Hits & Misses: Cobaea and Cobaea
Question of the Week: Fall-Flowering Fruit
People: Shrub Wars
Crops: Corn Snobs

My sister-in-law, Valerie, always trials a bunch of corn varieties in our test garden at the greenhouses. This year she has put 10 varieties to the test and there have been some exceptional ones that we have been cooking up over the past few weeks. Some of the best varieties are from a category called “synergistic.” Synergistic means that on each cob of corn there are three types of kernels: sugar, sugar enhanced and supersweet, which really do provide a synergy-as far as flavor is concerned. As a result, I have become a synergistic corn convert. If you have become a fresh-corn fanatic, too, give the synergistic varieties a try.

By the way, for those of you who are buying the ‘Peaches and Cream’ variety of corn, you should know that you aren’t. Despite its popularity, ‘Peaches and Cream’ is no longer bred. However, because the name persists, every variety of corn that is bicolored seems to inherit the descriptor.

Hits & Misses
Hit: Cobaea
The Cobaea scandens (cup and saucer vine) growing in a large clay pot by my door is just starting to bloom after a very late start this season. I put a tiny 5-cm tall cobaea seedling in the middle of the pot where it was surrounded by a dense forest of tall calla lilies. Within a month, the cobaea had not only totally obscured the callas but its tendrils had also woven through a neighboring pot of heliotrope and can currently be found crawling across my walkway and towards my door. While it has impressed me with its performance and beautiful bell-shaped flowers (which allude to its other common name: cathedral bells), it has also proven to be a remarkably care-free plant that’s quite forgiving of living in a pot that gets a bit dry and with a gardener who occasionally forgets to fertilize.

Miss: Cobaea Again!
If you receive my Jim’s Notes in New Zealand, do NOT plant Cobaea scandens in your garden. It is such an aggressive plant in that part of the world that it is listed as a noxious weed-one that you will be told to destroy if it’s found growing in your backyard. Now, I don’t think the Kiwi officials would put you in jail for growing it, but they certainly might force you to pull out the saw!

Cobaea scandens

Question of the Week
Fall-flowering Fruit
I received an interesting picture of an apple tree blooming in late August. Although most of the tree was laden with ripe fruit, the picture showed that one branch had a few newly opened flowers. Although it is a curious phenomena to most people, I expect-make that count on-getting at least one question about it each year. Late flowering of apples is due to a hormonal imbalance in a particular branch, and what causes that hormonal imbalance is water stress or defoliation near the end of July or early August after flower buds have formed. Well, when the trees are rewatered and relieved of their stress, reflowering occurs. Unfortunately, late flowers haven’t enough time to produce fruit before winter and are destined to die once the hard frosts arrive. The good news is that the tree’s overall health is not compromised by a few late blooms, so the best thing to do when you see apples reflowering is to sit back, observe, enjoy and reminisce about our spring past.

People
Shrub Wars
I had a couple of customers in the other day who appeared to be victims of a type of eco-terrorism. Well, the word eco-terrorism is a little too extreme, but they did show me pictures of their yard, including a shot of a bed of shrubs and surrounding grass that had apparently turned brown within a week’s time. There was a fairly clear delineation between their verdant lawn and the brown, dead-looking grass around the bed. It looked like someone had sprayed glyphosate, a non-selective herbicide, in and around their shrub bed. Apparently, these two distraught gardeners had been involved in a somewhat heated argument with their neighbors regarding some loud, late-night parties. I can’t say with certainty that glyphosate-wielding neighbors were to blame-and I wouldn’t want to point an accusatory finger at anyone without more proof-BUT the two events sure seem to be more than just a coincidence.

Crop Modeling:
Corn Snobs in the Trial Patch
So far this year, I would have to give the nod to ‘Frisky’ as the pick of the patch for 2006. ‘Frisky’ is a synergistic variety that has just the right amount of sweetness while still managing to retain a true corn taste. On a purely practical note, it also matures early, which makes it suitable for areas that have a short corn-growing season.

Use a Pop-Up Bag to ensure you get your compost to the bin.

Product Pop-Up Bag
Manufacturer Bosmere
Price Medium – $32, Large – $36

How It Works Spring steel support allows it to pop up from storage and open for easy use.
Durability Superior.
Ease of Use Simple.

Advantages Heavy duty handles for easy pick-up and carrying; washable inner surface; strong toggles to close for flat storage.
Disadvantages None.
Value Long-lasting, tough woven PVC coated polyester with heavy duty webbing handles and binding.

Buying Considerations
Great for weeding, dead-heading, or raking leaves. (May also be used indoors for toy storage or laundry. The Pop-Up Bag won’t rip or tear and will collapse for easy storage in the car.)
Professionals Not Recommended. Too small.
Home Gardeners Recommended. Average to large home gardens may need more than one.

First published August 24, 2006

“It’s in the news again,” were my brother’s words this past week, referring to the fact that someone in Winnipeg had eaten seeds from an Angel’s trumpet plant. I just shook my head and prepared for the all-too-familiar rallying cries.

Every few years, Brugmansia spp. (Angel’s trumpet) seems to make the headlines—but not for its beautiful, trumpet-shaped flowers. Instead, the sinister headlines usually speak to the fact that, once again, someone discovered the so-called hallucinogenic properties of the plant and decided that getting stoned on it was a perfectly fabulous idea. Although I can’t say that I am ever surprised by the fact that it happens, it’s the backlash against Angel’s trumpet that always baffles and frustrates me.

Man versus Nature
In nature, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction—simple enough. But because people aren’t simple, our reactions are often disproportionate—complicated by potent emotions and well-meaning-but-misinformed intentions. So whenever there’s tragic news related to Angel’s trumpet, the knee-jerk reaction is to banish the plant. It’s a natural reaction and one that may have some merit, but the problem is that Angel’s trumpet is but one of a vast array of common garden plants that can cause problems for people who fail to give plants the respect they deserve.

Pass It On
The fact is that if you really want to risk trying to get high by consuming plants, you can find a world of hurt in a multitude of garden centres and backyards. What seems to compound the problem regarding Angel’s trumpet is that people are afraid to talk about what it is that makes it such a potent hallucinogenic—as in, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” and could actually encourage people to experiment. But really, the opposite happens: no-one tells the entire story, which makes Angel’s trumpet more of a mystery, which secures it a position as the Holy Grail of drugs, which makes it more attractive, which calls for more experimentation, which makes for more headlines, and no one ever finds out the simple fact that Angel’s trumpet is not even a good high. In fact, it’s a very, very bad high, which is why nature went to the trouble of packing the leaves, flowers and seeds with bitter compounds designed to stop animals—including humans—from eating them.

Love Lost
It may come as a shock to gardeners, but plants just don’t love us as much as we love them. As tough as unrequited love is to take, it’s a fact. Many plants, like Angel’s trumpet, produce a whole legion of phytochemicals designed to keep us from eating them. They give us fair warning by making the anti-feedant compounds unpalatable, but when a person fails to heed the warnings, a plant like Angel’s trumpet doesn’t hesitate to deliver its crushing kiss-off—a prudent message of “Yes, I’m rejecting you—deal with it!”

That message, of course, is delivered via a very powerful, very dangerous phytochemical called scopolamine. And anyone brazen enough to ingest a sufficient quantity of scopolamine-laden foliage, flowers or seeds, either dies, slips into a coma or develops horrific hallucinations that can last for days. But remember, Angel’s trumpet is but one of many dangerous substances, and if we look at the number of “incidents” involving this particular plant each year, they are a drop in the bucket compared to the number of solvent abuse cases—and I’m not expecting that nail polish or gasoline will be banned anytime soon. And although I am prepared to accept that Angel’s trumpet is forever destined to be known as a member of the bad side of the Solanacea family (which includes tobacco, belladonna, potatoes and petunias), I’m not willing to believe that removing Angel’s trumpet from the market would safeguard us from future senseless tragedies—because I know it won’t.

Tis the season… Fall bulbs are starting to arrive in stores and it’s time to start thinking about next spring. Jim gives you a few quick hints to get you started.

Quicktime
WMV

First published August 17, 2006

A bougainvillea laden with hundreds of beautiful flowers seems to have a common effect on its observers. It causes people to start sentences with words like “remember,” as in, “Remember that time we were down in the Caribbean and saw all those gorgeous bougainvillea growing everywhere?”

As welcome a mental vacation as reminiscing may be, it all-too-quickly falls away and is replaced by the sober reality of our winter climate and the realization that the only place we will ever see a bougainvillea at this latitude is in the greenhouse. Well, not true. Sometimes people assume that something is difficult just because it is different, and that’s just not the case—not in life and certainly not in gardening.

Eyebrows and Elixers and Bears, Oh My!
As I look out my kitchen window at my backyard, I am treated to the sight of my own bougainvillea, which is presently covered in a mass of huge magenta-coloured flowers—so many, in fact, that I can barely see its leaves. Consequently, this also happens to be the time of year when I’m treated to another delightful spectacle: the incredulous looks on my friends’ faces when they lay their eyes on those big purple blooms. Each time, those looks are followed by raised eyebrows and smirks that suggest I must be using some secret elixir available only to those in the horticulture industry. And although I’d love to take some of the credit for how well the plant performs, the truth is that bougainvilleas aren’t difficult to grow.

Take It Off!
I like to grow my bougainvillea in a tree form. It’s simple to do, and the results are rewarding. All it takes is designating one strong branch to serve as a single stem (the trunk) and removing all other side branches, transforming the multi-stem shrub into a single stem with a broad umbrella-shaped canopy of branches. That’s it. The rest comes down to maintenance.

Most of that maintenance takes place in the winter when I grow my bougainvillea as a houseplant. And really, I hesitate even to call it maintenance. During the short, low-light-intensity days of winter, the bougainvillea remains vegetative, so all I really do is give it a small amount of water and as much sunlight as possible. No fussing. I’ve even gone so far as to test its tolerance by letting the nighttime temperatures in the house get quite cool (down to about 14C), but it had no deleterious effects on the bougainvillea. Invariably, the plant drops some of its leaves because of the lack of sunlight, but by late winter, the front side starts looking nice and leafy…too bad the same can’t be said for its ugly backside. Of course, if I weren’t so lazy about turning it now and then, it would look as good going as it does coming.

Waking the Dead
By early May, the bougainvillea begins its dramatic transformation when I take it outdoors and place it in the full sunlight of my back deck. For the first little while, when the plant is acclimatizing to the increased amount of light, expect a large number of leaves to turn yellow and drop. It’s a natural response and one that is quickly followed by the emergence of a new flush of vigorous green leaves. Within a few weeks, very tiny bracts form in the leaf axils—hundreds of them, in fact, and by the beginning of early June, it’s time to start fertilizing weekly with 10-6-16. With little-to-no other encouragement, the bougainvillea begins growing a mass of magenta-colored flowers that bloom throughout the summer. Finally, in early fall, the bougainvillea is ready for a much-deserved rest and, once again, is returned to the less-than-ideal (but tolerable) confines of my house where its sojourn begins.

It really is that easy to make a bougainvillea happy. If you think about it, you really shouldn’t be that surprised—bougainvilleas basically want a lot of the same things we do: to be happy and warm in the confines of the house during the winter and to kick back and enjoy the deck in the summer. It may not be a trip to the Caribbean, but it’s not a bad gig if you can get it.

Nothing beats the taste of corn straight out of the garden. Jim talks about how to get the best taste from your corn crop.

Quicktime
WMV

The Tri-Hod Leaf Collector is the simplest answer for collecting bulky garden refuse.

Product Tri-Hod Leaf Collector
Manufacturer Bosmere
Price $21

How It Works Stands open and flat at the front making it easy to sweep or rake into from behind.
Durability Superior.
Ease of Use Simple.

Advantages Rolls up for easy storage, easy to sweep in and tip out. Wipe clean surfaces.
Disadvantages None.
Value Made from long-lasting high quality polyethylene. U.V. stabilized on weave and top coating for longer life.

Buying Considerations
Sweep grass cuttings, hedge trimmings, leaves and weeds into the tri-hod. When full, collect up using the front handles to carry to the compost heap or recycling bin. Tilt and tip by means of the back handle for easy emptying.
Professionals Recommended.
Home Gardeners Recommended.

There is a mentality that stereotypes working in a greenhouse as easy, no stress work – walking around wearing pretty, flowery gloves, carrying a watering can and smelling flowers all day. Wrong!

Besides dealing with the usual cultural practices of watering, fertilizing, battling bugs and diseases, there is the never ending hassle of dealing with incoming shipments of plant material – whether from overseas, the USA or within our own country. Add to that the concern of what condition the plants will be in upon arrival – especially, if there is a delay.

Several years back, Valerie Hole had a shipment of nasturtium cuttings from Florida that ended up sittin’ on a dock in Bombay! The plants were guaranteed to arrive within 36 to 48 hours. (Wasted) The end result was the company had to take fresh cuttings and ship the order a second time.

A similar incident happened to me a few years back with a shipment of choice auricular primroses from the Heathrow Airport in London. Because of regulations governing the importation of live plants from overseas, all traces of soil must be washed off the roots. You have a situation of highly perishable plants with no soil on their roots, wrapped in tissue paper, with a guarantee the plants should arrive at our doorstep within 48 hours. In a perfect world, the plants would arrive as promised within the allotted time frame, in great shape and we would deal with them accordingly. However, these wayward children ended up on the tarmac in Lagos, Nigeria. Several phone calls later and many a sleepless night, we finally received the plants one week later. They were fine! This was a lucky case that reinforced in my head how tough perennials really are!

As well, I had a shipment of double fern leaf peonies (Paeonia tenufolia rubra plena), en route from Manitoba, travel in the compartment beneath a Greyhound bus during temperatures of -35°C in February, arrive as a block of ice. Thawed and potted, these ended up to be among the most magnificent specimen in years!

We have had other companies shipments arrive – product destined for Halifax from Cape Cod ended up on our doorstep.

We have had product go astray. There was a case of an American company shipping our plants to Montreal instead of Edmonton. (after all, how far apart can they be up there?)

In this business, sometimes you have to rely upon blind faith to pull you through!

In the world of the Unlikely Gardener, weeks are long and promises are frail things. Should you remember the last entry (July 14th, “Blink Twice for Yes”), perhaps you’ve been wondering what happened at that year-end meeting? Or, what fellowship was broken? Or, what was purged from the coldframes? Or, better still, why you even read the UG when you could be Googling yourself, or participating in an internet quilting bee, or buying Australian bananas on e-Bay?

I’ve been away, you see. My brother just got married—to a girl he met here at Hole’s during the couple of years he spent mixing our bedding plant soil—and the event spilled into my own life, miring it in the check, double-check of pre-nup preparation. Enough of that, though. Love has its time and place, neither of which this blog has any interest in providing.

Front Greenhouse might be closed by now. Is it? As I’m actually not back yet I don’t know, so don’t jump to conclusions. Come anyway—we’ll find something wonderful to sell you. I know for certain, though, that out in the Nursery there are garden mums available and pansies in 11cm pots, which I spent a bit of time growing before breaking for the wedding. There wasn’t much else, though, to speak of, and by now the Front Greenhouse kids have probably dealt with the remainders, sending petunias, bacopa, cosmos, and daisies of various sorts to the big compost in the sky, where one day we will find all the bedding plants of our past gardens (though they’ll just be dirt, if the angels kept up—religiously, of course—with turning it).

The year-end meeting is meant to address such excess. So, during the closing down of summer, we spend an afternoon looking at the past season’s strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to just increasing next year’s crop size on the assumption that the Alberta Advantage has, as we are meant to believe, excised “bust” from the yin and yang of cyclical economics. Start with A for Alyssum and work your way through to Z for Zinnia—a grueling but necessary exercise. (Two hours into the meeting, Front Greenhouse manager Dave Grice glanced at his watch and said, quite justifiably, something to the effect of, “My God, we’re only on Lobelia.”)

The result is that each year becomes the example for the next. In the rare event that you grew a perfect crop just in time for May-Long: Congratulations! Go directly to the next letter! If not, then reduce, combine, or cut rounds, seed earlier or later, or do the same with the plugs. We’ll also discuss new approaches to growing challenges, like Wave Petunias, which, grown pot-tight in troughs suspended over coldframe crops, get a bit stringy-looking. Next year, we decided, we’ll grow them on the ground. Maybe something else can go in the troughs.

At this, Bobbi S., went rather white. A quiet girl who for the past two seasons has quietly run new plants from the transplant line out to quiet coldframes, she surprised us with the question we all hoped no one would ask: “Where do you think those petunias are going to go?” As that matter wasn’t on our agenda, and knowing full well that it would be her job to find room for what would surely be 500 flats, we hurried on to some plant beginning with Q or R or S, soon enough finishing our plans for the 2007 growing season, which we all agreed would certainly be the best ever. All of us, that is, except maybe Bobbi.

First published August 10, 2006

I tend to read a lot of everything, but one thing I’ve discovered is that it really pays to read labels. Better yet, it pays to read between the lines of those labels—especially on apple trees.

That is the advice I always give frustrated gardeners who ask why their apples are falling prematurely. That single question is always tangled in enormous amounts of angst and the unfounded certainty that, somewhere along the road, that person did something wrong. The truth is that they or someone else sort of did. In most cases though, that error goes all the way back to when the tree was selected and the purchaser neglected to pay attention to that all-important label. Of course, there are many factors like drought, disease—even wind—that can cause fruit to fall prematurely, but the one commonly overlooked reason is quite a simple one: the apple variety.

Oh, That’s What That Means!
Whenever an apple label states that a variety is an early producer, reading between the lines will reveal that early producers also drop their fruit early. It just makes sense: the moment an apple reaches peak perfection, it has no where to go but down (both in direction and taste). Some early varieties have an extremely short interval of palatability, and when the weather is hot and dry (like this year), an early maturing apple can go from peak flavour to unpalatable in a rather short time. Early maturing apples are wonderful so I do recommend that gardeners grow them—just remember not to stand back and admire the fruit for too long. Eat them, juice them or make them into pies, or they’ll inevitably be lost to gravity and wasps.

Not all varieties are early. The alternative, of course, is a late-season variety (one producing ripe fruit in mid to late September or even into October). These apples rarely drop in summer unless the tree is extremely stressed or Mother Nature has dealt it a windy blow. The benefit of late varieties is that they often produce superior quality fruit that has a wider harvest interval. Late-fruiting varieties also typically store better and rarely deteriorate on the branch. However, the problem you face with late varieties is that they are, well, late. And while the risk of losing them to an early, exceptionally cold spell is always there, the real danger is in not getting enough warm, sunny weather in late August and September. Without sufficient heat, late apples won’t have time to develop peak flavour before the first hard frost hits.

Best of Both
If you have the space, choose an early maturing variety so that you have apples to chomp on in the yard, and save another spot for a late-maturing variety that will provide that incomparable flavour during the cool, crisp days of autumn. One late-season apple that’s showing tremendous potential on the Prairies is ‘Honey Crisp.’ It produces commercial-quality apples that wouldn’t be out of place on the produce table with ‘Fuji,’ ‘MacIntosh’ or ‘Spartan.’ We’ve had no trouble overwintering it in our orchard, and it’s producing a nice crop of apples this year. Of course, as any apple grower knows, “one winter does not an apple make,” but Honey Crisp looks darn promising. If it’s an early maturing apple you’re looking for, I really like ‘Goodland.’ It has a good harvest window and produces large fruit with a nice blush and crispy white flesh. Whatever you choose, it all comes down to knowing what you are purchasing—so read before you buy.

Anyone who has grown apple trees (even troublesome ones) knows how quickly they become sentimental favourites. In fact, I know people who were more tearful about parting with their apple trees than they were about parting with their homes. That’s just the way it is. So my advice is to choose carefully. A little control goes a long way toward battling the things over which we have no influence. And during those years when Mother Nature trumps preparation, call upon that sentimentality—sometimes it’s sweeter than anything else from the orchard.