O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

There's been a lot of yaying and naying lately about the issue of decorating for Christmas before Thanksgiving. Like most things in life, there are various reasons why people choose when to do their Christmas decorating and how they do it. I like to have my tree up by Thanksgiving, and here's why.

I'm a procrastinator. In fact, I'm The Queen of Procrastination and while you might think putting up a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving is contrary to procrastinating, it's actually my way of trying to overcome my affliction. If my house is already in the Christmas spirit, then I'm much more likely to be in the spirit too and get my shopping done before Christmas Eve. It's supposed to work that way in theory anyway.

Now, let's get this whole "celebrating one holiday at a time" thing out of the way. I love Thanksgiving. LOVE. IT. Family, good food, Macy's parade, football (I can't believe I even said that), and relaxing with no guilt about doing it. But of course, Thanksgiving is also all about being grateful for your blessings and our family sure has plenty of those to be thankful for. Just thinking about them puts me in a festive mood.

Christmas decorations put me in a festive mood, too, and as a Christian, the birth of Christ is a blessing to be thankful for. So Thanksgiving is the perfect way to usher in the Christmas season by being first thankful and then celebrating by sharing with others in the form of gifts. Having Christmas decorations up at Thanksgiving just isn't a conflict of interest for me. It's all just one big, long lovefest.

Part of what makes this early decorating possible is that we don't put up a real tree. This year will make the 41st Christmas my husband and I have celebrated as man and wife and in all those years, the only time we had a real tree was our first Christmas. I saved a pine cone from that tree, framed it, and it sits out all year long on a bookshelf.

 I have a fear of a dried-out real Christmas tree going up in flames due to some sort of lighting malfunction and I don't need that kind of stress. Not when there are perfectly lovely artificial trees that give the same effect. I understand the whole experience of shopping for the tree and making that an event in itself, but I'm willing to forgo that for safety's sake.


If you're a real tree kind of person, let me help you keep your cut tree as safe as possible by giving you some tips:

• Firs, pines, and spruces will hold onto their needles equally well, but the biggest factor for this will be how long it's been since the tree was cut. Unless you cut the tree yourself, you probably have no way of really knowing this. If the tree is losing more than a few needles when you shake it or pull your hand along one of its branches, pick another tree.
  
  
•  Just before you put your Christmas tree in its stand, make a fresh cut straight across, at the base of the trunk, removing at least a half-inch of wood. Sap begins to seal off the cut so making a fresh cut will allow the tree to better absorb water.
   
• Do NOT whittle away any of the wood on the sides of the trunk to make it fit in the stand, because it's the outer layer of the trunk (the cambium) just under the bark that transfers the water up into the rest of the tree. Drilling a hole up into the middle of the tree trunk won't help the tree take up water, so don't bother.
   
• Water temperature won't affect uptake and there's no proof that adding substances to the water really helps prolong freshness, so don't waste your time doing that either. Check your water level every day to make sure you keep the base of the trunk submerged. 
   
• Keep your tree well away from any heat source, and the cooler you keep the room, the longer the tree will last before drying out.
   
• Choose low energy lights, such as LED lights or in the case of incandescent lighting, the miniature ones give off less heat, lowering chances of causing dry needles to ignite. Of course, if your tree is that dry and brittle, it shouldn't be in your house anyway. 

The holidays hold special meaning for each of us, so let's all enjoy them in our own way and pray for peace. I think we can all agree we need more of that, no matter what time of year it is.







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A similar version of "O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree" first appeared in my In the Garden weekly column in the Paulding Progress newspaper on December 2, 2015.

Let's Drink to Apples!

My husband and I have taken many, many evening walks down our road over the years. As far as country roads go in these parts, this one provides some interesting scenery. There are the neighbors that have an assortment of animals, a cemetery that has many familiar names, and we cross two creeks lined with wildflowers.

Many years ago, we also noticed a mature apple tree growing in the deeper ditch on the west side of the road about three-quarters of a mile south of our house. I've always been curious as to how it got there, knowing that there are random apple trees planted by Johnny Appleseed in our general area.

Wikipedia

Logic tells me that while it's fun to fantasize, that tree more than likely grew from an apple that got tossed out the car window after someone long ago enjoyed it as a snack. And if that was the case, then it's highly unlikely that Johnny Appleseed had anything to do with planting it.

John Chapman planted several apple orchards as he traveled these parts, but the trees he planted didn't produce eating apples. Apples eaten for their fruit didn't become popular until the last century. Until that time, apples were almost exclusively used for cider.

This is because apples don't come true to seed and though they grow readily this way, the resulting fruit is almost always very, very sour. Henry David Thoreau described the taste of apple fruit as sour enough "to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream." So how do we get those deliciously sweet varieties such as 'Honeycrisp', 'Gala' and 'Jazz'?

Just like other new cultivars are created by crossing two varieties with the desired traits, so it is with apples, but because of their extreme variability, once a favorable result has been found, propagation is done by budding or grafting.

I personally learned about apple genetics by reading The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan as well as watching the PBS series by the same name. It never occurred to me that the apple wasn't commonly eaten until our not-so-distant past.

Like so many heirlooms, the apple varieties have dwindled to just a fraction of what used to be grown years ago. Back when they were open-pollinated, there were no less than 7500 different varieties of apples. Cultivated varieties for commercial use have basically created a relative monoculture, but apple enthusiasts are growing some of the older heirlooms in greater numbers.

The U.S. is number two in the world's apple production (China is number one), but apples aren't native to our country. They originated in what is now Kazakhstan and were brought to the U.S. by the Puritans. 'Red Delicious' currently leads all varieties in production.

I've not tasted the apples growing on the tree in that nearby ditch, mainly because there's a huge swath of poison ivy in the way of being able to reach the tree. But my curiosity may get the better of me and I might just have to figure out a way to pick that apple. I feel a bit like Eve...

Previously published as "Let's Drink to Apples!" by Kylee Baumle in the Paulding Progress newspaper in October 2013.  Reprinted and modified here with permission.

7 Reasons to Shop at an Independent Garden Center

Clichés are just so...cliché. When we see them, our eyes tend to move quickly past them, our brains barely registering the words we just read. Yet we somehow grasp the meaning in a split second, giving clichés inherent value even as we dismiss them as a tired communication tool. 

You hear it all the time - “Buy local!” We generally take it to mean that we should spend our dollars in locally-owned businesses. It can be a tough row to hoe (cliché alert!) for the smaller independent businesses, as they struggle to maintain their presence alongside the big stores. 

It can be a dilemma for the shopper too, because we all only have so many dollars to spend and we want to get the most for them. I will be the first to admit that if I can buy something considerably cheaper at a big box store, that’s where I’m going to buy it. Add to it that many times those stores are more convenient in terms of location as well as being a “one-stop shop,” and it’s hard not to shop there. 


But there are compelling reasons to buy your plants and garden materials locally. “Local” can be an ambiguous term, but generally it means a business that is both located in your community and owned by people who live there. 

Consider these things when you’re shopping for plants and other garden items: 

• Your local garden center often carries the same plants you might find in a big box store, but if you want something out of the ordinary, you’re more likely to find it in a smaller, independent garden center (IGC). There’s a lot of thought given by the IGC owner when they make their buying decisions. They want to carry attractive plants that perform well, including those tried-and-true varieties that we’re familiar with, but they also want to cater to those who seek the unusual.
  



• It’s always a gamble as to what will sell well. No business owner wants to get stuck with inventory that buyers passed over. But IGCs also don’t want their business to look like one you’d see in Every City, USA. And besides, those big box stores don’t have as much invested (relatively) as the independently owned ones do.
  
   
• You know those plants that have a one-year guarantee at the chains? When you return a plant there, the store doesn’t lose money outside of the lost sale. They only pay for the plants that go out their doors and stay out. That loss is borne by the supplier and/or grower. Not so with the smaller independents. So when they offer plant guarantees, appreciate what that means to their business.
  
   
• IGC owners also care a lot about whether their customers have success with what they buy, and they often choose to carry plants that have a high rate of success for their particular geographic and climatic area. That means happy customers, which in turn means repeat business. Happy customers often share their experiences with others and word of mouth can be the best PR a business can have.
  
   
• Local garden centers are known to take better care of their plants too, and healthy plants already have a better start in your garden before they even go out the door. As a rule, IGCs are more knowledgeable about plants in general and the ones they carry in particular. They can help you make decisions about what would work best in your individual situation.
  
   
• Many times, the local garden centers purchase plants as liners and grow them larger themselves. That may mean that the plants you buy locally have acclimated themselves to local conditions, thereby increasing their chances of success in your garden.
  
   
• Want a certain plant or a large quantity of something? Sometimes local businesses will special order things for you. Good luck trying to get a big box store to order you a couple of flats of something specific. 

It’s no secret that some of the smaller garden centers have been struggling. In March, I spoke with the owner of one of them at the Fort Wayne Home & Garden Show and during the hard part of this past winter (which was pretty much all of it), he shared with me that just keeping his greenhouses going cost him $200 a day in propane. It takes a lot of sales to support costs like that and it’s representative of the things that all businesses have to face, whether large or small. But these things have a bigger impact on the smaller businesses. 

Sometimes I think we take our local small businesses for granted. We assume they’re doing okay and that they’ll always be around, but they won’t be if we don’t support them. There’s another cliché that I’m sure you’re familiar with: “It takes a village to raise a child.” It also takes a village to make a village.

Previously published as "Buy Local! - The Garden Version" by Kylee Baumle in the Paulding Progress newspaper in April 2014.  Reprinted and modified here with permission.

Six Reasons to Plant a Garden

Those of us who garden are just full of reasons why we do so.  For us, it’s almost a no-brainer and we can’t imagine not gardening.  But to those who’ve never done it, some convincing might be in order and I’m here to try and do that, because there are some very compelling reasons to garden.

First of all, there are all kinds of gardens: flower, vegetable, orchards, container, indoor, rock, etc.  Not all forms of gardening appeal to all people.  But I’m betting you can find one of them that suits your personality and that will enrich your life in more ways than you might think.

• Let’s just look at the mental health aspect of it. Flowers make us smile. And working in the soil actually causes beneficial bacteria to be released into the air that raises the level of serotonin in the brain when you breathe it in.  That’s what makes us feel good.  Think about that!  All that’s required is to stir the dirt around and you’ll feel happy!  And if you’re going to do that, you might as well put something in that hole that serves another purpose.
   
•  You know there’s nothing that tastes better than fresh food right from the garden.  You can grow your own with no pesticides and you can harvest it right when it’s ready and then eat it the same day, within minutes even.  No grocery store produce can match freshness like that.
  
  
  
   
•  You choose the seed. Even if you can buy fresh, when you choose your own seed, you can choose whether or not you want to eat genetically engineered produce (not to be confused with GMO) or food the way nature made it. The jury is still out on what effects GE crops may have on human beings, but when you grow your own, you can avoid that issue altogether.
   
•  Your selection of what you can eat grows exponentially when you grow your own, because of all the varieties of seeds there are to choose from. Commercial growers grow what transports best and takes the least amount of time from seed to harvest.  When was the last time you saw a Charentais melon for sale in the grocery store?
   
•  Whether you grow edibles or flowers, gardening is educational and is great exercise.  There are a number of lessons to be learned in the garden at all stages of the season.  And if you don’t think gardening is good exercise, just talk with a gardener in the spring after they’ve been out of the garden all winter.
  
  
  
   
•  There is a sense of wonder and an appreciation for miracles big and small that occur in the garden.  It isn’t just the plants, the fruits, the flowers; it’s all that goes with it.  Birds love gardens and will help with pest control.  Butterflies adore them and need them to live.  Children grow up knowing where food comes from and may be introduced to a lifelong activity.  The sights and smells of a garden are one of the most organic pleasures life has to offer.

I know…some of you are saying you don’t have room for a proper garden or you don’t even have a yard.  There are plenty of things that can be grown in containers on porches, patios, balconies and windowsills.  You don’t need much. If you’ve never grown one thing before, start simple, with one planted pot in a sunny window.  You may find that it’s like the proverbial potato chip – you can’t stop with just one.


 This article by me first appeared in the Paulding Progress newspaper in April 2013 and is republished here by permission.