Alive!

I'm still trying to assess the damage of the three and a half weeks of negligence I inflicted on my beloved houseplants while I was home over the holidays.

There has been carnage. Of course the little Easter Lily in the bathroom died along with one of my pink and green herbaceous plants and the cuttings I was trying to root. The orchid seems to have given up, several of the Alocasias are on their last legs. And perhaps the most tragic has been the passing of my beloved cardboard sago palm and Nikau palm. RIP.

The Ficus benjamina was of course visibly upset and threw down almost all his leaves, but has gotten out his aggression and has put out a respectable number of new leaves. I saved the Wandering Jews by making cuttings, which are growing happily in their water baths.

I've been holding out on the Ficus lyrata, though, the Fiddleleaf fig. His enormous violin shaped leaves were too heavy for his flaccid petioles, and he dropped them all one after another until he had just a few stems jutting up from his pot. Normally, I'd have taken a plant like that for dead, but being a ficus I thought just maybe he had a little something up his sleeve. Or, down in his root. So, I kept watering his empty pot and lo and behold two itty bitty baby leaves have been unveiled from his growing tips! He is alive!

Science geek out!

Late blight of potato, in which leaves turn black and tubers turn to mush

So I met the girl I'll be working with at the USDA yesterday to hear about the project she has in mind for me and holy toledo I am to be inventing potatoes! I am to be on the cutting edge of plant molecular biology! I am to work on actual things that (assuming I am successful) would actually be useful in the actual world!

Firstly, genetic modification has a bad rap. I know. People are not crazy about human-invented (xenogenic) genes escaping into nature and doing we don't know what yet, and people are not excited about human-gods sticking firefly genes (transgenic) in tobacco plants. Or adding resistance to antibiotics into anything if it means antibiotics are less likely to be effective when we really need them.

We are relatively ok with the sort of interspecies hybridization that brought us pluots or mutation breeding whereby we nuke seeds and see what happens. And crazy stuff can happen with mutation natural or otherwise. The less fun part of natural breeding is the kind of monominded selection for specific phenotypic traits that brings us firm but tasteless tomatoes. Or in more serious cases amps up allergens and other natural toxins.

But! We can do all the good stuff without the bad stuff!

It just so happens that a wild variety of potato is particularly resistant to Phytophthera infestans, the fungus-like beast that took down Ireland when it caused the potato famine, and we can borrow its gene for other sexually compatible potatoes. We can double check to make sure the bacterial plasmid's antibiotic resistance gene didn't make it into the plant DNA, and although the plasmid DNA of the bacterial vector generally used for this sort of thing has border sequences telling the plant where to snip built in, we can swap those for plant versions so that what's left in your potato is 100% natural potato DNA, something that could have been created by nature itself given enough time.

The lab I'll be working in has already done a sort of proof of concept with one breed of potato, and five years on, they're still good at fighting late blight (caused by P. infestans) , which means they don't seem to be exerting the sort of selective pressure that breeds super-strains of pathogens. (Typically this will occur in two or three years). And yours truly shall be trying doing my darndest to duplicate this success in more commercially appealing varieties of potato. If it works, it will be huge. HUGE.

Hello, grad school!

Were you aware of it? vol. 23: The Knobcone Pine

Chapter VIII of John Muir's The Mountains of California runs you through the trees that make up the forests of, well, the mountains of California. To my untrained eye, the little black and white line drawings of the various tree genera and species may as well have been identical. Or, rather, all but one, this so-called Knobcone Pine.

John Muir has this to say about them:

Pinus Tuberculata
This curious little pine is found at an elevation of from 1500 to 3000 feet, growing in close, willowy groves. It is exceedingly slender and graceful in habit, although trees that chance to stand alone outside the groves sweep forth long, curved branches, producing a striking contrast to the ordinary grove form. The foliage is of the same peculiar gray-gren color as that of the Nut Pine, and is worn about as loosely, so that the body of the tree is scarcely obscured by it.

At the age of seen or eight years it begins to bear cones, not on branches, but on the main axis, and, as they never fall off, the trunk is soon picturesquely dotted with them. The branches also become fruitful after they attain sufficient size. The average size of the older trees is about thirty or forty feet in height, and twelve to fourteen inches in diameter. The cones are about four inches long, exceedingly hard, and covered with a sort of silicious varnish and gum, rendering them impervious to moisture, evidently with a view to the careful preservation of the seeds. [...]

The Grove Form and the Isolated Form (Pinus Tuberculata)
It is so little known [...] that it can hardly be said to have a common name. Most mountaineers refer to it as 'that queer little pine-tree covered all over with burs.' In my studies of this species I found a very interesting and significant group of facts, whose relations will be seen almost as soon as stated:

1st. All the trees in the groves I examined, however unequal in size, are all of the same age.
2d. Those groves are all planted on dry hillsides covered with chaparral, and therefore are liable to be swept by fire.
3d. There are no seedlings or saplings in or about the living groves, but there is always a fine, hopeful crop springing up on the ground once occupied by any grove that has been destroyed by the burning of the chaparral.
4th. The cones never fall off and never discharge their seeds until the tree or branch to which they belong dies. [...]

Needless to say, I was skeptical. This all sounds a little too fantastical to be true, something of a chimera of the plant kingdom. Except! We were clearing away a giant pile of Black Acacia logs from the base of an old Coast Live Oak, and I found this log about a foot in diameter With Pinecones Stuck Right To It. It was like chancing upon a unicorn horn, I swear to you.

And then! I was wrapping things up at the Botanical Garden the other week, having potted a bunch of vine cuttings, and on my way back to the N Judah, there appears from nowhere an Entire Tree with pine cones growing straight out of the trunk. And not only that, I found another one in one of the vegetable beds at school when we pulled out the sunchokes. I am a believer! However, I have done you the service of not providing any photographic evidence to encourage your skepticism and heighten the drama of your personal discovery. You are welcome.

Green tomatoes

I made one of my better batches of fried green tomatoes for dinner tonight as I continue to wait for my barm brack dough to rise.

I have probably ten pounds of green tomatoes, not to mention an equal weight of sunchokes, in my refrigerator, harvested from plots across Oakland as we pulled up tomato plants. It's unlikely that many more tomatoes will ripen in autumn's short days and cool nights, so it's out with tomatoes, in with the onions, fava beans, winter greens and garlic. Garlic should be planted in the fall to be harvested in late spring, early summer, I think. You can plant garlic right up through about March if you want to harvest it as green garlic (as opposed to the little white gems proper).

I've been a good urban farmer this week, and am feeling a certain nobility in it. I love the way we descend on our harvest at the end of Permaculture class, taking home our weekly sack of vegetables wrested from the earth by our own toil, though it still feels a bit like alchemy. I'll be the first to admit the plants do most of the work.

To fry green tomatoes, you will need:

- a supply of green tomatoes
- cornmeal
- flour (optional)
- milk or egg or buttermilk or a combination or nothing
- hot paprika or cayenne pepper
- salt, preferably sea salt
- vegetable oil or ghee or bacon grease for frying

Mix 2 parts cornmeal with 1 part flour in a small, flatish bowl with enough hot paprika or cayenne pepper so that you can just begin to see the color once it's combined. (Or use only cornmeal for a grittier texture, or half cornmeal, half flour for a finer texture). Shake in salt to taste.

Pour your milk or egg into another small bowl, if you'll be coating your tomato slices.

Slice your tomatoes about 1/4" thick. Heat some oil/ghee/fat in a frying pan. Dip each slice first in the milk/egg, then in the cornmeal mixture so that it's coated with cornmeal. Lay slices flat in the frying pan and cook until the tomatoes are soft and the cornmeal gets a nice crisp golden color.

Enjoy immediately.

Because these are necessarily made in small batches it's easy to adjust paprika/pepper and salt levels to your personal preference as you go.

Science-art-magic

Best ever Arboriculture lab yesterday. We got the grand tour of the palm garden at Project Artaud with its curator, Benjy Young.

The man himself, Benjy Young
We were regaled with the history of Project Artaud and stories of growing up with a dad who was in love with palms. Apparently, being a lover of rare species means classy garden parties with the elite, phone calls from Africa offering rare fifty pound seeds that look like 'a woman's pelvis,' international seed trading, jungle expeditions, tree climbing and intrigue!

I have not only a newfound appreciation for palms of all stripes, but this sense of Yes This Is What It's All About.

Palms, it turns out, grow really well in San Francisco because it's always cold at night, but never gets a chill - something palms love.

Probably the most awesome plant was this:

Chilean Wine Palm (Jubaea chilensis)
That thing is seriously at least three feet wide, and they can live for over a hundred years. Monks called wine made from this beast ethereal (you drain the trunk like sugar cane), but wine making was outlawed in Chile just in the nick of time to save them from extinction.

As monocots, palms don't produce secondary growth like most trees you see with annual rings of old xylem produced by the vascular cambium.

Monocots	Dicots
(xylem & phloem in bundles throughout stem)	(xylem & phloem organized into rings)

Palms do all their horizontal growing first - before growing vertically at all - since they can't put on girth later on. To give you an idea, this palm is three years old:

Baby Nikau palm (Rhopalostylis sapida)
By comparison, fast growing dicot trees could be six feet tall at three years old. Just imagine how long it takes the palm to get to this size:

Mama Nikau palm
We got to take home those Nikaud palm seedlings, since Benjy's adult tree was so prolific with seeds - in those red pods - and he treated us to fresh coconuts and plates of Medjool and Zahidi dates. Such a magical day.

Were you aware of it? vol. 19: Sierra Beauty apples

Discovered these at Berkeley Bowl when a man turns to his son and says, "These are the best apples you'll ever have." It's true.


Large, handsome apple with thin green and yellow skin, striped or blushed red. A favorite apple from Boonville, CA. Juicy, very crisp, rich, tart, sprightly flavor. A good seller in farm markets and an excellent keeper.

Generally late blooming. Need full sun, well-drained soil, and moderate fertility. The tree is compact. Unpruned, semi-dwarf trees reach 85% of standard (about 15—25'), but by pruning you can keep your tree to any desired height. Thin fruit to maximize quality and size. Susceptible to codling moth, apple scab, powdery mildew, and gophers. Generally cross-fertile, which means that the variety is not pollinated by itself, but by a different variety of the same fruit. Three or more varieties are best. Harvest 3rd year.

Bloom: Midseason
USDA Zone: 6,7,8,9
Pollination: Self-fertile
Fruit Storage: Excellent
Mature Size: Medium
Ripens: Very Late
Uses: Fresh eating/ dessert, cooking (puree, applesauce, apple butter), baking
Rootstock: Semidwarf

Order an heirloom apple tree.

Sleuthing

I was in the lath house last week looking for work indoors since it was so hot outside, and Don, the head of the nursery, showed me a plant near the entrance. He brushed off the black droppings and showed me where the caterpillars were eating the lower leaves. Then we saw a fluffy white spider pouch wrapped up in another leaf. The spider must have eaten the caterpillar, he said, because the new leaves hadn't been touched at all. He's always good about pointing these things out.

Bomarea

You can't even really tell from this picture, but this plant has the most stunning flowers. I mean, I like all kinds of plants, but I was arrested seeing these on the lunch table in the botanical garden greenhouse.

My cursory internet research (aided GREATLY by a 94 year old woman who told me the genus) suggests that they might have been Bomarea kalbreyeri.

Apparently these things come from South America, grow like vines and can get up to 10 feet tall. Amazing stuff.

Were you aware of it? vol. 16: Ceanothus

Otherwise known as wild lilacs.

These most incredible flowering bushes are in bloom all over the place at the San Francisco Botanical Garden right now. And they are STUNNING.



The Sunset Western Garden book has this to say about growing them:

CEANOTHUS
WILD LILAC
Evergreen shrubs
Zones 5-19, 14-24, except as noted
Full Sun
Little or No Water
------------
Some species grow in easter U.S., Rocky Mountains, the Northwest, and Mexico, but most are native to California. In flower color, they range from white through all shades of blue, from pale powder blue to deep violet blue. Typically flower in spring. Plants vary greatly in habit: some are low and spreading, others compact and bushy, still others upright and angular. Generally evergreen; a couple listed here lose leaves in cold weather. Only types with small leaves tend to be deer resistant. New varieties (most of them propagated from selected wild plants) appear frequently in nurseries, while old ones disappear. For the widest choice, deal with a specialist in Western natives. In Zones 1-3, 8, 9, stay with varieties tested and sold locally.

Ceanothus sometimes get aphids and whiteflies, but these are easy to control. As a group, plants don't live very long; 5 to 10 years is typical.
------------
WHAT CEANOTHUS NEED
DRAINAGE: In the wild, plants grow on rocky slopes. Give them light, well-drained soil in your garden.
WATERING: Some demand total dryness, but others (particularly coastal ground cover types) need occasional summer water if grown away from the fog belt. A few tolerate more frequent summer moisture.
PRUNING: Wait until after blooms have faded; avoid cutting off branches that are more than an inch in diameter. Control plant growth by pinching back shoot tips during the growing season.