NH Outside: Gardens Archives

Over the winter, I began reading about making ponds and waterfalls. Visions of rocks started dancing in my head about the middle of February. I drew and redrew my plans. With my wife looking over my shoulder (no doubt contemplating the rocks in my head), I proceeded to lay out an ambitious rock project.

As the snow melted in late March, I was out on the slope in back of the garage with string and stakes, laying out the watercourse of the waterfall. I bought the necessary materials for the pool, water system, and electrical power for the pump. Then I waited a month for the ground to thaw.

Following the expert directions I found in books, I started from the lowest point. I set the preformed pond in place and backfilled around the upper perimeter. I left the lower side open and built a structure to contain the electrical supply.

A water feature in the yard undergoes constant transition. Now that warmer weather has arrived this season, I've realized I need to change the liner on the waterfall and move more rocks to improve the flow of the water.

Once I've completed the structural work, I'll add plantings to the fringes of the watercourse: astilbe and daylilies around the pond, sedum and vinca hugging the rocks along the watercourse, creeping thyme and alyssum emerging from the crevices between the rocks. As the season progresses, I'll add lights and potted moon-flower vines for night viewing.

In addition to keeping me occupied, the pond has become a center of gravity for my 15 grandchildren, ages 2 to 20, when they visit. Some of them go straight to the pond before they come into the house. Others come in the front door and briefly sit in front of the television set. But soon they become restless and exit at the back of the house, pausing briefly on the deck to observe the pond and waterfall from on high. Then quickly, they leave their vantage point and follow the waterfall to the pond.

I've provided a bench at the bottom of the slope next to the pond from which they can amuse themselves. Some merely sit and watch the resident frog (he's returned this spring). Others reach into the pond's cool reservoir and hum a quiet tune. The more active ones want to grab a stick and poke at the frog or the water lily. Occasionally, a child will insist on trying to catch the frog. Of course the frog has other ideas and takes evasive steps to avoid capture.

I've had to institute a few pond rules:

No squeezing the frog.
The frog stays at or in the pond.
Don't use sticks to abuse the frog or the pond lily.

After they've tired of the pond, I usually give the grandchildren a tour of my flower and vegetable gardens, where I encourage some supervised picking (though I insist they wash the vegetables before eating). Depending on the age of the child, I may offer to give one a ride in a cart pulled behind my garden tractor.

These activities tend to make the visits more pleasant for all of us. I think it also encourages my grandchildren to have more curiosity about the natural world outside and around their own home as well.

Finally, the care and grooming of the pond area provides me many pleasant hours doing something restorative to the soul. If I feel the need of a bit of shade, I step a few feet from the pond and sit down in the woods, find a fallen log next to a live tree and lean back. Absolutely no watches or cell phones allowed there!

By Bill Dawson, Community Tree Steward
UNH Cooperative Extension

These are the days to drink in the precious gold of autumn. As the sun slants low in the sky, the golden hues dazzle us in their brilliance. The black-eyed Susans in the garden flaunt their yellow petals at the wind, which replies by swinging them jauntily in the sunshine. Behind them, tall golden sunflowers nod their huge heads. Each day, the centers expand outward, enveloping the yellow petals until all that’s left are the seeds.

The chipmunks race up the tall stalks to stuff their cheeks with seeds. The chickadees are there too, often hanging upside down as they peck away. A bird releases one seed from its cradle then flies away to crack it open and feast. Are they the birds that have been here all summer long? Or have our birds flown south already and these are migrants from further north, happy to have found a feast to sustain them on their long journey?

Other birds are busy gathering seeds, too. Another flash of gold announces the goldfinch, and soon a small flock of finches is busy eating seedheads around the garden. I watch one bird land on a grass blade nearby and the light stalk sways nearly to the ground. Undeterred, the bird moves along to the very end of the stalk and nibbles on the seed.

The sun dazzles today. It lights up the fading black-eyed Susans and the heavily blooming sunflower stalks, and behind them, the pale gold of clumps of Karl Foerster ornamental grasses. A light breeze is music to the grass, which seems to dance with wild joy.

The goldenrod is buzzing as the bees cover the surface of each cluster of blooms. The bees seem to know that the oncoming cold will soon take the flowers, so they hurry from blossom to blossom. The bees themselves are a golden hue, as are the pouches of pollen on their legs. From sun to flower to bee to pollen, the circle of life itself is represented in the colors of this pigment we humans value so much.

I pick up a fallen maple leaf. The outer edges are a rich, deep red which subtly melds into orange and then gold. In the low sunshine, the colors speak of many things: of spring showers and slowly lengthening days, of the warmth of summer; of cool fall evenings with bright full moons.

On one edge of the leaf, a little grey spider eyes me, then hops to another part of the leaf further away. “Where will you spend the winter?” I ask him. He doesn’t answer, so I put the leaf down where I found it and hope he will survive until spring.

By Susan M. Poirier, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

Digging carrots from the garden in 80 degree weather just doesn't seem natural for the end of September. There were a surprising lot of carrots, considering I never got out there to thin them for salad as I’d promised myself I’d do.

So I suffer now. I spent the afternoon in the kitchen processing the carrots for freezing. Now, the non gardeners among you will be thinking “How nice! People out there are still preserving food.”  But the real gardeners will think, “Why doesn't she just put them in the root cellar”?

Well, these carrots needed to be processed because chipmunks or some other critter started eating the carrots at the top and went as far into the ground as possible, leaving a concave depression with all these little tooth marks and making those carrots no good for root cellar storage.

On the other hand, I'm not overly fond of cooked carrots. Thank goodness for my mother's old Farm Journal Cookbooks, which contain recipes from generations of farm wives. They knew how to preserve food: Take 12 pounds of carrots, etc. I wound up with candied ginger carrots and orange glazed carrots. I’ll be very happy this winter to take them out of the freezer.

The beets also needed gathering. Something bigger than a chipmunk had enjoyed the beet greens, and the roots themselves weren't as time consuming to process. I just picked out the ones that were split or nibbled on and cooked them. I stashed the rest away in a cool place to be brought out much later.

As the sun was sinking, I went out to get a few (I thought) beans for dinner. Lugging the full basket back into the house, I set about preparing them. These aren’t just any bean, but scarlet runners. My friend from England introduced me to this heirloom variety. They not only produce the most beautiful red flowers all summer and fall, but the beans themselves taste better than ordinary green beans. They are so beautiful many people grow them just for the flowers and don't even know how good they taste. You have to pick the pods before the beans inside start to swell. If you have to “string” them, they’re too old, fit only for the compost. 

I got them all cut up and didn't have the heart to do any more freezing that day. As my husband walked through the kitchen he casually asked if I was freezing them. I told him, “No, we’re having some hot for dinner and I’ll make the rest into a bean salad that should last the rest of the month.”

While I’m on the subject of heirloom varieties, the Brandywine tomatoes are hitting their full stride. We got them into the ground very late. Most years at this time the plants would be hanging down in the cellar slowly ripening their fruit away from the frosty outside air. Brandywines are so good! No other tomato beats their taste. And big! A couple of years ago I remember picking with pride the first ripe Brandywine. I washed it and sliced three half inch slabs that completely covered the bread for that first tomato/mayo sandwich. This particular tomato was so large I put the rest of it in the fridge and we had it for a salad that evening. I haven't had one that big in awhile, but I did bring one to share with my hiking group today. Everyone tucked slices into their sandwiches except for the one with the peanut butter sandwich. She ate her share separately.

The winter squash are still out there. If nothing has been nibbling on them, they go right into the cold room. No hassle. Thumbing though my gardening magazine, I found a lovely article on horseradish. Something else I’ll need to harvest before too long.

Have you ever tried to process horseradish? Oh, the tears you shed! After my first experience, my mother told me she used to hold the root outside a mostly closed window and grate it out there. Good idea. I'll put my food processor on an extension cord and see how that works.

My mother gave up canning and freezing well before she was my age. She lived though the time when you had to do it to survive the winter. She stopped when they moved off the farm and thought supermarkets were just great. Well, they are, but home grown food tastes better, at least to me. Knowing what went into growing the produce, harvesting it and preserving it for the long winter gives a feeling of security not just because I can have something to eat, but because I still know how to do it. Will the next generation have these skills?

By Carolyn Enz Page, Community Tree Steward
UNH Cooperative Extension

The fall precipitation has gotten me to thinking of puffballs and bird’s nest fungus. Autumn weather in New England is always a catalyst for mushrooms, and water may be the most important ingredient.

Fungi are neither plant nor animal, but ancient beings that have made up their own rules. This causes abrupt name changes whenever a mycologist discovers some new chemical contortion or connection. Any habitat with even a dribble of moisture has been colonized by some fungal form and there seems no reproductive method that they haven’t tried.

Hardly a matrix remains unchallenged by the astonishing array of fungal enzymes, and many plants over the millennia have made symbiotic alliances with fungi; some plants, including many orchids, can’t live without them. In trees, wood-decay fungi play a key role in producing beautiful, multicolored patterns in the wood called “spalting,” an embellishment especially prized by woodworkers.

Water may be the only commonality agreed upon by all species of fungi. Water awakens the microscopic, thready hyhpae, which comprise the main body of a fungus. This tangle of threads perforates what we persist in believing is solid ground. In industrious self-employment, these hyphae transform larger things into smaller things. These larger things are as varied as granite, trees, leaves, feathers, insects, shower curtains, and the contents of my refrigerator. The foam in brooks is most often a by-product of aquatic fungi.

Dampness finalizes a fungus’s plan to organize and send forth the familiar mushroom. A particle of evaporated water in an intentionally self-cooled mushroom cap catapults a spore on its journey out of the gill or pore off to a suitably damp new beginning or a desiccated and sorry death. The design is so precise that with all our apparatus we could not duplicate it. Even the shape of a mushroom cap is adapted to allow an appropriate air current to move the spore along its way.

I am thinking in tonight’s rain about more unusual forms of fungus though. The bird’s nest fungi are easy to overlook. Very small, but quite common, they look like groups of quarter-inch cups, leftover dinnerware from some Lilliputian gathering. Each contains a few lentil-shaped “eggs.” These capsules contain the spores, and they are waiting for rain. A well-placed raindrop can propel one of these carriers a surprising distance—up to several yards—which is the point. Offspring must be sent off to fresh food supplies.

Some species of these miniscule nests eject “eggs” trailing sticky threads, which cause these reproductive structures to adhere to any surface they strike. With luck, one of these eggs, called peridioles, will accidentally become part of some herbivore’s meal, eventually left behind somewhere, complete with a ready-to-eat lunch.

Rain is also crucial for the continuation of many kinds of puffballs. Unlike the commonly depicted children’s-book mushroom, puffballs have neither gills nor pores to send their spores aloft. Instead, their reproductive dust matures within the protective sphere, a system that prevents premature drying. Expecting rain, a pre-ordained pore enlarges and opens on the upper surface. A few good smacks of a downpour and puffs of spore erupt into a stiff, damp breeze—perfect for starting more puffball mycelium to continue the process of decay beneath a lawn.

The deluges of this past month have caused puffballs galore on a baseball field I know. They glow in the moonlight like little Halloween ghouls arisen mysteriously from barren turf. Some are large enough for late-season myopic outfielders to prematurely explode them. Enough will have escaped intact, awaiting the rain.

By J. Ann Eldridge, UNH Cooperative Extension Wildlife Coverts Cooperator

In mid-October, begin raking (or collecting from neighbors) fall leaves and pine needles to replenish your supply of garden mulch. Keep working on winter firewood (split, stack). Begin storing large columns of cardboard hauled home from town dump to replenish spring mulch under the woodchuck fence.

Separate the best of last year's garlic bulbs and plant the cloves pointed side up about four inches apart in well-composted soil in mid-October; mulch heavily to prevent heaving. Amend entire garden planting area as recommended by a soil test. Spread and rake or till in compost, wood ashes (as needed) and either mulch or sow winter rye in all bare spots.

Get your stovewood under cover before snow falls. Maintain compost pile throughout winter.Haul kitchen scraps to the pile on snowshoes as needed. Haul wood ashes in covered metal container outside, away from your house. Save newspapers and cardboard for use as weed-suppressing mulches.

In early January, order pizza seeds to ensure good choice of varieties: tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers (optional), onions, basil and parsley. Late February, sow onions and parsley seeds under lights. Six weeks later, sow tomatoes, peppers and basil. Water seedlings as needed; keep full-spectrum lights on 12 hours a day.

In mid-April, begin hardening off onion seedlings, setting flats outdoors for gradually increasing periods of time. Around the third week in April (providing garden soil has dried enough), transplant hardened onion seedlings into amended soil, setting seedlings four to five inches apart. Remain vigilant with weed removal from onion beds throughout season. Acquire pickup load of aged manure from neighbors with horses. Begin new compost pile. Mix weeds and kitchen scraps with horse manure. Repair and mulch under entire perimeter of electric woodchuck fence. Test line. Ouch!

In mid-May, retrieve tomato supports and polyester row covers from garden shed, till under winter rye and (provided soil test shows need for lime) broadcast wood ashes over entire planting area at recommended rate. Begin hardening off tomatoes, peppers and basil. Plant non-pizza salad crops if desired: lettuce, carrots, Asian greens, snow peas, radishes, etc.

Memorial Day weekend: Spread old compost. Transplant hardened tomato, pepper and basil seedlings into garden. (To pre-burn the calories for, say, a pepperoni pizza, transplant cabbage, broccoli, eggplant, leeks; direct-sow bok choi, beans, carrots, kale, winter squash, cucumbers, zucchini, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Spread row covers over non-pizza crops as needed to foil insects.) Set stakes or other supports for tomatoes. Rigorously maintain mulch under woodchuck fence to prevent short circuits from weeds.

Mid-June to mid-July: Don bathing suit, periodically harvest pond weeds from backyard pond. Once soil has warmed, keep weeding or mulch entire planting bed with underlayer of hoarded newspaper topped with saved leaves, pine needles and pond weeds. Begin tying up vining tomato varieties. Water only if top two inches of soil dry out. (Non-pizza crops need rigorous daily monitoring for signs of insects and disease; e.g., check undersides of squash leaves for squash-beetle eggs; scrape off eggs with fingernail.) Remove garlic scapes as they form; eat in salads and stir-fries.

Mid-July through mid-August: Harvest garlic when all but three blades have begun turning brown. Set in warm, dry, well-ventilated space to cure. Begin daily check for early blight on lower leaves of tomatoes; remove any leaves with lesions. Pull row covers off cucumbers, squash and melons as soon as female blossoms appear to let pollinating insects do their work. Keep watering and weeding as needed. Make successive plantings of non-pizza salad crops.

Mid-August to Labor Day weekend: Remain vigilant with insect, disease surveillance activities. Harvest onions as tops begin falling over; spread to dry in protected area on old metal bedsprings (another raised-bed gardening strategy). Harvest tomatoes as they ripen. Can or freeze on weekends. Prepare some as pizza sauce, adding diced green pepper, onion and garlic, parsley, rosemary (see below), basil, thyme and oregano (from perennial herb garden).

Sometime in September or October, attend family reunion in Vermont. Shower brother Peter with effusive thanks for harvesting a load of rosemary branches from his Albuquerque backyard and carting them east in his golf bag.

September through early November: Harvest and eat or store all crops in timely fashion. Spread compost, sow cover crops in bare spots.

Ready for pizza? Fire up wood cookstove, remove sauce from jar or freezer, and simmer on stovetop. Prepare pizza dough. Make salad with seasonal ingredients. Build and bank fire to about 400°.

Assemble pizza. Add generous amount of pepperoni and sausage if you've also raised the pork and beef, grown your own wheat, and milked your own cow for the cheese. Slip pizza into oven, bake until cheese bubbles and browns.

Sit down, relax, and enjoy your nega-cal pizza.

By Peg Boyles, Writer-Editor UNH Cooperative Extension

I felt my nose twitch and an “oink” coming as soon as I glanced at the “truffles” listing in the field guide on North American mushrooms. Truffles are those ugly, knobby, strongly scented French and Italian delicacies often sniffed out by hogs and cherished by gourmands who will pay up to $2,000 per pound.

The closest I've ever come to eating truffles was a few thin slivers shaved on pasta, the cost of which thinned my wallet. Jeepers, I thought, if we have them here in the U.S. maybe I can scout some out for free.

My enthusiasm dispersed like a puffball fungus discharging its spores. Such tasty tidbits, I read a bit further on, are found only in Oregon. The two types found there are Fuzzy False (now there’s a clue) and Oregon White. The first resembles the costly champignon, but it grows above ground and not below a tree under the soil. Oregon Whites are thought to be as delectable as their European cousins to connoisseurs, but 3,000 miles is quite a trek for a truffle.

I don’t know when I first became interested in fungi. It might have been living two decades near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, which proudly bills itself as the “mushroom capital of the world.” Or it might have been those times I was golfing, and mistakenly took a swing at one of those small, white spheres that pop up on grass after rain. In any case, they have always fascinated me, so when I read about mushroom seminar offered recently I immediately sent my check.

The class was given by a woman with 15 years of experience tramping over terrain hunting fungi. She goes to mushroom camp each year, she told us, mushroom earrings swinging to and fro as she talked. Our mycologist learned serious mushrooming by first identifying edible mushrooms, then the deadly ones, and then, she said, mock serious, those that make you wish you were dead.

Amanitas, are the nastiest mushrooms on earth and most will kill you dead, she said, glibly adding that the Destroying Angel will taste good only once.

We weren’t deterred by the glum toadstool talk and, when instructed to go out and bring back whatever we found, we eagerly set off with baskets in hand. Some of us chose to explore a nearby riverbank. It was hot and humid for September as we slipped down brush-laden hills and through thick fern fields, swatting mosquitoes and clouds of bugs.

During the period of our fungi foray, this part of New Hampshire was in a dry spell. Mushrooms thrive in moist conditions, so our findings were few. But we did come across one perfect specimen - a large cement toadstool decorating a homeowner’s lawn. We laughed at the irony when we walked by.

Among our finds: a blue-staining bolete that turned blue when scraped by our mushroom guru’s thumbnail. Boletes, she told us, will give you diarrhea and make you throw up.

Some findings had scary or descriptive names. Dead Man’s Fingers are black, finger-sized growths. The Pigskin Poison Puffball, sporting a rind-like surface, has a name that speaks for its toxicity. One participant thought the Straight-branched Coral was edible, but our expert squashed that notion. There’s only one coral you can eat, she said, and I’ve never found it.

She became excited when she saw the tiny, flat, button-sized Scarlet and Eyelash Cup fungi. They looked similar until a magnifying lens revealed that one had small hairs lining its edge. This caused a group member to quip that it had to be a boy fungus, because they always have the nicest lashes.

We found an Artist’s Conk, so called because drawings on its underside turn brown and can be preserved. We also found the Birch Polypore, which native Americans and ancient peoples used as tinder for campfires. The Alpine Iceman, Oetzi, had two polypores in his belongings when he was discovered in the Alps.

We found some edibles. Well, almost. Our expert said she loves puffballs, which she slices thinly, oven-dries and salts to eat as a snack. As she cut through the ones we found, she informed us that puffs are edible only if they are pure white inside. As they age they go from white to cream to brown. Our findings provided examples of the later stages.

Our mushroom master had brought along a Hemlock Varnish Shelf, a shiny, maroon-colored, kidney shaped mushroom she said was rumored to have magical properties such that if you drink a tea made from it you will live forever.

Now there’s a mushroom worth $2,000 a pound, I thought. I’m ready to hunt that baby down.

By Pauline Bogaert, Master Gardener

Digging carrots from the garden in 80 degree weather just doesn't seem natural for the end of September. There were a surprising lot of carrots, considering I never got out there to thin them for salad as I’d promised myself I’d do.

So I suffer now. I spent the afternoon in the kitchen processing the carrots for freezing. Now, the non gardeners among you will be thinking “How nice! People out there are still preserving food.” But the real gardeners will think, “Why doesn't she just put them in the root cellar”?

Well, these carrots needed to be processed because chipmunks or some other critter started eating the carrots at the top and went as far into the ground as possible, leaving a concave depression with all these little tooth marks and making those carrots no good for root cellar storage.

On the other hand, I'm not overly fond of cooked carrots. Thank goodness for my mother's old Farm Journal Cookbooks, which contain recipes from generations of farm wives. They knew how to preserve food: Take 12 pounds of carrots, etc. I wound up with candied ginger carrots and orange glazed carrots. I’ll be very happy this winter to take them out of the freezer.

The beets also needed gathering. Something bigger than a chipmunk had enjoyed the beet greens, and the roots themselves weren't as time consuming to process. I just picked out the ones that were split or nibbled on and cooked them. I stashed the rest away in a cool place to be brought out much later.

As the sun was sinking, I went out to get a few (I thought) beans for dinner. Lugging the full basket back into the house, I set about preparing them. These aren’t just any bean, but scarlet runners. My friend from England introduced me to this heirloom variety. They not only produce the most beautiful red flowers all summer and fall, but the beans themselves taste better than ordinary green beans. They are so beautiful many people grow them just for the flowers and don't even know how good they taste. You have to pick the pods before the beans inside start to swell. If you have to “string” them, they’re too old, fit only for the compost.

I got them all cut up and didn't have the heart to do any more freezing that day. As my husband walked through the kitchen he casually asked if I was freezing them. I told him, “No, we’re having some hot for dinner and I’ll make the rest into a bean salad that should last the rest of the month.”

While I’m on the subject of heirloom varieties, the Brandywine tomatoes are hitting their full stride. We got them into the ground very late. Most years at this time the plants would be hanging down in the cellar slowly ripening their fruit away from the frosty outside air.

Brandywines are so good! No other tomato beats their taste. And big! A couple of years ago I remember picking with pride the first ripe Brandywine. I washed it and sliced three half inch slabs that completely covered the bread for that first tomato/mayo sandwich. This particular tomato was so large I put the rest of it in the fridge and we had it for a salad that evening. I haven't had one that big in awhile, but I did bring one to share with my hiking group today. Everyone tucked slices into their sandwiches except for the one with the peanut butter sandwich. She ate her share separately.

The winter squash are still out there. If nothing has been nibbling on them, they go right into the cold room. No hassle. Thumbing through my gardening magazine, I found a lovely article on horseradish. Something else I’ll need to harvest before too long.

Have you ever tried to process horseradish? Oh, the tears you shed! After my first experience, my mother told me she used to hold the root outside a mostly closed window and grate it out there. Good idea. I'll put my food processor on an extension cord and see how that works.

My mother gave up canning and freezing well before she was my age. She lived though the time when you had to do it to survive the winter. She stopped when they moved off the farm and thought supermarkets were just great. Well, they are, but home grown food tastes better, at least to me. Knowing what went into growing the produce, harvesting it and preserving it for the long winter gives a feeling of security not just because I can have something to eat, but because I still know how to do it. Will the next generation have these skills?

By Carolyn Enz Page, Community Tree Steward

One of the delights and rewards of gardening is garden gluttony eating fruits and vegetables straight from the bush or vine. The cherry tomatoes I ate by the handful today were warm from the sun and sweet as candy. Earlier in the summer I pigged out on raspberries that went right from the bushes into my mouth, again warm and sweet.

I just returned from a visit to another garden where fall raspberries were just ripening again straight into the mouth. In fact this is the moment when I realized new meaning for the expression “hand to mouth.” In this case, hardly poverty and subsistence, but luxury and indulgence.

It’s difficult to choose the most prized “hand to mouth” food in the garden gluttony menu; blueberries are right up there. But homegrown peas eaten from the pods in early summer are a true delicacy, too. They are less common, as few people bother with the fuss of growing them. I grow them mostly to eat in the garden, a reward to keep me at the tedious gardening chores.

Growing up in the fruit belt along Lake Ontario north of Niagara Falls, I remember climbing the sweet cherry tree out back with my younger brothers, where we would balance precariously to reach to the furthest branches for the prized cherries before the birds got them. I’m sure my mother allowed this wonderful adventure because she realized it was easier than picking them herself. She also taught us how to pop the grapes into our mouths by pinching and slipping the skins off the Niagara and Concord grapes, leaving a trail of skins on the ground next to the vines. Again she put no limits on quantity consumed!

But things got even better. When I was about seven, Dad left his job as an Extension Agent and became a fruit farmer. The immediate and most obvious change was the introduction of a pick-up truck in our driveway (we didn’t move to the farm). We got to ride in the back!

Bushels of fruit came home in the truck. I can remember the peaches huge, fuzzy, brightly colored and juicy. Again no limit, except I remember the fuzz being irritating. Mother laid creamy, luscious pears out on newspapers in the basement to ripen. And then the apples arrived, so many kinds we hardly got excited. Mother made every apple dessert imaginable.

But in addition to the fruit there was a corn garden. During the season, Dad brought corn home every night and Mom presented huge, steaming platters to us five children. My two older teenage brothers had appropriate teen appetites and now I appreciate how relieved Mom was that she could fill them up on corn. I think I can remember dinners when that was all we ate, along with platters of tomatoes. Who needed meat and potatoes!

All this abundance and bounty wasn’t quite as wonderful for my mother who canned enough produce to feed the family all winter. Peaches ripen during the hottest days of August. We knew enough to stay out of the way when the canning days were in progress a hot, horrible job. The kitchen looked like a steam bath! Grandma sometimes came from far away to help. But Mom seemed proud of all the jars of peaches, pears, and tomatoes stashed away in the “canning closet” in the basement.

When we asked her what Labor Day was all about, we got the line about how that was just a contrived day of luxury for people who didn’t really work. Dad and my older brothers spent Labor Day at the farm harvesting peaches. That work didn’t look so bad to me my brother got to drive in the trailer loads of peaches.

One year we three little kids were taken to the farm during sour cherry picking a day off for Mom. Dad plunked us by a loaded cherry tree with branches drooping to the ground, and he showed us how to pull off the clusters of juicy red cherries he said something about picking clean and not leaving any and was gone. In no time it was obvious that this wasn’t fun. Sour cherries aren’t great eating from the tree. Furthermore the cherry juice was sticky and got all over our hands. Then it began running down our elbows...ugh!  We probably lasted an hour or so, but it seemed like a very long morning. I think we were taken down to the lake to swim and clean up at noon.

Back in the old days while we practiced hand-to-mouth garden gluttony, we were playing hard all summer long, and all of us were skinny from the non-stop exercise and stuffing ourselves with fresh from the vine fruits and vegetables.

By Anne Krantz, Tree Steward & Master Gardener

One day in late summer about a year and a half before my mother’s death, I took her for a short walk on the dirt road near her central Vermont home. Afflicted with Parkinson’s disease and increasing dementia, mom shuffled along slowly, using an old ski pole for a cane, wearing her faded denim hat with a gigantic fake sunflower pinned to its folded-back brim. (She always wanted the visiting tourists to know they’d met “a real Vermont character.”)

Suddenly she stopped and sucked in her breath, pointing to a spectacular roadside display of purple asters and goldenrod against a backdrop of tall ferns and towering hemlocks.

“Oh look!” she gasped. “How beautiful! No human hand could have created that landscape. Do you know why those flowers take your breath away, Peggy? It’s because they grow to suit themselves.”

My mother, Gertrude Alice Martin Boyles - an extraordinary human known to all as Trudy - allowed her three children to grow to suit themselves, though she tended us in such a way that she sculpted our deep interiors with her values.

From her, I got my frugality, my belief in self-reliance and the general competence of ordinary people, my work ethic, my politics, my love of words and, especially, my connection to the natural world and to the important work of home food production.

Unintentionally, Trudy also taught me to hold within myself the necessary tension between the awe of things that grow to suit themselves and the human need to tend things, to manipulate our natural environment to meet our needs.

Trudy grew up as one of nine siblings on a dairy farm, which helped explain why ours was the only house in the neighborhood with a huge vegetable garden and fruit plantings that extended around the house to the edge of our lot.

Decades before the word compost entered our common lexicon, we maintained a big fenced-in pile in one corner of the vegetable patch. Every summer, we planted, weeded, harvested and canned hundreds of jars of corn, shelled beans, peas, green beans, tomatoes, berries, applesauce, jams, jellies, relishes and pickles. We stored potatoes, cabbages, winter squash, beets, carrots and onions in the cellar. We foraged for dandelion greens, blackberries and wild blueberries. We raised chickens in the space over the garage we called “the barn.”

As a child conscript in the family food-producing enterprise, I hated the endless weeding, picking, shelling, peeling and canning, but most of it sank in. When I planted my own first garden I had a storehouse of knowledge about when and how to sow and tend and harvest.

I think about Trudy nearly every day, but especially on bright summer days like today, when she would rise before dawn, set bread dough to rise, and roll out two or three pie crusts before heading out to harvest raspberries (or strawberries or apples) and peas (or green beans or tomatoes).

When we’d come down for breakfast, Trudy would have half a dozen loaves of bread and a couple of pies cooling on the kitchen shelf and a dozen jars of jam boiling away in the canning kettle.

For 37 years, I’ve lived in the house and grown food on the land Trudy bought in 1969, when, driving home from visiting her daughters in Cambridge, she passed a house with a For Sale sign on the lawn and a white stallion galloping around on the hillside behind it.

“That magnificent white horse drew me in,” she told me later. “I took him as a sign, a signal that this was the place, a real place that could feed my grandchildren and teach them about the important things in this world.” She went into that house, sat down at the kitchen table with the farmer and his wife, and signed a sales agreement that day, paying for the place with insurance money my dad had left when he died five years before.

Almost every day for more than three decades, I’ve eaten something grown on the land Trudy bought that day. I spend most of my vacation days working in my bony hillside garden. I’ve done much of my most important pondering and grieving and raging and celebrating while tending my peas and cabbages and squashes.

Last year, we cut way back the size of the lawn we mow. This morning, I visited one of the overgrown areas. There among the tall grasses, I saw daisies and violets and buttercups, Indian paintbrushes, baby’s breath, and, sure enough, asters and goldenrods, poking through in bold self-assertion, growing to suit themselves.

By Peg Boyles, Writer/Editor

One of my favorite childhood activities was making dollies from inverted hollyhock blossoms in my grandmother’s garden. The blossom becomes the skirt of the doll; the body and head come from imagination or whatever’s available by scrounging the garden, lawn, orchard, or driveway. Unripe blackberries made great bodies as did small native strawberries and small dropped peaches and apples. Sometimes the head was a single Cosmos blossom; other times the head disappeared under a flower bonnet of sweet peas.

When I was seven, our house burned to the ground. We lost everything: our beds, books, clothes, shoes, and toys. We lived with my Quaker grandmother in her third-floor apartment while the house was rebuilt. She allowed me to eat parsley from her garden (after I learned not to squash her parsleyworms, the caterpillar of black swallowtail butterflies), and to pick single hollyhocks.

Hollyhocks still rank among my favorite flowers. I bought seeds of two kinds Alcea rosea and A. fificolia as “old fashioned single hollyhocks.” Both form low rosettes of ground-hugging leaves the first year from seed. Flower spikes emerge the second year.

The leaves of A. fificolia resemble hands or maple leaves on the flower spike while Alcea rosea retains the same rounded, scalloped leaves of the rosettes; foliage of both species are covered with fine hairs. A. fificolia is a grayer green and slightly hairier. Deer detest the foliage.

In my stony, bony, heavy clay ground, I double dug the soil, amending it profusely with composted cow manure and building caches of the stones, before the seeds were planted.

Double digging is an English invention to promote aerobic exercise and enrich the soil. You dig and remove the soil to a depth of one spade; loosen the sub soil to a depth of another spade and enrich with compost, then replace the first soil on top. Ten or fifteen years amending the soil by layering composted cow manure and mulch over all the beds has produced a soil friable enough to support hollyhock seeds sown by chipmunks and chickadees. Some years, they plant more than I do. In sandy soil, hollyhock seeds planted early in a spring garden sometimes will bloom late in the first year.

Alcea rosea tends to bloom in the dark reds, burgundies, mahoganies, true reds, deep pinks, and “black” (really very dark red). It also blooms first and is a true biennial in my garden, with a first- year rosette hugging the ground and a second year bloom stalk of flowers. The black one has blossoms twice the diameter of the others, and is the least robust to self-perpetuate, so I have to reseed it myself. Some have lighter colors of pale yellow or white in the center. These pale centers are called “eyes,” and they appear to watch over the garden and house.

Fificolia has a paler palette of sorbet colors: strawberry, raspberry, peach, apricot, cantaloupe, lavender, creamy lemon and white. Some flowers have an inner ruffle, a second layer of petals in a different hue. Some are so pale they can be distinguished from pure white only at high noon. Fificolia tends to return to bloom for two or three years if the stalks are cut to ground level before the seeds set in round rolls resembling donuts.

When frost hits, hollyhock seed rolls shatter and forests of seedlings spring up to be culled. These seedlings are mostly Alcea rosea, which will bear the red flowers. Many seeds retain the same color as the parent plant.

One year, I confess to being the Martha Stewart of hollyhocks. I punched holes in my old business cards, threaded strings, and labeled the plants with the most desirable colors. In the fall, I collected seeds of the labeled plants, destroyed the old bed, and reseeded with the darker colors nearer the house fading into the paler colors in the distance. It gave a false sense of depth to the bed.

That was the year I reread the work of Gertrude Jekyll, the famous 19th century British garden designer, several times to grasp her concept of color and order in a perennial bed. After a hundred years, Jeykll’s advice about drifts and sweeps of colors still rings true.

In wet years, in full sun, hollyhocks reach nine feet with multiple flower stalks, beginning to bloom before the Fourth of July and continuing to Labor Day. Following Jekyll’s admonition that the bed depth is two thirds the height, a six foot wide bed is a minimum for hollyhocks. My largest perennial garden is the leach field for our septic system, so hollyhocks add height on the edges.

Mature blossoming hollyhocks attract bumblebees, lady bugs, hoverflies, butterflies, chickadees, humming birds, nuthatches, and chipmunks. They offer height and a wide a palette of colors. They bring a touch of nostalgia. They contain no known noxious toxins, so they make great dolls or imaginary ice cream for tea parties. Plant hollyhocks and enjoy!

By Cheryl Grabe, Master Gardener

They began arriving in the mail before Christmas—mail order seed catalogues with their lavish photographic displays. The catalogue writers use superlatives: “biggest,” “best,” “largest,” “sweetest,” to describe perennials, annuals, fruits, and vegetables. Every tomato has that “old-fashioned flavor.” Corn has “mouth-watering” sweetness. Potatoes grow “as big as your hand.” Which catalogue holds you spellbound and dreaming of a bountiful garden this year?

Every winter as I study these catalogues, I try to weed the misinformation from the catalogue descriptions. Despite these efforts, the catalogues lure me into trying new products and varieties.

Over the years, I’ve discovered heirloom tomato varieties—Brandywine, Zebra, Purple Cherokee. Their incredible flavor puts newer varieties to shame, even though most heirloom varieties have little disease resistance, and some produce oddly shaped fruits.

My curiosity also drew me to Sugar Snap peas when they had just come out. I’ve grown them ever since, as they require little effort to grow or pick, and they taste delicious. My inclination to try new vegetables also added sugar-enhanced corn varieties to our table and delicious, hardy Asian greens like mizuna and bok choy.

Here are some of the vegetables I’m dreaming of for 2006:

“Micro Greens”: Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of these, neither had I until just recently. Micros are the first delicate seedlings of vegetables and herbs: beets, cress, kohlrabi, celery, pea sprouts and spinach. In just a week or two after planting, you clip the young seedlings and use them as garnishes, as the main ingredients in a spring salad, or as a base for a roasted vegetable like grilled fennel or roasted beets. Obviously, this will require intensive succession plantings as with mesclun mixes. I may try creating my own blend from leftover seeds from last year, or look for specialty blends in catalogues.

Delfino cilantro: This herb earned recognition as an All America Selection for its flavor and fern-like appearance. Ready in just four to five weeks, this is another plant that deserves succession planting. People I’ve talked to seem to love it or hate it, but it could become a staple for salsa-holics. When cilantro goes to seed, it’s called coriander. I plan to harvest good crops of both leaves and seeds to use as seasonings.

Big Mama tomato: The supplier suggests “fire-roasting” this indeterminate paste tomato on the grill and using it to make bruschetta to spread on thick slices of fresh Italian bread. Yum!

Purple Haze carrot: This sounds like a great conversation veggie, purple on the outside, orange inside. The catalogue tells growers to serve Purple Haze raw to retain its color. The kids in my life are going to love me for this one!

Ruby Queen sweet corn: Can you imagine? Sweet corn that turns red as it ripens! Some catalogues recommend steaming to retain Ruby Queen’s color. I can hardly wait for this one.

In addition to new vegetables, I want to try more ornamental grasses in my perennial border and elsewhere. They are a great way to make sure the garden has something to please the eye after frost shrivels the heat-loving annuals, and snow begins to cover the perennials.

Miscanthus sinensis “Graziella” is an ornamental grass I’ve heard will spread, and I certainly hope it will in my garden. I planted a pot of this cultivar in a raised bed last summer, and it still looks great. Now in the middle of winter, it is a beautiful shade of golden beige against a background of snow. The tall feathery plumes, or culms, of Graziella are as graceful as its name.

Although I spend many pleasant hours curled up with my seed catalogues, come spring, I also like to visit some of the excellent nurseries in my area. My idea of a good trip is to drive off with a large plastic tub in my trunk in search of new and different plants I can add to my ever-increasing garden or put into patio containers.

My only caveat: Remember each plant or packet of seed you purchase is going to mean time on your hands and knees. Those tiny little transplants become big in no time, and often we have weather in New Hampshire that prohibits early planting. Finding space to hold these new plants while you wait for warm weather can become a problem especially as they grow larger. Often, a few new plants provide more than enough satisfaction in the long run, and less frustration in the present.

So, get those catalogues out, brew a pot of tea, pull a blanket over your knees, and dream and plan. After all, spring is just a few cold days and a whole mud season away.

By Helen Downing, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

Date

When Shakespeare penned his famous lines: “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” he must have been on his way to a marketing meeting. Statistics show that gardening is the number one hobby in the United States; nearly 70 million households participate annually.

Even more staggering is the variety of plant life gardeners have to choose from, and new cultivars are hitting the market all the time. From “Barbara Bush” roses and “Snow Queen” hydrangea to “Big Boy” tomatoes and “Tom Thumb” popcorn—who comes up with these names?

Learning the language of identifying plants in the world-wide botanical community would probably earn you about three credits at any Land-Grant university. Centuries ago, folks with an interest in flora and fauna recognized the need for a global means of identification. Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish fellow, developed a system using Latin as the root to naming all plants, which has become the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

The rules are very specific for proper identification. Every tree, shrub, vine and flower that has been found around the world has a unique botanical name, but few of us garden hobbyists refer to a summer squash as a Cucurbita pepo. We remember their common names like the names of old friends.

As it turns out, a rose isn’t just a rose. Like people, roses have defining characteristics and personality traits. We personify them with names like “Ronald Reagan,” “Graham Thomas” and “Barbara Streisand.” And yes, in 2000, plant breeders introduced the “William Shakespeare,” one of the David Austin “English” shrub roses.

And it’s not just roses. “Princess Diana” is a dahlia, “General Eisenhower” a tulip, and “Fat Albert” a blue spruce. Plant breeders have great hopes for plants like “Rock Star” pumpkins, “Queen of the Night” morning glories (yes, they bloom at dusk!) and “Dinnerplate” dahlias.

Back to the original question, “Who comes up with the names?” Sometimes it’s the researcher, who may be a university professor or a home gardener, but often it’s a marketing person. UNH plant biologist Brent Loy told me he’s produced hundreds of experimental pumpkin, squash and melon hybrids. Most of his varieties that made it into commercial production were named by the seed companies, although they did like his choice of “SnackJack” for the snack-seed pumpkin he developed.

I contacted seed companies popular with home gardeners to ask how they name new plant varieties. Flannery Higgins, media relations director for Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine told me they have no formal naming process. Researchers often choose names but occasionally the company hosts contests among employees. A researcher named the new specialty melon “Serenade” while listening to Mozart’s Serenade No. 13. (Perhaps the “Bolero” carrot has a similar history?) The “Diva” cucumber, named in an employee contest, went on to become a 2002 All-America Selections Winner.

Burpee Seeds in Pennsylvania works similarly. Don Zeidler, Burpee’s director of direct marketing, told me the story behind the company’s popular “Big Boy” tomato. One of the breeders in the field exclaimed to David Burpee, “Who's the big boy with the tomato?” The toddler was Burpee’s son Jonathan. That was more than 50 years ago, and “Big Boy” is still a top-seller.

Plant names often give conspicuous clues about a plant’s color, appearance or flavor. Examples from Johnny’s catalogue include “Tendersweet” cabbage, a thin-leafed variety, and “Tom Thumb” popcorn that grows on 3½-foot plants. Burpee has a tomato called “Fourth of July,” which is ready to pick by Independence Day, and sunflowers called “Sunforest” that grow 10 to 15 feet tall.

While many plants are named to honor individuals, others are labeled for the folks who developed them. The New Hampshire farmer, Tom Fox, for example, cultivated “Tom Fox” pumpkins. Countless more may be named after relatives, lovers or, perhaps, just wishful thinking. I found a pea named “Payload,” a tomato known as “Mortgage Lifter,” and Brussels sprouts called “Prince Marvel” (maybe that one has a better chance of getting past your kids’ noses).

As it turns out, a home gardener developed “Mortgage Lifter” in the 1930s. Burpee offers the heirloom tomato and, according to the story in its online catalogue, the fellow grew four of the biggest tomato varieties he could find. He cross-pollinated them over six seasons and bred a cultivar that was not only immense, but tasty, too. The name came from his success at selling the plants for a dollar apiece, and in six years, the garden hobbyist paid off his mortgage.

Perhaps I’ve piqued your curiosity about the variety of plant names you’re finding in seed and nursery catalogues and garden centers across the region. If you are looking for a specific plant, however, your best bet is to learn its Latin name. Several plants sometimes share the same common name.
For more information about the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, visit the web site of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden at www.bbg.org.

By Jackie Bower, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

Date

Gardening is and always has been my source of emotional nourishment. The locations, tasks and companions have changed over the decades. The motivation has not.

While I was growing up, no one in my family was interested in the yard, let alone gardening. My father was busy supporting a family and my mother considered yard work something someone else should do. My mother’s way to pacify her active girl toddler was to place her in the yard with a spoon.

The year I entered grade school, my father built a ranch house on the site of an old asparagus field, flat and stripped of any landscaping. Once the ranch was complete, he decided it was time to put in a lawn. Not to be outdone by other lawns, he set out to locate the perfect pile of manure to fertilize the yard.

We went to an old dairy farm in town. The farmer showed my father what appeared to be a modest pile of cow manure. Dad told him to deliver the load and spread it on our small yard. The next day the entire front yard was covered with two feet of cow manure. It seems Dad had seen only the above-ground part of a manure pile stored in a pit five feet deep.

Dad attempted to till the manure into the ground, but the tiller tines weren’t long enough to reach the soil. He solved the problem by adding new soil on top of the manure and planting grass seed. It took weeks for the manure to settle enough for us to walk on the lawn. The neighbors weren’t pleased with the smell. The following years, our lawn produced crop after crop of beautiful mushrooms.

There were formal gardens and yards to view as I walked to and from school. I extended my walks to include more roads or paths just to see the gardens. Once during such a walk a wonderful elderly lady welcomed me into her garden. Her house was old, as were her garden ornaments and plants. We had a chat, she gave me some marigold seeds, and I became a gardener.

I began to dig garden areas around my house and used my allowance money to purchase more seeds to plant. The garden became a place of escape when emotions became volatile. Tending it was a chore no one ordered me to do, but the one I liked the most.

My high school guidance counselor lived next door. Of course she’d had direct sensory exposure of our well-manured lawn and for years had watched me gardening in my yard. My preference for the world of plants and insects led the counselor to place me in the agriculture education track at school. Insulted to have their daughter placed in the agriculture track, my parents sent me to various private schools that became my home over the next five years.

College brought glimpses of my future as a gardener. I visited the home of a professor, an old house with gardens visible from the windows. The home’s rough interior mirrored the struggle for survival outside. The place was comfortable and welcoming. Sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the kitchen windows, I watched the professor’s birdfeeders and noticed how flowers in his wife’s gardens fed wild visitors.

My first husband came from a farming family. This relationship began a 10-year foray into the “back to earth” phase of my gardening experience. A small farm supported us with goats, chickens, geese, rabbits, and a three-acre organic vegetable garden with a roadside stand. Life was a cycle of planting, harvesting, birthing and slaughtering. We counted our riches in good weather and health. It wore us out.

When that man and the organic farm were no longer part of my life, I found I still had the need for a home with a space to garden. Another marriage and an old home on 10 acres allowed for the space; however, years of career building and graduate school kept any extra time for gardening to a bare minimum.

The years since then have brought me to my present stage of semi-retirement and a back yard of small gardens located so I can view them from the windows in my old home. Now I spend many days on the back porch, lulled by the heirloom flowers in my backyard gardens. My husband and I discuss other forms of entertainment—boating, kayaking, motorcycling—but no one moves.

I no longer plant vegetables in my gardens. To do so would make the critters and insects enemies to be controlled or defeated. There are plenty of small farms around to provide us with fresh produce. Instead, I plant mostly old-fashioned flowers chosen for their hardiness in this location and soil.

Only what survives stays. I keep what the insects and birds enjoy. The colors, forms, smells, sounds, and the feel of these spaces produce the emotional nourishment I’ve sought from gardens all my life.

By Stephania Pearce, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

A few weeks ago, my garden looked as if something green had rained on it overnight. The soil around the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers was blanketed with thousands of tiny seedlings that, upon closer inspection, I easily identified as purslane. The fleshy stems are reddish in color and the dark green, paddle-shaped leaves grow in pairs along the stem. This succulent plant doesn’t grow very tall but spreads quickly and can form a dense mat.

Who peppered my garden with this interesting but annoying weed? As it turns out, I did! A little research revealed I had unwittingly gotten good at all the methods for propagating purslane: seed broadcasting, root division, and stem cuttings. That mid-July morning, my garden looked like I was going for the purslane plant record in a single plot.

Portulaca oleracea , common purslane, also known as pusley, pigweed, fatweed, and little hogweed, is an herbaceous annual that’s found in most corners of the globe. Some folks call it a vegetable or an herb since it’s a common item in their diets. Americans often blaspheme it as a weed, probably because it is so prolific. Purslane will grow just about anywhere, from your lush, well-composted flowerbed to the gravel on the edge of your driveway. Although it does like plenty of sunlight, purslane isn’t picky about soil conditions

For those on the weed side of the argument, mulching is probably your best bet for eradicating purslane. Its season runs from July until the first good frost, as sunlight and warm soil temperatures are critical to seed germination. Because purslane emerges so much later than most other broadleaf weeds, early application of pre-emergent herbicides may be ineffective.

Purslane is easy to pull out by the roots when the soil is wet. It has a taproot with lots of secondary rootlets and, if you break the root, it will regenerate a new plant (a propagation method botanists call root division). If you’re trying to weed when the soil is dry, you will likely end up with a handful of plants and roots that remain firmly anchored in the ground. Use a tool that will help loosen the soil so you can do the job right the first time.

Like me, perhaps you use weeds to fight weeds, by adding weeds to the mulch you use to smother other yet-to-emerge invaders. But toss purslane plants back onto the dirt or an existing mulch cover and even broken stem pieces will find a way to take hold all over again. Even if conditions are dry enough that the foliage eventually shrivels up, chances are the plant will have used its moisture reserves to develop more seeds. Bottom line–remove purslane plants from the area you are weeding.

Purslane’s amazing ability to produce seeds, even on death’s doorstep, is the reason this plant is so prolific. It produces a single, little yellow flower at the ends of its stems. The blossom remains open only briefly, but the resultant seedpod is filled with tiny seeds that can remain viable for decades. The seeds germinate close to the surface when soil temperatures reach about 90 degrees Farenheit. You may eradicate your current crop by hoeing, only to find that your hoe inadvertently pulled seeds to the surface that had been too deep to germinate. Those seeds are minute , so don’t expect to see them. You’ll know you brought seeds to the surface if you have a new crop of seedlings in a few days.

Despite its reputation in this country as a pest, there is some good news about purslane: It’s edible. Purslane is often compared with spinach and used similarly. It’s been on menus in other parts of the world for about 2,000 years, but not many Americans are tossing it into their salads and stews. On paper, purslane looks like a highly nutritious vegetable, high in potassium and magnesium, as well as vitamins A and C. It also contains higher amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids than any other plant. However, like parsley, chives, spinach, and rhubarb, purslane is also high in oxalic acid, which binds with prevents the body from absorbing calcium and other minerals. So, if you do enjoy purslane’s mild, tangy flavor, use it in moderation.

Native to India and the Middle East , purslane has spread around the world. Cooks in many cultures use its tender, succulent leaves raw in salads, cooked alone and or with other vegetables, or added to soups and stews. It has a slight mucilaginous quality that helps thicken stews. Latin cultures call it verdolagas and frequently cook it with eggs. Some cooks actually pickle the thick stems.

If you like the looks and ground-covering habit of portulaca oleracea , several seed catalogues carry cultivated varieties. Apparently the leaves are larger and more lush, but the plant is equally invasive.

by Jackie Bower, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

Vines with trumpet-shaped, pale pink and white flowers and deep green, heart-patterned leaves wind up around the lilacs at the edge of our garden.

“Morning glories,” my wife calls them.

“Bindweed!” I reply.

Farmers who see the plant twisting around a struggling corn seedling might say, “Devils-vine.” It’s just a matter of perspective.

Discerning botanists will tell you that even the most noxious invasive plants often have a few useful, redeeming qualities. Not one to try and categorize plants as either good or bad, I like to look at it as a realtor might, as a matter of “location, location, location.”

Whether you think of a plant as a welcome abundance or a noxious infestation, it’s important to know just what kind of plant/weed you’re dealing with. For plant-hunters with an urge to do botanical identification, this time of summer is ideal. That’s because many plants are now showing distinctive reproductive structures (flowers, fruits and seeds) that make the task simpler.

A working knowledge of botanical structures and terminology is helpful. Many with whom I’ve walked Coös County meadows have been subjected to the old rhyme, “Sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have nodes from the top to the ground,” as a way to distinguish the stems of these quite-different plant types. Then, for the graze-able grasses there’re those auricles and ligules (little ears and tongues) we need to know about.

Old botany texts can often be bought inexpensively at library book sales and flea markets. A reasonably-priced book I used when teaching a botany course a while back is Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon. It’s still readily available and an easy read as well.

A well-illustrated plant identification guide is also a must. My most-used, dog-eared reference, usually somewhere in my pickup, is Cornell Press’ Weeds of the Northeast by Uva, Neal, and DiTomaso. First published in 1997, it quickly became an essential tool for practicing botanists. Along with a photo of the plant in full bloom, the book also includes photos of seedlings, seeds, leaf details, and other key features. Accompanying descriptions detailing end-of-season characteristics, similar species, and habitat add to its usefulness. It seems I’m always adding more botanicals to my book collection.

An understanding of a plant’s preferred habitat can tell us a lot about it and the land itself. For instance: buttercups in a field or moneywort in a garden typically indicate wet soils and poor drainage. Conversely, yellow and orange hawkweed, or rabbit-foot clover indicate droughty, low-fertility ground. Check with your local County Conservation District office for soils maps, which will detail the physical characteristics of soils in your area.

With practice, these references can help plant enthusiasts identify the families most weeds (or interesting specimens) belong to. Are they annuals, biennials, or perennials? Broadleaf weeds or grasses? How do they spread? Answers to questions like these will give you some clues about how best to manage troublesome weeds.

Cultivating (mechanically or with a hoe) seed-reproducing annuals, such as purslane may eliminate them. Not so with weeds such as perennial quackgrass, which will sprout from the pieces of the rhizomes you spread with your hoe or cultivator. An agronomist I know calls quackgrass “the grass that sews New Hampshire soils together,” in tribute to its aggressive root system. (Note: some people still call it witchgrass, but there’s also an annual witchgrass—one of the problems arising from the use of common plant names, versus their Latin names. The Latin name for quackgrass is Elytrigia repens)

Conflicting or duplicate plant names, along with the difficulty of precisely identifying their genus and species, make foraging for wild edible plants risky business. Over-confidence can prove deadly. A family of very familiar plants—the Umbelliferae , or carrot family plants, are a good example. This same family that includes the edible garden carrot, parsnip, and parsley also includes the deadly poison hemlock, an infusion of which Socrates drank to commit suicide. Can you tell the differences between poison hemlock and Queen Anne’s Lace, the wild ancestor of the garden carrot?

For identification of potentially toxic or injurious plants to livestock, a good reference is Poisonous Plants of Pennsylvania, published by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. Livestock owners should have a copy of Merck’s Veterinary Manual on hand. In addition to plant descriptions, it offers information on symptoms, poisonous principles, and more. I’m often surprised at how many plants cause problems for livestock.

My general outlook on pasturing animals safely is to look at ways to improve the stands of cultivated grasses and clovers necessary for proper nutrition, discouraging anything else in the field through good management practices.

If you’d like to see how one farmer has worked hard to accomplish this, join us up here in Coös County Wednesday, August 10, for an afternoon-in-the-field Pasture Meeting. Call 788-4961 for more information.

by Steve Turaj, UNH Cooperative Extension Agricultural Resources Educator

You don’t need a rototiller to make a new garden. We used a no-till method to create a 17' x 8' oval flower garden on the northeast side of the Alexandria Historical Society building. If you have a few of the right items, a little time and a little labor, our method will work for you, too. In the process, you’ll improve your soil, minimize soil compaction, discourage weeds, improve water retention, and create an inviting environment for beneficial soil microorganisms.

First, pick out the site. Knowing the exposure to sunlight over the growing season will allow you to choose the best plants for the environment. To get an idea how much of each type of plant you will need, mark and measure the size of the plot you plan to develop.

Now gather a supply of newspaper large enough to cover the entire garden area with a layer six sheets thick. Collect the black print pages only, no shiny inserts.

Have access to a large amount of composted manure or other finished compost. If you don’t make your own, you can purchase it bagged from a local garden supply center, or in bulk from a nearby compost facility. The UNH Cooperative Extension fact sheet Purchasing Compost contains a list of New Hampshire composting facilities. Many New Hampshire towns produce leaf-and-yard-waste compost at their local solid waste facilities and give it away to residents.

Finally, you’ll need a layer of topsoil (any ordinary dirt will do) and a two-inch layer of organic mulch: pine needles, shredded leaves, grass clippings, or shredded bark. When you’ve collected all the above items and have a nice day with rain expected overnight, it is time to start the new garden.

If the grass has started to grow, mow it very close. Then lay six sheets of newspaper over every speck of the ground. The paper will block the light and prevent the grass or any weeds from growing. Wetting the paper as you go will make it stay where you put it.

Then spread two or three inches of the compost over the damp newspaper. On top of that goes an inch or two of dirt, topped off with a layer of mulch.

Now just sit back for a month and let nature take over creating a ready-to-plant garden. The time is essential for the earthworms and other organisms from the soil and compost that live in the ground to begin decomposing the various organic items. While you are busy planning what to plant, they will be working to prepare your planting bed.

Whether you plant annuals for season-long flowers, or perennials for long-lasting structure, having the plants in mind and knowing their requirements before you go to the garden center to buy them will ensure a better outcome.

Although annuals are easy to raise from seed, with a new garden it makes more sense to start with plugs or transplants. Use a plant catalog or book to find out how big your plants will become, so you’ll give them enough room and so you don’t buy too many.

Lay out your design beforehand. Set tall plants in the back if you’re planning a border garden, or a garden that will be seen from only one side. If your garden is along a path, placing small plants in front will allow taller plants behind them to be seen. Just try to imagine how you want it to look.

When the month has gone by, your new garden bed should be ready for digging. Use your small spade to make the three-inch-deep holes to receive your transplants or plugs. (Plugs are what the little started plants are called. You “plug” them into the soil and they grow into a big plant.)

Make sure to give your plants enough space to allow them to grow. Wait until any chance of frost has passed in your area—in central New Hampshire that typically means after Memorial Day. Covering tiny plants with newspaper or old sheets every night to protect them gets tiring quickly, and you risk losing everything to a frost.

After preparing our garden plot, we laid out our plants like a braided rug: nine bright pink geraniums in the center with 18 dark coleus plants circling them. An outer circle of 30 yellow French marigolds completed the rug effect. The colors were effective, the plants were happy, and we were able to over-winter the geraniums for the next year. When the frost threatened in the fall, we removed the plants and put in daffodil and crocus bulbs. It gave a great start to the garden the next spring.

So, give a new garden a try. Almost any color or type of plants will work. Just consider how much less work your garden can be if you let nature help you do it without a rototiller.

By Judith A. Kraemer, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

“Dot, what are we doing that for?”

“Dot, why do we need to make the fuzzy white stuff on the pumpkin leaves go away? Can I spray the milk on their leaves?”

“Dot, how long do we need to do it for? When we get through doing this, will we ever do it again?”

A teacher pipes up from across the garden, “Evan, wait for Dot to answer the first question before you ask another one.”

 “Dot doesn’t mind. She always answers them,” Evan replies, and he starts right in again with his questions.

When I was approached about working on a children’s gardening project in the summer of 2002, I tackled the task by looking back into my own childhood.

I grew up on a vegetable farm, so gardening was integrated into the fabric of daily life. I asked myself how I learned what I know and soon realized the truth of the old adage “we learn by example.” A lot of what I learned came from countless hours just watching a loved adult do a job, while we talked about something entirely unrelated.

“Nana, Peter isn’t sharing the wheelbarrow. What are you doing?”

Nana, who was always doing something that needed to be done, answered my question without stopping her chore. “Tell your brother I said to share with you. I am thinning the radishes. If we leave them too close together they won’t get nice fat radishes on them.”
 
Of course, it would take two or three visits back to Nana to make Peter share the wheelbarrow, and in that time I continued to ask questions and watch what she was doing.

At some point, I’d try thinning radishes, or whatever task was at hand, and, voila! I could do it myself!

On a family farm, all members are needed to get things done. Just being with adults I loved and joining their activities at what ever level I could manage gave me a great sense of accomplishment, a feeling of being a part of something important.

It didn’t matter what the job was, I was recognized and made to feel as though I’d made a difference. For example, when I was little, I was notorious for squishing the strawberries when I picked them. Although I hated that I was taking so long to learn to do it “right,” I always knew those squished berries were important.

How? I would bring them to my grandmother, who would turn them into jam. When I arrived with the squished berries, she’d put both hands on her cheeks and exclaim in Italian, “How special these are! I know how much love is in each one.”

Growing up on the farm, I loved the sizes, shapes, colors, textures, and smells of the natural world. I loved hiding in the corn, looking at stuff under rocks and boards, building fairy houses out of sticks and stones, having tomato fights with my siblings, and making figurines out of corn husks that I dyed with plant juices.

Statistics tell us that 90 percent of the 43 million elementary school children in the United States, are two or three generations removed from the farm. How will our children develop an appreciation for the natural world if they have no memories of it? How will they make sound decisions about our natural resources? Why should they care about nature if they don’t love it?

Plant-based education is a way to change this situation.

In the summer of 2000, the ”Growing a Green Generation” project got underway as a collaboration among three UNH units: Cooperative Extension, the Plant Biology Department and the Child Study and Development Center (CSDC). Our goal: to develop a curriculum that any caregiver, teacher, or parent can use, regardless of their level of horticultural experience.

The CSDC involves UNH undergraduates studying early childhood education, so this project focused on the question, “What can young children learn down a garden path?

We’ve learned together that children can learn to read, write, and communicate down a garden path. They can hone their gross and fine motor skills. They can have positive interactions with their peers and the adults around them. They can observe—and even consume—their natural surroundings through touch, hearing, smell, taste, and sight. They can experience joy in their environment by letting the juice of a ripe tomato run down their chins, and by sitting in the shade of a sunflower house or a bean teepee. And when the world is going too fast, a garden can offer solitude.

Human development experts tell us the most lasting lessons are learned in the first five years of life. I have no doubt that my early experiences on the farm “grew me up green” and enabled me to raise my own children green. I hope the body of gardening activities provided in our “Growing a Green Generation” curriculum will foster in other children the same fond, lasting, positive connection to the natural world. Look for “Growing a Green Generation” at the UNH Sustainable Horticulture Web site.

By Dot Perkins, UNH Agricultural Program Coordinator

The trees haven’t yet donned their autumn foliage, but already we are surrounded by color—field after field of bright goldenrod yellow. Sadly, most of us aren’t overjoyed by the splendor of nature’s golden paintbrush, steeling ourselves against the beauty of the goldenrod flowers and unjustly accusing them of causing hay fever. While stuffy noses and watery eyes are undeniably a problem at this time of year, little of the pollen causing these symptoms comes from goldenrod.

Hay fever sufferers are at the mercy of dry, dusty pollen blown about by the wind, which comes mostly from others plants also now in full bloom, such as ragweed. But ragweed flowers are so small and drab most of us don’t even notice them.

We have little to fear from goldenrod flowers. Goldenrod pollen is too heavy and sticky to be blown about by the wind. Instead it is carried about by the countless insects who visit the goldenrod plants to feast on the goldenrod’s abundant pollen or nectar, or—in some cases—each other.

Goldenrod blossoms teem with insect visitors. Many types of beetles feed on yellow pollen grains. As these beetles scramble about, the pollen clinging to their bodies fertilizes the goldenrod flowers, helping, rather than harming, the goldenrod. Unfortunately, one of these beetles, the innocent- looking black-and-yellow-striped locust borer, lays her eggs on black locust trees. Her larvae chew tunnels in locust branches. Infested trees often die outright or become so weakened they may snap in a windstorm.
 
Bees, butterflies, and moths also visit goldenrod. Beekeepers find their beehives filling with dark goldenrod honey this time of year. Southbound orange-and-black monarch butterflies pause frequently along their migration routes to sip the high-energy goldenrod nectar. You’ll need to look closely if you want to find a goldenrod stowaway moth feeding on the goldenrod nectar. This moth is small, and its orange-streaked yellow wings blend well with the yellow flowers. However, you’ll find the equally small, black-and-yellow lichen moth easy to spot.

Natural predators abound on goldenrod. Oddly shaped, yellowish-green ambush bugs wait patiently, hidden among its golden blossoms until an unsuspecting insect comes into reach of their powerful front legs. In the blink of an eye, the ambush bug has seized its prey, rammed its sharp-tipped, soda-straw mouth parts into its victim’s body, and begun sucking out the body fluids.

A much daintier predator is the little, pale yellow goldenrod spider. But don’t waste your time looking for a goldenrod spider web; this spider is a hunter, not a trapper. The goldenrod spider moves sideways, crab-fashion across the goldenrod flowers stalking its prey with all the stealth and cunning of a lion hunting in the jungle.

I find the gall-makers the most fascinating of all the insects found on goldenrod. The inch-long spindle-shaped galls commonly seen on the upper half of goldenrod stems serve as home to tiny moth caterpillars. The more rounded stem galls contain the young of a tiny fly. The young insects spend the winter inside the galls, surrounded by food, sheltered from the weather, and hidden from most predators.

But their lives aren’t worry-free. All too often other tiny insects move in to share the gall makers’ snug homes and may even eat the defenseless gall-dwellers. Also, hungry birds may tear open the galls to get at the tasty insects inside.

A less familiar but very common gall is caused by a tiny fly who lays her eggs on the very topmost bud in a goldenrod flower cluster. When the egg hatches, whorls of stunted leaves and flowers overlap and clump together around the immature fly forming what is called a goldenrod bunch gall. While unsightly, none of the galls seems to be harmful to the goldenrod plants.

Now that goldenrod hybrids have been returned to the U.S. by the English, why not consider planting at least one? Plant breeders have developed many new varieties. Once you plant some goldenrod, you too will be able to watch the fascinating array of insect life visit your garden.

By Janet Schmidt, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

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I can’t dispute the wisdom of Winnie-the-Pooh’s creator. Potatoes, especially when harvested small, before their natural sugars turn to starch, are a humble delicacy known for their rich, distinctive flavors.

The “sweet corn” of the potato world, many of us remember “new potatoes” fondly as an essential ingredient in Grandma’s famous creamed-peas-and-new-potatoes, served alongside a piece of poached salmon on the Fourth of July.

Digging through my potato references to prepare for a workshop on growing small “gourmet” potatoes, I couldn’t help but be impressed with this mundane vegetable’s remarkable history.

In New England the potato’s chronicles began in 1719 with plantings by Scotch-Irish immigrants in what is now Derry, New Hampshire. Potatoes adapted to our soils and cool climate. By the 1880s Coos County farmers were producing 3,000 acres of potatoes, mostly to supply starch used in spinning mills. Throughout much of the 1900's table-stock potatoes provided a valuable cash crop for the county, one that fit well with dairy farming. The potato’s history, of course, goes back a lot farther.

It’s generally agreed that potatoes originated around 400 B.C. in the high mountains of South America, where indigenous farmers preserved the tubers by mashing them and spreading them on the ground to producean early freeze-dried product they called chuno. Along with corn and beans, potatoes were staple foods of the Incas long before the arrival of Spanish conquistadores in the 1500s. Recognized for their nutritive value, potatoes were soon introduced into Europe by the Spanish. By 1573 potatoes were used to feed hospital patients in Seville.

An odd-looking underground vegetable that grew suspiciously from “roots,” rather than seed, the potato had a checkered European experience. Most considered it a food fit only for the poor, those of low birth, and animals. Frightful maladies of that era were also attributed to this possibly poisonous plant, leprosy, syphilis, and madness among them. Like tomatoes, which had similar market resistance, potatoes are members of the deadly nightshade family. (Curiously, tobacco, also in the Solanaceae family, didn’t seem to have that problem.)

Perhaps the potato’s reputation had something to do with a banquet once held for the local gentry by Queen Elizabeth I. Instead of using the unwholesome-looking tubers, the chefs cooked up and served the plant’s toxic tops. Banquet-goers promptly became deathly ill and potatoes were thereafter banned from court.

Flummery (wheat cooked in spiced milk) and fruenty (boiled oatmeal and bran) might have remained a dinner-table mainstay, rather than evolving into today’s breakfast food, if not for A.A. Parmentier. Botanist and soldier, Parmentier was captured by the Prussians several times during the course of the Seven Years’ War. While in prison, he was fed and apparently developed a taste for potatoes (German peasants having been forced to grow them by Frederick II since 1744).

Returning to France, Parmentier convinced Louis XVI to let him use a sandy plot of land, where he established a lush potato plantation, which he kept under constant armed guard. (Removing the guards at night encouraged curious thieves to run off with the tubers and replant them elsewhere.)

Parmentier also convinced Louis and Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers on their clothes and in their hair, starting a fashion trend soon imitated by other aristocrats. Potatoes, now served at court, became upscale. Herbalists further helped their popularity, heralding potatoes as a health food that could cure diarrhea and tuberculosis, although the plant also acquired a reputation as a dangerous aphrodisiac.
 
In America, both Ben Franklin, who once attended a dinner at French court where 20 potato dishes were served, and Tom Jefferson, were early proponents of potato culture. Jefferson may get the credit for inventing French fries, which he served at the White House during his presidency.

And so, the simple tater’s influence can be traced through history. As a staple food introduced to prevent starvation, potatoes themselves, or near-total reliance on them, helped cause the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s, when a fungal disease destroyed entire crops.

During the Alaskan Klondike Gold-Rush miners thought potatoes worth almost their weight in gold, because of their high food value and rich Vitamin C content. Potatoes also became the first vegetable grown in space by NASA, in experiments intended to feed astronauts on long voyages or in extra-terrestrial colonies.
 
What’s next for the humble pomme de terre? Inventor Henry Ford once said there was enough potential ethyl alcohol fuel in an acre of potatoes to power the machinery necessary to cultivate it for the next 100 years. From the looks of gas prices, I think I’ll be planting more potatoes this spring. No, I won’t be turning them into tractor fuel. But I figure the more food I produce for myself, the fewer trips I’ll have to take to the grocery store.

By Steve Turaj, UNH Cooperative Extension Agricultural Resources

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

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If you decorate your home with greenery for the coming holiday season, chances are you’ll include a few sprigs of Ilex, popularly known as holly, among the trimmings.

The custom of decking our halls with boughs of holly dates back to the Druids of ancient Britain and Gaul, who hung holly over their doors at Yuletide as a shelter for woodland spirits. The Druids believed the spirits would take shelter in the holly and bring good to the household during the year. Later, Christian symbolism included the belief that the spiny leaves and red berries were a reminder of the crown of thorns and the blood of Christ.

The early English settlers brought the custom of decorating with holly to the New World. The native American holly was one of the first plants sighted by the Pilgrims. Native Americans planted evergreen hollies, their symbol of courage and eternal life, around dwellings for protection. Today, when holly decorates our homes during the winter holidays, we associate it with celebration and good cheer.

Unfortunately, over the years holly has been typecast as a symbol of the Christmas season. That’s a shame, for holly is a plant we can enjoy in the landscape year ’round.

Hollies come in many forms: trees or shrubs, deciduous or evergreen. Mature hollies can range in height from less than three feet to more than 30 feet. Holly berries come in shades of red, white, yellow and black. They all prefer a soil that is neutral or slightly acidic.

More than 300 varieties are found worldwide. Here in the U.S., we grow American, English and Japanese hollies most commonly, but not all of them are hardy in New Hampshire.

One of the hollies commonly used for winter decorations—Ilex aquifolium, the English holly with dark, spiny green leaves and clusters of red berries—isn’t hardy in New Hampshire. It is usually grown and shipped in from the West Coast.

The so-called “blue hollies,” however, will survive our winters. These were hybridized by Kathleen Meserve in the 1950’s on Long Island. World-renowned for her work with the blue hollies, Meserve crossed English holly with the prostrate Ilex Rugosa holly to produce a c