Pruning chores around my Bedford, New York farm continue with the large hornbeam hedge in front of my main greenhouse.
The English hornbeam, Carpinus betulus, is a fast-growing deciduous tree - it can grow about four to five feet per year. From a distance, it appears solid, but light streams in through the leaves providing a pleasing and dappled space. I like to maintain my hornbeam hedge using a traditional European style of pruning, so it has a nice, sculpted appearance. This means, it’s crucial that the hedge is pruned regularly, so it doesn’t look overgrown and unruly.
Enjoy these photos.
This tall hornbeam hedge grows in the parking lot directly in front of my main greenhouse. It is quite pretty here, but serves primarily as a privacy and noise barrier from the road. This photo was taken before any pruning began – it has so much lush new growth.
Carpinus betulus is native to Western Asia and central, eastern, and southern Europe, including southern England. Because of its dense foliage and tolerance to being cut back, this hornbeam is popularly used for hedges and topiaries. Hornbeams are often confused with the common beech because of their similar leaves; however, the hornbeam leaves are actually smaller and more deeply furrowed than beech leaves. The leaves are deciduous and alternate, with serrated margins.
Looking inside the hedge, the hornbeam has pale grey bark with vertical markings.
Here’s another view – all of the hornbeams are planted in a very straight line just a couple feet apart. One can see the sturdy branches and how they grow outward and slightly upward.
The hornbeam grows pretty quickly – about four to five feet per year, so it is important to trim and sculpt it regularly. Hornbeam is also very hardy and frost resistant, which is good in this area.
We trim the hornbeams every year around this time. We use a traditional English style of pruning, which includes a lot of straight, clean edges. A well-manicured hedge can be stunning in any garden, but left unchecked, it could look unruly.
The crew does most of it by hand. Everyone uses Japanese Okatsune shears specially made for trimming hedges. These shears are user friendly, and come in a range of sizes.
It is more time consuming this way, but it is also more exact and provides straight clean cuts – very important when sculpting formal hedges.
Pasang keeps the shears close to shoulder level. This allows the best control. He also holds the shears closer to the base of the blades.
Phurba works from the ground with his Japanese hedge shears. He stops every few minutes to assess his work.
Pasang works from the ladder. Here, one can see what has been cut and what hasn’t.
Here’s a view looking up – the bottom has been trimmed, but the top has not.
It doesn’t take long for the ground to fill with clippings – and this is just from the front of the hedge.
Once the front face is done, our Hi-Lo is moved in, so Pasang could trim the uppermost sections. The Hi-Lo is very useful, and because the hedge is accessible from the parking lot, it always comes in handy for this task.
Domi works from the ground raking up all the clippings, which are loaded onto a truck or the back of a Polaris and then taken to the compost pile where they will decompose for next year’s garden dressing.
Pasang is lifted above the hedge, so he could safely trim the top from the cage of the Hi-Lo. The top of this hedge section is trimmed perfectly level using our STIHL battery powered extended hedge trimmer.
From above looking in one direction, all the tops are trimmed flat.
Here is what Pasang still has to prune – it’s a big difference, but this shows all the growth from the past year. Pasang is carried from section to section very carefully. This is also a good time for him to evaluate the pruning from another angle, and to decide where adjustments are needed.
Here is a side view showing how the front is sculpted with the taller sections protruding just a bit. It is now beginning to look very straight and square.
And here is the finished hedge – trimmed beautifully. It looks great. Next to be trimmed is the long European hornbeam hedge that runs along the back of my Summer House and Winter House. What pruning chores are you doing in your yard? Share with me in the comments section below.
It's berry picking season once again and the blueberries at my Bedford, New York farm are ripe for the picking!
Plump, juicy, and sweet, with vibrant colors from red to the deepest purple-black, blueberries are one of nature’s finest treasures. I love to use them for jams, jellies, and pies, but they’re also wonderful with cereal, in pancakes and cobblers, and of course, in handfuls on their own. Low in fat, yet packed with vitamin-C and antioxidants, it’s not surprising they’re one of America’s favorite fruits to eat.
Yesterday, we started picking lots of delicious blueberries. Enjoy these photos.
My blueberries are all from these bushes located near my Flower Cutting Garden and large Equipment Barn, next to my grove of quince trees. The posts are the same 18th-century Chinese granite uprights I use for the clematis pergola, my apple espaliers, and to support my raspberry bushes. For most of the year, these healthy blueberry bushes are left open under this large pergola. And just before the bushes are laden with fruits, we place a net over the pergola to protect the developing berries from all the birds.
The netting covers the blueberry bushes on all sides and on the top. I use a durable plastic bird netting, which can be reused every season for several years.
Here is a closer look at the netting we use. The holes are flexible enough so if a bird does manage to get in, it can also get out.
These sod staples are used to keep the netting taut and well-secured, but still easy enough to remove for harvesting. They are placed every few inches to ensure there are no openings for curious ground critters.
The netting is pulled taut to the ground and then secured. The sod staples are great because they also allow for easy access to the bushes when it’s time to harvest.
Here’s my housekeeper, Elvira, just starting to pick the first blueberries of the season. She is using two-pint wooden berry picking baskets made from natural flat wood slats.
These bushes are so full! Bunches are hanging from nearly every branch. I grow many blueberry varieties, including ‘Bluegold’, ‘Chandler’, ‘Darrow’, ‘Jersey’, and ‘Patriot’.
Blueberries are about five to 16 millimeters large with a flared crown at the end. They are pale greenish at first, and then reddish-purple and finally dark purple-blue when ripe for picking. When harvesting the fruits, select plump, full berries with a light gray-blue color. A berry with a hint of red is not fully ripened.
Blueberries were once called “star fruits” by North American indigenous peoples because of the five-pointed star shaped crown.
They are also covered in a protective powdery epicuticular wax known as the “bloom”. These berries are just right for picking. Blueberries are high in fiber, high in vitamin-C, and contain one of the highest amounts of antioxidants among all fruits and vegetables.
And, the blueberry is one of the only foods that is truly naturally blue. The pigment that gives blueberries their distinctive color is called anthocyanin – the same compound that provides the blueberry’s amazing health benefits.
Blueberries are perennial flowering plants. They are classified in the section Cyanococcus within the genus Vaccinium. Vaccinium also includes cranberries, bilberries, huckleberries, and Madeira blueberries.
The day was cloudy, but quite pleasant with temperatures in the 70s, so Elvira set out to pick as many blueberries as she could before the temperatures soared into the upper 80s.
Standard blueberry bushes grow about six to 10-feet tall. New shoots grow from the crown under the soil. At the base, blueberry shrubs have multiple canes growing directly out of the soil in clumps. The canes or branches are smooth and thornless. These bushes have done so well here at the farm. I am always so pleased with how prolific they are. A single mature blueberry bush can produce up to six thousand blueberries per year.
Blueberry bushes have glossy leaves that are green or bluish-green from spring through summer. The leaves are ovate, in an irregular oval or slightly egg shape that is wider at the bottom than the top. Blueberry leaves can also be harvested and dried for teas.
There will be lots of berries to pick for the next several weeks. We check the bushes every day from now through August.
Unfortunately, many blueberries also fall to the ground. All those picked are carefully inspected – only the best are saved.
Blueberries are among the most popular berries for eating. Here in the United States, they are second only to strawberries.
This first harvest was very successful. How do you like to enjoy blueberries? Let me know in the comments.
And here’s a sneak peek… in a few weeks, we’ll have many, many peaches to pick from my orchard – I can’t wait.
Here at my Bedford, New York farm, we're picking lots of wonderful and nutritious vegetables from the garden.
Yesterday, after another brief rain shower, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, and my housekeepers, Enma Sandoval and Elvira Rojas, harvested a bounty of beautiful vegetables - broccoli, artichokes, lettuce, peas, fava beans, Swiss chard, hot peppers, cilantro, and more. While the recent heat has affected some of the cold-weather vegetables, others are thriving.
Here are some photos.
This year, I decided to display all my potted citrus in front of the vegetable gardens. Here, they can be watered and monitored easily. The vegetable gardens are entirely fenced in to protect the crops from hungry creatures. All the plants are growing well – and some are ready to pick.
In one garden along both sides of our two trellises, we have lots of peas – one side for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and the other side for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas. They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from pests and diseases.
By early July every year, these peas are plump, and ready to be picked. The pea, Pisum sativum, is an annual herbaceous legume in the family Fabaceae.
The pods can range in size from four to 15-centimeters long and about one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half centimeters wide. Each pod contains between two and 10-peas.
Snap peas are also edible-podded peas that differ from snow peas in that their pods are round as opposed to flat.
Elvira and Enma picked many peas. Extend the harvest season by re-planting in two-week successions. Succession planting is the practice of following one crop with another to maximize a garden’s yield. It is an efficient use of gardening space and time.
Here’s another full box of peas – I hope your pea crops have done as well as mine.
Broccoli is a hardy vegetable of the cabbage family that is high in vitamins A and D. And, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA, the average American eats more than four-pounds of broccoli a year. Because broccoli is a cold weather crop, meaning that it grows best in soil with temperatures between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, it hasn’t been as productive this season. The warmer weather causes it to bolt, or go to flower sooner. Fortunately, there are still quite a few that Ryan can pick.
Look at this broccoli plant – there is no head growing in the middle due to the extreme heat over the last couple of weeks.
Some of the cabbages are also not as large, but these are growing nicely. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green. Savoy cabbage leaves are more ruffled and a bit more yellowish in color.
Lettuce, Lactuca sativa, is a cultivated plant of the daisy family, Asteraceae. Lettuce is a fairly hardy, cool-weather vegetable that thrives when the average daily temperature is between 60 and 70-degrees Fahrenheit. Fortunately, we have had a lot of great lettuces to pick so far. I love all the different colored lettuces. We always grow several varieties.
Ryan harvested several globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus – popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually flower buds, which are eaten when they are tender.
Here’s a purple artichoke ready to harvest. Purple artichokes are loved for their superior flavor and vibrant color. When harvesting, always use sharp pruners and carefully cut them from the plant leaving an inch or two of stem. Artichokes have very good keeping qualities and can remain fresh for at least a week.
Vicia faba, also known as the broad bean or fava bean is an ancient member of the pea family. They have a nutty taste and buttery texture. I always grow lots of fava beans.
And of course, our tomato plants are all very strong. We’re growing both hybrid and heirloom varieties. Staking is the best way to ensure the plants get the support they need for the many vegetables they will produce this season. Look at these beautiful young tomatoes. There are already so many growing. Most tomatoes are red, but other colors are possible, including green, yellow, orange, pink, black, brown, white and purple. We’ll be harvesting a lot of tomatoes later this summer.
Swiss chard is a leafy green vegetable often used in Mediterranean cooking. The leaf stalks are large and vary in color, usually white, yellow, or red. The leaf blade can be green or reddish in color.
Here’s a bright red Swiss chard still growing in the garden bed.
Basil, also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the family Lamiaceae. Basil is native to tropical regions from central Africa to Southeast Asia. It is a tender plant, and is used in cuisines worldwide. Since basil grows in tropical climates, it grows well in hot weather. Actually, this plant can thrive in very warm temperatures, and it grows amazingly well up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
There is also a lot of fresh and fragrant cilantro. Often known in the United Kingdom as coriander, cilantro comes from the plant Coriandrum sativum. In the United States, the leaves of the plant are referred to as cilantro and the seeds are called coriander. Cilantro is also commonly known as Chinese parsley.
There are lots of hot peppers too. The jalapeño is a medium-sized chili pepper of the species Capsicum annuum. It is mild to medium in pungency depending on the cultivar.
And we harvested several summer squash. These spherical summer squashes, available in dark green, light green, and yellow, are very similar to zucchini.
Everything is loaded in trug buckets and brought up to my flower room, where they will be washed if needed, then bagged and stored in the refrigerator until ready to use. How was your harvest this week?
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