I KNEW I WAS OLD

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/17/07)


I knew I was old when one of my sons asked me about the merits of joining AARP. At my 80th family birthday party my other son said, “Gee, Dad, you’re as old as dirt.” Meine Überfrau thought that his remark was offensive, but she doesn’t understand male humor, not knowing that his remark was a sign of admiration and affection. As a matter of fact, I’ve always liked dirt and as a toddler ate it garnished with worms.

However, I feel more like compost which is old stuff decaying into new life. A rich, fertile mix of my life’s memoried debris, such as, a counter-intelligence Sgt/Maj, field hand, ditch digger, college, numerous and varied graduate schools, private investigator, parish minister, college teacher, newspaper columnist, author, backpacked the John Muir Trail, Alaskan shipwrecked, jail bird, psychotherapist, clinical hypnotherapist, occasional radical, sometime conservative, triple-bypass, “regular old coot,” and gardener, compost seems a better fit than dirt. I still like dirt and worms, just not gastronomically.

Having lived as an adult for two generations, been brushed by death four times, and abided with people as they’ve died, I’ve learned to cut out the crap. Not much matters, but what remains does. My Occam’s Razor has resulted in a belief of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking in faith with God. Gardening is just such a walk. While not an old man’s avocation, gardening is salutary for old people (no “senior citizen” nonsense) because it keeps up the exercise and provides life-extending nourishment.

The walk of faith begins with onions, especially the Hybrid Candy (Allium cepa ). Onions extend the notoriously short growing season in Flagstaff by at least three months. Hardy down to 20° F., onion sets can be planted in March just as daffodils begin to peek from their winter slumbers. Stored, they can be eaten throughout the winter. Besides tasting great, onions are good for what-ails-you, as in heart disease and cancer. An onion a day keeps the doctor away. I have planted 450 onion sets just to be sure.

The next horticultural glory is the beloved globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus,) a thistle of beauty and taste, unlike the notoriously prickly Scotch thistle. Not native to the Colorado Plateau, the globe artichoke can be grown here if the same devotion is used as that required for an equally beloved vegetable, the tomato. If left to flower, the globe artichoke is a delight to the eye with a purple flower of extraordinarily beautiful intensity. If eaten, it is a delight to the palate as well as a tonic for the spirit.

Next on the walk to glory is the Siberian tomato, the Galina (Lycopersicon lycopersicum), a golden cherry tomato of a deliciously complex taste of sweetness and acidity. In addition to that virtue, it is an early producer (59 days.) The fruit seldom gets into the house because various and sundry people eat it off the vine, dust and all.

Close in glory is the Sweet Baby Girl (Lycopersicon lycopersicum ), a prolific producer of clustered bright red, very sweet cherry tomatoes on a compact bush. At 65 days, it is apt for container gardening. Also, the thumbnail-sized Red Currant tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum) is great for salads with its intense flavor. A wild South American tomato the Red Currant works in Flagstaff at 62 days.

A good slicing tomato and great for hamburgers is the Glasnost (Lycopersicon lycopersicum). A large Siberian, it matures at 62 days and, as with the rest of the tomatoes, it supplies prodigious amounts of the antioxidant Lycopene which helps to fend off cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

Not forgotten is the beet, the sweetest of all vegetables, especially the "Bull’s Blood" beet (Beta vulgaris) which along with "Burgee’s Golden", "Red Ace", "Detroit Red", and the "Chiogga", is an early producer and a fount of goodness. The beet lowers cholesterol and triglycerides, reduces blood pressure, helps ward of colon and stomach cancer, is colorful, and tastes great with leaves and fruit adding pizzazz.

Having lived this long, I want to live longer, so it's "Go gardener, go!"

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2007

WHITEFLIES: ONE OF LIFE’S LEARNING EXPERIENCES
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/23/07)

Whiteflies are amongst life’s learning experiences. In fact, a learning experience is an actual failure which the politically-correct try to transform into a potential success with the phrase “learning experience.” The purpose of such polite obfuscation is to put a pretty face on an ugly event. “A learning experience” is in the same politically-correct category as “at heart he’s a really nice guy” which means “he’s a real s.o.b.” or “she meant well” for “she really messed up.” However, with “learning experience” the politically-correct are surprisingly right. Gardening is jam packed with learning experiences.

The first horticultural learning experience is: “Vigilance,” to echo my flame-tressed Überfrau. Those small little white things flying around, ensconced on the underside of the leaves aren’t harmless. They’re the al-Qaida of horticulture. They suck the life out of plants. When discovered, spring into action, don’t wait around, as did I, to see what will happen in the vain hope they’ll go away by themselves. They won’t. They’ll destroy. They’ll multiply exponentially ad infinitum into a Malthusian nightmare. “Apocalypse Now.”

With a four stage life-cycle, whiteflies begin as eggs, scarcely visible to the naked eye, laid by adults on the underside of leaves. Then emerging as crawlers, they wander the leaf’s underside until they pierce a vein with their needle-like mouth parts and begin sucking the phloem (life juices) out of the plant. Remaining immobile as nymphs, they keep on feeding. After about ten days, they stop feeding and mature as pseudo-pupa. Finally, they emerge as adults, flying and laying eggs. As with all rat finks, they leave refuse, ironically called “honeydew,” which attracts sooty molds, resulting in an unsightly, sticky mess. Gunk City.

Armageddon has arrived when the plant is alive with whiteflies, covered with eggs, crawlers, nymphs, pseudo-pupa, dying with curled, desiccated leaves, and oozing a sticky mess. Then, the only thing to do is to sack the infected plant and debris around it in a sealed plastic bag, dump it in the garbage can pronto, and dispatch it to Environmental Services.

Last fall, I brought two flourishing Genovese basil (Ocimum baslicum “Genovese”) plants I had raised from seed into our house. Within two weeks they were covered with whiteflies. I wondered “why me?” After a few moments several reasons came to mind, and I forsook my theological inquiry. Carelessly, I hadn’t made sure they were free of whiteflies. Ever vigilant my Überfrau, Gretchen, discovered them. I learned to inspect plants regularly, especially those coming from nurseries which, as with hospitals, harbor many ailments.

If, on the other hand, hope is warranted, grab a hand sprayer loaded with either insecticidal soap or botanical insecticides. Available commercially, both have low toxicity for plants and mammalians and act and degrade rapidly. Avoid pesticides unless you want to poison the atmosphere and kill the friendlies in the bug world. Systemic assaults work well, but don’t eat the fruit, leaves, or stems of the plant. In the morning or evening, spray the underside of all the leaves. Then, keep doing it several times until there’s nary a sign of a whitefly.

No Albert Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” when it comes to whiteflies. For them, vengeance and extermination. Sans merci. As my aged Aunt Emily told me just before I was shipped overseas, “Smite them, dear sweet boy, smite them hip and thigh.”

Sadly, there is no cure, only control. Working three ways, insecticidal soaps and botanical insecticides stop the adults from flying and the colony from laying more eggs and suffocate the remaining members of the colony.

Happily, there’s a secret weapon, yellow sticky paper. Whiteflies like yellow and stick to the sticky paper. The paper is good as an alert for the first signs of whiteflies and as a means of control.

Whiteflies have natural enemies. Green lacewings, lady bugs, minute pirate bugs, big eyed bugs, damsel bugs, tiny black ladybeetle, and parasitic wasps like to eat whitefly eggs and nymphs. They should be released gradually throughout the growing season and in the evenings.

Elimination isn’t possible. Control is. Fresh Genovese basil, along with all manner of flowers, plants, vegetables, and herbs, is worth the vigilance and effort.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2007

SASHA’S ALTAI TOMATO
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/20/07)

The Altai Shan, the golden mountain range, is a complex series of mountains rising in the Gobi Desert and descending into the West Siberian Plain. Traveling southeast to northwest, it threads its way through Russia, Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan. Its highest peak is 15,000 feet. A remote neck of the woods, the Altai Shan was until the 19th century terra incognita for westerners. On their maps, medieval cartographers would have designated such unknown places as the Altai Shan with the inscription, “hic sunt dracones” (here are dragons.)

Yet, it’s the origin of a prized tomato, Sasha’s Altai (Lycopersicon esculentum), which at one time fetched $5.00 per single seed in Australia. But, in a sense, one shouldn’t be surprised since tomatoes originated with the Incas in the remote high country of the Andes where, growing wild, they are more a berry than a fruit. Indeed, the word “tomato” is a corruption of the Inca word tomatl. From Peru the Conquistadores took the tomatl to Mexico, thence to Spain, and then to Italy. Finally, the ubiquitous tomatl made its way to Siberia and Sasha Stavrov’s garden in the Altai Shan where it was discovered by Bill McDorman of http://www.seedstrust/ in Cornville which is just a few miles down slope from Sedona.

A horticultural explorer, Bill McDorman stalks and hunts seeds sans gun but with camera. On one of his heirloom seed hunting expeditions, Bill ventured into the Siberian city of Irkutsk on the shores of Lake Baikal looking for tomato seeds. In short, Bill is a guy who takes his seeds seriously, especially his tomato seeds, else why would he find himself smack dab in the middle of nowhere looking for tomato seeds. Only a true hunter would venture into terrae incognitae, searching for descendants of the tomatl amongst the dracones.

The reason was quite simple. After the Communist Revolution of 1917, Russia had been cut off from outside horticultural influences for 70 years. One of the influences from which it was protected was the horticultural genetic engineering of western capitalistic corporations. So in effect, rather than the artificial selection of hybrid tomatoes, there was 70 years of natural selection, producing the best non-hybrid tomatoes. In many ways the Soviet Union had been a hermit kingdom run by privileged class of corrupt political hacks commonly called apparatchiks. However, with the coming of glasnost (transparency) under Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 all of Soviet horticulture began to open up.

For Bill McDorman this meant open season for heirloom seeds. Siberians are avid gardeners, and he figured that with 2 million highly-competitive gardeners he could have a field day hunting for the best non-hybrid vegetables and tomatoes. He was looking for that right combination of acidity and sweetness, in short, a sophisticated, complex taste.

While in Siberia he collected sixty different kinds of tomato seeds. On one occasion a smiling man with sparkling blue eyes came out of a crowd, telling him about his deliciously nonpareil tomatoes, and claiming they were “the best tomatoes in all of Siberia.” He said he would walk home to fetch him some of his own seeds. He didn’t come back. Three days later as Bill was waiting to board his airplane for the flight home, he burst through the crowd with his seeds carefully wrapped in an old newspaper. Surprised, Bill wondered why he had taken so long. Bill’s translator said that there were no roads where Sasha lived and that he had to walk home, some 22 miles into the Altai Shan, a forty-four mile walk altogether.

What Sasha brought back were the seeds of Sasha’s Altai tomato, a thin-skinned, scarlet-red, slightly flattened, luscious tomato with a delightfully complex taste. Maturing in a short 55-60 days, it’s a fit for both the Altai Shan and the Colorado Plateau and Flagstaff. Along with its companion Siberian, the Galina (Lycopersicon esculentum,) Bill McDorman struck gold amongst the golden Altai Shan.
Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2007

CHARLOTTE MINOR’S SOFT FOREST FOOTFALL
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/25/07)

Charlotte Minor always wanted to be the first woman forester, but while studying forestry at NAU where her father was the founding dean of the School of Forestry, she discovered that she was ten years too late. Instead, she became a forest landscape architect for the Kaibab National Forest after securing her master’s degree from the U of A in landscape architecture. As a feminist, she’s not militant, rather committed. As a member of the Society of Friends (Quaker), militant wouldn’t quite fit the bill, but then neither does pacifist feminist. Whatever the paradox, she brings it off.

A tall, slim, witty, singularly attractive woman with an infectious smile, Charlotte means business, especially when it comes to the human impact upon the environment. She believes in “the unobtrusive,” as in keeping the artificial to a minimum. One might wonder why the Forest Service would hire a landscape architect since a forest can’t be landscaped without destroying it. Charlotte designs landscapes in the forest where artificial, human constructions intrude into the forest, such as, water tanks for cattle and camping sites for human beings. Her principles are simple: detract as little as possible from the natural setting and fit in as much as possible. Sounds like the same principles for a covert agent. “Don’t let anyone know you’re there.”

In landscaping residences, Charlotte’s mind turns about 180 degrees because in residential building a massive artifice has already intruded into the natural process. Her first concern is restoring the natural beauty as much as possible and stabilizing the environment which has been destabilized by construction. Another concern is the planned use of the property, even to the point of micro-climates in a yard, such as, the amount of sun, the presence of moisture, and the effect of the wind. As with any sensible person in the Southwest, she is concerned about conserving water, and, therefore, she advocates xeriscape landscaping.

In landscaping a yard, she thinks in terms of artistic composition, beginning with the big things, such as trees, which serve as anchors in a yard, much like famous department stores do in shopping malls. Then she works down through shrubs and flowers to the grasses. Of course, the most effective way to accomplish the design is xeriscaping a yard with native plants or plants which are adapted to the southwestern climate. The Flagstaff Xeriscape Council produced a very useful brochure “Flagstaff Fabulous Plants” on line at www.thearb.org/fabplantlist.htm.

Two of her favorite bushes are the bird-loving red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) along with the texture and color of the tree leaf sumac (Rhus typhina.) As for flowers, she likes the many types of columbine (Aquilegia), penstemons, and coreopsis. One of her favorites is the native rocky mountain iris (Iris missouriensis), a blue/purple iris resembling a miniature domesticated iris. It was discovered “toward the sources of the Missouri” by the famous botanist Nathaniel Wyeth in 1834.

Charlotte’s likes grasses because they are hardy and easy to grow, such as blue gramma (Bouteloua gracilis) and “some of the Muhlys,” by which she meant species of the genus Muhlenbergia which was named after the Rev. Gotthilf Heinrich Muhlenberg, a Lutheran minister and famous botantist. With a name so formidable, no one would chew gum in his class.

Landscape design seeks to mimic nature as much as possible so that a yard gives people a feel of nature, using the apparently random yet functional designs of nature to soften the harsh, rectangular designs of human beings. God apparently favors the paradoxical and ironic of meandering streams while human beings seem to favor the rationally sequential with straight-line concrete channels.

The grasses serve as a backdrop on which the flowers, shrubs, and trees can be placed, giving people an ease within themselves as though they are in tune with the natural process. While we leave more than footfalls in the forest, we can fit in as much as possible with our landscaping, making it a picture worth taking.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2007

APHIDS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/13/07)

A distinctly modern ailment is the crashed computer. If a person is an e-mail junkie or an internet surfer or shopper, life as he or she knows it comes to an end with a crashed computer. Indeed, even mighty corporations have been brought to their knees by crashed computers. “How the mighty are fallen” (II Sam 1:3).

It is as though a connection to the great unknown, a secular vision of Rudolph Otto’s mysterium tremendum et fascinans, is kaput. Disconnect! So it is with an infestation of aphids. Like terrorists, worms, and viruses, aphids come as thieves in the night, slithering with reptilian velocity. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (I Cor. 15:51), it’s all over. No merely vexing matter, computer junkies and gardeners are left with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, impotence, and fury.

As with liberty, fighting aphids requires eternal vigilance. Unlike grasshoppers, the Norse berserkers of the horticultural world, attacking in wave after wave like massed kamikazes, aphids slink in unawares. This means that gardeners have to play Dr. Snoop, bending over and peering into the underside of things, particularly leaves, scanning for aphids. Arthritis is no excuse. No pain, no gain.

The adversary is a soft-bodied, pear-shaped insect that sucks the sap out of plants with piercing apparati in its mouth. Not a pleasant sight. Not only that but with twin tail pipes (cornicles) attached to its hind end it emits a sweet slime hilariously called “honeydew.” The honeydew goo can ruin glass windows and the finish on automobiles. Also, a fungus called “sooty mold” turns the honeydew black. Grody to the max.

As with all subversives, aphids take on the coloring of plants from which they are sucking out sap. Generally wingless, they grow wings and take flight to other plants in vast clouds, oddly called blooms, when they’ve run out of room on a leaf they’ve colonized. Seemingly, they can colonize a plant or bed overnight. On roses they can be spotted right on the bud before it opens, turning it into a sorry deformed husk. On leaves their presence is signaled by curled and discolored leaves as they suck on the underside of the leaves.

Generally, as with all subversives, worms, and viruses, aphids arrive a few at a time. Winged aphids leave nymphs to suck the life out of the plant with their voracious adolescent appetites. These reproduce exponentially, reaching a reproductive age in seven to ten days with each aphid producing 40 to 60 offspring.

The first line of defense is the water hose. Using it as a syringe, aphids can be washed off the buds and from the underside of the leaves. No gentle sprinkling. Even with vigorous washing, however, this technique isn’t effective unless done repeatedly on an initial infestation.

In addition to washing off aphids with water, they can be sprayed with insecticidal soap, neem oil, and horticultural oils. Pesticides should be avoided because they kill the friendly insects as well as the enemy ones. Since the aphids are sneaks, these sprays have to be applied on the underside of the leaves. Because they kill only the ones on the leaves at the time, the spray has to be applied repeatedly.

Some of the friendlies that pesticides kill are ladybugs, which actually are beetles, non-biting parasitic wasps, lacewings, midges, and minute pirate bugs which have the wonderful scientific name of Orius insidosus. All of these, especially the ladybugs, should be let loose in the evenings just before sunset, lest they fly away, and in small groups over the spring and summer.

The happy news is that gardens with flowering plants attract aphid eating and disabling insects with the flowers’ nectar and pollen. As is always, beauty has the capacity to destroy evil.

Defense against the aphids is the result of eternal vigilance, focused and repeated counter attacks, and counter-terrorist insects. Sadly, there are no fire walls. The conflict is never over, least not until the first frost. However, some things are worth saving, such as gardens, no matter the effort.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2007

THE GRASSHOPPER WARS
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/23/07)

Gardening requires many hats. Perhaps, the most important is the mystic’s cowl because gardening is ultimately a spiritual experience. William Blake said it best, “To see a world in a grain of sand / And heaven in a wild flower / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour.” Gardeners begin with awe.

The nurse’s cap fits the gardener who patiently brings sickly plants back to health, nursing, caring, and tending. Of course, gardeners always wear a Crime Scene Investigator’s hat as they prowl through their gardens, poking here and there, peeking into the underside of things, on the look-out for the latest infestation of bugs, noxious weeds, or sociopathic mychorrizae.

A soldier’s helmet best fits the gardener facing a grasshopper infestation. Negotiating with grasshoppers is a fool’s errand; however, a war on grasshoppers cannot be pre-emptive, striking at the enemy before it attacks because grasshoppers may fly in from a neighbor’s yard. Attacking a third of the world is risky at best and foolhardy at worst. The only war possible is a defensive war in which no mercy is shown the invading host. The French say it best, “ne pas faire de quartier.”

Strategically, a two-fold defense is best, ground and airborne. The ground strategy is to lure the grasshoppers with attractions more toothsome than their usual fare and then zap them, closing in on them in a pincers movement. Unlike the French fixed Maginot Line, which failed to stop the Germans in World War II, the ground strategy has to be mobile, placing the traps where the grasshoppers are the most likely to see the deadly meal as in barren spots where foliage does not hide the trap.

Tactically, two attractive traps are easily available. The pesticide, carbaryl, comes with a warning, not to ingest it, inhale it, or let it contact the skin. While not lethal, it can cause great discomfort, but it is deadly for grasshoppers and bees which means to avoid laying carbaryl traps near plants attractive to bees. As with all soldiers, gardeners must always respect their weapons and treat them carefully.

When mixed with a host material, usually wheat bran which attracts the grasshoppers, it can be spread on the ground, but not the plants. Gardening soldiers don’t poison themselves, just the grasshoppers. As with all good mobile defenses, the traps are laid out before the grasshoppers arrive, early in the spring. After they arrive, it may be too late because carbaryl works best when the grasshoppers are young in their nymph stage.

Unlike carbaryl which looses its punch after a time and after rain, the biological protozoan Nosema locustae, while a slow starter, lasts longer even after it has knocked off the nymph grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are cannibals so that when a live grasshopper eats a grasshopper killed with Nosema locustae, it is eating the poison that killed the grasshopper on which it is feasting. As in the principle of martial arts, it uses the adversary’s energy. Nosema locustae are gifts that keep on giving.

These tactics used throughout the spring, summer, and fall will significantly reduce the invading host which means the airborne forces are used to finish off the remaining grasshoppers. Birds are one half of the air forces, especially the black ravens and purple Stellar’s jays which means a good soldier in the gardening army will feed these birds all during the winter to keep them around for the rest of the year. A well-protected garden is bird friendly.

After securing an adequate air force of birds, the next armament is the praying mantis or, correctly, the praying mantid. Resembling a skinny skyhook helicopter, the praying mantid is a veritable grasshopper gunship. Praying mantid eggs are readily available. As soon as the praying mantid emerges, it starts eating with a voracious appetite.

Ultimately, it’s boots on the ground that win wars. A gardening soldier, such as Lally McGhie, the attractive, well-coiffured and clad local Realtor, is a model soldier as she mops up the remaining stragglers. As Lally walks through a garden, her left arm reaches out like a Bofors anti-aircraft gun, pow-pow-pow, grabbing grasshoppers in her hand and crushing them.

We need soldiers so that we can wander our gardens in wonder, else we’ll live in a wasteland, so, gardeners, like Elijah of old, gird up your loins and join the battle.

WINTER GARDENING
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (January 3, 2007)

Aside from refreshing composters, winter gardening begins with seed catalogues which are akin to horticultural travel brochures, something like an imaginary gustatory world tour. Beginning with one of the sources of our civilization, the Thessaloniki tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) appears smack dab in the middle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com). The ancient Greeks didn’t have tomatoes because they came from the Incas of Peru by way of the Spanish Conquistadores. The Thessaloniki tomato, a favorite of Tickaboo Ranch’s Diane Scantlebury, is a fit for the High Country, being an early producer. A good companion for the Thessaloniki tomato is Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare.) They bring out the best in each other. By the way, Thomas Cahill’s Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, an excellent retelling of the story of the ancient Greeks, is an delightful accompaniment to the Thessaloniki tomato.

Other tomatoes in a world-tour would certainly include that czar of all Siberians, the Galina tomato (Lycopersicon lycopersicum), a golden cherry of subtle and complex taste. It, too, is an early riser and an abundant producer. Happily, one doesn’t have to take the Trans- Siberian Railway at $2,000.00 a head or spend time in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago to enjoy the many Siberian tomatoes that are good fits for the High Country. The seeds are available down in Cornville at Bill McDorman’s www.seedstrust.com.

After some time in Siberia, it would be pleasant to visit sunny Tuscany and fetch some seeds of Cavalo Nero or Tuscan kale (Brassica
oleracea.) De-stemmed, chopped, blanched, and pressed dry, it is great in soups and as a side dish sauteed in olive oil with raisins and roasted pine nuts, Tuscan kale seeds can be found at www.nicholsgardennursery.com. Tuscany is the birthplace of the Renaissance. When dining on Cavalo Nero, one is also dining with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Dante. When preparing to dine on Tuscan kale with the Mona Lisa, a good read is Sigmund Freud’s fascinating analyisis in his book Da Vinci.

Not to be outdone, Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch brings to mind Adam Smith, John Knox, Rob Roy, David Hume, and, of course, Rabbie Burns, as the Scots call him, with his poems “To a Mouse,” “To a Louse”, “A Red, Red Rose,” and “Auld Lang Syne.” Not a bad set of dining companions if they weren’t eating haggis, the national dish of Scotland. Oatmeal mixed with sheep entrails and suet and boiled in a sheep’s stomach, haggis can only be eaten when washed down with vast draughts Scotch.

Giant Walking Stick Kale, a Portuguese favorite, also from nicholsgardennursery.com, is a treat for children because it grows tall and walking sticks can be fashioned from the stalk. Strolling through the countryside, sporting a Portuguese kale walking stick, would be a treat alongside Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and the Duke of Albuquerque. At least, one wouldn’t get lost with Prince Henry the Navigator as a guide.

Any return trip to Italy is well-worthwhile, especially a trip to Genoa and Genovese basil which actually comes from Asia, Africa, and India. The Genovese were great mariners, such as Christoforo Colombo and Andrea Doria, which means that they brought back herbs to Genoa from all over the world and along with tomatoes from the Incas. Johnny’s Selected Seeds (http://www.johnnyseeds.com/) offers a wide variety of basil in addition to Genovese basil. The Red Rubin basil (Ocimum basilicum) is a rich, dark purple and highly prized by Diane Scantlebury.

Any travelogue isn’t complete without a visit to Merrie Olde England and the Bull’s Blood beet (Beta vulgaris.) A British heirloom, seeds can be obtained from Seed Savers Exchange (http://www.seedsavers.com/). Bull’s Blood does double gastronomic duty with its dark purple leaves and sweet, dark roots. It is a beet lover’s beet and would be fit for dinner with either Winston Churchill or William Shakespeare.

Bon voyage et bon camarade.

LUNCH AT DIANE SCANTLEBURY’S TICKABOO RANCH

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (November 5, 2006)

A couple of months after a killing frost, Gretchen and I were the guests of Diane Scantlebury and her husband, Todd, at their Tickaboo Ranch for a lunch of fresh salad greens, soup, and corn bread. The buttercrunch bibb and red oak leaf lettuces, chervil, nasturtium flowers, white cucumbers, and sweet gold, yellow pear, and Greek Thessalonika tomatoes all came from her hydroponic garden. The salad was topped with pecans from her neighbor’s Willowbrook farm. A deliciously rich and healthy soup was made of roasted butternut squash, sweet onions, and fresh sage. Along with the soup and salad she served slices of a delightfully-textured, freshly baked cornbread. True to farming culture we ate in her invitingly warm kitchen with window frames of punched tin and a large, wood-fired pot bellied stove set against a wall. It was a lunch to remember with all the varied and complimentary colors, textures, and tastes. The recipe for her soup can be found at http://oldfartskitchen.blogspot.com.

As we ate, I kept being reminded that I was in the process of shutting down my garden with the advent of winter, and that meant no more fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs. As a grandson of the soil, I remember my mystically-inclined grandfather telling me to cooperate with nature. He put it theologically. “Work with what God has given you. Don’t go off on some fool’s errand trying to improve the Lord’s work.” Now, oddly enough, a widower, he grew various herbs on his kitchen window sill which he cherished as gifts from God.

As Gretchen and Diane chatted merrily away, I was relieved from making thoughtful comments and was free to chum my mind for new ideas as my taste buds explored the lunch. It struck me that a hydroponic garden was simply a high-tech extension of a south-facing window sill. I had before suggested to Gretchen that we could use our dining room with its great south-facing sliding doors as a winter garden for some tomatoes, lettuces, and herbs. The suggestion wasn’t received well.

When the chatting died down after lunch, there was a brief conversational lacuna in which I could ask Diane about developing a home-made hydroponic garden. Like a true-believer she jumped at the chance to tell me how to go about it. Almost everyone is evangelical about those things in which they believe, and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Diane “Standin’ on the corner” in Winslow with the Eagles handing out hydroponic tracts. She made a believer out of me.

The equipment is simple and inexpensive, things like a Rubbermaid storage container, a pump for fish tanks, some hose, fluorescent lights, and so forth. It’s no biggie. Even klutzes can hack it. There are several web sites for amateurs on means and materials. Just write hydroponic on your browser. I’ve started collecting the material and hope to be up and running later in the winter. My mouth waters at the thought of fresh lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs all winter long. You’ve got to keep your eye on the prize.

Of course, there are the usual problems which beset every gardener, such as blights, diseases, etc. However, the advantage is that the garden is enclosed and the remedies can be administered effectively.
As with all gardening, hydroponic gardening requires attention. As my grandfather was accustomed to say, “All God’s vineyards need tending. Just remember your garden is a trust from the Lord.” I never imagined as a boy the divine irony in which in my 80th year I’d be tending my garden in a garage. As William Cowper wrote long ago, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

THERAPEUTIC GARDENING

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (10/17/06)

The benefits of gardening are many, beauty, fresh air and food, physical exercise, but perhaps the greatest is therapeutic. The emotional and psychological problems with which we are all beset are internally head-bound. They may have originated in external impressions and events, such an abusive childhood, a betrayal, a failure, an exclusion, a rebuff, a physical wound or limitation, an affliction, or maybe even an off-hand remark, but we archive them in our memories where voices from the past keep echoing down the hallways of our years. It’s called down time.

The up times are when we are called out of our archived memories by physical sensations in the present, such as, the aroma of a rose, the feel of a baby’ skin, a breath of fresh air, the taste of a good cheeseburger, the pain of a stubbed toe. The therapeutic secret of gardening is sensory attention. We are drawn out of the remembrances of things past into the existential moment. It’s also the reason that so many gardeners, like fisherman, are happy fanatics.

It is perhaps what William Blake had in mind in “Auguries of Innocence.”
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Effective psychotherapy is not so much about insight as it is about transformation, our transformation from being a victim and survivor into being a prevailer and a pilgrim. It means no longer driving by the rear-view mirror but through the windshield. Transformation turns old memories into new promises. Such is the paradigm of gardening.

For many, autumn is a postlude to summer and a prelude to winter, but for a gardener it is getting ready for spring. It means raking leaves, pruning perennials and trees, and pulling out dead annuals and putting all that refuse into a mulch pile where winter will silently turn it into compost. It means cleaning up the leavings of the past and turning them into nutrients for the future.

We change not so much by advice and insight, but by osmosis in which we absorb the process of change from others. A maimed veteran will more likely triumph over his or her disability if he or she is in the company of disabled conquerors. Being with transformative people is transformative in itself. Change is more likely caught than taught.

Just as psychotherapy is more about transformation than insight so it is more about process than issues, those processes by which we can transform our issues. Gardening is parsing the paradigm of the seasons of change. Paradoxically, the most productive season is winter in which the soil is given a rest to recuperate from the hustle and bustle of spring, summer, and autumn. Winter is a time to get ready for change, fruition, and harvest.

As we work through the seasons we see seeds transformed into plants, buds into flowers, blossoms into fruits, saplings into trees, and refuse into creation. As gardeners, we are part and parcel of the transformation. Everyday, each season, is a day and season of change, a change that seeps into our spirits through the dirt under our fingernails.

The therapy of gardening is more than a sanctuary or a refuge, it is a transformation by which gardening becomes a personal paradigm for parsing our archived memories into anticipations and fruitions.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

SKYE’S LANDSCAPE

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (10/4/06)

Skye Sieber knew what she wanted when she landscaped her yard. She wanted beauty, specifically a beautiful yard. She also wanted a yard with authenticity, one that was a fit for Flagstaff and faithful to the Colorado Plateau. For her efforts she received an honorable mention in Flagstaff’s recent Xeriscape Contest. As a daughter of the Mountain West she was already aware of the scarcity of water. However, she liked lush beauty which meant she wanted an abundance of foliage and flowers which needed little water. She discovered that the best way to create such a yard was to go native.

One of the first things she did was sign up for the Master Gardener Course so that she could find out how to create a lovely yard in Flagstaff. She listened to the people at the Arboretum and several of the commercial nurseries. Skye soaks up information.

As an environmental planner for the Forest Service in Flagstaff and active in the community, she is a woman with little time to spare for her garden. She wanted a lush, low maintenance, drought-tolerant, authentically Southwestern yard. She created one, not ex nihilo, but by evolution out of dirt, rocks, ground glass, flagstone, plants, and grass. As with most gardeners in Flagstaff, she began with the tohu wabohu (Genesis 1:2) of a developer’s detritus.

She didn’t set out with a completed design in her head. Hers was not a graph paper, T-square, and triangle design. However, she knew what she wanted. The design gradually unfolded in her mind’s eye as she began working in her yard, taking horticultural courses, and bending the ears of knowledgeable people. She terraced her front yard because she had a pile of dirt left over from putting in an additionally driveway. Using the volcanic rock she and her husband Todd gathered with a Forest Service permit from A-1 Mountain, she built a three-tiered series of terraces dominated by a humming bird mint (Agastache) complete with bees and hummers.

Her front yard is rife with color and texture, both in the plants and rocks. A “hell strip” between the driveway and walkway is planted with a colorful variety of Artemisia, cat mint (Nepeta cataria), and a few native plants.

Authenticity of design means as few straight lines as possible. Nature does not believe in straight lines, and neither does Skye. As with most houses, hers and Todd’s is a series of right angles and rectangles, but her yard strolls as though she were mimicking nature. The terraces in the front yard are curved and asymmetrical. The plantings in the rectangular hell-strip don’t march lock-step but appear random.

The backyard was designed with people in mind as well as beauty. A path winds amongst various plantings, passing, as it goes, an arbor, a small meadow, a couple of chairs, some penstemon and natives, and onto a bench. In the back of the yard in ascending raised beds are tomatoes, vegetables, and herbs.

Of course, a part of authenticity in Southwest gardening is collecting rainwater and composting. Tucked unobtrusively here and there are water barrels and bins. Behind the house are two handmade wooden frames topped with bent plastic pipe. When covered, they portend fresh greens during the winter months.

Without spending vast sums of money, but jamming her head with information, and using lots of imagination Skye evolved a design and brought it to fruition. She created a yard which is not only faithful to the Southwest, but which also as a thing of beauty is a haven for the human spirit.
Copyright (c) Dana Prom Smith 2006

A GARDEN SALAD GARDEN
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (9/16/06)

As the delights of summer gradually wind down and the baleful beauty of autumn looms, the promises of a distant spring tantalize the High Country gardener, especially a garden salad garden of greens freshly picked moments before they are washed, tossed, and eaten. In short, it is never too early to plan and anticipate, the seed catalogue being the gardener’s harbinger of hope. While Eugene O’Neill was right about The Iceman Cometh, eventually The Iceman leaveth.

Lettuce, the basic ingredient of a garden salad, is easy to grow and can be seeded well before the widely predicted last frost in June. Surprisingly, while lettuce looks delicate, as with many delicate appearing beauties, it is hardy. As a cool weather vegetable it is a fit for Flagstaff. A great favorite is the loose-leaf Black Seeded Simpson (Lactuca sativa), a beautiful lime-green, loose-leaf, sweet-tasting lettuce with broad, crumpled, frilly leaves. First developed by a Mr. A. Simpson in New York in 1864, it is an all-American heirloom lettuce. In salads, as in all food, appearance makes for good taste, and Black Seeded Simpson visually invites the palate with flavorful promises.

Coupled with the succulent beauty of Black Seeded Simpson is the exotic elegance of Lollo Rossa, an Italian heirloom. A magenta-hued Mediterranean beauty, mild and sweet with a green interior edged in red, it is beguiles the eye with savory anticipations. Another good red leaf for a salad are the young leaves of the English heirloom beet, the Bull’s Blood (Beta vulgaris). Its leaves, as with its fruit, are deep maroon, sweet and dusky. The leaves can also be used in bouquets as a delightful backdrop to light-colored flowers. The fruit gives a salad, a hauntingly deep, rich color and taste.

Completing the lettuce roster is the Forellenschluss or the speckled trout lettuce. An Austrian heirloom, its broad, smooth chartreuse leaves are splashed with dusty red specks. Crisp and sweet, it is a delight to the eye as well as the tongue.

No delicious garden salad would be complete without cherry tomatoes, both red and yellow. The Siberian heirloom Galina (Lycopersicon lycopersicum) is yellow with a sweet, complex favor. Bill McDorman of Seeds Trust writing in Mother Earth News claims it is “arguably our most flavorful tomato.” Complementing the Galina is the Hybrid Sweet Baby Girl F1 which has been touted as the “world’s best tasting red cherry tomato.”

For carnivores a few thin strips of julienne delicatessen ham and Swiss cheese might garnish the salad. Croutons made of ciabatta bread add a nice chewy crunch to the salad. Lightly toss with a dressing of olive oil, a pinch of sugar, and balsamic vinegar. Two good dressings (Gretchen Anne’s and Hazel Marguerite’s) can be found at http://oldfartskitchen.blogspot.com.

A salad such as this would fetch $25.00 to $30.00 at fancy eateries in Sedona, Scottsdale, and West Los Angeles. However, in Flagstaff with some well-composted soil and a little elbow grease it would cost about $15.00 in seeds, not for just one salad, but for a whole summer of such salads. Bonne jardinage. Bon appetit..

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

TICKABOO RANCH

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (8/19/06)

A few miles across Interstate 17 from Montezuma’s Castle a dead-end road leads through a waste of barren limestone hills to the turn-off to Tickaboo Ranch. At the turn-off a sign points to a gravel lane which passes by a large plexiglass-clad building on its way to a white ranch house set under a canopy of large trees. In front of the ranch house are a few cars, a battered farm truck, a rusted farm implement in a patch of weeds, and the beginning of a foot path leading around the house. The other side of the house is lush and verdant, reminiscent of a Middle Western farm. The path leads from the desert’s sere past a vast expanse of a shaded lawn, a pump house, a well-used wheel barrow, clumps of green grass, a tangle of forgotten wire fencing, a tractor, to a hedge row, an irrigation ditch, a small foot bridge, and a large green field on the banks of the Verde River.

Diane Scantlebury, the head honcho at the ranch, is accomplishing what the Sinagua people at Montezuma’s Castle tried to accomplish over six hundred years ago, sustainable agriculture, only hers is high tech in a plexiglass-clad building.

She is quick to point out that Tickaboo Ranch is also part old tech with a truck farm flourishing in the rich silt of the Verde River’s flood plain. There she grows tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, herbs, and melons for a local farmer’s market. The high tech part is in the hydroponic greenhouse, set transitionally between the barren limestone hills and the verdant spread of the old tech truck farm. Diane describes the difference as that between a model T and a supersonic jet. “Things happen in the greenhouse overnight, sometime faster than that. Stuff grows faster and dies faster. You’ve got to be vigilant. There’s nothing slow about hydroponics in a greenhouse, like lickety-split.”

The interior of the hydroponic green house resembles the Hanging Gardens of Babylon with savory and aromatic herbs cascading from the ceiling. High near the ceiling are the controls that manage the heat, the water flow, and the nutrient mix. Most of the hydroponic beds are vertical rather than horizontal. Containers of herbs are fastened to poles with nutrient-laden water dripping down one to another from pipes along the ceiling. Every which way there is something to savor and sniff at tongue and nose level.

The temperature in the greenhouse varies from one end to the other, depending upon the plants’ needs. The air near the entrance is warm and moist and gradually cools toward the far end as the produce goes from Genovese basil, to nasturtiums, and finally on to lettuce. The lettuce is grown in horizontal beds of water. On top of the watery beds are sheets of pressed plastic foam. Small holes in the sheets house the lettuce. For the most part the herbs in the green house are sold to high-end restaurants and grocery stores throughout northern Arizona.

Diane makes it very clear that she is running a business, not some pie-in-the-sky operation. Profit is the bottom line, but it’s not the motive. Raised on a family farm in northern Iowa she wants to reclaim for her children that which she relished as a child, but she wants something else, something in short supply in modern life. Perhaps, her purposes are best summed up in the Ute word for friendly, Tickaboo, friendly to the land and people. Rather than living by the compromising codes of modern corporations, she strives for an authenticity made possible through sustainable agriculture. She wants to work her own land.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

TOMATOES: III
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (7/31/06)

Just as a watched pot never boils so a watched tomato never ripens. The virtue most important for gardeners is patience. Staring doesn’t work. Tomatoes aren’t easily intimidated. Sometimes those beautiful hard, yellow globes seem to hang on the vine ad infinitum. Tomatoes ripen by warmth, not sunlight, so the wait is for warmer temperatures which can be a difficult wait in the High Country. Nature, as with its Creator, has its own purposes, and they may not be the gardener’s. Gardening is not instant gratification.

However, some things can be done to assist the ripening and make the gardener feel useful. Tomato vines do a lot better, as with nearly everything else, if they are given the right care, such as a few light feedings during the growing season. Tomatoes don’t do well on a diet of fat fast food. The diet should be lean on nitrogen. Nitrogen causes the tomato vine to blimp out without producing many tomatoes, resulting in a high maintenance trophy which hangs around looking lush but doing nothing.

Regular watering avoids the feast and famine of wet and dry cycles which stunt the vine and thwart fruiting. It is important to avoid getting the leaves wet when watering because the sun might scald the leaves and wet leaves are an invitation to disease. Tomato vines are liquid feeders so dry fertilizers should be well watered-in.

Pruning the vines helps with the harvest. The principle in pruning is the same as it is in training athletes, an efficient use of energy. If runners wave their arms, they impede their speed and waste energy. A lot of excess branches drain energy away from producing fruit. Non-producing branches near the ground look messy and siphon off energy.

The purpose of pruning is to open up the tomato vine so that warm air can circulate within the vine to prevent moisture-borne diseases and to ripen the fruit. Also, one of the purposes of the leaves is to shield the delicate flowers and fruit from direct sun light. Pruning should not produce a skinny vine, but rather a vine open to the air and clothed enough with leaves to protect the fruit, something like sensible clothing.

Sometimes it is useful to think of a tomato vine as an adolescent in matters of nutrition, dress, cleanliness, and growth. Vines don’t do well in messy surroundings. Keep the space clean and picked up because filth is an avenue for disease. A sour smell is never good whether from tennis shoes or rotting leaves and fruit.

Ripening occurs, as with adolescents, in spurts. All of a sudden, wham, bam, overnight a tomato turns from hard yellow to red luscious. When it’s growing, it’s a hard yellow. On reaching full size the tomato turns green and begins to ripen because of an internally produced gas called ethylene. In the twinkling of an eye a sweet, docile child can turn into a defiant adolescent because of those internally produced hormones. When the fruit turns half green and half pinkish red, the tomato stem is sealed off from the main vine. From then on the ripening takes place either off or on the vine. Waiting for the tomato to turn red on the vine is not a vine ripened tomato because the tomato matures of its own inner dynamics. Sometimes it is better to harvest tomatoes in this “breaker stage” to prevent splitting and to control the ripening process indoors.

Tomato vines are the gardener’s babies. Staring, intimidation, and cursing don’t produce children in which a parent can take pride. If they are well cared for and loved to a fault, eventually they will do well. However, eventually everything is in the hands of an Unseen Power who has no name and over whom a gardener has no control.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

A GOOD WORD FOR MULCH
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (7/10/06)

Mulch merits a good word. As the plain friend of the high country gardener, it doesn’t have a rose’s beauty, a gardenia’s aroma, or a tomato’s taste. It can’t whistle like the pines. It doesn’t even feel good on bare feet like cool, soft, damp grass on a hot summer’s afternoon. Mulch’s problem is akin to that of a garage floor. Few people notice it. No one ever says of a garage floor or mulch, “Look at that beauty!’” “What a gorgeous color!” “Just smell the aroma!” “It’s to die for!”

However, mulch is worth its weight in gold. Not only does it keep the soil warm when it’s cold and cool when it’s hot, it also keeps the soil moist and suppresses weeds. And under special circumstances it can even steep tea.

Mulch isn’t even second banana to all the first bananas and luminaries in the garden’s show. Nurseries pile it in big plastic bags out by the parking lot along with the steer manure. It’s never sold alongside elegant delphiniums or massed pansies. It’s stuck out by the gutter just like a garbage can. It needs a good word.

Although the word mulch sounds organic, it is more than that. Versatile mulch can morph into rocks, plastic, wood and bark chips, anything that will cover the soil to protect it. Some people like to live in a rock pile, mulching their whole yards with rocks to save on water and keep down the weeds. Strawberry fields are mulched with plastic. The problem with rocks and plastic in the yard is that they reflect and hold the heat. A landscape of rocks is the thermal equivalent of living in a granite canyon on a hot day down in the Valley of the Sun.

More versatile mulches are chips, sawdust, vintage manure, duff, bark, pine needles, leaves, and compost. Plastic and rocks are very useful in special circumstances, but they do not add nutrients to the soil as do the other mulches. They simply cover the joint.

Weeds are the trial of every gardener. Suppressing weeds is a biggy, and mulch is the best available weed suppresser. Chips, bark, pile needles, and sawdust take a long time to turn into nutrient rich mulch, but they cover the ground well. Moldering duff and leaves decompose and release their nutrients faster. Vintage manure and compost are winners in the decomposition race, but compost is the richest. Every time vintage manure and compost are watered, they gradually steep a nutritious tea, not fit for human consumption, which seeps into the earth enriching it with natural nutrients.

Pine bark, chips, and sawdust may carry the bark beetle insects and should be sterilized in a sealed black trash bag for a couple of weeks before spreading them as mulch. Poisoning the earth with weed killers is an example of the dictum that human beings are the only animals who foul their own nests. Steer, chicken, and horse manures are best used when they’re at least four years old or composted. The weed seeds will be killed and the animal waste won’t be “hot” or harsh.

As a triple threat, any mulch will suppress weeds, warm or cool the soil, and save on water. However, mulch of vintage manure or compost is a quintuple threat. It suppresses the weeds, cools or warms the soil, supplies nutrients, saves on water, and enriches the soil with organic matter. By the way, aged elephant dung hands down is the best. So go for it!

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

TOMATOES: II

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (5/12/06)

As with all high maintenance trophies, tomatoes expect luxury, especially the luxuries of food and bed. Tomatoes do not do well in beds of hard Coconino concrete (sandstone), with mattresses of volcanic rubble, or on ticking of red clay. They thrive in the best of soils which means soil amended with compost or imported. Even imported soil should be amended. The compost can be store-bought or home-made; however, home-made is best. Sometimes, store-bought compost has fillers, such as sawdust. Also, often the imported soil isn’t much good, either. Just because some guy has a dump truck full of dirt doesn’t mean the dirt is any good. Dirt has lineage, ancestry, and genealogy like anyone else, and its origins and history should be checked out.

If tomato plants are going to be bedded in the ground, it should be warmed for several days beforehand with a blanket of clear or black plastic. If in a container, the container and the soil in it should be heated for several days beforehand by enshrouding it in a black or clear plastic bag to destroy any lingering bugs and to welcome the tomato plant with a warm bed.

Tomatoes also like to be well and carefully fed. No mess hall fare or chow line, certainly no MRE’s or K-rations. A high nitrogen fertilizer will help start the plant off well, but as soon as the plant is off to a good start, the best fertilizer ratio is low on nitrogen (N), high on phosphorous (P), and medium to high on potassium (K). Too much nitrogen will produce a beautiful trophy which does nothing except hang around the garden looking beautiful sans tomatoes. Although harder to manage, natural fertilizers are better rather than chemical as a means of keeping friendly mycorrhizae (fungus roots) in balance around the plant’s roots.

In Flagstaff and on the Colorado Plateau short-season
varieties of tomatoes do best because the growing season is so short. This sadly means that a lot of old favorites from back home are chancy in the High Country, especially those coming from soft, sultry climes. Many tomato varieties, like the Vamp of Savannah, like it “nice and warm,” but in the High Country Vamps can be hazardous to a gardener’s emotional well-being. Tough trophies do best. Vamps “tease them and thrill ‘em,” but then “torture and kill ‘em.”

Early Girl Hybrid (FV) and Big Boy Hybrid are popular short-season varieties. Several Siberian tomatoes, such as Galina, Market Miracle, Glasnost, and Perestroika are short-season. Seeds for these Siberians can be obtained from Seeds Trust in Cornville, AZ, at www.seedstrust.com or (928) 649-3315. Siberia is an excellent training ground for the High Country. Nichols Garden Nursery at www.nicholsgardennursery.com or (800) 422-3985 offers two short season varieties, SunSugar Hybrid (62 days) and Sweet Baby Girl F1 Hybrid (65 days.)

Nurseries offer a limited number of varieties. Seeds offer more variety. Seeds can be started indoors in peat moss, vermiculite, or potting soil six to eight weeks before planting outside after the danger of frost is past. Any south-facing window sill will do. However, if picking tomato plants from a nursery, choose sturdy, dark green plants. Avoid leggy plants and be sure to check for insects, looking on the underside of the leaves. Nurseries as with hospitals often incubate maladies.

A big advantage to growing tomatoes in Flagstaff and on the Colorado Plateau is few diseases. The harsh weather (low humidity, wind, and frost) does bad things to pests as well as tomatoes. For the few fungi and sucking pests nicotine spray or insecticidal soap can be effective. The various worms can be picked off by hand. High maintenance trophies don’t like bugs crawling over them.

The prices of growing tomatoes are great, but when successful, the fruit of the vine is worth the work, worry, and anxiety. It is luscious to eat, piquant to taste, beautifully shaped, wonderfully colored, and chock full of human nutrients.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith (2006)

TOMATOES: I

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/15/06)

Originating with the Incas, tomatoes have served a variety of purposes, one of which was as a poison. The same Incas who gave us tomatoes also used them to poison the soldiers of the Conquistador Francisco Pizarro in the 16th century. The tomatoes of that time were small, yellow, and far more acidic than our cultivars and heirlooms of today. The oxalic acid of the Incas’ tomatoes ate holes in the soldiers’ intestines, inducing slow, painful deaths. The Incas were neither the first nor the last to gain revenge by poisoning their enemy with gifts of food and drink.

With such a chancy history it is small wonder that tomatoes are hard to grow in Flagstaff and on the Colorado Plateau. Also, Flagstaff’s cold weather and short growing season make growing tomatoes even chancier.

High maintenance plants, many think that the tomatoes’ beauty and taste are worth the time, money, and anxiety they demand. Indeed, some gardeners think of their tomatoes as trophies to be trotted out and shown off to all their neighbors, frequently boasting about the time, money, and ordeals required to grow them. As with a lot of high maintenance trophies, tomatoes are fickle. Sometimes, they’re great and sometimes real pains in the ass, but when they’re great, they’re great.

The tomato is a fruit grown on a vine. The Supreme Court ruled it a vegetable, but only a lawyer or a judge would use the convoluted logic of lawyers to call a fruit a vegetable. As a fruit it is best plucked fresh off the vine by hand and eaten while still warm. Leaning forward and dripping on the ground is acceptable behavior.

No hardy mountaineers, tomato vines can’t even stand up by themselves and need a lot of propping up with cages, poles, or lattices to keep them from falling over.

The trick to growing tomatoes is the same trick used by many gardeners in Flagstaff, fooling Mother Nature by micro-managing the climate and refurbishing the soil. Flagstaff and the Colorado Plateau are not congenial to tomatoes who like it warm and humid, not cool and dry. Tomatoes have to be tricked into thinking they are in the Midwest or South during a long warm, muggy summer. Thus the choice for tomato lovers is either living in a warm, muggy climate and growing tomatoes easily or living in Flagstaff and growing tomatoes with difficulty. A real double-bind. As an old farmer once said, “Yep, the weather’s a little hard on us humans, but its sure great for the corn, hogs, and tomatoes.”

Tomatoes can be grown either in the ground or in containers. Both places work, but the choice among tomato aficionados, such as Dr. Jim Mast, is the container, preferably an ugly black plastic container. Black absorbs heat, fooling the tomato plant into thinking the soil is warm when it isn’t. For ground-growers, black, porous plastic sheets spread around the plants’ base perform the same trick.

The chilly air is the next challenge. Frost kills tomatoes. The one advantage to Flagstaff is that really hot, rainy summers are not congenial for tomatoes, either. The easiest and almost most expensive trick is the Wall-o-Water, a device sold by nurseries. It is literally a translucent plastic wall of water which surrounds the tomato plant, tricking the plant into thinking the air is warm when it isn’t. The manufacturers claim the Wall-o-Water works in temperatures down to 16 degrees F.

Less expensive and less effective arrangements are rocks, of which there plenty in Flagstaff, gallon glass wine jugs, or gallon plastic milk jugs. The rocks absorb heat during the day and keep the plants warmer at night. The gallon wine jugs filled with water do the same trick as the rocks. The gallon plastic milk jugs with their bottoms cut off and caps discarded can be placed over the tomato plant in an attempt to keep the plant cozy day and night. Also, plastic tarps or old bed sheets can be draped on poles or cages over the plants.

Of course, all of this trickery can be accomplished in a green house, surely the most expensive way to grow home-grown tomatoes, especially if the green house is heated with electricity or gas. If passive solar heating is used, then the only expense is the green house itself. A really cheap and effective green house is a lean-to affair set against the wall of a house, drawing radiant heat from the house, but such an arrangement may be too casual for gardeners with a sense of propriety.

Next tomato beds, fertilizer, bugs, and varieties.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

BEETS, ROOTS OF NOBLE LINEAGE

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/26/06)

Beets have been out of fashion for several years, considered by many a plebian vegetable along with turnips, rutabagas, and parsnips, but now beets and their allies are becoming de rigueur. Carrots have always remained a standard, not quite fashionable, bourgeois vegetable, conventional and humdrum. However, as gastronomic fashion changes with greater emphasis on food that smacks on home cooking and meat loaf, root vegetables are now happily chic.

Beets, turnips, rutabagas, and parsnips are naturals for Flagstaff and the Colorado Plateau. They don’t wilt at the first sign of frost, like tomatoes. A hardy lot, they’re nutritious, attractive, and easy to grow.

The beet with which to begin is the Detroit Dark Red (Beta vulgaris), an Heirloom developed in 1892 by a Mr. Reeves in Port Hope, Ontario, Canada. He began with the Early Blood Turnip (Beta vulgaris cv.). The same turnip was also grown at Monticello by the author of the Declaration of Independence and our nation’s third President, Thomas Jefferson, whose gardens were undoubtedly tended by his slaves. At any rate, the Detroit Dark Red has a noble lineage.

An all around vegetable, almost all of it can be eaten. The
young leaves can be used in salads, and before they are too old can be used as a side dish or in soups and stir fry.

However, the real triumph of the Detroit Dark Red is the root, a delightful globe, best plucked early while it is still tender and tasty. To prevent the dark red from staining everything in sight, the globe is best boiled, baked, or roasted in its skin with the small base of leaves attached to the top and the small pig tail left on. After cooking, the skin can easily be slipped off without red stain running all over the place.

Beets are not all dark red globes. The Italian Heirloom, Chioggia (Beta vulgaris) with its interior rings of bright pink and white offers a great contrast to the Detroit Dark Red. With its sweet and peppery taste, it’s also an eye catcher when sliced properly on any dinner table.

The Golden Beet (Beta vulgaris) is golden in color and doesn’t bleed as do the red beets. A fetching contrast to the red beets, it’s attractive, sweet, and nutritious.

The Bulls Blood Beet (Beta vulgaris) is, also, an Heirloom. With an earthy yet sweet flavor, it’s darker and richer than the other beets with its leaves a deep maroon color. If the leaves are picked young, they are a striking contrast in salads. It’s a beet connoisseur’s beet.

The rules for growing beets are simple. Sow the seeds a few weeks before the expected last frost and keep sowing on through to fall. Plant an inch deep about 12 to 15 feet per foot and thin to 2 to 3 inches. Plant in well-composted soil and keep the watering even. When harvesting, choose a dry day, cut off tops near the crown, don’t wash the root, and store in the crisper in a plastic bag with small holes. They’ll last a long time. They can be stored, boiled, pickled, roasted, baked, canned, and frozen.

As far as pests are concerned, the ubiquitous aphids are a possible threat. Dill, coriander, and bronze fennel draw the insects that feed on aphids. Lady bugs are excellent predators on aphids. Insecticidal soap and detergent work as long as the leaves’ undersides where the aphids hide out are hit. If these are used, the leaves should be washed before eating. Never use systemic poisoning. Suicide and homicide are horticultural no-no’s.

Beets bring a delight to the eye, a pleasure to the palate, health to the body, and clarity to the mind.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

KALE

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/20/06)

Growing kale in Flagstaff is a lead-pipe cinch. As a cole crop, it is a cool season vegetable which makes it a fit for Flagstaff and the Colorado Plateau. Kale is hardy and grows best in the spring and the fall. It’s even sweeter after the first freeze in fall. The best time to plant it is in the early spring and the late summer. Some have even picked kale in the snow.

The most common variety is Red Russian Kale (Brassica napus), so named because of its color, not its political affiliation. As an heirloom vegetable, it precedes the rise of communism in Russia. As a matter of fact, it was first brought to North America by way of Canada about 1885 by Russian fur traders.

Close by the venerable Red Russian Kale is a cultivar called White Russian Kale (Brassica napus) whose name again has no political implications. During the Russian Civil War from 1918-21 the White Russian Army fought the Red Army of the Bolsheviks. They lost and Russia became communist. Also, a White Russian is also an alcoholic drink featuring vodka and kalua. Actually, White Russian kale is called white because it has white stems. It’s sweeter and hangs around longer than Red Russian kale, being hardy to 10 degrees F.

Nowadays, a more fashionable kale is Tuscan Kale (Brassica oleraceae) which promises a taste of sunny Italy. Delicious tasting, it is also decorative. An Italian Heirloom, it also goes by the names of Italian Lacinate Nero Toscana, Black Tuscan Kale, Dinosaur kale, and cavolo nero. Acclaimed in gourmet magazines, it has received the horticultural imprimaturs of Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, the gastronomic doyenne of The Hamptons.

For those of Scot’s heritage there is the Blue Scotch Curled Kale (Brassica oleracea acephala), a native of Great Britain. A favorite for soups and salads, it can also be used decoratively. Another fascinating kale is the Giant Walking Stick Kale (Brassica oleracea longata), a favorite amongst the Portugese. It grows to 7 feet tall. The leaves at top may be eaten as in the other kales, but the stem can be used for a walking stick. While growing, it will need a stake to support it. In the early winter months, it may be pulled and cut off at the base. After the cane has been dried, it can be polished and used as a walking stick. Seeds may be obtained from the Nichols Garden Nursery at www.nicholsgardennursery.com or at 1-800-422-3985.

In addition to being used in soups, side dishes, and stir fry kale can also be used as greens in salads if the leaves are picked young. As cole crops, they can be planted by seed four to five weeks before the last frost. To get the jump on the spring, they can be started by seed indoors. They are best sown about 1/4 inch deep and 15 inches apart, except the Giant Walking Stick Kale which requires more space.

The pest to which kale is most vulnerable is the ubiquitous aphid. Dill, coriander, and bronze fennel planted near the kale draw insects that prey on aphids. Also, insecticidal soap or detergents work well if all the aphids are wetted, especially those on the underside of the leaves. Repeated treatments are necessary, and be sure to wash the leaves before cooking them.

Very nutritious and sweet tasting, kale is also quite attractive, offering differently colored varieties which makes it useful not only in a vegetable garden, but also desirable in the flower garden.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

SURREAL HORTICULTURE

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/19/06)

During my internship at UCLA’s Neuro-psychiatric Institute one thing became clear to me. Most of the stuff that really counts is unseen and unheard. In psychodynamic terms the stuff that really counts is in the unconscious. In horticultural terms it’s in the mycorrhizosphere.

The mycorrhizosphere, the soil around a plant’s root, is where the mycorrhizae do their thing, good or bad. Mycorrhizae are literally “fungus roots.” NAU’s Prof. Nancy C. Johnson, a leading researcher in mycorrhizae, calls them “symbiotic associations” or cooperative life-sustaining systems in which both plants and fungal communities around the plant’s roots can benefit. They’re akin in psychodynamics to unconscious associations.

Mycorrhizal associations affect a plant’s ability to acquire mineral nutrients from the soil. When mutualistic, that is, cooperative, the plants gain nutrients with help from the fungi, and the fungi gain carbohydrates from the plants. A balanced relationship of mutual gains for the plants and fungi is something like a functional family in which everyone gets what they need to thrive. However, sometimes a family loses its equilibrium, becoming dysfunctional, when some members are given special attention, good or bad. Plants often need specific chemical nutrients, such as nitrogen or phosphorus, for plant growth or flowering and fruiting. When added to the soil, the balance in the relationship between the plants and their fungal partners can be inadvertently changed with some plants deprived of what they need to thrive.

New Year’s resolutions don’t often work because the unconscious mind subverts the conscious mind. The conscious mind wants to lose weight, but the unconscious mind craves cool, soothing ice cream after a buzz saw day. As a professor once said, “The mind’s like an iceberg, ten percent shows, but that unseen ninety percent calls the shots.” So it is that gardeners should pay mind to those symbiotic associations beneath the garden’s surface.

Paradoxically, it turns out that repeated use of chemical fertilizers can create colonies of parasitic mycorrhizae just as repeated broken resolutions can breed a sense of defeat. It’s called the Law of Unintended Consequences which means that chemical fertilizers are not, as advertised, always horticulturally friendly. Prof. Johnson and her students are discovering that the ratio between available phosphorus and nitrogen may affect the outcome of fertilization. Mycorrhizae seem to be more mutualistic when phosphorus is in shorter supply than nitrogen relative to the plant’s needs.

As common sense tells us, relationships are the key to life underground and in the unconscious. Salvador Dali graphically illustrated the unconscious associations in his early Surrealistic painting Persistence of Memory. Melting watches are set against the backdrop of a horizon in which sky and sea are fused in a timeless continuum. It may puzzle the conscious mind, but the unconscious understands a sense of time melting in the face of timelessness.

Great basketball players don’t deliberately think through their moves, calculating the physics of thrust, velocity, and parabolic curves. They seemingly shoot baskets on the spur of the moment, trusting their unconscious processes with their mutualistic associations of continuing practice.

Mycorrhizal fungi sleep in beds with the roots of a plant, intimately associated with and actually becoming a part of the roots as they help move nutrients from the soil into the plant. They also enrich of the soil with organic matter by building networks of thread-like mycelia, interwoven vegetative masses of tubular filaments resembling pieces of modern art or spider webs gone wild. When mutualistic they nourish plants as well as soils.

While our soil on the Colorado Plateau may be short on organic matter, it is rich with many different types of mycorrhizal fungi. Good gardening helps these underground allies stimulate their mutualistic, not parasitic, associations. This means reducing the use of inorganic phosphorus fertilizers and using instead more organic amendments and compost with ample nitrogen and less phosphorus to help the development of mutualistic mycorrhizopheres.

As Plato observed long ago, appearance is not always reality. Horticultural reality is, also, not always in the appearance, but often in the mycorrhizosphere where fertility is natural, not artificial, organic rather than chemical.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2006

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN COMPOSTING

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (2/19/06)

When my wife, Gretchen, passes my composters, a sky-hook is attached to her nose. She makes comments beginning with phrases, such as "Why did you?" and "What on earth are you?" or the word "Ugh!" However, she likes the results. The other day she stamped her foot, flaired her nostrils, flared her red hair, and cougared her green eyes when she demanded that I give her some compost for her flower barrel. The final accolade came when she said, "You know, this stuff of yours really smells sweet."

At first my composters got out of hand and really stunk, but now that I’ve gotten the hang of things they don’t stink anymore. Early in my composting career I used too much nitrogen material. During those stinky times Gretchen called me "Fly Face" because of the flies hanging around the composters. She didn’t know she dated herself to 1960 when Chester Gould’s comic strip Dick Tracy was in vogue and General Eisenhower was President. "Fly Face" was a criminal with flies circling his face.

Last fall, things came to a head when I began composting on top of the ground. The bins were full, and I wasn’t about dispatch my tomato and zucchini vines and sunflower stocks to the cruel machinations of Environmental Services. I dug shallow trenches on the vacant vegetable beds, dumped in garden clippings, coffee grounds, and tea leaves, and covered them with soil. Soon they were cooking, slowly.

Then Gretchen remembered that her beloved grandmother, Flo, a Kentuckian who plugged rattlesnakes and rodents around her house with a shotgun, dropped kitchen scraps on a pile in her back yard. Grandma Flo had a great vegetable garden. Aha! Now, since it was good enough for her Grandma, it was good enough for me. However, I wouldn’t recommend Grandma Flo’s method unless one craves a rodent-feeding site.

So by messing around I found a slow-cooker way to compost besides hot bins from the city. It was trenches on vacant vegetable beds. Even in winter microbuggies toil away in hot bins sending up clouds of steam and yielding mature compost about every three weeks. The trenches filled with yard clippings crock pot all winter long, yielding their goodies in the spring.

More sophisticated, slow-cooker gardeners build three-sided bins, usually of concrete blocks or spare lumber. They toss organic material in the bins, turning it now and then, producing great compost in the spring, summer, and fall.

An indoor form of composting is called vermicomposting or worm casting which is not fly-casting. First, get a wormery, either home-made or store-bought. The home-made variety can be made from a small plastic container with the approximate dimensions of 14 inches wide by 21 inches deep by 9 inches high. Drill a couple of holes in each side and cover them with a screen. Duck tape holds the screen in place. Since the worms like it dark, keep the lid.

Next, shred newspapers to three times the side of the container. Then in another container dampen the shredded newspapers and put them in the bin, making sure the dampened newspapers aren’t soppy and matted. Watch for puddles on the bottom. Now, that the wormery’s beds are made, it’s ready for guests.

The best guest worms are red wigglers (eisenia foetida), not earthworms. They can be purchased on the Internet or by phone through the mail. One Internet site is www.happydranch.com. Two pounds or two thousand worms are best for the size container mentioned above.

The worms must be fed to get castings. In and out. They like minced left-over vegetables and fruits. No meat, dairy, fat, salt, or citrus. Small amounts of coffee grounds and soil are good for the worms’ gizzards.

Worms like air so the wet newspapers should be fluffed now and then. Keep the wormery away from vibrating contrivances. The temperature is best kept between 68-72 degrees as in a garage or under a sink.

After a few months, harvesting the castings is a cinch. Move all the material to one side of the womery, add fresh newspaper to the other side, and feed on the new side. The worms will migrate to the new side and the castings can be harvested from the old side.

Composting with worms is a sure-fire hit with small children. Most children like the squiggling, wiggling things. They like growing things, too. In addition to home entertainment, the worm castings are very rich and are useful for enriching the soil, especially in window sill gardens.

Now, that we are in a fearful drought, compost is the way to go. By adding organic matter, the soil retains moisture effectively as well getting fertilized.

Copyright (c) Dana Prom Smith 2006