First Published in the Edmonton Journal 9/29/2005

It’s been said that in the event of a worldwide cataclysm, only the cockroaches will survive. But I think that the tenacious cockroach might have at least one fellow survivor in such a catastrophe: horseradish. Well known as one of the hottest, spiciest herbs, horseradish’s flavour is but a reflection of the plant’s incredible tenacity.

Down the Horseradish Trail
I enjoy a regular run or walk down the trails by the Victoria Park golf course, and each year a cluster of broad-leaved horseradishes on a south-facing, grassy slope endures everything Edmonton weather can throw at it, including broiling summer heat, devastating drought and bitter cold. And each year, I can see where people have inadvertently trampled on the plants or harvested them for culinary use, leaving nothing behind but a mass of discarded leaves. This summer I even spoke to a Polish fellow who regularly harvests Edmonton’s wild horseradish; when I asked him whether or not the horseradish was hot, he just shook his head with an incredulous look in his eyes, as if to say, “What, are you stupid? Of course it’s hot!”

Spicy Chemicals
Horseradish owes its pungency to a category of plant chemicals called isothiocyanates. The “thio” in the name indicates the presence of the element sulphur in the chemical’s molecular makeup, which explains the sulphur-like odor you can’t help detecting when you crush the roots. (In fact, you won’t notice the odor unless you crush the roots; the act of crushing causes a naturally occurring enzyme called myrosinase to liberate the isothiocyanate compounds.) Isothiocyanates are also responsible for the unmistakable flavour of horseradish, a spice that will light a fire under any dish. My friends have a name for the moment these compounds hit your nasal cavity; they call it “brain burn.”

The Roots of Success
Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) is, without doubt, one of the world’s most successful plants. A perennial herb native to Europe and Asia, it is a member of the mustard family, which includes broccoli, cabbage, canola, and, naturally, mustard. It has become naturalized in North America, adapting to a wide range of climates across the continent. The secret to its success is its extremely tough root system, a root system with white, carrot-shaped roots with an incredible capacity to produce side shoots – actually rhizomes, which grow sideways through the earth and send up new shoots that grow into new plants.

Once established, horseradish spreads very rapidly and can be extremely hard to get rid of should you ever grow tired of their pungent company. In fact, a few years back, I talked to researchers at Brooks, Alberta who were experimenting with horseradish for possible export to Japan. They had no trouble growing the crop, but plenty of trouble getting rid of it once the experiment was complete – in fact, rumor has it that they’re still struggling to eradicate the horseradish in their experimental plot.

So if you plan on growing horseradish in your yard, you’d better choose a spot where the plant can be contained. Otherwise, the horseradish could mount a hostile takeover of the rest of your garden!

Phoenix Without Ashes
“My” patch of horseradish down by Victoria Park has recently been levelled by heavy equipment during construction of a new set of pedestrian crosswalk lights. But am I worried? No way. Other plants may be wiped out by the passage of a skid loader or two, but to horseradish, such abuse amounts to little more than a simple pruning job. At best, it’s a temporary cataclysm, and I have no doubt that I’ll see fresh green horseradish shoots emerging from the (metaphorical) ashes next spring.

First Published in the Edmonton Journal 9/22/2005

There are a lot of evergreens in my neighbourhood, and they are, without question, magnificent trees. But my driveway slopes down to my underground garage, and serves as a perfect trap for thousands of dropped evergreen needles; it seems like I’m always sweeping them up.

I don’t let this extra yard work annoy me too much; the benefit of having these mature trees in the neighbourhood far outweighs the pain of a little extra sweeping. Besides, needle drop is a fact of life for evergreens, and a normal function of any healthy needle-bearing tree – as long as the tree sheds in moderation. When the rain of needles turns into a downpour, the tree is stressed, and it’s time to investigate the cause.

A Rain of Needles
Just like broad-leaved, deciduous trees, evergreens periodically drop their needles; the only real difference is in timing. Deciduous trees such as birch, maple or ash drop their leaves in the fall, as the greens of summer give way to the yellows and reds of autumn. With conifers, the timing isn’t quite so predictable. Some conifers, such as larch, are actually deciduous rather than evergreen, and follow the same pattern as, say, birch and maple, dropping all their needles each fall and regenerating new needles in the spring.

Most other conifers are in fact evergreens, and retain their needles from two to about nine years, depending on the species (or even up to forty-five years, in the case of the bristlecone pine) before finally shedding them to make way for new needle growth. Besides exceptions like the larch, needles of conifers don’t (or shouldn’t) fall off all at once; rather, individual needles drop off as they reach their old age.

The bulk of normal needle shed generally occurs in the fall. The quantity of needles that drop at any one time depends upon the species of the conifer and the environmental conditions in which the tree is growing. For example, while a white pine might normally retain its needles for two or three years before shedding them, if the tree is under stress the needles may drop at any time, and probably in much larger quantities.

The percentage of its total needles that an evergreen drops is a pretty good indicator of how much stress the tree is under. For example, a pine that sheds 90% of its needles all at once is definitely showing signs of stress. However, if another pine suddenly drops only 10% of its needles, it could still be under stress, depending on where the needles are falling from. A healthy tree should have lush, thick needles, particularly at the tips of its branches. Excessive needle shed at the tips, although it may only represent a small percentage of the tree’s total needles, often indicates that the tree is stressed.

Stress Management
Drought is probably the most common cause of premature needle drop, but it isn’t the only cause, and one shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the tree simply needs more water without first eliminating other possibilities. Needle drop can also be caused by low light, excessively clay or sandy soil, pests or disease.

This year, with frequent showers occurring on what seems like a daily basis, there has been a greater incidence of needle infection by a group of diseases collectively referred to as “needle cast.” These fungal diseases normally don’t kill trees, but they can cause abnormally large needle losses. Since there aren’t any effective fungicides for this disease currently available to the public, the best solution for needle cast is to ensure that the trees are well maintained; a healthy plant is always better able to defend itself from attack than one that’s struggling to survive.

In fact, this is good advice for dealing with needle drop in general; this is one of those problems for which there is no magical cure. Generally speaking, to minimize tree stress gardeners need to plant their trees in the right location, keep them consistently well-watered and quickly address any pest problems. These simple steps will help maintain healthy growth and prevent unsightly and unhealthy shedding.

Everlasting Evergreens
Most evergreens are planted because the owner envisions many years together with these stately and beautiful needle-bearing trees. (And indeed, some evergreens are quite ancient, including a limber pine recently discovered in Alberta that’s estimated to be over 1,400 years old!) Understanding the normal cycle of needle shedding, and knowing how to address a stressed evergreen, is vital if you want this relationship to endure. It may also cut down on the amount of time you spend sweeping up needles!

First Published in the Edmonton Journal 9/15/2005

I’m not sure how many teachers really do get apples dropped on their desks, but I’m sure that any apples they receive look a heck of a lot better than the ones dropped on mine. In fact, the ones that wound up on my desk a few days ago had brown, rotting flesh, crisscrossed with a labyrinth of tunnels. They’d been attacked by apple maggot, a pest that’s new to Alberta and, unfortunately, very destructive.

A Growing Threat?
I sent a sample of the apples to Dr. Ken Fry, a researcher and instructor at Olds College, who confirmed that the maggots were, in fact, larva of the apple maggot fly. His biggest concern was that there is a fledgling commercial apple industry on the Prairies, and a large, well-established apple industry in BC, and that both could be seriously harmed by this pest.

The apple maggot fly is about 5-6 mm long, about half the size of a typical housefly. The fly has very distinctive black markings on its wings that when viewed from above look (at least to me) like a crouching spider, which makes identifying the pest relatively easy.

The female flies search out ripening apples and puncture the skin, depositing a single egg beneath it. The small, brown puncture mark left by the egg-laying fly is often the first sign that an apple maggot is residing within the fruit. After several days, the egg hatches and a tiny, white, legless maggot emerges, tunneling through the flesh and causing so much injury that the apple rapidly decays. The maggot continues to tunnel and feed on the fruit, causing premature fruit drop. The larvae, of course, fall right along with the fruit, remaining within it until the maggots mature, whereupon they tunnel out of the apple and move into the ground. They then pupate in the soil, re-emerging in the early summer to start the whole cycle once again.

Controlling Apple Maggot
It’s tough to say how widespread the apple maggot problem is in our region, but now is the time to do our best to control it. The onus is on anyone who grows apples to watch for signs of the maggot and then destroy the pests promptly and prudently. The last thing anyone wants to see is this pest becoming firmly established in our area.

One rather effective control measure is to hang a decoy apple on your trees. A decoy apple is a red plastic or wooden globe, hung from an apple tree branch. The false apple is coated with a sticky, glue-like material; the adult flies are attracted to the decoy and stick fast to its surface, preventing them from attacking the real fruit. The decoys are also useful in determining if you actually have a maggot problem; just hang the decoy on an apple tree branch in the late spring and inspect it regularly to see which insects get stuck to its surface. If you spot any apple maggot flies, you’ll have to start control measures; the simplest and most important means of controlling apple maggots entails picking up all of the fallen fruit as it drops and destroying it.

Most commercial fake apple traps are infused with pheromones, chemical attractants that lure the pests to the fruit. As yet, I haven’t seen any pheromone-laced traps available for sale at garden centres here, but I’m planning on contacting a few companies this fall to see if the traps can be made available next spring.

Our Responsibility
Apple maggots are indigenous to various regions across North America, and now they’re here in Alberta. Thus far, my research indicates that apple maggots haven’t made it into British Columbia. That means that Albertans have a special responsibility not to take any of our Prairie apples across the border to BC, or across any other borders for that matter, lest we infect our neighbours with this very serious pest. The history of plant problems is riddled with stories of insect and disease infestations caused by careless movement of plants from one part of the world to another. Let’s not be contributors to that history.

First Published 9/8/2005
Most gardeners strive for perfection. We like perfect flowers, perfect trees, and, particularly at this time of year, perfect vegetables. But sometimes I wonder if our obsession with perfection has robbed us of some of the more subtle joys of gardening. Sometimes, the failures can be as interesting – or even more so – than the successes. Frankly, I get a kick out of some of the bizarre plants, especially the weird vegetables, I’ve seen produced by Prairie gardens.

The Garden of Imagination
I always associate September with potato harvesting. As kids growing up on the farm, my brother Bill and I were responsible for culling out any imperfect spuds. We stood on the back of Dad’s incredibly loud, dust-covered potato harvester and tossed all the dirt lumps, potato tops, and any tubers that didn’t quite measure up off the conveyor belt. It was a dirty, tedious job and we passed the time by counting down the seemingly endless rows of potatoes to estimate how many weeks it would take before the last potato was harvested. Entertainment was hard to find during the potato harvest, but one thing often kept us amused: every so often, a strange-looking tuber would march up the conveyor, and we would grab it for a closer look.

One potato variety, ‘Netted Gem’ (known today as ‘Russett Burbank’), was particularly prone to developing the most outrageous appendages off the main tuber. With a little imagination, we transformed mundane spuds into exotic animals, monsters, potato people, body parts…whatever our entertainment-starved minds could come up with. Riding that dusty old harvester for hours on end, we were desperate to make our own fun.

Mysterious Harvest
Most adults I know who have a vegetable garden have pulled up a distorted tuber or root at least once in their lives. Most of the time, their reaction to these unusual treasures isn’t wonder so much as concern.

Deformed vegetables such as three-legged carrots and potatoes with huge, knobby outgrowths are usually the result of “checks” in plant growth. A check is essentially an abrupt change in growth caused by environmental changes; extremes in temperature, lack or overdose of moisture, physical obstacles, and so on; basically, any interruption to the normal course of plant growth is a check. For example, some potato varieties are prone to developing knobs if their water supply fluctuates during a period of rapid growth. The knobs form because the dryness encourages the development of plant growth hormones that stimulate nodules to form on the surface of the main tuber. Basically, the fluctuating moisture causes the potato to malfunction in a sense, almost like it’s producing warts.

While the knobs may be unsightly, they don’t really affect the palatability of the tuber. Still, if you want to prevent the problem, just keep your potatoes consistently watered throughout the growing season.

In a similar kind of malfunction, carrots produce multiple branches when the growing point of the root is damaged, or checked. A hard layer of clay or a stone in the earth can injure the growing point as the plant cells divide, causing the carrot to send out additional rootlets.

Of course, not all weird vegetables are strange because of their shape; sometimes, it’s their colour that’s a little off. Just the other day, I was presented with a potato that, when cut in half, revealed a network of beautiful pink tissue, almost like a textbook cross-section of a human lung. The cause of this peculiar condition hasn’t been nailed down yet, but it’s probably some kind of mutation, or perhaps a viral disease transmitted by aphids. Whatever the cause, it’s fascinating to look at – perhaps not well-suited to the dinner table, but a great conversation piece nonetheless.

In a way, it’s too bad that imperfect vegetables are “rogued out,” or culled, from the harvest before they ever hit grocery store shelves. I understand why they have to be rogued out; customers simply won’t buy “mutant” vegetables. But it’s kind of a shame that most people, and in particular most children, never get to see anything other than perfect – perhaps you could even say perfectly boring – potatoes. Seeing a steady stream of perfect, uniform vegetables is the ideal scenario for commercial growers, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s those eccentric misfits of the vegetable garden that make gardening fun.

First Published 9/1/2005

Centennial Memories

This week, Alberta and Saskatchewan celebrate their respective Centennials. Though I’ll enjoy the occasion as much as anyone, I can’t help but think of how proud my mother would have been to take part in the celebrations. Through her service as Lieutenant Governor and through her books and gardening talks, I think it’s fair to say that Lois Hole left her mark on both provinces – but she would have argued that it was Alberta and Saskatchewan that left an indelible mark on her.

Saskatchewan’s Soil

Mom’s connection to the land and gardens of the Prairies started in Buchanan, Saskatchewan, a small farming town in the eastern part of the province. When I was growing up, she loved to tell stories about the resilience and ingenuity of the Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian and Jewish immigrants and how they used their skills and creativity to forge a living from the soil. She was profoundly impressed by their ability to successfully apply their knowledge of farming and vegetable gardening from the Old World to the challenging environment of the Canadian Prairies. Her favourite trick, based on how often she recounted the story, was how some of the Ukrainian farmers in Buchanan grew an astounding variety of melons by planting them in partially mature compost. Of course, as compost matures it releases a lot of heat, and that extra heat gave the melon plants the extra boost they needed to produce fruit before the inevitable early fall frost. I think Mom’s love for that story was a reflection of how she saw life: as an optimist, but an optimist who believed that good things were almost always the product of hard work. Telling Mom that something couldn’t be done only strengthened her resolve to accomplish the seemingly impossible, and her memories of the triumphs of those Saskatchewan farmers was all the justification she ever needed for that view.

Alberta Bound

When Mom was a young woman she moved to Alberta, but the lessons learned from her childhood in Saskatchewan were firmly anchored in her spirit. The thought that with hard work, determination and a little good luck, the soil could not only provide food for her family but countless others stayed with her, and I’m sure it played a role in her decision to marry Ted, my father the aspiring farmer.

Mom’s exposure to the different cultures in Saskatchewan left her very open to the thoughts and passions of a new wave of immigrants to Alberta, from the Italians who introduced Mom to a then-exotic vegetable called broccoli, to the Lebanese who gave her cousa (vegetable marrow) recipes, to the Chinese who inspired her to grow several varieties of traditional Chinese vegetables like Bok Choy and Lo Bok.

Lessons Learned

When I reflect back on Mom’s stories and those early days in the vegetable business I often think that Mom grew vegetables partly for pleasure, partly for the economic benefits, and partly because they drew the world to her doorstep. Vegetables and flowers facilitated in-depth discussions with customers, neighbours and passers-by about art, politics, and life. Mom’s willingness to listen, learn and of course share her own opinions when the moment was right was essential to her success as a businesswoman, author and political figure. All those conversations around the garden reinforced what she’d believed from a very young age: that people are more alike than not, and that we all share the same fundamental values. The only difference is the way we approach those values, and while Mom may have disagreed with people, she was always grateful whenever there was room for discussion and, ultimately, compromise.

A Birthday for All

As we mark the occasion of Alberta and Saskatchewan’s hundredth birthdays, I remember how strongly Mom felt about what made our two provinces great. Of course she understood the importance of the land itself – after all, it was the foundation of her success – but to Mom, it was the people of Alberta and Saskatchewan that created what could be called a kind of paradise. And if she were here today, she would be celebrating our twin Centennials by honouring the diversity of the provinces, from First Nations peoples to the descendants of the first British, European and Asian settlers to the immigrants of the 21st century. She learned from them all, and I learned from Mom that good advice can come from all quarters.

Sir Isaac Newton once wrote, “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I think Mom was one of those rare individuals that saw farther, and in her case it was by standing on the shoulders of two great giants: Saskatchewan and Alberta.