-pollinated using two different species of the same genus of plant. They are bred professionally under controlled conditions, to produce certain desirable traits. Grocery store produce is usually hybridized and often bred for mass production or large-scale farming. Many of the characteristics that are bred into these plants, such as thick skins for transport, or high water content for size, are not desirable for small-scale gardening. This is one reason why you may not want to save seeds from store bought produce. Seed packaged for the home gardener by seed companies may also be hybridized. These plants are bred to contain traits that are desirable to the small scale gardener such as colour and taste. However, seeds produced by these hybrids doesn’t guarantee that those desirable traits will be carried over to the next generation. In most cases the such traits may actually disappear entirely after a few generations. Or the seeds may be sterile and won’t produce fruit anyway. Either way, growing seeds from hybrids is a gamble. Checking the seed packet or catalogue of the grower is one way to find out whether seed are hybrids. Packets will often say F1 to indicate hybrids or OP to indicate open-pollinated.
Harvesting Seeds
If this will be your first time saving seeds, start out with some easy plants that flawlessly produce seeds without any intervention. Annuals such as cosmos, marigolds, pansies, corn flowers and many others are some of the easiest. Collect seeds from the highest quality and healthiest plants. A good specimen is disease and pest free, has bright foliage and flowers, and grows vigorously.
Under usual circumstances snipping flower heads off after they are spent (deadheading) is crucial to encouraging a plant to continue producing new flowers. To save seed, leave the flowers on the stem after the flower dies off instead. That way, the plant will start putting its resources into producing seed instead of new flowers.
Before long a seedpod will replace the spent flower. Don’t remove the seed head right away: leave it on the stems as long as possible, letting it ripen within the pod. Seeds are generally ready when the pod turns brown, dries out or cracks open. If you notice that the seed pod is prone to cracking open on it’s own (snapdragons, violas, pansies), attach a lunch-sized paper bag around it using an elastic or string, catching the seeds as they fall. When the seeds are fully ripe, cut the stem at the base of the plant and shake the seed head inside the bag to dislodge the seeds from the casing. If some seeds are lost to the soil they will come up on their own next year. This is called self-seeding, and many annuals reproduce themselves this way.
If the seed heads are not fully dry and ripe when you cut them off, either hang the stems (with the seed cases) or lay them flat to dry on a newspaper or paper towel pad away from direct light. Make sure that all seeds are completely dry before removing them from the pods: if you package them before they are fully dry they will go moldy in storage. This is the simplest way; it’s easier to dry the whole seed head then a bunch of loose seeds. When the pod is dry, extract the seeds by carefully crushing or breaking open the seedpods. Separate crushed debris from the seeds by sifting everything through a fine mesh screen. The debris will fall through and the seeds will remain on top of the screen. Some seeds such as those from marigolds or black-eyed susans can simply be pulled from the seed head.
Seeds from fruits and vegetables should be collected when plants are at their peak, before they are over-ripe and decay has set in. Some vegetables such as beans are the exception and should be harvested when the pods are dry. Seeds from most fruits and vegetables are incased inside a wet environment (the part usually eaten). In the case of very wet pulp such as tomatoes, the seeds can be washed from the pulp and then laid out to dry on newspaper or a screen. The same can be done with pumpkins, squash and other soft pulp vegetables. In the case of harder pulp fruits and vegetables they are simply opened up and the seeds removed manually.
Storing Seeds
The best way to store seeds is to package them in paper envelopes or bags since they allow for good air circulation and don’t sweat. However, any container will do, keeping in mind that humidity and lack of air circulation will cause mold, disease and prompt seeds to germinate prematurely. Film canisters for one aren’t recommended as the plastic promotes humidity and stagnant air. The temperature should be cool to make longer storage possible-refrigerator storage will work if you can’t find a naturally cool place. Be sure to write the date, name of plant and any growing instructions you are aware of on the envelope or package. This will come in handy when using the seeds a year or more later, and will be appreciated if you give the seeds to someone else. It’s worth it (but not necessary) to put a bit of extra effort into the packaging if the seeds are to be given away. Use specialty papers for the envelopes or create fancy labels to mark them. Some envelope and label templates are provided here for you to print out on any paper (or sticker paper for labels that is compatible with your printer type).
Store seeds carefully by placing envelopes inside large glass jars with a bag of silica or powdered milk. These products absorb excess moisture. Reuse the tiny bags of silica gel that come inside new shoes–dry them for a few minutes at a very low temperature in your oven. Alternatively, make a tiny package of powdered milk by pouring a pile into the centre of a piece of breathable fabric or tissue paper. Pull the corners together and close it up with a piece of string or elastic to create a sachet. The best jars for storage are wide mouth mason jars used for canning. They have the proper airtight seal that is essential for long term storage. If you store the jars in a cool, dark place the seeds should last from a year to a few years, depending on the type.
Testing Your Seeds
If you are saving your seeds for extended periods of time, test the seeds before you use them to see if they will still germinate. This is easily done by placing 20 or so seeds (depending on size) onto a half-piece of damp paper towel. Fold it over so that the seeds are covered. Then place it in a plastic baggy with a few pinholes punched into it and set it aside in a dark, warm place. Bear in mind that some seeds need light to germinate and some have other specific requirements-some may need to be soaked first, or may require a certain temperature for germination. Knowing your seeds will help you in this process: however most seeds will do fine with the standard procedure. After a week check to see how many seeds have germinated. Again some seeds will have a longer germination period than others, so if they haven’t germinated by week’s end, wait another week to be certain. If a fair number of seeds have germinated then the seeds are good and can be used with little trouble. If few seeds germinate, increase the number of seeds sown per inch or don’t bother using them at all.
Plants for Beginners
Make Decorative Envelopes
To get you started on making and decorating your own seed packets we have designed a small envelope template and labels that you can print out in colour or black & white. We have also designed four seed packets of common garden plants: snapdragon, viola/pansy, Oriental poppy and columbine. The packet includes a full colour illustration of the plant, as well as care and seed sowing instructions on the back. Instructions for putting the envelopes together are included on the print-out.
Suggestions for Use
Print the labels onto plain or sticker paper. We used plain, white sticker paper and clear sticker paper available for use with ink jet printer.
Print the envelopes onto any paper that is appropriate for your printer. We used construction paper, plain paper, colour ink jet paper and clear, thin vellum. If you are using vellum use rubber cement to seal.
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