Barely A Shadbush Berry to Eat

It's been another bad year for shadbush berries. You know, those tasty red berries borne by our native shrub that blooms when the shad migrate up the mighty Delaware River to spawn? Don't recognize the name "shadbush"? Maybe serviceberry or Amelanchier rings a bell. Oh, well. To not be familiar with shadbush is to be saved the dismay of witnessing the corruption of its bounty by cedar apple rust.

How sweet the memory, though, of going to what was once Kinko's out on Route 1 and finding a shadbush loaded with ripe berries at the front door--a secret feast in plain sight.

That memory seems more like a dream now, as nearly all the shadbush berries I encounter are a study in disfigurement, as if each berry had donned a grotesque Halloween costume. Even the catbird, so grateful for the berry bushes I've planted in the backyard, seems to have lost interest. If the fruit of a shadbush were a drupe, one could say "Berries, berries, everywhere, but not a drupe to eat."

There's a nice grove of shadbush next to Frist Center on campus, where at least a few berries aren't affected.

The name of this fungal disease implies that it alternates most notoriously between apple trees and cedars, which may explain why there were these garish growths on an arborvita two blocks from my house a couple weeks ago.

Some treatment recommendations can be found on the web, such as here and here, and there may be resistant shadbush varieties out there, but half the pleasure of eating them was the serendipity, the surprise gift recognizable to only a few.

Water, Water, Everywhere

Water's everywhere in Princeton, but it's not always easy to get it to where it's needed. Take the raised beds at the Princeton High School as a for instance--seventeen beds, installed in a sunny patch behind the school in the fall of 2009 with great spirit and optimism. There must have been thirty of us, kids and adults, cutting, nailing, hauling, filling. Piles of lumber and rich soil, a table with hot cider and chili on a cool autumn morning. It takes a village to make a school garden. And the designers made sure to put the gardens close to a spigot.

Only one problem. No one could get the spigot to work. Facilities staff tried to fix it, but it could only be accessed through some long tunnel deep in the bowels of the building, and somehow the fix never happened. For lack of water, many of the beds went unplanted, students came and went, interest rose but mostly fell, and except for some planting by the horticulture class, most of the beds grew weeds.

Fast forward six years, my younger daughter is a freshman, expresses some interest, and so she and a friend plant one of the beds with native wildflowers. I check the spigot. Still not working. I figure, why not try one more time. So I email facilities staff, and boom. They have a guy, Dan Galatro, crawl into the tunnel. He was apparently unfazed by whatever had proved intimidating before, because a day later, he emails that the spigot's fixed. How great is that? From my experience, once the water's flowing in the right place, all sorts of good things can flow from that.

So, the moral of that story is that good things can happen when people forget to be discouraged.

Meanwhile, there's the water situation at Potts Park, the little pocket park on Tee-Ar Place.

(I google "T R Potts princeton", thinking Tee-Ar Place and Potts Park are named after the developer of the neighborhood, who I'm guessing had daughters named Dorothy and Ann, because there's also a street called Dorann Avenue, and up pops a page from an ebook entitled "The Ancestry, Life, and Times of Hon. Henry Hastings Sibley", by Nathaniel West. It appears to say that T.R. Potts was brother of a director of the Princeton Theological Seminary, Rev. George Potts, a man of "majestic presence" and "universal esteem". The wife of the Dr. T.R. Potts in the book was named Abbie Ann.) 

Note, 9.9.2018: Just researched this further. There's a Dorothy Ann Potts living in Florida who appears to be related to Dorothea S. Potts and Theodore R. Potts, and lived in Princeton at one time. Theodore's development firm built the shopping center in 1954, and was called Clearview Associates, which explains the street named "Clearview," which may well have had a clear view southward across Princeton back in the 1950s when it was built. ("Relict" means widow.)

But I was writing about the drinking water issue at Potts Park, where children love to put sand from the sandbox into the bowl of the drinking fountain, thereby gumming up, or sanding up, the works and causing the parks dept. to turn off the water and leave an "out of order" sign posted nearby.

This has been going on for years, so my idea is, buy a drinking fountain that doesn't have a bowl, but instead drains to a raingarden. Here's one that drains down a ramp where kids presumably can put sand and see the water flow through it. Here's one that flows first to where dogs can take a sip, before draining into the ground.

The fountain will cost more, but maintenance will be less, kids will be able to play with sand and water in a positive way, and everyone will see how drainage can be used to grow native wildflowers. Call me an armchair optimist on a lazy Sunday morning, but I'm cooling down that bottle of "Wyn, Wyn, Wyn" champaign, and preparing a toast to working with gravity, nature, and children's nature, rather than struggling against them.

Needed: Used Flower Pots

Calling all plastic planting containers!

I'm potting up extra native plants from my backyard for a fundraiser, and am running out of pots. All sizes needed. Even large plastic pots may prove useful, for growing trees at the town's tree nursery.

If you have some used plastic pots laying around that you don't need, please drop them off at my doorstep at 137-139 N. Harrison St. in Princeton. We have a parking spot in front of the house where you can pull in.

Thanks in advance!

Mulberry Lament

Make one perfect berry, and you will be treasured for your rareness. Make a multitude, and you will be cursed for your messy opulence. Only a few will gaze upwards from the stained sidewalks, see beyond your suspicious generosity, your high altitude pick-me-if-you-can teasing ways, and gorge with gratitude.

Engaging Bamboo at Princeton Battlefield, Part 2

The Princeton Battlefield Society has an issue with the bamboo that was planted long ago near Clark House. It's expanded to the point that it's starting to block pathways. Responding with a workday in the spring, the volunteers had a big above-ground impact, reducing the forest of bamboo to long piles of thick stems. I made the case that, despite that great accomplishment, it was not time to declare victory. A month later, the bamboo would quietly send up a new forest of shoots from energy reserves in its massive root system, and restore its strength over the long summer.

From high atop my horse, or at least my horticultural soapbox, I offered a plan to outsmart a grass species long schooled in the art of survival. We'd wait until its new stems are ten feet tall, then seize the day, along with some loppers, and cut them all down. That's just what board members Kip and Marc did this past weekend, with an admirable sense of thoroughness. Now it's the bamboo's move. Having spent all that root energy for no return, it may abandon ambitions of tall stems for the time being and merely send up short, shrubby sprigs dense with leaves. If these, too, get cut down, then the bamboo's roots will be well along the way to being exhausted.

We found a few natives growing in the void left by removing the bamboo: spicebush, blackberry, black raspberry, jewelweed, and white snakeroot. Their presence is heartening, and though we discussed encouraging them it's too early to think about nurturing the peace. The bamboo is not yet quelled, and porcelainberry vines are creeping in from the sides, ready to outcompete the relatively tame natives.

We then headed across the backyard of the Clark House to check out another clone blocking another trail. We tasted a young bamboo shoot or two. Not bad, even raw. Maybe what we have here is a failure to utilize. If only Princeton had a ravishing hunger for locally grown bamboo shoots, the clones would be held nicely in check.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Mercer Street, the dogwood trees lining the field are growing new leaves that can actually get sunlight, now that they've been liberated from suffocating vines.

All of this speaks to the progress that can be made in local parks by a few people with some plant knowledge, some strategy, a few spare hours, and some loppers.

Turtle Rescue at NJ MVC

Why was a turtle heading towards the Motor Vehicles Commission offices? Had its shell registration expired? I had just renewed mine, and couldn't really just leave the turtle there.

On the way in, I had stopped for a family of geese crossing the road. Three had crossed but one young one had stayed behind. I was about to continue on my way when its mother suddenly appeared in front of my car, raised her wings and glared at me like a crossing guard until the straggler had joined them.

A turtle has no such option, and retreating into its shell was not going to work for long on that busy street.

So I carried it back to the wooded side of the road, told it to leave the annoyance of vehicle registration to humans, then watched with satisfaction as it quickly disappeared into the thicket.

More on Emerald Ash Borer

While in Chicago recently for a family reunion, I stepped out on the back patio of my niece's apartment in Hyde Park, looked up, and saw that a neighbor's tree was dying. The thick, opposite twigs suggested ash, and the loss of most of the crown, with only a few lower branches still green, suggested that Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) has made it to Chicago.

In a nearby Chicago park, I found the characteristic D-shaped exit hole (the native ash borers make a round exit hole).

New Jersey had been exceptional in being free of emerald ash borer, until last year when it was spotted in Somerset, then later in Mercer County. This year, at the May meeting of the Princeton Shade Tree Commission, council member Bernie Miller sounded reasonably sure he had seen one in his yard.

Our town arborist, Lorraine Konopka, has placed two traps on the east and west side of town--one at Valley Road, the other at Marquand Park. The traps contain a pheromone that will attract the insect if it happens to be nearby. Whether or not the traps catch any insects, it's best to assume that EAB has made its way to Princeton, and begin considering which ash trees to treat. It would be nice to think that some ash trees will resist attack on their own, but that hasn't been the experience elsewhere, as far as I know.

Below is info on treatment options from a previous post, along with some related links:

HOW TO SAVE SPECIMEN ASH TREES
It's important for those who have ash trees in their yards to know that those trees can be protected with systemic pesticides. Not all the available pesticides are equally effective, however. Though imidicloprid is being frequently recommended locally, the experts in other states that I've spoken to have all recommended emamectin benzoate (brand name Tree-Age, or Arbor-Mectin). 

Page 15 of this document is very informative, and says the emamectin is the most effective and longer lasting, while warning against use of imidicloprid on larger trees. Dave says that the EAB expert Deborah McCullough recommends emamectin, which is supported by this article about communities in Minnesota. The article is very optimistic about saving some ash trees, and offers this interesting approach:
"Burnsville is so sold on that idea of saving trees, rather than cutting them down, that it plans to encourage residents to treat their trees by extending to them the rates the city receives for pesticide injection. " 

Curtis Helm, a former Princetonian and currently an urban forester in Philadelphia's Parks and Rec department, advises against using imidicloprid on trees larger than 16" diameter. He says Philadelphia is treating 1000 ash with Tree-Age. 

In a previous post on the subject, I included notes from an extended conversation with Donald A. Eggen, Division Chief of Forest Pest Management Division of Pennsylvania. He, too, strongly recommended Tree-Age rather than products that use imidicloprid.
The emamectin benzoate, last time I checked, was more expensive, which may explain the local preference for imidicloprid, but that cost differential is reduced when the frequency of application is considered. 

Note: The Arbor-Mectin formulation is said to be absorbed into the tree more quickly than Tree-age, and therefore can be less expensive to apply. Both use the same active ingredient. 

Links to news stories about emerald ash borer being found in Mercer County are here and here.

There's also evidence from Yellow Springs, Ohio, that another native related to ash trees, the fringe tree, can be attacked by emerald ash borers. I've only seen fringe tree once in the wild, in a nature preserve I helped create in Durham, NC, though it is becoming more common as a beautiful ornamental shrub/tree.

Part 2 of Salvaging a Hidden Garden

When salvaging a garden like the one at Harrison Street Park, don't be deterred by the wall of mugwort and Canada thistle--the default weeds that swoop in when a garden loses its gardener.

Rather, be encouraged by woodland asters that have improbably survived in this thickening sea of weeds.

Commence pulling, not with a jerk but with slow, steady pressure so that the mugworts' formidable root systems come up with the plant.

Pull the garlic mustard, too, before its pods mature and shatter.

Some bag them up and throw them in the trash, but I don't want to create more trash to haul off to the landfill, and put the garlic mustard instead in one pile that can be monitored for any sprouting the next year.

This autumn clematis, though it has a pretty flower, is future trouble, known to form wide ranging underground root systems that sprout all over a garden. Dig it out while the digging is easy.

Star of Bethlehem looks innocent enough as well, but can also be invasive.

Honeysuckle shrubs, another component of the default landscape asserting itself, block the view of the garden and an attractive stone sitting area that was part of the installation five or six years ago.

A couple hours of pulling made the original plantings visible again, with the weeds forming a mulch along the edge, left to dry in the sun. If there was a leaf corral in the park to demonstrate sustainable landscaping, the weeds could have been tossed on top of last fall's pile of leaves, to slowly decompose and return to the soil.

The act of weeding usually leads to some discoveries, like this bred variety of columbine--another remnant from the original planting--

and this more authentic-looking foamflower, which like the woodland phlox is almost never seen in the wild. A garden in an urban park, then, can be a place for people to encounter components of the natural heritage that for one reason or another have not survived in Princeton's nature preserves.

One Good Garden Begets Another

A vision for attractive, low-maintenance curbside landscaping appears to be spreading across the municipal swimming pool's parking lot. The combination of mulch and perennials means little upkeep needed beyond an occasional watering.

The default lawnscaping still found elsewhere in the parking lot requires mowing, watering, and broadleaf herbicide, which I was told by a former rec dept director was necessary to keep white clover from growing. The clover flowers attract bees, which don't go well with barefoot swimmers.

The new garden looks to be the offspring of other gardens nearby. There's the Dogwood Garden Club's garden, here on the right, and Vikki's plantings in front of the parks and rec offices in the distance.

Vikki, a rec dept. employee, had already expanded her gardens beyond the walls and down towards the police department's parking lot. It's in the nature of well-tended gardens to expand, since the perennials benefit from occasional division, insuring lots of new plants that need new space to grow in.

At the other end of the municipal parking lot, another garden prospers, at Community Park Elementary. There's the edible portion in the front, and a more prairie-like garden in the back courtyard. Here, too, is a similar story of one garden inspiring another, until gardens now grow at all Princeton public schools.

A more detailed story of this greening of schoolyards--with Karla Cook, Dorothy Mullen, science teachers John Emmons and Martha Friend, and many other parents, students and teachers playing a role--can be found at the Princeton School Gardens website.

It may even explain what these cups signify--perhaps something to do with celebrating ten years of gardening at CP school.

Add to this the community gardens around the corner on John Street, overseen by the rec department, and one has a central example of a public gardening renaissance in Princeton.

Bamboo Battle Update

Herein, the importance of timing, persistence, and collaboration for vanquishing the bamboo bully in the backyard:

There's been great progress in the battle against bamboo being waged by my next door neighbor and myself. Last year, I alerted the long-distance landlord to the fact that the bamboo had started actually prying the siding off the other side of his house by growing up between the siding and the foundation. He hired a crew to take action. They cut down all the bamboo, planted grass, declared victory, and haven't been seen since.

That was an important first step, but it won't do much good unless there's followup. As this picture shows, the battle is far from won. In the lower right, you can see the bamboo has sprouted once again along the foundation. And over on the left, hundreds of new shoots have shot some ten feet into the air.

Another angle shows that the bamboo roots, still intact, had plenty of stored energy to send up long shoots that are just about to deploy solar panels in the form of leaves. Now, while the stems are soft and the roots have invested energy without yet gaining any solar return, is the time to cut these stems down. Otherwise, the bamboo will fortify its root system and be well along the way to regaining its former mischievous glory. Unfortunately, the neighbor on that side of the rental is not joining in the fight.

The prognosis is much better on my side of the rental. For my part, yesterday I dug up every last bamboo shoot I could find, pulling out as much of the root as I could. You can see in the lower right the thick rhizomes that form a dense clone, requiring that the whole clone of bamboo be repeatedly cut down in order to starve the roots.

Most likely, a similar resurgence is happening right now at the Princeton Battlefield, where volunteers cut down all the old bamboo stalks earlier this spring. How much easier their battle will be next spring if they round up a battalion now, when the time is most ripe for followup, and wield loppers to foil the bamboo's quiet resurgence.

(This link should take you to past posts about dealing with bamboo. Otherwise, type "bamboo" into the search box at the top of this blog.)

Two other neighbors appear to have teamed up with a chemical assist, which I've never tried.

Nature and Culture Walk at Herrontown Woods--Sunday, May 24, 1:30pm

On the premise that holiday weekends can sometimes have unexpected gaps, I'll be leading a nature and culture walk at Herrontown Woods--Sunday, May 24, at 1:30pm. Others with the new nonprofit Friends of Herrontown Woods may join in, to talk of recent habitat restoration efforts and the mysteries of magnetism found in some of the boulders. Culture comes into play with the Veblen and farming legacies. Meet at the parking lot (it's down the short road across from Smoyer Park entrance on Snowden Lane). Read about all the doings at Herrontown Woods on facebook and at VeblenHouse.org.

For some environmental theater, come by this month's Cafe Improv at the Arts Council of Princeton this Saturday, May 23, around 8:40-9pm, for some Climate Change Cabaret. We'll perform three comic sketches: Complaint Training, Carbon Dating, and Breaking Up With Your Car. The full lineup for the 7-10pm show is at http://www.cafeimprov.com/. Some videos of sketches we premiered at the Princeton Public Library this past March can be found at SustainableJazz.com.

The Rotary Club of Princeton includes the Veblen House at Herrontown Woods among its service projects. They're having their annual Pancake Festival fundraiser at Palmer Square this Saturday, 8am to noon. Money raised goes to community projects and scholarships. All you can eat--pancakes, fruit and bacon--for $10. Pre-K free.

Healthy Children, Healthy Planet Garden Fair Raises $5000 for Riverside Garden Programs

Build a garden, like Dorothy Mullen did over many years at Riverside School, and they will come. Dorothy has since moved on to other projects, but only after the garden had become woven into the school's curriculum. It's role in educating kids is sustained in part by the spring garden fair, which this year raised $5000. Dorothy had a table, where she was giving away seeds and making small batch sauerkraut with massaged cabbage and salt. She has an amazing website at thesuppersprograms.org that's full of recipes.

The cider press got a workout, turning apples bought at Terhune Orchards into cider. I asked a few questions, and got a story about how apples originate from an area of Asia where forests of wild apple trees still grow. He agreed that Stayman apples enhance the taste of cider, and said that most cider is made from red delicious apples, which originally had a lot of taste but lost it over years of breeding for color.

I had a little display about the Friends of Herrontown Woods and the Veblen House, along with some native wildflowers to sell.

A couple tables down, I was surprised to see edible insects being sold. I didn't think the future would arrive so soon. Competing with the grasshoppers and crickets were silkworm larvae and chocolate covered scorpions. I decided to be conservative and went with the grasshopper. Tastier than the batch I bought at a tourist site in Mexico.

Even the bees came to the fair, to check out the garden, to be checked out themselves, or to just bee.

It was a very pleasant way to raise money for a good cause. As chief organizer of the event, Beth Behrend, described, "These funds enable us to maintain our beautiful school gardens and offer over 120 hours of garden lessons per year to our 250+ Riverside children. These sessions are life-changing for our children and their families. Kids enjoy hands-on lessons about healthy food, where it comes from, how to plant, cultivate and harvest, and what it tastes like - and share this knowledge (and even requests for vegetables) at home. Princeton elementary schools now use garden “classrooms" to teach science, social studies, health, math and other subjects."

ALERT: Viburnum Leaf Beetle Spotted in Princeton

During an otherwise very positive weeding session in Harrison Street Park, I spotted a small Viburnum shrub that appeared to be a ghost of its former self. Every last leaf had been skeletonized. As I took a closer look, I was afraid of what I might find. Native to Europe, the Viburnum Leaf Beetle was transported to our continent and has been spreading across the eastern U.S., decimating native and exotic Viburnums as it goes.

This closeup corresponds with what can be found on the web. As far as I know, and I'll check with the extension service, this is the first documented occurrence in Mercer County. (Update, May 20: I called today, and they are in the process of confirming a sighting in Pennington.) The map on the NJ Invasive Species Strike Team website shows documented occurrences in other areas of NJ. My first encounter with it was some five years ago in a park in Pittsburgh, where a grove of arrowwood Viburnums (V. dentatum) had been transformed by the insect from robust green to brown ooze.

The only good news is that only two Viburnum shrubs in Harrison Street Park had been visually affected. This photo shows the early stages of attack. I tried to kill every last larva I could find.

Chances are, this is not the only infestation in Princeton. Homeowners should check any Viburnums in their yards for signs of damage. Some suggestions for control can be found at this link. Not all Viburnums are equally vulnerable, as this Cornell University list shows. Among our three most common native species, arrowwood Viburnum (V. dentatum) is the most vulnerable, followed by mapleleaf Viburnum (V. acerifolium), with blackhaw Viburnum (V. prunifolium) being the most resistant. Arrowwood Viburnum is generally found in low-lying woodlands. Mapleleaf Viburnum is a small shrub, rarely encountered except along the ridge. The blackhaw Viburnum is the largest and most common native Viburnum in Princeton. A Penn State website suggests that the insect prefers Viburnum species with less pubescence on the leaves.

Most people have heard of Emerald Ash Borer by now, which was spotted for the first time in Mercer County last year. One ecological consequence of losing most of our ash trees over the next ten years is that more sunlight will then reach the understory, which is dominated by non-native shrubs like honeysuckle, privet, asian Photinia and winged Euonymus. Viburnums are a main component of the native understory. If they are severely weakened by Viburnum leaf beetle, then they'll be even less able to compete with exotics for that additional sunlight. A recent presentation by entomologist Douglas Tallamy in Princeton offered evidence that not only is the foliage of native plant species necessary for the survival of countless species of insects, but their berries are much more nutritious for birds. How we are to keep foodchains intact in our forests is something of a question.

In addition to being vigilant and acting quickly if an infestation is found, one thing to do is take a moment to appreciate the Viburnums and ashes we have--the play of light on their leaves, the colors they turn in fall. In a largely unregulated world where powerful forces of change continue to be unleashed, there's a heightened poignancy in what we all too often take for granted.