Liberated Gardener

How To Launch a New Fig Tree by Layering a Branch

When I discover a plant I really like I want to have more of them. But sometimes I want more then my budget can support. Fortunately, as gardeners we can save money by making our own plants.

 One of the easiest ways to multiply plants is to grow new roots from the branches of shrubs and small trees. I’m not talking about taking cuttings or grafting or division. Those all have their pluses and minuses in the world of horticulture. I’m talking about an even easier technique called layering. I think it’s one of the most underutilized propagation techniques in the garden today for shrubs and trees. It can work with shrubs like rhododendrons, camellias, daphnes and even small trees like juneberries and hollies. 

 Other propagation techniques either require significant damage to the plant--such as division--or trying to start a plant without any roots—meaning cuttings--or trying to line up narrow pathways of the cambium—that’s grafting.

Layering gives the gardener and the new plant the best of both worlds: the new plant stays connected to the mama plant until it’s ready to grow on its own.  And there’s no tricky work for the gardener. You can start a plant from layering in any season. Here, I’ll show you how simple and reliable it is to layer a fig tree.

 1)   First pick a few slender branches (no more than an inch or so thick) that bend easily and can touch the ground.

2)   Take your pocketknife and scrape away a thin layer of bark from the side of the branch that will touch the soil. Scrape away an area about 2” long (in line with the branch) and up to a half inch wide to expose the green cambium. (Some gardeners like to bend the branch just till it cracks and that can work too.)

3)   For some species it may be beneficial to apply a dusting of root hormone to the cut area, but many plants will root successfully without that.

4)   Press the cut area onto the soil after removing any mulch or other debris.

5)   Hold the scraped branch in place with a stone, brick or length of stiff wire so it doesn’t move. You want the scraped area of the branch to have thorough and stable contact with the soil. The darkness, the moisture and the smell of good soil will stimulate the cambium to produce new roots from the damaged area.

6)   Leave it alone for one or more seasons. I often start layering a fig in fall, let it root over winter and pot it up in late winter or spring. You can also layer them in early spring and probably pot them up in late summer.

7)   When you think it’s been long enough lift the brick and brush soil away from the branch. If there are no roots, you haven’t given it enough time or it’s been too dry or too cold for much to happen. Put the brick back and wait another season. If the branch is holding in place and you can see roots reaching into the soil, then it’s ready to grow on its own.

  8)   Use your hand pruners or loppers to cut the new baby plant away from the mama plant. Make this cut on the mama side of the branch just an inch or so away from where you scraped the bark.

9)   With the rooted branch separated from the mama plant, carefully dig as deep as necessary to get the roots up out of the ground.

10)                 Put the rooted branch in a suitably sized pot.

11)                 Add any compost needed to fill the pot and keep the roots from drying out unless you are going to plant the new fig somewhere right away.

12)                 If you are going to grow the new plant in a pot for a while put soil less media (I recommend 2/3 compost and 1/3 shredded pine bark) so that the potted roots will have great drainage and can get better established.

13)                 Alternatively, you can just cut the branch and leave the new plant in the ground where it is until you are ready to move it or give it away. Here's a picture of a new fig tree that's been dug after leafing out in spring.

Once it’s all said and done, you’ve got a new fig tree and can look forward to filling bowls with this delicate fruit in two or three years. 

This beautiful and delicious variety is called Violete de Bourdeaux and is available at www.ediblelandscaping.com.

Let Me Show You Our Garden

When I moved into my wife’s house ten years ago, the front yard grew nothing but weedy grass. Some people call this sort of thing a “freedom lawn.” I understand the concept, but our freedom lawn enslaved me behind the mower every week.

We both garden, so as time allowed we gave the front yard an edible and ornamental makeover.  Over the years, slices, circles and squares of freedom lawn were swapped out for colorful and tasty gardens.  Our front yard is barely fifty by fifty, so from above it looks like a Whitman’s Sampler box--but one composed of gardens rather than chocolates. 

 

(Driveway on left is to the south. The street above is to the west. And me, I'm on the roof taking the photo, so bottom of the picture where I am is east and to the right is north.)

My wife likes to cook and we both like to eat so we planted edibles near the front door first. A big bed of herbs, artichokes and alliums colonized the narrow strip between the driveway and front walk on the south side of the yard.

Other drought-hardy plants from the Mediterranean—pomegranates, poppies and sedums--filled any gaps in this garden.

And the mulch is as perennial as the plants. Nine years ago we used a permanent 2” layer of Cabernet-colored gravel to cover the soil and suppress the weeds. The rich color sets off the grays, blues and greens of the lavender, bearded iris, candytuft and other plants. A surprising benefit was that many of the plants happily reseed themselves because the gravel mimics their native soil in the Mediterranean basin.

 

Next we created four diamond-shaped raised beds for vegetables on the west side.This vegetable garden lies on our path from house-to-car and back. So it’s easy to keep things tidy. We pick ripe vegetables and pull a few weeds as we come and go.

The regular grooming combined with mulches of cocoa hulls, camellia tea twigs and coffee chaff--all by-products of the food industry—keep the vegetable garden looking pretty enough for a front yard.

 You can’t have food without water so a 300-gallon galvanized horse trough on the east side, next to the house, holds water lilies, thalia and hibiscus. It functions as a water garden and decorative rain barrel in one. We dunk our watering cans in the trough to replenish our container plants on the porch. An unexpected bonus: the water’s surface bounces rippling waves of sunlight through the front window and onto the ceiling of our living room.

As we replaced freedom lawn with plant beds, my wife asked if we could keep some grass. I made all the usual arguments against lawns: pollution and noise from mowers, little support for wildlife, requires too much fertilizer and so on. She waited patiently, looked me in the eye and said, “Well can we have a Lawnlet?”

I was converted by her logic and her neo-logism. Our Lawnlet on the northern side of the yard is no larger than a king-size bed; just big enough for two gardeners and a black Lab named Molly to sprawl on. We lay on our backs to watch the clouds tumble along or sit up face-to-face with peonies in their season.

 

There’s much more going on in the front yard then when we started. But we both probably work in the garden much less now than when I was mowing weekly. And none of it feels like a chore.

 

Frank Hyman gardens with his wife, Chris Crochetière at their home, Bayleaf Cottage, near downtown Durham, North Carolina.

 

Bulb Land

According to Raleigh garden designer  Tracy Traer, bulbs in piedmont North Carolina gardens often lack good drainage. Many diminish in number and stature because of rot, despite a gardener’s attention.

            A former N.C. State horticulture professor, Traer installed and monitored campus bulb plantings during the 1980's that maintained a constant number of blooms over six years—without adding fertilizer. The difference is that these daffodils and other bulbs were planted on the ground and then covered with 6 inches of pine park much. Their roots can reach the fertile clay, but the bulbs themselves grew free from rot in the fine bark. Most ornamental bulbs originated in the deserts and mountains of central Asia—so a well-drained bark bed mimics the bulbs’ native soils.

 

            Tracy refrained from fertilizing in order to isolate the impact of growing in bark. She says that with annual fertilization the bulbs would have multiplied many times over. Because of their dry-land heritage, bulbs are also extremely drought-hardy. This makes them ideal for a low-maintenance landscape.

            Pine bark is a by-product of the lumber industry. At the lumber yards they use a powerful hose to blast the bark off before milling the tree.  You can buy pine bark in bulk or have area nurseries and landscapers deliver it. You can also buy it in a bag at most garden centers. A 2-cubic foot bag will cover a 2'x2' bulb bed 6 inches deep. You can also buy bulbs in bulk from Terra Ceia Farm in northeastern NC. Brent and Becky's Bulbs in southeastern VA is also a great source.

            What to do if you’re buying smaller quantities and want a long season of daffodil blooms? Plant a mix of February Gold, Peeping Tom and Ice Follies.

 

Sugar Maple and Red Maple Tree Planting

Sugar maples aren’t only found up north. Even in the Piedmont, they’re a common sight. To most eyes, they look like a red maple. The two key differences are that the leaves of the sugar maple are more deeply cut, and in the fall sugar maples turn yellow or orange while the red maples turn a clear red or an orange-red. If planted on the right site, either species grows well here.

            Red maples naturally grow in river bottoms, which are also called floodplains. They don’t mind having their roots wet—you can find plenty of them along the banks of the Eno River or along New Hope Creek. Paradoxically, the same adaptation that allows them to tolerate flooded conditions also allows them to survive severe droughts. Here’s how that works.

            When the floodplains are flooded in the winter and spring, the water displaces the air in the soil. Tree roots need air as well as water to survive. So floodplain trees, such as the red maple, slow down the roots’ metabolism to avoid drowning. This same slowdown also allows them to survive drought conditions. This adaptation explains the surprisingly frequent planting of river bottom species like river birch, sycamore, willow oak and red maple on high and dry commercial sites such as parking lots.

            Sugar maples evolved on drier slopes and ridge tops so they come by their drought tolerance the old-fashioned way. Unfortunately, their adaptability to drought doesn’t translate into a tolerance for the opposite condition as with the red maple—wet, poorly drained soil will kill a sugar maple.

            If Hurricane Fran did nothing else useful, it at least showed us that roots of even the biggest trees are rather shallow. Remember this when you dig your planting holes. Dig no deeper than the depth of the actual root ball. You want it to rest on solid, undisturbed soil. Save your energy for digging a hole that is at least 1-1/2 times wider than the root ball, so the new roots can move horizontally into loose soil.

            Once you’ve planted your tree with the root ball at the same level as the surrounding soil, you need to mulch it to suppress weeds, prevent weed whacker damage and hold moisture for the roots. I use a three-inch layer of shredded hardwood bark mulch covering an area wider than the actual plant hole. I prefer shredded hardwood mulch over pine bark because the hardwood mulch decomposes to a nice topsoil and also because it does not wash away like the pine bark does. This is especially important on a slope. Hardwood mulch will hold its place on even the most vertical slope.

            Make sure you don’t leave any mulch against the trunk—you want to hold water near the roots, not the bark. Think of the point where the mulch meets the trunk as if it were the collar of a crewneck shirt rather than a turtleneck. Mulch pushed up against the bark of a tree will hold moisture and encourage rot or it may create a home for rodents who’ll eat the bark.

            Both sugar maples and red maples make good shade trees or street trees. They cast a wide shadow and will easily be around for a century or so if you follow these steps and get them off to a good start.

            

Salt Cedar Likes it Sunny and Dry

Tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) is a risk if you plant it in the southwestern US. It evolved on floodplains in Spain and spreads along creeks in dry country. In higher rainfall areas it's not a threat and is in fact terrifically drought hardy and has tiny pink blooms in summer. 

 

Called salt cedar because it pulls salts from deep in the soil and then spits it out from its leaves as a way to discourage competitors. Haven't noticed that effect in our garden. Our salt cedar has an underplanting of leadwort that looks happy and is blooming too. I cut the salt cedar back hard every other late winter or whenever it looks ragged. It's a small tree, but I treat it as a large perennial and whack it back as needed.

With winter pruning it only gets about 8'-10' high and about 3' wide. Very light and airy appearance, good contrast for low-growing, horizontal plants like the leadwort. It's also next to a gardenia and the frilly foliage and blue-green color make a nice contrast. We just give it mulch in winter and no fertilizer. And certainly no water after it's established. I think there's no risk of losing it in summer. 

 

 

Free-Ranging Formosa Lily

When other plants in the summer garden look like they want a vacation, Formosa lily launches a fleet of bright white flowers. With fragrance. 

 

The stalk in full sun is about 6'-7' tall. It gently seeds in around the garden so plants in shade are appropriately shorter. Sometimes 2'-3' high. Blooms through the month of August and into Sept. here in NC piedmont, zone 7. Once the 8" long flowers pass, their drooping form is replaced by upward facing seed pods that look like a candelabra made of skinny gourds. Seeds ripen by fall and seedpods can be left to dress up the winter garden or cut and sown wherever you need something upright and drought-hardy that blooms in summer.  

Originally from the island of Taiwan, their latin name is Lilium formosanum. Some varieties have pink or red color on the outside of the petals. 

  

Pot Marigold at the End of the Rainbow?

Originally christened Mary's Gold in the 12th century, Calendula officinalis was considered a remedy for small pox, indigestion and "evil humors of the head." Their bright yellow, long-lasting flowers are also a remedy for a tired-looking garden. And here a native bee both pollinates the flower and is enjoying getting it's fill of pollen. It will then make packets from the pollen to feed it's young after they hatch. 

Another form of Mary's Gold?

 

These annual calendulas have seeded into a sunny, dry bed and a partially shaded, sometimes moist bed from one specimen we picked up at a plant sale. 

 

The foliage has a fragrance that reminds me of collards. So it must be good for your health. And the fragrance may deter deer. 

Originally from the Mediterranean basin and points east, so it's pretty drought hardy. And if it wants to keep on seeding-in and saving us from spending money buying plants--more power to it. 
  

Blackberry Surprise

It's July and wild blackberry vines are rambling and scratching their way into everyone's heart and belly. 

The "blackberry" below comes around a few months later, but I would not eat it.

 

Because they are the seedpods of an ornamental plant called Blackberry lily which is blooming now. 
 

 This biennial (flowers and sets seed in it's second summer and then dies) is one of Chris's favorites. She loves the summery orange color and the iris-like foliage. But it's not in the iris family--it's instead called Belamcanda chinensis. 

This drought hardy plant also falls into our category of "gentle-self-seeders." One mature plant in our garden will probably spawn half-a-dozen seedlings to replace it. And since the foliage is two-dimensional, they can slip in sideways between perennials without crashing the party the way sprawling blackberry brambles will. 

When the seed pods ripen and bust open in October, you can toss the seed into some fallow roadside for a little no-cost guerrilla gardening. 

Creeping Jenny Swings Both Ways

Most plants like things just-so: very wet or very dry; lotsa shade or lotsa sun. But not both. Creeping Jenny reliably swings both ways: wet or moderately dry, shade or sun. 

And it's a very low-growing ground cover that can work it's way under other perennials that go dormant in winter--like peonies--and keep the garden from looking empty in the off-season. 

The variety of Creeping Jenny in the photo is called Lysimachia nummularia "Aurea" because of it's yellow-green color. The straight species is a light green. The coin-like leaves inspired the common name, moneywort. ("wort" is old English for "plant")

Native to Europe and Turkey.

Can tolerate some occasional foot traffic--possible lawn alternative if you're not playing a lot of football.

 

Figs !

Lots of people worry that fig trees aren't hardy here in NC. But figs thrive in southern heat. They can even produce a good crop in part shade and dry soil. And without any spraying, so we don't have to worry about using chemicals. Figs are probably the easiest fruit crop to grow organically in the south. 

The only real threat is birds eating the figs, but we've convinced the birds that the neighbor's yards are safer by hanging an inflatable snake balloon in the fig tree to scare them away. We just move the snake every other day as the figs ripen, so they don't get used to it--and that matches our harvesting schedule anyway. 

We have one fig tree called Violette de Bourdeaux that produces a late spring crop (the sweetest), a mid summer crop (the heaviest) and a late summer crop (the lightest). It has a rich, sweet flavor, juicy texture, dark purple-black skin and strawberry colored flesh. Bought it from Edible Landscaping Nursery in Afton Virginia. When I read in the catalog, that this was the one that all the chefs wanted, I had to have it. 

Edible Landscaping's mission is to find or develop fruiting plants that do well in the south and can be grown organically. 

Since this fig produces more than we can eat, Chris makes a fig syrup and our neighbor makes a spicy fig jam. So we save money and have fresh fruit over a long season and conserved fruit through the winter. And we give a lot away to friends. We've also eaten the figs on Chris' pizzas and have dried them in the oven (but that took over 24 hours !). 

Here's a photo of our pretty figs getting stewed down for fig syrup. 

 

Here's a pic of some figs quartered with a dollop of goat cheese and a dribble of balsamic vinegar that Chris reduced on the stove. We shared these with some friends and brought a big plateful  to a potluck where they disappeared faster than a wheat field in a locust swarm.