Here are a few random thoughts on this year’s growing season. We had our first below-freezing temperatures here in my Philadelphia neighborhood around November 20, which is 3 or so weeks later than “average” (although I’m not sure if what is reported is really the average, or something like a 30% probability to improve the odds a bit for farmers.)
I got my son a Venus fly trap for his birthday in May. They are native to the Carolinas, which is cool, although I bought this one from California Carnivores. We looked at it for awhile, then left it in our buggy backyard for the summer where it seemed to be very, very happy. It even flowered – now a Venus fly trap flower is not a particularly breathtaking flower, but I was excited nonetheless. Most of the time, there was plenty of rain to keep it wet, but I invested in a gallon of distilled water to top it up occasionally. As I write this in early December, I’ve brought it inside for the winter. I’ll continue to give it distilled water, and no matter how sad or even dead it starts to look, I’ll keep watering it and put it back out in the spring. I threw one away a few years ago thinking it was dead, and was horrified to read later that they naturally go dormant in the winter. They can also supposedly handle some light freezes (again, think Carolinas) but not an extended deep freeze, so it seemed safest to just bring it in. My research said to put it in an “unheated garage or entryway” for the winter, but my urban home has neither of these things.
The “dwarf” (advertised as 15-feet but 20+ feet tall and maybe still growing) Asian pear tree grew lots of pears this years, which the squirrels really enjoyed. I picked and ate one unripe one just to get something, but there were no ripe ones left when the squirrels were done with them. The annoying thing is that they don’t actually eat all that fruit, they take a bite or two out of each one and drop the rest on the ground to rot. Luckily, I find squirrel antics fairly amusing and my family is not starving as a result of the fruit they are depriving us of.
The Asian persimmon tree grew exactly one persimmon this year. This tree is a bit younger (4 years?) so hopefully there is more to come. The squirrels didn’t eat it – maybe they just don’t know what it is – and it was delicious. I thought I had a photo but can’t seem to find one. I believe persimmons are the most delicious fruit that most Americans have never tried. And I don’t know why – the trees are compact, prolific, pest and disease free (the flip side of this is they probably don’t have much ecological value locally), cold tolerant (there are several Japanese varieties), and the fruit is absolutely mouth watering and yet very tough on the outside which seems like it would make for easy shipping. There are native American varieties, but be warned these grow into very big trees which is why I chose the Asian variety. By the way, I am generally partial to native species, but I have not found the right native tree species that works in my small urban garden. I want trees that provide a little bit of shade for the front of the house but leave sunny areas to grow other things, and that I can easily get under or around. My basic principle is that a plant should have at least one other function, whether an ecological function or a food function, other than just looking good. Of course, plants that have all these things are awesome! But like I said, I haven’t identified the perfect tree yet that fits that bill.
Around July, my garden was clear cut (other than the trees) by a gardener hired by a neighbor. And not just mowed, but scraped absolutely to the ground. I was upset, but it was actually kind of interesting to watch how it responded. It’s a perennial garden, so it mostly grew back quickly. More aggressive and resilient plants outcompeted the less aggressive ones for the most part. Interestingly, some plants that are normally aggressive, like Black Eyed Susan, were probably about to flower when they were whacked and apparently decided they were done for the year. I assume their roots are fine and they will be back. Wild strawberries by contrast loved being mowed and took over an entire corner of the garden. There is way too much lemon balm now, even though I like lemon balm. A neighbor actually bought me some native plant seedlings after it happened, which I found really touching. So now I have an aromatic Aster and a Hubricht’s Blue Star in my garden.
After the garden was clear cut, I talked to the neighbor that (inadvertently) did it, and we agreed that I would just take over part of her garden from now on. To get things going quickly, I’ve picked a prairie seed mix (most “prairie” plants are native to the entire U.S. east of the Rockies). I’ve put down some cardboard to suppress weeds from growing back, put a mix of homemade and store-bought compost on top of that, and plan to sprinkle the seeds over the winter and see what happens in the spring. The only issue is that at least one cat has decided this bare soil makes a nice litter box. I intended to plant a fall cover crop but work, family, and life intervened to prevent that project.
Each year, I like to pick a “try again” species and a “new species”. The try again species is usually something I have tried to start from seed in a previous year without success, and still have seeds left over in my basement. This year, I finally got a sea kale seedling going. Squirrels dug it up multiple times for some reason, and it seemed to wilt during a fall heat wave, but now as we enter December it looks incredibly happy and has even flowered. We’ll see what happens. My “new species” was goldenrod variety “Golden Fleece”. I got it from a nursery out west somewhere, but the variety was originally bred at the Mount Cuba center in Delaware, which is nearby where I live and on my list of places to eventually go. It is advertised as a ground cover less than 18″ high. It is flowering and looks happy out there.
In pots, I did cherry tomatoes, Thai basil (both the “holy” variety as Indian people tend to refer to it, which Thai people insist is just “normal” Thai basil, and the “sweet” variety as Thai people refer to it, which seed companies in the U.S. consider normal Thai basil.) Both taste and smell awesome, and are much more heat and drought tolerant than Italian basil, which tends to wilt and die on me if I go away on a summer weekend. I also tried a mini-version of a polyculture mentioned in the book “Gaia’s garden”, which was fun although it didn’t really go as planned.
We had a groundhog. Not exactly a rare species, but a rare siting around our urban neighborhood so fairly exciting.
And finally, I loved this enormous sunchoke. It was not in my garden, but was likely spread by an enterprising squirrel from my garden to a neighbor’s garden, and then forgotten. I read The Dark Tower this summer, in which God is at least sometimes embodied as a rose bush. But I am not a big rose fan. If I were any sort of deity, I might choose to be a sunchoke.
