Begonias- Part One : From the Louvre to the Antilles -

Charles Plumier

It's begonia season in SoCal.

The somewhat unlikely discoverer of this glamor queen of the botanical world was an extraordinary genius, a monk, a Frenchman who found the first rather unassuming begonia on Hispaniola (my gentle readers will remember Columbus found the island in 1492. However by the 17th c. the French held the island--- which was  an enormously valuable source of sugar.)

Market in the Antilles

 Sugar was the tech stock, the highflyer. Plumier found a patron with a sugar plantation on Hispaniola--- the flamboyant and successful courtier Michel Bégon of   the court of Louis IV the Sun King himself. 

 Michel Bégon was a passionate collector of many things, including plants. He went to the West Indies as Intendant of the Isles du Vent (Windward Islands) were he met and fostered Plumier. Bégon introduced Plumier to Louis XIV, who appointed the monk a royal botanist (which meant a "pension" from the king-- effectively a salary that allowed Plumier to continue his plant explorations. )


Michel Bégon by Hyacinth Rigaud

                         
With such a spectacular patron we'd expect the first begonia to look perhaps like this:
                                                     


Modern Picote Begonia

Nope. It was an unassuming flower, and the original plant seemed to not exist in a drawing anywhere, including the French Begonia Society in Rochfort, France located at 1 Charles Plumier, Rochfort. But surely it looked rather like this ?

Begonia domingensis photo from the French Begonia Society
begonia from Dominica catalogued 19c.

Now, thanks to Botanicus and the U of Missouri we can see a digital reproduction of  Plants of the Americas.Plumier left an incredible cache of drawing (6000) and 31 manuscript pages which the early botanists were able to see and plagarize, rather freely.  See:

http://botanicus.org/page/775194
 

The page can't be reproduced but the original begonia is right there in Tab XLV in Plumier's magisterial book in French and Latin.***Plumier discovered the fuchsia, Arum lily, plumeria....and in his 58 years appears to have worked about 24/7. Louis got his money's worth.

Then, the  plot thickens because the next begonia discoveries pass to the English, beginning with Joseph Banks .

 Kew Gardens becomes the place to see the newest begonias.Plumier falls into undeserved obscurity, as the English begin writing up his discoveries, and apparently not giving Plumier much credit. (Hooker?) History belongs to the victors, and in this case the victors appear to have been the English botanists. However, there  were some heroic  English plant explorers in the 19thc. Stay tuned. Part Two is the story of the tuberous begonia.



*** After a 2 week  search to find this drawing--felt like finding the Holy Grail. In the process of reading about Michel Bégon  re-discovered Dumas  historical novels of the period and the court of the Sun King. The Man In the Iron Mask deals rather crisply with the great Louis... Dumas, like Plumier, deserves your attention.

Dragon Fruit aka Pitahaya or Hylocereus

Locavores,  "Here be dragons......."

Hylocereus in bloom

This is the season for eating your dragons if you are lucky enough to have one of eating age (2 years from the nursery plants available in local Central and SoCal nurseries). 

Hylocereus polyrhizus

This is one of the magenta (or red) fruited ones. It came from Whole Foods @ 7.99 a lb this month. On the left the outside of the fruit is visible--red with green tips, about the size of a large artichoke. The taste is somewhere between a strawberry and a kiwi, or a watermelon and a pear. (Think it varies from white fleshed-hylocereus undulata -to red and pink-undulata and yellow--not to mention the  terroir. )

Why grow it? It's delicious, subtle and interesting. Found it best a bit chilled with a squeeze of Meyer lemon. Lime or lemon overpowers it. Pitahaya is spectacular in a salad with slices of kiwi and pineapple. (Recipes can also be found at ww.penangfaces.chanlilian.net.)

It's a cactus, it's low water, it grows easily around here, and is another native of the New World like chayote, red runner beans you can grow in the backyard almost anywhere in SoCal. (Consider: what if there are no grocery stores open after The Big One?) Anyway--pitahaya is local, ecological and at $7.99 a lb--worth growing.

That's not all you can do with it.

Young Dragons

The peelings of dragon fruit can be made into wine (hence, terroir)



• 6 lbs ripe dragonfruit fruit

• 2 lb sugar

• 6 pts water                                                            

• 1 crushed Campden tablet

• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend

• 1 tsp pectic enzyme

• 1 tsp yeast nutrient

• 1 pkt wine yeast



Single flower



Put water on to boil. Meanwhile, carefully trim the greenery from the fruit, wash the fruit well, and chop it coarsely. Put chopped fruit, acid blend, sugar and yeast nutrient into primary. When water boils, pour into primary and stir until sugar dissolves. Cover with a sanitized cloth and set aside to cool. When at room temperature, add crushed Campden tablet and stir. Recover primary and set aside for 6-8 hours. Add pectic enzyme, stir, recover primary, and set aside another 6-8 hours. Add activated yeast. Stir daily for 7 days. Strain through nylon straining bag and squeeze juice out of fruit pulp. Transfer liquid to secondary, top up if required and fit airlock. Rack, top up and refit airlock every 30 days until wine clears and no new sediments form during a 30-day period. Stabilize, sweeten to taste, wait 3 weeks, and, if no renewed fermentation, rack into bottles. Like most wines, it should improve with age. [Keller's own recipe]Jack Keller @ wine( http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request212.asp)

Pectin –what’s that? Pectic Enzyme is recommended for all fresh fruit wines. Add it to the juice prior to fermentation to enhance the clarification process. See http://www.eckraus.com/ENZ110.html).

Santa Rosa plum (W)

Campden tablet is used to destroy molds and bacteria. Amazingly enough (joys of the internet) there are winemaker kits for backyard fruit. (see eckraus above). Used to make a sort of May wine from excess Santa Rosa plums.

This particular plum tree was very  slow to bear. So slow that it was threatened with being replaced. Trees hear better than you might think.... in any case, the following year,  and years after it bore tremendous crops of plums which were turned into a fizzy, pink, rather brut wine with a very short shelf life. (No campden tablets available.) Goes to show this oldest of human activities--fermenting excess fruit--is not too challenging . If the Haphazard Gardener can do it, anyone can. 

W

So tame your dragons into a barrier fence, or grow them it big pots, eat them in a creme brulee', or make them into wine.  

 

                                         

                                     

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Vermiculture Revisited with a side on Procyon lotor/update 5/15/12

Gardener’s adventures with red wriggler worms last year….they ate about 520 lbs. of garbage before rain and cold did them in. .


eisenia foetida




They’d have doubtless survived in a proper worm house. Sooo…. This year we created a worm palace--- a conventional  worm house with a spigot at the bottom http://www.homecompostingsolutions.com/wormbincomposters?gclid) enclosed in a , locked , screened  raccoon proof  enclosure.

 Raccoons (procyon lotor) hunt in part by their acute hearing---they can hear the worms crunching away at the compost, and it drives them mad mad mad with worm lust.

                                                image W
Let’s stop for a word from our sponsor here about raccoons. Never underestimate the intelligence, tenacity or daring of an urban raccoon. Once found a mother and 6 kits inside my room eating my cat’s food.

image W

Clapped my hands to shoo them out. Mother R calmly abandoned the kits, 5 of whom escaped out an open window. One kit couldn’t make the leap up to the window sill---too fat. Nothing phased, he shinnied up the wall and out. Not scared of me at all---they just don’t like loud noises---- no doubt due to ears so keen they can hear a worm burrowing underground.

image w

They plan to take over the planet if we continue to mess up. “Raccoons are noted for their intelligence, with studies showing that they are able to remember the solution to tasks up to three years later. (W) In other words these guys have “culture” and teach their off spring where the goodies are to be found.

image W

They are charming  but — désobéissant.  They’ve rid the garden of snails and keep it snail free, despite a snail- breeding border of agapanthas.

 Snails used to eat the dahlias as they emerged from the ground—not any more. If you sense a love/dismay relationship here with the raccoons---that's it .  Used to feed them. Ended up with about 30 showing up every night for the hand out. Nipped my ankles when I was too slow with the food. Quick ending to  raccoon soup kitchen.

Raccons with their Elephant Child curiosity have been known to dig up a dahlia tuber, simply to examine it. (Dahlias are edible—according to Aztec lore--, but resinous, like eating a very strong retzina) . To keep the raccoons away from newly planted bulbs, sprinkle the ground with chili powder (very cheap at Big Boxes in wholesale size jars). Chili gets on the very sensitive raccoon * fingers, and stings— though they hate it, it is non-toxic and non-lethal..

Having raccoon proofed the worm house , and carefully installed the worms according to directions, you are good to go. Almost immediately the worms begin producing worm juice, which you can use at once on your pet plant. Meanwhile the blessed worms are eating your shredded junk mail not to mention banana peels, coffee grounds etc. If worms did nothing but eat junk mail we could love them.

Guards against ID theft. Better than flossing.

So far the new worms, stunningly housed (is Architectural Digest out there? )
are doing exactly what they should be doing----  eating 5  to 10 lbs of garbage a week.

Teenage male raccoons run in gangs—and “cover a territory of 3-20 miles” (W). Does that sound  familiar?

 Raccoon mothers are single parents, like bears and a lot of other ladies. Raccoon domestic life is affectionate ; the mothers purr and chirp to the young , are careful guardians. … until it’s time to make the juveniles  leave home, get out there and fend for themselves This becomes  a horrible, noisy process

 Talk about tough love and 'failure to launch’. The young ones simply can’t believe their cosy, loving mother is throwing them out into the cold cruel world. They  complain bitterly, sounding like aliens from outer Space. Mom snarls back and nips them to get them going. It’s awful for everyone. (Families of raccoons for many years lived nearby in an old tree house—got to witness the whole telenova  several times.)

 Would be worm raisers, raccoons are Public Enemy #1. Those ousted  juveniles are ravenous until they get a new  territory figured out, because Beastly Mean Momma will not let them stay where they were. Plan accordingly.

Update on vermiculture 5/15/12- Worms are creating the most wonderful compost ever seen. Also producing worm juice which our orchids seem to like a lot. All worms survived and multiplied this winter, thanks to worm palace. We could actually use another worm box at this point, but the one we have is a total success.

Report from Greco-plant auditions-what worked, what didn't

                                                           Growing baby purple artichoke from seed.
                                                                               

Growing artichoke from seed is reported in garden books  as   a problem---Why ? Beats me. Garden  myth!  Not actually even very  good at growing stuff from seed , but this was easy. Seed came from 3 different organic seed houses (Baker’s, http://rareseeds.com/; Territorial  www.territorialseed.com and Island Seed (Goleta,CA). Soaked the seed overnight, planted the first batch in plantable pots inside.

Everything grew-Violet de Provence, Violette di Chioggi, Violetta Precoce , and Purple of  Romagna. Most of them are now about 2  ½ feet tall. Violet de Provence is outgrowing all the others. Not too surprising as his native heath resembles our climate  more than those of  the other varieties. Used soaker hose to keep the ground moist.

Chioggi from seed in ground

Once it warmed up, planted more of the same seeds in the ground, having soaked them overnight (June). These also came up without a problem.

Fennel.

. Never grew fennel before. It turned out to be easy, long bearing, delicious raw or cooked. (http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/roasted_fennel/. It comes in 3 kinds: Florentine, Bronze and vulgare. Grow the first 2 to eat and vulgare for the swallowtails. Florentine fennel is the celery like vegetable, Bronze an herb used much like dill, (and also is reported as a host for the Anise Swallowtail).

                                Black swallowtail on bronze fennel

He's not a pretty baby but he won't eat your tomatoes. However, what swallowtails like best is fennel vulgare. That's the one you see blooming all over the hills of the Central Coast.

 Use Florentine  fennel  like celery. Easier to grow than celery in this climate, though celery might be a really good winter/spring  crop here on the Central Coast.

                               Long Island celery- easy for them!

This is normally the time to start winter cole crops from seed.

Broccoli—had good luck with Veronica ( 85 days) which seems to use a little less water than conventional broccoli. However, given the weather cycle, won’t plant cole crop seed until late August which still gives the veg 2 hot months to get started.

 Ideally, plant some now and some later. Later, you can use starts which means you don’t have to be such a dedicated farmer. Best in this garden was Veronica (also known as Romano).

                              
                                   Glamorous Veronica

Qualified success: the roof garden. Only the real desert plants were happy—barrel cactus, agaves, etc. The sedums fried.

The roof garden depended entirely on rain water. The sedums would have to be watered every 2 weeks to survive in this climate. If it’s from the Sonora Desert—it’ll do fine without water, otherwise no.
                                     

Unqualified success: new terraces planted with dwarf citrus using grey water.

Scarlet Runner Beans:
                                         
                                                    w image
Ours came from 6 seeds. We have been harvesting about a 2 lbs. a week from these plants. They get watered once a week unless we have a scorcher (100° or more)


Harvest when they are about the size of a mature French Filet bean.( http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/french_green_beans_with_butter_and_herbs/) Or let them mature a little into lima bean size, then steam them, serve with butter. Or let them dry and give every child you know Magic Beans for Christmas.

                              
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Coming up next: Vermiculture Revisted

Return of the Native/ East Coast Farmer's Markets & Other excitements

                             Drought proof aloes (Chihuly -MFA,Boston)

Farmer's Market, Falmouth, Cape Cod

Been wandering in the flesh-pots of Cape Cod and Long Island, with a side trip to Boston and the MFA there. Chihuly, the extraordinary glassmaker was having a major exhibit. Check it out at http://www.mfa.org/. As you can see he has completely solved the water problem. Cape Cod is basically one big fish-hook shaped sandspit. God knows how the Pilgrim Fathers managed to grow anything at all. The Farmer's Markets on the Cape have beautiful lettuce, kale ( learned how to cook), herbs, peonies, rhubarb and lots of stuff for tourists to buy- lobster buoys,straw hats,fish prints (some very good) and lighthouses for your refridgerator.

                                                      Amagansett
 The North Shore of Long Island, on the other hand, is still farm country once you move away from the coast ( wall to wall summer houses, mostly very opulent-think Malibu on steroids --- but you already knew that.) There are vineyards looking very prosperous, fields of potatoes and other edibles.

                                               Montauk geese

                              Roadside stand, Long Island near Perponix

Small fishing is still viable --clams, mussels and lobster as well as lots of fish-haik, sea bass, flounder.



Potato field

 Both Cape Cod and Long Island are filled with very small towns such as we only encounter on the Disney Channel. Everyone really does know everyone else, and whether X actually managed to make it home last night, and if not, where was X and with whom?

 There's a deep patriotism and pride in the local people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan--- and an intense communal grief if one is lost --- the whole town turns out for the funeral, a street is named for the soldier.

The past is present in a way that it simply isn't in the West. So many of the towns are lifted straight from the English coast, Falmouth, Truro, Yarmouth, and Wellfleet. New England, indeed.

Urbane farmers and backyard gardeners along the Central Coast now dealing with climate changes---both hotter and colder--- can take heart. We can still grow almost anything here. It just may take more attention and ingenuity than we are used to expending. If the Pilgrims could learn to farm on Cape Cod, we can adjust to the climate changes. The longer colder weather gives us a chance to grow more stone fruits, berries and lilies. The cooler spring with more rain encourages us to grow more leafy vegetables for a longer season. It pays to be horticulurally adventurous.