When the Weather Blows
OK, so it turns out that when wind gusts hit somewhere between 35 and 40 miles per hour, large potted plumeria plants can fly.
Off of your garage roof.
OK, so it turns out I’m growing plumeria on my garage roof.
Originating probably in the Yucatan Penninsula, plumeria thrive in hot, sunny weather and are drought-tolerant. But if you supply them with the right amount of water and fertilizer, they produce some of the world’s most beautiful and fragrant flowers, which are used in Hawaii to make leis.
It so happens that I have these old 70-foot-tall pecan trees towering over most everything in the back yard. The trees cast a nice shade and keep the yard cool. But plumeria do best with at least six hours of sunlight. The only place in the yard that gets at least six hours of sunlight and also can support plants is on the flat tin roof of my garage.
Thus, about 50 plumeria plants are up there, sitting on boards so as not to get burned by the hot tin roof. Yeah, I have to climb up and down a ladder to water/fertilize them, but it’s usually just once a week and I can use the exercise.
So it seemed like a pretty good arrangement until the damn wind picked up to about 35 miles per hour for an entire day on Thursday.
One plumeria, fairly good-sized, in an eight-inch pot no less, flew off one side of the garage onto the ground. On the other side, a smaller plant was knocked over but stayed on the roof, while a big, expensive rooted cutting with lots of leaves flew off of a shelf and landed on a whole flat of seedlings.
Amazingly, two of the plants lost a leaf apiece. I had to re-pot the big ones, but nobody really got hurt, not even the seedlings.
Still, I suppose this means I’ll have to clear off the roof the next time there’s a hurricane.
→ B.Dunn, Jun 07, 2008, 07 41 am
The Upshot
I’ve worked for some time toward a goal, on my little acre-minus of land here and in previous abodes, of being able to harvest fresh fruits and/or vegetables year-round, or as close to it as possible.
It always seemed a worthy pursuit in the past, because for a graying guy like me gardening provides exercise I wouldn’t get much of otherwise; and gardening helps one understand the inter-relationship of plants, critters and the elements; not to mention that home-grown produce and fruit provide a really healthy supplement to the diet.
Now, however, it appears that growing your own food may come very close to being a necessity.
Anyone who’s given it much thought probably concluded years ago that there are major inherent flaws in the U.S. system of agri-corp food processing and grocery store distribution.
Confirmation of those flaws hit home a year and a half ago, When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning after one person died and at least 49 others in 11 states got sick from a particularly impolite strain of E. coli bacteria. Suddenly, people would no more buy spinach for their salads than they would rat poison. I remember at the time that Fort Bend County environmental cops (and who knew there were such people?) busted a California truck driver who was caught dumping 100 or so boxes of spinach off a bridge near the San Barnard River.
A couple dozen people in Texas and 75 or more nationwide have gotten food poisoning – in the form of Salmonella Saintpaul. The feds and state health officials are pointing to Roma and those big, round, hard, tasteless ‘maters sold in the grocery stores. No one’s died yet, but tomato sales have tanked at Kroger and HEB lately because, well, people by and large don’t like projectile vomiting a whole lot more than dying. The government now advises that it’s best not to eat raw tomatoes unless you’re picking them from your own garden.
And these are just a couple of the more highly publicized breaches in our food delivery system. The FDA alone posts notices on a dozen or more every month – not to mention what goes unreported behind the curtain or under the radar.
So if you want to guarantee yourself fruit and veggies that are free from pesticide residue and e. Coli, and picked and distributed to your dinner plate fresh and ripe, you either have to grow your own or find a grower you can trust at a farmers’ market.
Which is reason enough to take up gardening, but not the only reason.
Another major flaw in our food distribution system has been exposed by the fact that world oil producers can’t keep up with world oil demanders, and gasoline prices are headed for the clouds. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say prices for meat, milk, bread and eggs seem to be paralleling gas prices. That’s because trucks full of food run on petroleum products.
In my opinion gas prices are going to rise more quickly over the next few years than they have over the last 12 months, taking food prices right along with them. We’re all going to suffer financially as a result, but those who can afford the land and time needed to put in a garden – along with maybe some chickens and a milk goat – won’t suffer as much.
We’re lucky here in southeast Texas, because we’re blessed with long (albeit hot) growing seasons and mild winters. But you can grow your own food – a lot of food – even in the North, if you plan for it.
→ B.Dunn, Jun 04, 2008, 06 36 pm
Berry, Berry Good To Me
I may be shamed into renaming this the Brazos Berry Blog, but this time of year berries are what’s happening around here.
I picked the first bowl of blackberries this afternoon, and probably should’ve picked them last week, but there will be more.
The wild blackberries already have come and gone, along with the old man waving from the side of U.S. 90 going east into New Territory, selling the wild berries vigorously but not giving up his price unless you stop.
Mine are Cherokee, developed by the University of Arkansas maybe back in the 1980s. They have lots of thorns, but make up for that in size and flavor. They thrive in the heat, but they also could handle below-zero freezes – if our winters ever got close to that cold, which they don’t.
Some of these berries are the size of my thumb. We had to learn to leave them on the vine for a few days after it seemed they were so enormous they couldn’t grow any bigger. But they do, and you need to let them plump out completely to enjoy their full sweetness. You also need to cover them with bird netting or risk losing most of your crop to the cardinals and mocking birds.
I was spoiled last year, since every time I thought we could use a little rain, it rained, and I never had to water the blackberries or anything else. The Cherokees don’t need much care, but they really do need some water. I’ve been negligent because the water line at the back of my property is in need of repair, but tonight I’ll string enough hose back there to give these berry plants a good drink. I’m sure they’ll return the favor.
→ B.Dunn, Jun 03, 2008, 04 15 am
High on the Pie Scale
The tastiness of loquats notwithstanding, we found something in our garden this spring that rates at least two notches higher on the pie scale.
I’ve been growing Surinam cherry trees for more than 20 years, but only as container plants until the last five. It started when I bought a small seedling from a botanical garden in Southern California in 1986. The garden’s mother tree was probably 25 or 30 feet tall, but these plants are more often grown as hedges or shrubs in the Caribbean and Central and South America, where they originate. They put out beautiful but tiny white powder-puff flowers that morph into what look like tiny green pumpkins. These grow to about the size of sour pie cherries and turn bright red. You really need to let them get as ripe as possible for the best eating; otherwise they taste a bit like a lemon-cherry combo. There’s also an indescribable kind of spicy tang that some people apparently find objectionable, but we really like. The fruits are packed with vitamins A and C, and various trace minerals.
My little tree produced a couple dozen cherries after about three years, by which time I was living in Arkansas and dealing with occasional actual snow and temperatures in the teens in the winter. I planted the cherry pits, and about 18 of them sprouted. I put these in pots along the south side of my house, and left them out that winter. Literature says the plants are hardy to 28 degrees, and established trees may be hardy to 22. About six of my seedlings lived through a winter that saw the temps dip into the mid teens a few times.
I kept one of those cold-hardy seedlings and my original tree in large pots, and moved them with me over the next few years. I lost the original, but still had the seedling when we moved into our place here on the river back in 2003. With our mild winters, it seemed safe to plant it in the ground.
It was. It’s underneath a big pecan and probably would like a little more sun, but the Surinam cherry tree now is about 12 feet high, and this year it had its first bumper crop of cherries. I won’t go into recipe details, but suffice it to say these tart cherries make as fine a berry pie as you’re likely to find anywhere. Substitute them in your favorite recipe if you happen to be lucky enough to have a tree.
I was so impressed with the taste that I planted a new crop of seeds, which haven’t yet come up (germination takes three to four weeks).
Everyone is not impressed with this tree, however, and in southern Florida they are on the invasive plant list. That means they’ve been observed crowding out native plants, which is hard to believe from my experience, because these tree-shrubs are so slow-growing. I don’t know of any other state that has so labeled the Surinam. Here, I’ve never observed seeds sprouting on their own, but of course animals could carry them a long way out of sight. The birds, perhaps too busy watching all our figs ripen, seem to leave our Surinam cherries alone.
I have plans to try them as a hedge in the front yard. Any time I can replace a purely ornamental shrub with something that gives back fruit as tasty and healthy as these cherries, I’m going to give it a try.
→ B.Dunn, May 23, 2008, 05 22 am
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