Bare Root Strawberries #115

For more than 50 years one of our most important November garden tasks was to plant strawberries. The local nurseries always had inexpensive and healthy bare root plants of varieties suitable for our zone 24 climate. We first grew 'Lassen,' then switched to 'Sequoia,' and finally settled on 'Seascape' as the best to provide quality fruit over a long season. Seascape will bear as early as March, but the fruit is sour and flavourless until May, and so we pinch off the blossoms until early April. Twenty to 25 plants will give us all the fruit we can use through May, June and most of July. After being dissatisfied with the results of growing plants from runners over a second season, we plant new bare root plants every year.

Over the last decade we have become increasingly disappointed with the bare root plants we found in the local nurseries. They were appearing later in the season, fewer varieties were available, and the quality of the plants worsened. Four years ago we had only a handful of survivors after buying three lots of plants, and we gave up on trying to buy them locally. Buying online also was a challenge. It seems that the big box suppliers weren't interested in catering to the small southern California market and insisted that the planting time in our zone is February or March, a time when we could be picking ripe berries if we wanted to let them mature that early. And so, with some trepidation, I turned to Amazon. There wasn't a lot of choice when I first tried that source in December 2019, but I was able to order 25 plants from Hand Picked Nursery. They came, looking much healthier than anything I had seen locally for several years, and included a few extra plants. Twenty-five survived and throve through the following summer. In 2020 I ordered both 'Seascape' and 'Mara des Bois' from the same source with similar results. This year I put in my order as soon as they appeared on the Amazon website and planted them November 1st. The plants were obviously in better condition when I ordered them earlier and, ten days later, 27 of 28 plants are flourishing. This company, located in North Carolina, also supplies 'Chandler' and 'Camarosa,' two other varieties recommended for southern California.

Last summer we picked an overabundance of 'Seascape' from early May through most of July and useful quantities through most of August. The 'Mara des Bois' were good until mid-June, but after that the berries were sparse and small. Only a few had the wonderful fragrance that so excited garden writers when they first became available in this country. In spite of having reported favourably after my first two seasons of growing them, I don't think I'll be planting them again. I realize that others, including Chino's, grow them successfully, but I think I have enough experience with them to say that other varieties will be more satisfactory close to the ocean.

Starting Legumes from Seed #114

The seeds of beans and peas can be sown directly in the ground, but that method exposes them to several hazards. They can rot before they germinate, especially during the cool weather which is best for garden peas and favas. The infant sprouts can be devoured by soil pests like sowbugs before they reach daylight,  which is one of the causes of what I call pollywogs, beans that emerge showing only cotyledons and failing to develop true leaves. Finally, the survivors may be poorly spaced, crowded in part of the row and with gaps elsewhere.

In the past we have reduced these problems by sprouting the seeds between layers of damp paper towels, setting them out when the rootlets reach about a quarter inch in length. That doesn't completely deal with the soil pests but leaves them exposed to attack for a shorter time before they emerge.

This year that strategy also failed us. I suspect that the seed companies, for reasons related to the pandemic, are selling older and less viable seed, increasing our losses because of low germination and less vigorous young plants. I am now starting seed in 2-1/2 inch round pots, though 6-packs might work almost as well. For some varieties whose germination may be 40% or less, I plant two or three seeds per pot. Even if all three seeds germinate, they are easily separated for planting at this young stage with almost complete survival after setting out. This method is a bit more work, but it's so successful that I'll stick with it, even if seed quality improves in the future, which I suspect it won't.

Because of the deteriorating quality of seed, the losses from sprouting to mature plant, and the stingy quantities sometimes provided by the seedsmen, we have turned more and more to saving seeds from our own plants. This strategy won't work for hybrids, but most legume seeds are open-pollinated. The flowers are self-fertile and cross-pollination between varieties doesn't occur readily, though the authorities recommend separating them by 10 to 20 feet. That makes it possible to start 40 to 50 seeds with each planting, which would seem a lot to supply one elderly couple, but sometimes it's barely enough. If we do find the harvest excessive, we have plenty of friends and family, so it doesn't go to waste.

The legume seeds we've saved geminate reliably for at least two years when kept indoors at room temperature. If we wanted to keep them longer, we would freeze them in airtight containers, such as plastic prescription bottles, with a packet of silica desiccant. Seeds need to be thoroughly dried before they are put in an airtight environment. Otherwise, they are likely to mildew. I find that just leaving them exposed to the air in a cool but not dark place works fine. Keeping them in a dark closet is a bad idea if you live close to the beach, as we do. Mildew will surely find them.

Sweet Corn #113

Eleven years have gone by since I last wrote about corn and it's time for an update. Many of our friends are surprised at our success in growing corn in foggy La Jolla, since one has a mental picture of tall stalks waving in the breeze under a scorching midwestern sun. In fact, it's one of our most reliable summer crops, keeping us well supplied from late May until mid-November. The heirloom varieties of corn that you remember from childhood, like Golden Bantam, have a rich flavour and are very sweet when first picked. Conversion of sugar to starch begins immediately after harvest and proceeds rapidly over a few hours. That was the source of the old maxim, "be sure that the water is boiling before you cut the ear". Over the years the breeders have enhanced the sweetness and have increased the holding ability of their varieties by developing the 'se' trait, which both increases the sugar content and inhibits the conversion of starch to sugar. A further improvement was made with the Super Sweet shrunken 2 (sh2) gene resulting in even more sweetness and very delayed starch formation. The result is that the corn you buy from the supermarket has quite an acceptable quality and we can cut all of the ears from a planting when they are at the ideal stage of maturity with very little deterioration when we keep them in the refrigerator for a week or more.

We have grown several varieties over the years, beginning with Illini X-tra Sweet and Ruby Queen. Fifteen years ago, we switched to the bicolour, 274A, which allegedly combined the extra sweetness conferred by the 'sh2' trait with the tenderness of the 'se' types. It lived up to the claims and we stuck with that variety until four years ago. Then, intrigued by the glowing description in the Stokes catalogue, we tried the yellow variety, 'Elle'. It was definitely superior to 274A, both for eating quality and for vigorous growth. As I wrote earlier this year, Stokes will no longer provide US customers with quantities of seed suitable for the home gardener and so we turned to the developer, Harris Seeds. I couldn't buy fewer than 1000 seeds but was able to share some of the abundance with friends and family.

'Elle' belongs to a group of varieties dubbed "Quality Elite" by Harris and described in their literature as "the best tasting, highest quality sweet corn available on the market today." We would agree with their claim and have received enthusiastic confirmation from several friends. For those of you who worry about such things, I should add that 'Elle' is not a GMO product. Harris does have a line of seeds called "Biotech Sweet Corn" but they are available only to registered growers who have signed a stewardship agreement.

After nearly half a century of growing corn, we have our technique down to a science. With the goal of getting nine to a dozen plants, I put three seeds per cell into a 6-pack. These are ready to set out when the seedlings are about six inches in height. The roots may be tangled but the young plants don't seem to be bothered much, even if they have to be torn apart. I plant them about eight inches apart in three or four rows to assist wind-pollination. After a couple of days I sprinkle about an ounce of granular balanced fertilizer around each plant and water it in thoroughly. I make six or seven plantings per season, the first early in March and the last in mid-August.

Since I have ben spraying the silks with spinosad, the European corn borer has not been a problem. We did have some damage on the first planting this year and I realized that the two-year old spinosad had lost its kick. We've had no further trouble after I bought a new bottle. Aphids can be very numerous on the husks of the mature cobs, but they don't seem to affect the quality of the edible portion. We have had significant problems with the corn blotch leaf miner, though it is described as "an occasional pest that feeds within corn leaves but does not usually result in potential yield loss". I'll leave further discussion to a future article.

Padron Pepper #112

After half a century of growing our own produce, we have become almost independent of the supermarket. We have achieved this by learning when to plant various vegetables for a year-round harvest, and also by adjusting our diet to what is in season. We have been assisted by the changing climate which has greatly lengthened the harvest season for some frost-tender crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants. The penalty we have paid for so intensively cultivating our beds is that the soil is loaded with pathogens ,and for many vegetables we can grow only the most disease-resistant varieties, having had to give up on many desirable heirlooms.

We have not found a sweet pepper sufficiently resistant to thrive in our garden. With luck we may get two or three undersized fruit from a bell pepper plant and so we perforce turn to the supermarket when we need them. Happily, chili peppers aren't bothered by our soil diseases, and we grow several types. However, most of them are much too hot for our northern palates and the crop goes to Juan, the gardener, and his friends. This year we grew the famous Padrón pepper and it was a great success, flourishing in our garden and providing an amount of spiciness that we can both tolerate and enjoy.

These peppers were first cultivated from seeds brought from the New World to the Franciscan monastery at Herbón, near the town of Padrón in Galicia. In Europe 'pemento de Herbón' is recognized as a protected designation of origin but the seed is widely available online. We planted them in containers in early February, keeping them in a sunny widow until they were ready to set out in early May. The fruit began to reach harvest size, about two inches long, early in July and the three plants have churned out more than we can use for the last month. If you pick the fruit when it is small, under three inches, most of them are only slightly spicy, but you will occasionally get a fiery one ("Some are hot, and some are not.") The pungency increases as they mature and is augmented if the plants are stressed by underwatering. They will eventually turn red but they are normally eaten young and green. They are a favourite item in tapas, heated in a skillet with olive oil until the skin is blistered. You will find scores of recipes for their preparation on the Internet, all much the same. They can be added to many other dishes that benefit from a bit of zing. Helen even put some in a batch of zucchini bread.

Unfortunately, they don't seem as impervious to soil-borne fungi as some of the scorchers now established as perennial in our garden. I'll plan on a second planting in future years, a strategy we have found essential for even the most disease-resistant tomatoes.