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The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
May 19 - May 25, 2005 Edition
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Garden
Notes
On one of the several gorgeous days of the past week I was able to go for an in-line skate on the bike path in the State Forest. The bike paths are a great recreational asset of the Island, used by bikers, in-line skaters, runners, walkers, and dog-walkers. To that list, add observers of native flora and butterflies. The bike paths are a window onto the spectacle of interesting sandplain plants that grow along their margins. The current show is composed of broad blue drifts of diminutive but large-flowered Viola pedata, birds-foot violet, and the delicate beauty of the wild pear or shadbush. (A bit player at this time, spread with tiny urn-shaped blossoms, is the glossy-leaved bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi.) Flowering pears, however, are in their fleeting season everywhere on the Island. Ornamental ones (which are now so spectacular on Clough Lane adjacent to St. Augustine's church in Vineyard Haven and in the West Tisbury graveyard) and orchard varieties, as well as the shadbush (Amelanchier spp.) constitute this beautiful group. But it is the latter that I would like describe as a worthy plant, one deserving of a greater use in our gardens. Many Islanders know the amelanchier, but others are oblivious to its existence. It has an airy delicacy in bloom and often achieves a very artistic form. Its very subtlety gives it a retiring grace that is no match for the showier 'Callery' or 'Bradford' pears, the hybrid magnolias, or flowering cherries with which it shares bloom time. Yet, to drive up Middle Road or Indian Hill Road just now, viewing the legions of these slender understory trees as they lean out over the stone walls, covered in flowery popcorn-white bud and blossom, frilled with thin ruffs of reddened tender foliage, is to experience a winsome graciousness that our austere Island spring often lacks. Shadbush signals spring It is usually assumed that the shadbush on the Vineyard is A. canadensis, but when I turned to “The Flora of Martha's Vineyard” (Martha's Vineyard Sandplain Restoration Project) to check what grows here in that group, I learned that there are four: A. canadensis, A. laevis, A. spicata, and A. nantucketensis. Furthermore, in checking some other sources of information, it turns out that these amelanchiers interbreed with abandon; so much of the variation that Island amelanchiers demonstrate is due to their being open-pollinated! While the standard description of A. canadensis will likely note that it is to be found growing in moist soils, we see it growing all over the Island in places we know to be dry, sandy, even gravelly. The form it takes is also quite variable: sometimes an upright growing, sometimes a spreading, tree, or a spindly multi-stemmed shrub. In order to possess one's own shadbush it is often necessary to do no more than to check carefully around the edges of one's property. The plants set tasty, edible fruit the size of a blueberry that birds love; so bird-sown seedlings are everywhere. It is fairly easy to spot a blooming age shadbush now by looking for the flutter of the white blossoms. It is harder to spot a sapling but the leaf shape, oval with a finely serrated edge, about an inch and a half long, papery thin and red-brown in spring maturing mid green, is easy to learn and recognize. (Saplings of the aronias can be confused with amelanchiers, as they share similar habitats, but they have a tougher, leather-like leaf texture.) Mark it with some flagging and let it grow, or take advantage of the compact, fibrous root system by transplanting it to a more ideal spot. If a search yields no spontaneously occurring plants, several Island retail nurseries sell plants of A. canadensis, A. laevis, and a cultivar named 'Autumn Brilliance,' with heightened fall color. Either way, in time an amelanchier will become a graceful flowering tree in spring, a magnet for colorful birds like robins, orioles, and tanagers in summer, and a source of orange, salmon, and apricot foliage, contrasting with beautiful grey bark, in autumn. Carrot tips, garden chores Turning to vegetable gardens, an item gleaned from the spring Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association journal is a technique for pre-sowing carrot seed on toilet paper. Carrot seed is small and sowing it thinly directly in the ground is sometimes hard to do. I am paraphrasing, rather than quoting, here: before planting can begin, or in winter, seed mats are made by wetting toilet paper with a light coating of flour and water-similar to making a papier-mache paste. Space the individual seeds on the paper and allow the seeds to dry. To plant, wet the paper and lay it in the soil, covered slightly. This method of seeding saves labor and time. The carrot seeds are not wasted, as they would be by planting too many and later thinning. Labor is saved by not having to thin, and the carrots grow larger because they don't have to compete for space from the start. Try this for the fall carrot crop, which on the Island is sown in late June/early July. Cutworms are active now and feeding upon early crops where they occur. Look for them just under the soil surface near the damaged plant, using a cultivating tool. Cutworms are fat, greenish, greyish, or whitish worms that typically curl up when exposed by digging. They are the larvae of a nondescript moth, which I have no qualms in destroying. In flower gardens we are pinching out the growing tips of phlox, watching for botrytis on peonies, training clematis vines and climbing roses, destroying lilyleaf beetles on bulb lily foliage by squishing or spraying with a solution of neem oil, side-dressing perennials with fertilizer, and nipping out weeds in their crowns. |
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