Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Bare root fruit trees are now available. Choose one tree or a whole orchard and get them planted while the soil is good for digging.

• Blueberries are a delicious fruit that can be planted now from young plants. Give them a rich, acid bed prepared with lots of peat moss.

• Start seeds of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and other cool season crops indoors for planting outside in March.

• Prune fruit trees, grapes, berries, and ornamental trees this month. Take in a pruning class and sharpen your shears before you start.

• Start off the new year with a new house plant to brighten your indoor spaces. Choose from many fine varieties now.

Flavorful, Fresh Fruits

Each year the list of mouth-watering summer fruits grows longer with new hybrids introduced and sometimes antique varieties making a comeback. Home grown fruit is becoming increasingly popular as we learn the benefits of local food production.

Discovering new flavors and even new fruits can be an exciting taste experience. Here are some varieties that may be new to you.

After nearly disappearing from the marketplace, apple varieties that were popular decades or even centuries ago are making a come-back. These varieties, known as antique or heirloom apples, number in the thousands and carry names such as Sheepnose, American Mother, Lady Sweet and Nickajack.

A couple of antique apples that you can find right here are Spitzenburg and York Imperial. Spitzenburg is regarded by some connoisseurs as the very best dessert apple. It has red over yellow skin, yellowish flesh, and is firm, juicy and moderately sweet, with renowned flavor. It ripens in late October here and is a good keeper.

York Imperial is one of the very best apples for keeping: in a cool location, it holds its flavor until April or May. It has a fine quality for dessert use, and is excellent for baking and cider. It may have a light red blush or be nearly fully red. It is a firm apple with coarse, yellow flesh that is crisp and juicy with a semi-sweet flavor. It is harvested late in the season.

A fun and productive way to grow apple trees is called espalier, in which the branches are trained to grow flat against a wall or fence supported by a framework or trellis. They are excellent space savers perfect for small gardens, producing more fruit in less space than conventional trees. This practice dates back to the Romans, but now you can buy an apple tree already started as an espalier with four different varieties of apples grafted onto it.

Another unique shape for apple trees is the columnar apple tree. With a compact, upright, narrow growth habit (they mature to be about 7-8′ tall and 2-3′ wide) they are perfect for planting in small yards and gardens or growing in containers on balconies and patios. Two varieties, which pollinate each other, are Northpole and Scarlet Sentinel. Northpole has large, red-skinned McIntosh-type fruit that is crisp and juicy. Scarlet Sentinel has dense clusters of white blossoms followed by large, delicious, red-blushed, greenish-yellow fruit.

Interspecific hybrids are an entirely unique type of fruit. They are complex hybrids of plums, apricots, peaches, cherries and nectarines in varying combinations and proportions that are in no way genetically modified. Of the plum/apricot crosses, Pluots and Plumcots have more plum than apricot parentage while Apriums are more apricot than plum.

Tri-Lite is a peach/plum cross. This white-fleshed peach crossed with a plum has a mild, classic white peach flavor and finishes with a wonderful plum aftertaste.

Sweet Treat Pluerry is a cross between a plum and a sweet cherry, with the size of a plum. It is extremely sweet when fully ripe, and will hang on the tree for over a month, getting sweeter and sweeter. Burgundy plum is recommended as a pollenizer.

Burgundy Plum has medium-sized fruit with flesh that is deep red, mellow, and sweet covered with a reddish purple skin. An all around great plum, it is good for fresh eating, cooking, drying and in jams and jellies, and it is self-fertile.

Now is the time to plant fruit trees of all kinds from bare-root trees available at local nurseries. Be sure to add some of these tasty varieties to your orchard.

• Fragrant Paperwhite narcissus will bloom indoors by Thanksgiving if planted now in rocks and water.

• Plant pansies, snapdragons, stock, calendulas and primroses now to replace summer annuals.

• Plant lawns now to have them ready for next summer enjoyment. Ask at your nursery for the best grass seed for your situation.

• Garlic sets can be planted now for an easy crop that you can harvest next spring. Choose from hard-neck, soft-neck or Elephant garlic varieties now available.

• Compost your leaves as they fall, don’t burn them! Leaves make wonderful compost that breaks down into rich humus by next summer.

Divide and Conquer

Fall is a great time to rejuvenate the perennial border by dividing old clumps of perennials to keep them vigorous and blooming freely.

In general, summer bloomers should be divided in the fall, and fall bloomers divided in the spring. Grasses and bamboo should be divided in early spring just as growth begins. Most perennials should be divided every three to five years, but some, like peonies, are best left alone, as it will take them several years to begin blooming again.

Perennials need dividing when the flowers are smaller than normal, the centers of the clumps are hollow and dead, or when the bottom foliage is sparse and poor. Plants that are growing and blooming well should be left alone unless more plants are wanted.

Water plants thoroughly a day or two before you plan to divide them. Prepare the area where you plan to put your new divisions before you lift the parent plant. Prune the stems and foliage to 6 inches from the ground in order to make the job easier and to cut down on moisture loss.

Dig down on all four sides of the plant, about 4 to 6 inches away from the plant. Pry underneath with a spading fork and lift the whole clump. Shake or hose off loose soil and remove dead leaves and stems. This will help loosen tangled root balls and make it easier to see what you are doing.

Perennials with spreading root systems include asters, bee balm, lamb’s ear, Black-eyed Susans and many others. They often crowd out their own centers and can usually can be pulled apart by hand, or cut apart with shears or a knife. Discard the old woody center and replant the young, healthy pieces.

Clumping perennials grow toward the outside of the clump creating new growing points. Many, like astilbes, hostas and daylilies, have thick fleshy roots. It is often necessary to cut through these roots to separate the young plants. Keep at least one developing eye or bud with each division. If larger plants are wanted, keep several eyes.

Bearded iris grow from rhizomes and they need to be divided when they have stopped blooming well. Discard old sections and keep divisions with one fan of leaves, trimmed back halfway. Replant with the top of the rhizome just beneath the surface of the soil.

Plants that have very tough, vigorous root systems, like agapanthus, red-hot pokers and ornamental grasses, may have to be divided with a shovel or saw. You can also hose off the soil to make the root system easier to work with.

Plant the divided sections immediately in the garden or in containers. Replant divisions at the same depth they were originally. Firm soil around the roots to eliminate air pockets and water well after planting.

Fall is the best time to divide most perennials because air temperatures are cool and soil temperatures are warm. So take advantage of the mild fall weather to revitalize your perennials.

• Tree collards are delicious winter vegetables. Set out plants now.

• Enjoy birds in your garden by hanging bird feeders around the yard. You’ll see many different kinds as they migrate through this fall.

• Fragrant Paperwhite narcissus will bloom indoors by Christmas if planted now in rocks and water.

• Clean up dead foliage on perennials like peonies, daylilies and balloon flower and cut back dead flower stems on Echinacea, blanket flower and penstemon.

• Japanese maples and snowball bushes are some of the most colorful shrubs in the fall. Plant them now and give them a head start on spring.

The Colors of Autumn

We all enjoy the colors of autumn leaves. The changing fall foliage never fails to surprise and delight us. Did you ever wonder how and why a fall leaf changes color? Why a maple leaf turns bright red? Where do the yellows and oranges come from? To answer those questions, we first have to understand what leaves are and what they do.

Leaves are nature’s food factories. Plants take water from the ground through their roots, and carbon dioxide from the air. They use sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose through photosynthesis. Chlorophyll, which gives plants their green color, helps make photosynthesis happen.

The shortening of daylight hours and cold, crisp nights triggers the trees to go into dormancy. During these days, lots of sugars are produced in the leaf but the cool nights and the gradual closing of veins going into the leaf prevent these sugars from moving out. During the winter months they will live off this stored food.

As the green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves and the bright green fades away, we begin to see yellow and orange colors. Small amounts of these colors have been in the leaves all along. We just can’t see them in the summer, because they are covered up by the green chlorophyll. Ginkgo, birch, aspen and willow trees turn a dazzling yellow in the fall.

The vivid red and purple colors in scarlet red maples, sweet gum and dogwood trees are made mostly in the fall. Reds and oranges are made by different pigments, called anthocyanins. Anthocyanin pigments are responsible for the red, purple, and blue colors of many fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, and flowers.

Chlorophyll requires sunlight and warm temperatures to do its work. As chlorophyll exits the leaves, anthocyanins are created to give leaves time to unload nutrients. The new red pigments protect leaves from the sun, giving some species extra time to absorb those essential leaf nutrients.

If you’ve ever noticed maples turn a deep burgundy before they achieve that crims
on red, it’s because the burgundy is a mix of outgoing green chlorophyll and incoming red anthocyanins, and the crimson is pure anthocyanin.

While leaves will always change color as the amount of sunlight wanes, weather conditions can affect how brilliant they become. High heat or drought can rob leaves of their brilliance, or make leaves drop early. Insufficient rain in September can also hurt peak color. But lack of wind and rain in the autumn will prolong the display.

It is the combination of all these things that make the beautiful fall foliage colors we enjoy each year.