Gardening : How to Wash Residues Off Produce
QUESTION: Please tell me if washing fruits and vegetables will remove pesticide residues.
ANSWER: If the pesticides are inside the fruit or vegetable, as happens with systemic types, washing or peeling will not help. For most produce, washing the outside with a solution made by adding a few drops of liquid detergent per pint of water works better than just rinsing with water.
Some people tell us they use a bar of Ivory soap to make a light suds, since it doesn’t have any artificial colors or perfumes that some detergents and soaps may have.
For Hot Spots, Try Sun-Loving Periwinkle
Q: We have a dry spot next to the foundation of our house. It gets full sun and is hot. Is there any plant that will do well there?
A: A good heat-loving plant that needs to be grown more is Vinca rosea or Catharanthus roseus (also called Madagascar periwinkle). We don’t mean the vinca vine (Vinca minor) which is used as a ground cover and commonly called myrtle.
Nor do we mean the one named Vinca major, which is used as a hanging vine in window boxes and hanging baskets.
The one we refer to is an annual sold as a bedding plant, which is becoming so popular that plant breeders are concentrating on new varieties. It won’t be long before this annual will be in colors resembling those of impatiens.
At present, there are many shades of pink and white with red or pink centers. They bloom freely all summer and fall and can be grown indoors as houseplants during winter. They make superb hanging basket plants. An added bonus is that they are relatively pest-free, in addition to their great tolerance for hot, dry weather.
Rotation May Help Boost Vegetable Yield
Q: Perhaps you can help me with a puzzling problem. I have planted a vegetable garden each spring for the last five or six years; however now the yield is way down, even though the plants are lush and green. I add amendments and fertilizer each time I replant, so what am I doing wrong? We live in a canyon area where sun is scant--a maximum of about five hours per day.
A: The problem could be not enough sun. Perhaps the trees have grown taller during the last six years. Too little sun would certainly cause plants to grow lush, but fruit poorly. You also might try fertilizing less, since that also promotes leafy greens at the expense of fruit, unless you are growing leafy greens of course.
You might also try crop rotation. Many plants shouldn’t be grown in the same spot year after year. This is even true of flowers, such as delphiniums. Harmful soil organisms build up in the soil where the plants grow, but moving them leaves these organisms behind. Put the tomatoes where the lettuce was, the lettuce where you grew carrots before and so on.
Tiffany Rose Acts More Like Floribunda
Q: “My Tiffany rose bush, now in its third spring, started acting like a floribunda rose, producing clusters of small roses on a long cane instead of producing a single large bloom on a stem. What puzzles me even more is that only half of the rose is doing this. The other half is behaving normally. Does this happen frequently with roses?”
A: First, let’s explain what a Tiffany rose is. It is classified as a hybrid tea with five-inch silvery pink blooms, each borne on a single stem. It has a rich fragrance and is mildew resistant.
Hybrid rose bushes have two “parts”--the top, which is the favored or “cultivated” section, and the bottom, known as “understock.” A bud is taken from a Tiffany plant in the nursery, and inserted into a vigorous understock, which soon nurses the bud into a desirable plant.
Certain things like a severe winter, insects, diseases or drought, etc, often kill the top portion or the cultivated rose, leaving the vigorous understock to produce its own blooms and finally take over the whole plant.
Sometimes, the hybrid part becomes weakened but still produces a live cane, while the understock sends up shoots that overshadow it. You have a floribunda with clusters of flowers because that is the understock which your Tiffany was budded onto. You can encourage the Tiffany to survive by pruning out all the shoots from the understock and leaving whatever shoots come up from above the graft union.
