Assessing the efficacy of plastic bin cold frames when growing broccoli in the late winter

I planted the first broccoli seedlings of the season a couple of days ago. Last year, I protected the broccoli seedlings planted during the late winter with simple plastic bin cold frames. This year, I will try to getter a better feel for the extent to which the cold frames are actually helping. Among the six seedlings shown in the picture to the left, three will always be protected overnight (as shown in the picture to the right). Otherwise, they will be treated the same. Even though I am looking at a rather small number of samples, this will hopefully be an informative comparison.

The plants were purchased at a nearby big box store and the pots had a Bonnie Plants sticker. The cultivar is called 'Packman.' This is the earliest I have ever planted broccoli seedlings, so it will be interesting to see how they will hold up during the rest of the winter.

Dive!, an intriguing documentary on food waste

About a year ago, I wrote a little review of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, by Tristram Stuart. This is a very important book, outlining the absolutely stupendous waste of resources linked to the runaway wastage associated with the predominant western food systems. However, many of the same issues are covered in the movie Dive!, a documentary centered around dumpster divers recovering perfectly good food discarded by grocery stores. While mostly taking a light approach, this documentary is both highly informative and quite inspiring. So for those who might be curious about Tristram Stuart's book, but have not gotten around to actually reading it, this movie might serve just as well. Given the magnitude of the problem, I applaud almost every effort to shine some light on these issues.

http://www.divethefilm.com

sweetgum

The annual gardening lull (represented by the State of the Union Address, the Superbowl, and Valentine's Day) has passed, and it is very much time to get serious about getting the garden ready for spring. The winter is of course a good time to be building soil, and I have been doing a fair amount of composting and I have taken lots of trips to Starbucks for used coffee grounds. However, more daylight, warmer temperatures, and getting some seeds started are naturally reasons for excitement as the spring is beginning to come around.

While being rather inactive in the garden, I have been planning a new feature for this blog that I am finally launching today. After some contemplation regarding how various plants impart different features to the everyday physical landscape throughout the seasons, I decided to feature locally growing plants on the blog on a weekly basis. With such a broad and seemingly inexhaustable topic, I am hoping to regularly pick out and present snippets of worthwhile information that ties in appropriately with the other subjects covered on this blog.


A sweetgum in my neighborhood on an early February evening.

First out in this new weekly series is sweetgum, or Liquidambar styraciflua, with both its common name as well as its genus name (Liquidambar)¹ referring to its sap. Hence, comments in tree guides regarding the sap being used as chewing gum are hardly suprising, but my tree guide (National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Trees, Eastern Region) also claims that sweetgum is an important timber tree.² Although printed in 2007, this book has apparently not been updated since it was first published in 1980, and I suppose such claims may be dated.

Closeup of trunk in the evening.

The same tree guide describes the bark as "gray; deeply furrowed into narrow scaly ridges."²  From my perspective, the bark is not an overly distinguishing feature.

On the other hand, the gumballs are a most distinguishing feature that makes the tree very easy to spot in the winter.

As a street tree, sweetgums are also notorious for their gumball litter.

While working  on this blog post, I learned that there are a variety of sweetgum cultivars out there. Trees have been selected and propagated for traits like reduced fruit production, growth patterns, as well as leaf and bark characteristics.³ 

The star-shaped leaves of sweetgums are quite distinct, and will certainly be prominently featured the next time this tree is designated as the plant of the week (this would be at a different time of the year).

1 http://www.museum.state.il.us/muslink/forest/htmls/trees/L-styraciflua.html
Viewed 2-24-2012
2  Little, EL. 1980. The Audubon Society field guide to North American trees. Eastern Region. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York.
3 Sternberg, G. and Wilson, J. 2004. Native Trees for North American Landscapes. Timber Press Inc. Portland, Oregon, USA.