The Mating Season

Who would have thought the juices would start flowing in our solar system so early? Daffodils are up at least 3 weeks early, and the flowering trees are delighted to see warmth and sunshine. Gotta plant; gotta till, gotta mate.

Although for the human species, the mating season is far from seasonal. Mating is “de rigueur”, and it seems we go about it quite well without any advice from bloggers and pundits.  For the feathered and furry of the universe, the mating season is governed by the length of daylight, but even more so by the warmth of the winds and the temperature of the air. When it gets warm early, the creatures start stirring.

  

A whole new world of birds is around us. Not only will they come and eat more food put out in your feeders, but also they will bring the babies with them. The Robins are scooting around the yard, cocking their heads to that sound we never hear—a worm turning. Precisely, without faltering, the Robin knows where to look and grabs its prey with ease. It really is like those childlike pictures we loved way back when -- a Robin stretching a worm straight out of the ground. Mammals are on the go, and Raccoons are hooking up faster than you can secure your garbage can; they’re out looking for dens and lodges, and mating has begun in earnest.

Robins, Mockingbirds and Catbirds will eat your suet and raisins more readily during early spring when they have family matters on the mind. They are beefing up to look their best for the mating dance, for making nests, and feeding chicks. Fights between males are a sight to see as they vie for territory in your yard.

The Woodpeckers are now doing what they do best: digging out holes in trees. You might think twice about cutting down that old tree or branch snag; it makes a fine home for all hole-nesting birds like Downy Woodpeckers, Red-Bellied Woodpeckers, Chickadees and the Tufted Titmouse. The incredible sound of a woodpecker’s drilling resounds through the yard, and they do us a favor by cleaning up insects in our trees. Extra treats like suet, mealworms, raisins, and peanuts will keep these birds close by where you can see them. Mealworms (even dried ones) can be a bit nasty looking, but we don’t have to find them palatable. There’s no better way to attract insect-eating birds than by treating them with a few mealworms now and again. Dried or fresh, they are the nectar of the gods for these birds. They are so tasty, you just might be able to lure a bird to your hands. If you are among the lucky ones to have bluebirds, then mealworms will keep them in your yard forever.

Mating is just not for the birds. A reproductive tizzy has hit everything else out there: pollen flies from the fruit trees, stray honeybees are starved for nectar, and whirly-gig seed pods are flipping from the maple trees. It’s time, and mate with pod and earth they will whenever possible.

It’s a good time to put down the backbone of your vegetable and perennial garden while the fur is flying and the song of love-struck birds are in the air. Turning over the clods and soil in your garden brings up the good stuff from below. (It also brings the sly Robin who can smell overturned dirt and worms in the air.) While you’re turning over the soil, a good chunk of Bumper Crop tilled through helps your garden retain moisture and adds crucial minerals and organics to everything you plant. You’ll want those worms to stay -- they are the natural tillers and aerators of the earth.

Pea, Spinach, and Cabbage seeds can now be planted directly in the garden. They are cold-weather crops that love getting an early start. Small plants of lettuce, greens, Broccoli, and Brussel Sprouts take to the early spring chill, and can go right in your cold plot. Even the old stumps of cabbage from the fall (if not smushed from a freeze) can be planted in the garden to start all over again.

Perennials can always be planted as long as the ground can be worked. If you want to get a head start, plant them now—they’ve been accustomed to cool and warm and there’s a great selection in the perennial yard. They may be small in size, but getting them in now will give you a settled-in, magnanimous plant in the summer. The same goes for trees and shrubs. When they get a head start and are established in cool, moist soil, they do better. Fruit trees are ready to plant now. The stunning pinks of almond, peach, and redbud trees are especially stunning in early spring.

Early flowering seeds of cool-loving flowers can be planted directly out in the soil. Cold lovers like Sweet Pea need to be established in the cool before the warm months settle in. You can also plant a few seeds in a pot indoors, wait a couple of weeks until they’re about 2 inches high, then set out in the garden. They are troopers in the cool and will reward you with the sweetest smell on earth. There is truly nothing like the fragrance of a Sweet Pea. Other seeds that can be sown in the cool of early spring are Larkspur, Poppies, Delphinium, Bachelor Buttons and Violas. They’ll get a head start and be on their way by time it starts to warm.

Don’t let the hot and cold quirky Jersey Springs keep you out of the garden. There’s plenty to do. There’s enough love in the air to keep mother nature’s mating instincts as ardent as ever. It’s just a love- fest out there!

Pat Dumas

Garden Center

April 3, 2012

What’s Up in the Garden Now:

• Get your hummingbird feeders out and ready. When the swarm comes in from Central America, and they’re cold and hungry, they’ll swoop down to your yard for some rich nectar.

• Clean out your birdhouses if you can, and hang them up. Early maters will be out looking for prime real estate. Cut back your hybrid tea and floribunda roses. These roses benefit greatly from

a hard pruning and will greet you with more leaves and more flowers in early Summer. Roses need air circulation. Thinning out the weakest branches that face inward helps keep disease away.

• Keep the bird seed coming! Winter feeding helps the birds survive, but spring

and summer feeding bring on a whole new show. Safflower seed is addicting to

the Cardinal, and Niger seed will bring a fabulous show of full-yellow plumaged

Goldfinches to your feeders by the 100’s.

• There’s still always a chance of frost before May. If you’re worried, the cold broccoli and greens and pansies can handle it. There’s nothing like an old blanket, thrown on top of other plants to protect from frost if you’re the super careful type.

Where Fruit is Big

Varieties of mangos
Trujillo, Peru

I’ve come to notice that fruit doesn’t play a huge role in our American diet.

Yes, it’s always there. We drink juice for breakfast, display a fruit bowl in our kitchens, toss a piece or two into our lunches, snack on it guilt-free, and make desserts with it for after dinner, but fruit plays only a supporting role at best. We pay little attention to a variety’s seasonality, and we seem to buy fruit out of duty, not passion or national pride.

Coconuts in the streets of Quito, Ecuador

 This observation came to me in South America, where there’s fruit everywhere. Grown year round on the coast, up in the mountains, or in the jungle, vast displays of ripe, seasonal, and local fruit dominate local markets. It’s even in the cities. On almost every corner, someone from the countryside is selling their produce, and the urbanites are buying it. Yes, this urban commerce isn’t unlike the fruit vendors in Manhattan, which my mother calls barrow boys, the Dickensian-sounding name for them in London of yore, but the fruit for sale in Latin American cities are seasonal and local, not the stuff from halfway around the world. The vendors will even cut the fruit up for you, so that it’s ready to eat on the spot. Or you just take a bag home with you. Would that local fruit be as easy to come by in all our towns and cities in the States!

South of the border, fruit juices are drunk like we drink sodas. Jugos are fresh fruit juices put in a blender with ice, water, and sugar (especially needed for sour fruits like passion fruit) and whipped up. Every home is equipped with a blender and a strainer for such a purpose. For an extra treat, add milk and you’ve got a batitdo, or fresh fruit milkshake. Jugos accompany almost every meal, and batitdos make for a wholesome and filling snack. Speaking about snacks, kids chomp on fruit without having to be tricked into doing so.

Carlos selecting lucuma
Trujillo, Peru

As an example of the centrality of fruit in the Latin diet, on my first trip to Peru (happening now) I accompanied the owner of my hostal in Huanchaco, a surfing town in the hot and dry north of Peru, near Trujillo, to a big market so that he could buy fruit on a large scale to make cremalados, which are basically fruit ices. Carlos' ices stand out because he uses only pure fruit, no flavorings or colorings. For our buying mission, we left the hostal in his beat-up car before 7 a.m. to get to the market early, listening to 1980s ballads on the 25-minute trip. The market was already bustling when we arrived.

Heaps of pineapples
Trujillo, Peru

It was awesome to see so much fruit of so many varieties: heaps of pineapples, including tiny ones that look like they were stunted in their formative years, a whole isle of bananas, wheelbarrows of mangos, also of many different varieties, precarious stacks of dense watermelons, wrinkled passion fruit, and local fruits like pumpkin-pie tasting lucuma and cierjelos. Loaded with bags of fruit, we hired two different people at the market, one an older man and the other a young boy, to shadow us, so we could pile our loot into their respective wheelbarrows after Carlos tasted a merchant’s offerings and negotiated a price.

Our fruity loot
Trujillo, Peru

After we left the market mid-morning, Carlos’ car was so laden with fruit that every time we hit a pothole (which is frequent in any South American city) or went over a speed bump (just as commonly found), the under bottom of the car cracked onto the road.

Carlos sacrificed his aging car in the name of fresh fruit and in the education of a gringa, so that she could come to understand the passion for high-quality fruit in South America.

Eat more fruit!

Diana Pittet, the roving cheesemonger