Parsnips, And Two Lives, Come Full Circle

The month of April has taken the frost out of the ground and I have taken the parsnips. They overwintered just fine in our zone 4 garden, protected from the deep cold by a good blanket of snow. Their tops had begun to green, Nature's signal that we had better use them while they have plenty of sugar left or Nature will use the sugar to form their seed stalks. So I took what we needed and left the rest to complete their biennial cycle and set their seeds.

We save seeds of our open-pollinated vegetables every year and look forward to a good harvest of 'Hollow Crown' parsnip seeds in August. Saving seeds saves us a little money and gives us a larger sense of self-sufficiency, and the pleasure of seeing our vegetables complete their lifecycles, itself a reflection and a foreshadowing of our own destiny.

It is an expression of that sense of Nature's completeness that led us to write our next book, due out in Spring 2011. Over nearly a century of combined gardening experience we have taught folks how to plant, care for, and harvest their crops. So it was only fitting that in our next book we tell readers how to save the seeds of nearly 2,000 species of vegetables, herbs, flowers, fruit, trees, and shrubs. It is a thorough book that itself completes our own journey in horticulture. We have come full circle, from seed to seed. The parsnips I left in the ground will do the same and that is good.

—Dr. Bob Gough

Vivipary

My husband and I don’t care for green tomato pie, green tomato chutney, or green tomato salsa. We love homegrown tomatoes, so we store our last fall harvest in a box in the garage, where it’s cool enough that the green tomatoes slowly ripen. Each week, I pick out the yellow-to-orange colored fruit and place them in a dark blue hand-thrown ceramic bowl sitting on the kitchen counter, to finish ripening. While these tomatoes aren’t as flavorful as our sun-ripened ones, we think they taste better than the winter tomatoes we find in the stores around town.

A few weeks ago, the last of our tomatoes sat on the counter. Some were a bit wrinkled, all not much larger than cherry tomatoes. My friend, Becky, turning up her nose when she saw them in the bowl, asked why I hadn’t thrown them out. I was defensive. “Cooked in olive oil, these taste great in a casserole or eggs.” I’m not sure she believed me.

Several days later, preparing stuffed acorn squash for supper, I cut open an inch and a half long, firm, unwrinkled, red ‘Roma,’ and saw green. Thinking Becky may have been right—I looked closer, and saw tiny stems with green leaves sprouting from the seeds.

Years ago, cutting open a grapefruit I’d stored in my fridge—one seed had sprouted. I’d thought it odd then, but now, with a tomato full of sprouted seeds, I wanted answers. I sent Cheryl, our technical editor for horticulture, an email to see if she’d have an interesting explanation.

Cheryl responded, “Yep. I’ve seen this too, with seeds germinating inside the fruit. Did you know that corn, dried on the stalk, will germinate right on the plant? I think this would be a good one for Dr. Bob.” She forwarded my e-mail to her husband.

Dr. Bob replied, “The technical term for this sort of thing is ‘vivipary.’ The juice of some fruit, such as tomato, apple, and some citrus, contains germination inhibitors that prevent the seeds from germinating in the fruit. Over time, in storage, those inhibitors become ineffective, allowing germination to occur. Additionally, seeds of many fruit—mostly fruit of woody plants—require a period of cold before they can germinate. So, if you store fruit in the refrigerator for any length of time, the cold requirement is satisfied AND the germination inhibitors break down, allowing the seeds to germinate in the fruit. Fruit in this condition is not harmful, but because it is old, it may not taste very good.”

There you have it—vivipary...

I chopped up the rest of my tomatoes that evening—none of the others had sprouted and they tasted great with the stuffed acorn squash. Later, I planted the sprouts, leaving them on the tomato slice, in a small pot, barely covering them with soil. Two seeds have grown; one is an inch tall. We’ll see if they’ll bear fruit this summer.

—Rilla Esbjornson

Get Your Grow Lights Glowing

Bob and I seeded onions, leeks, and celery February 7. It’s not a good idea to start transplants too early in our enthusiasm to be shed of winter’s dreariness, but for these plants, it’s ok as they require much longer to get to the size we need for setting to the garden. We use the same shelves for starting plants that we store our winter squash, and I had to move our last three Lakota squash to make room. It’s always exciting to clean last year’s soil off the shelves and fire up the grow lights. We have them set to turn on automatically for a 16-hour photoperiod right now. The onions and leeks are 2 to 4 inches tall, and the celery is finally showing up. We also planted catnip, and while we have a couple of plants that are obviously catnip, there are a number of other, strange-looking plants—one of which looks suspiciously like red-rooted pigweed. I guess that’s what we get for planting the catnip seeds in the bottom of the tub of catnip we bought! We’ll wait to sow more seeds for transplants until 6 to 8 weeks prior to the day we plan to set them to the garden. Some vegetables only need 4 weeks to make a good transplant!

—Cheryl Moore-Gough

Trade Associations Professionalize the Hort Industry

A year ago we joined three state trade associations: the Colorado Nursery & Greenhouse Association, Idaho Nursery & Landscape Association, and Montana Nursery & Landscape Association. We knew connecting with the good folks who purvey plants and knowledge to our readers was a good idea, but it has been better than that: friendship and camaraderie in a shared industry.

Last January we exhibited at the MNLA in Missoula, on the university campus. It was nasty cold and windy outside, but inside the University Center meeting rooms, exhibit hall, and amphitheater, we listened to some great speakers, signed up some new retail outlets, sold a few subscriptions, and Nurseries new friends. Noted horticulturist Dan Heims, of Terra Nova gardens in Canby, Oregon, gave an intriguing slide presentation drawn from his world travels, titled “How Dry I Am,” in which he predicted nations warring over water within five to 10 years. Some of his tips: plants with similar needs should be planted together; pruning reduces transpiration; wax sprays help to keep moisture in.

Another keynote speaker was Robert Doliboi, executive vice president of the American Nursery & Landscape Association, who offered a packed audience a unique perspective on the “green industry” and what terrific opportunities it has to prosper despite, and perhaps because of, the current challenges of economic recession and global warming controversy. He talked a lot about sustainability, defining it as: “The ability to continue a defined behavior indefinitely.”

Many attendees were familiar with Zone 4, even subscribers, and those who hadn’t seen an issue were impressed.

We came away so excited that on returning home that we immediately bought a booth at the much larger CNGA’s annual ProGreen expo, held in the Denver Convention Center the second week of February. Unfortunately, we were pretty much tied to the booth and couldn’t sit it on any of the seminars and workshops covering a wide range of topics, from new plant varieties to green roofs, integrated pest management, and advice on how to run a business.

We did get to spend some time with faculty and staff from Colorado State University, and are pleased to have Dr. Steven Newman onboard as a contributor. Steve is in the Horticulture and Landscape Architecture Department, and a specialist in protective structures.

CSU also is home to the wonderful Plant Select program, which tests plants for their suitability to the Rocky Mountain region, promotes and educates the public. On page 55 of our Spring issue (just got the first copy in my hands and it looks awesome!) is a description of Plant Select’s recommended plants for 2010.

If there is one overriding impression we have of these trade associations it is this: by and large, growers and nurserymen and women are knowledgeable, professional, and a pretty friendly lot. Next year’s expos will brighten our winter.

—Dan Spurr

State Of Zone 4

The magazine made it through year 1! We met most of our performance projections, which really were guesses made a year ago. We finished 2009 with nearly 1400 subscribers in 38 states (even though we only market to five), and are on about 350 newsstands where our sell-through rate is quite a bit higher than the national average. The nearly 50 nurseries and garden centers that sell Zone 4 on counter racks have done even better.

In appreciation of our charter subscribers and advertisers, we just mailed each one a free 2010 Zone 4 Calendar with some cool photos from around the Rocky Mountains. Included is a Reader Survey that we hope many of you will return; demographic data is important for two reasons: to help us learn more about what sorts of articles you like; and to better explain the magazine to advertisers. One of our advisors, an industry veteran, keeps reminding us that a magazine is like a three-legged stool: editorial, advertisements, and readers—without any one of them the stool falls over.

Andra and I are looking forward to year 2 with great anticipation. Here are some of the additions you’ll see in 2010.

• A crossword puzzle in which the answers are words taken from articles in the same issue.
• Our first travel story will appear in the Spring issue with a visit to Grand Junction, home of the Western Colorado Botanical Gardens and dozens of vineyards and orchards.
• Articles for the advanced gardener, beginning with Dr. Bob Gough’s tips on how to increase flower bud induction in fruit trees, with a sidebar on how to abort unwanted fruit.
• If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve already seen our revamped Web site, thanks to the hard work of Ben Johns. In 2010 we hope to begin adding short video interviews with great gardeners.
• Also on the new Web site online store are a few new products for sale: embroidered Zone 4 aprons, back issues, the superbly simple Sliver Gripper tweezers, and the aforementioned Zone 4 2010 Calendar. Check back for a unique line of handmade garden tools.

Many thanks to all who have helped us in 2009! Especially Kira, April, Lois, Rilla, Cheryl, Dr. Bob, Ben, Steve, Linnie, Adria, Anna, Laura, and Jane. You’re great!

Crazy Mountain Weather

Where we live, 5 miles north of Bozeman, it can snow just about any month of the year, though it’s rare in July and August. This year, we almost got through September without significant snowfall. But on the last day of the month it came, wet and heavy. Leaves were still on the trees, each one a glove-like catchment. Boughs bent, boughs broke. It melted, of course, and then temperatures dropped into the teens. The suddenly freed leaves froze. It was as if we jumped from summer to winter, skipping autumn altogether. Indeed, the aspens never had a chance to turn the mountainsides yellow. The aspen leaves in our yard are a dark purple, some almost black. The color of death.

All the doom and gloom talk about the weather changed a week later, when temperatures rose to a more normal daytime range in the 50s. The sun returned, too. Some nights temps are just above freezing, other nights just below. But I miss the colors from our aspen, maples, and contoneasters.

I pulled my last tomato plants just before the big snowstorm and am letting them ripen in a cardboard box in the garage. I taste them every few days, and after a few weeks some have gone soft, others are coming along just fine. None tastes quite as good as those that ripened on the vine in late August and early September.

Did I mention the October wind that blew down off the mountains, pegging the dial at 50-60 mph for nearly a full day and night? In our yard it took one mature aspen and a lot of branches. At least it carried away a lot of those purple-black leaves that were starting to bum me out.

C’est la vie in the Rockies.

Rain

As I write this, it’s raining. Hard. In fact, a few minutes ago marble-size hail thundered down on the metal office roof. As soon as it passed I ran out to the garden to see if any damage had been done. Not much, thankfully. Not like the hailstorm that passed through Gallatin Valley last summer, doing millions of dollars damage to auto dealers and farmers, and much to the pride of local gardeners.

This must be the wettest summer in a decade. Usually by now our unwatered lawn is brown, and so are the mountainsides. This year there’s still green on them thar hills. The obvious bonus is not having had to water as often as in previous summers. But we’ve also had cooler nights and some of my vegetables are behind schedule.

Last June, when a heavy, wet snow was forecast, I quickly made up several hoop tunnels with PVC and row cover fabric, and they did the job. I’ve left the hoops up all summer and come September I’ll lower the fabric when the temps drop. I’d hate to lose what appears to be a bumper crop of tomatoes.

We’re working hard on the Winter issue this month and next, as well as on stories and photographs for next Spring and Summer. Articles can be written right up to the deadline, but the photos must be taken in season (when we’re putting together the Summer issue, it’ll be spring and there’ll be snow on the ground!). Obviously, this requires some long-range planning. Either that or run generic photos bought from a stock agency, which a lot of magazines do. Anyone can run close-ups of pretty flowers. We want photos of the actual story subjects, whether it’s a garden or a person. This takes more work and more time, but we think it’s worth it. And hope you do, too.

As always, we love hearing from you. Tell us what you’re doing in your corner of paradise. And send pix!

New Payment Options

Until last week, readers who wanted to subscribe online had two options: download and print a PDF subscription form, or deal with PayPal. Some of our readers didn’t care for the second option, even though it is possible to bypass membership and pay with a standard credit card. Apparently the navigation isn’t as clear as it could be.

We now have a shopping cart system through our Web host, and Authorize.net credit card processing, which assures secure transactions. You can pay online with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, and with an eCheck, in which you “write” an electronic check on your checking account.

We apologize to those would-be subscribers who did not cotton to our earlier payment options; judging by the number of new subscribers using the shopping cart, customer confidence is much higher with the new system.

At present, there are only two “products” in the “store”: a 1-year subscription, and a 2-year subscription. At some point (when we come up for air), we’ll sell other items we think are special and worth bringing to the attention of readers—a few garden tools and clothing items for starters. Stay tuned. And thanks for reading Zone 4!

Memorial Day: Time to Plant!

The wisdom around Southwest Montana is not to plant outdoors until Memorial Day. Well, our veterans’ holiday is early this year, and the likelihood of another snow or frost gives one pause, especially if you’ve been fooled before. And we have!

Our first summer in Montana, a big, wet, heavy snowfall hit on June 10, bringing down branches and powerlines across town. You’d think that would have taught us, but no, fooled by sun and warm temperatures in May, we’ve planted—and paid.

Today’s weather is about what Andra and I experienced during a getaway to Grand Junction, Colorado, in late April-early May: shortsleeves, the trees budding, and the early spring flowers in bloom. There’s no denying it: even within our five-state area of coverage, bloom dates vary by a month and more. But as Dr. Bob keeps reminding us, there are other factors affecting Rocky Mountain gardeners that are just as important as average minimum temperatures: cool nights, clay soil, high altitude, wind, hail…you know the deal.

Yesterday I visited Doug Badenoch, who owns the Wine Gallery here in Bozeman, and who writes our reviews of locally produced wines. We talked about when it’s safe to plant outdoors. Doug said, “My brother is an avid gardener, and he told me: ‘Never plant until after the snow melts on Mt. Baldy.” Looking up at the nearby Bridger Mountains, we could see snow on Baldy’s ridge. The message: be patient. Memorial Day may come and go, and it may hit 80°F, but I’m waiting until the mountain is all brown.

A Cold One In My Hands

Issue No. 2 arrived a few days ago. The 80-foot truck was too big to come down our driveway so I had to meet it on the road with our pickup and transfer the pallet over. After a week of 60°F sunny days, it was snowing again. I drove back down the drive to our office door. Andra helped me move 3,250 copies of the Summer Issue inside. The rest of the print run was on trucks heading to our newsstand and bookstore distributors.

The magazine business is funny. Or maybe it’s the whole publishing world of books and newspapers, too. You bust your butt getting the issue out, reading, editing, proofing, and more proofing, until you know the thing as intimately as your own hand. You know every word and every photo. If you didn’t write the word or take the photo, you know the person who did. You asked them to write the article and take the photo. And then you worked it over. Sent it back with questions first, later for their approval. By the time you ship the issue to the printer you really can’t look at it another time.

Then a week passes. The proof copy comes FedEx from the printer. Once more, yet again, you read the issue word for word, looking for mistakes that eluded you the 19 other times you read it. There always are a few. Corrections at this stage are expensive—something like $50 a page. It adds up quickly, so you fix the worst and let the others go, hoping the readers will never notice.

Despite this over-familiarity with the publication, for some reason you can’t wait to see the REAL THING. To pull out your pen knife, cut the tape on the nearest box, pull out the top copy, and hold it in your hands. As if you expect to be surprised. To find something fresh and different. Of course, it is exactly as you remember it. The cover photo. The blurbs you wrote trying to lure newsstand tire kickers into picking it up and carrying it to the cash register. Willing to part with $6.95. Every page, exactly as you remember it.

And yet, and yet…the real thing is somehow different. You love it. This is why you’re in the publishing business. You can’t believe you made this darn thing. Pat yourself on the back. “Nice job!” you tell yourself.

Once Andra and I had all the boxes moved safely inside, out of the falling snow, we cut open a box and each took a copy. Having spent the last two days inside an unheated truck, they were cold to the touch.

I took mine inside the house, grabbed a cold one of another variety out of the fridge, and sat down to admire both of the cold ones in my hands.

Andra came in and said, “Funny how you can’t wait to get them. And soon as you do, you can’t wait to get rid of them.”

Not that we don’t like them. We just want to put a cold one in your hands. Coming to you soon!

Tomato Tip

Master gardener John Austin stopped by our table at the Bozeman Home & Garden Show to present us with a “magazine warming” gift—a 7-week-old ‘Early Annie’ tomato plant. He told us the plant had been cold stressed. Asked to explain he said he started the seedling with 16 hours of light daily, from a small 100-watt fluorescent bulb positioned 2-3 inches above. Then after 3 weeks—just when the first true leaves started to appear—he reduced light to just 12 hours a day. He maintained temperatures at about 55°F at night and 65° during the day. After another 3 weeks he returned to the 16-hour-per-day regimen. The result: edible fruit 2-3 weeks earlier than if he had not cold stressed the plant. And that, he says, is why he always has tomatoes by the Fourth of July…much to many people’s amazement. In Southwest Montana, he starts tomatoes around April 1, transplants around June 1, and begins eating the fruit of his labors on Independence Day.

The Denver Boot

It was Friday the 13th, and a winter storm was coming down over the Rocky Mountain front range onto Denver, which soon proved to be an omen of events to come.

The day started out well. Andra and I had visited Publication Printers, just a mile south of downtown, where Zone 4 is printed. A poster in the lobby says, “Official Printer of the Denver Broncos.” Our sales rep gave us a ten-cent tour, beginning with the huge prepress department where customer files are downloaded from an FTP site, and four sets of thin aluminum plates are made up, usually eight pages to a plate. In the four-color process—cyan, yellow, magenta, and black—four plates must be made for each set of pages. Once checked for accuracy, the plates move to the web presses (a “web” is simply a large roll of paper on a spindle that is pulled through the Heidelberg presses, where the images on the plates are transferred to a rubber “blanket” and then to the paper—hence the name “offset”). It all happens at lightning speed. The tour moved to the bindery where saddle stitch “signatures” are stapled together, and perfect bound pages are glued. Our rep left us at the shipping department, where young men zip around the cavernous warehouse on machines that look like a cross between a fork lift and a Segway. As they pick up and drop pallets of boxes full of magazines, they look like they’re having a lot more fun than anyone else in the building. It must be like getting paid to race go carts.

We picked up 1,000 copies of Zone 4 No. 1 that we’d had the printer hold for us last week when the issue printed. The other 4,000 copies were shipped to newsstand distributors and subscribers. Then we drove to downtown Denver, checked into our hotel, grabbed a box out of the trunk, and headed over to the Convention Center to promote the magazine at the 50th Colorado Garden & Home Show.

We’d walked just three aisles before an undercover security agent nabbed us. He said only exhibitors could hand out materials. We said, “Didn’t know that. Sorry. We won’t pass any more.”

To which he said, “Leave the show immediately.”

I said, “Well, we did buy tickets.”

He got on his walkie talkie and said to his superior that he had a “problem couple here.”

Realizing he wasn’t about to have a conversation with us, and that a couple of gray-hairs distributing subversive propaganda that promotes growing your own vegetables and patronizing local food sources didn’t have much chance of winning an argument, rather than suffer the embarrassment of being handcuffed, collared, and thrown out on the street, we left.

On the way back to our hotel, Andra, who always seems to come up with the right comment, smiled at me and said, “We got the Denver boot!”

We might be subversives but we’re not parking ticket scofflaws; there was no Denver boot locking a front wheel of our car. To lick our wounds we treated ourselves to a performance of Richard III, and the next day left town quietly—with 996 copies of Zone 4.

First Copies Have Arrived!

At 10:30 this morning a trucker delivered a pallet of Zone 4 issue No. 1. Half of our initial print order was shipped to distributors directly from the printer in Denver. We're sending out the rest, for now. Our mailing list includes subscribers, the media, advertisers, and small retailers. Printing labels, stuffing envelopes, and lugging mail trays to the post office is not exciting work, but we're anxious for your feedback. So please, write, email, telephone, yell, make smoke signals—let us know what you think!

And tell a friend about Zone 4.

Publication Printers did a great job. True color, no mistakes. As we knew they would, having closely checked other publications on their customer list. Thanks also to all the writers, photographers, proof readers, and others who helped.

Issue No. 2 is well underway. Besides informative and colorful features, Dr. Bob's Q&A, recipes, and much more, we'll announce the winner of our first Backyard Blunders contest. Get your hands on No. 1 for more information.

Stay tuned!

First Issue Shipped!

Yesterday our art director, Kira Stoops, shipped the first issue of Zone 4 to the printer in Denver, Colorado. It was a big day, preceded by many hours of proof reading, making corrections, and tweaking the design.

"Shipping" an issue to the printer today means uploading a PDF computer file to the printer's FTP site. Our file was more than 250 mb and took about 45 minutes to send.

This was fast and easy compared to the way magazines were shipped to printers back in the early 1980s, when Andra and I worked at the same sailing magazine in Newport, Rhode Island. Then, a typesetter typed all of the text and output it on a special glossy paper that the art department fed through a wax machine, which applied a sticky substance to the back side of the paper. It came in long rolls and had to be cut into columns with an X-acto knife and then literally pasted onto what we called "boards." Boards were large pieces of smooth, white cardboard with marks to align each column of type. Photos and drawings also were pasted onto the boards. To proofread the boards, a see-through paper was taped over each page, onto which the editors made their corrections. You didn't dare mark directly onto the boards! The paper with text could be lifted from the board and replaced, though if the correction was small the art department might just cut out the mistake with an X-acto knife and replace it with a new piece.

To ship, all of the boards were packaged in a box and mailed to the printer. We did have FedEx, but there were no computers and no fax machines. We aren't ancient: we did have telephones, okay!

We expect to hold the first copies of Zone 4 No. 1 in our eager hands by February 1. If you are a subscriber, you'll receive yours soon thereafter. We have been accepted by a major newsstand distributor for distribution in Montana, northern Idaho, and Colorado, primarily in supermarkets and pharmacies. No word yet on Wyoming, and bookstores. And we don't know yet which chains of stores will carry Zone 4. As soon as we find out, we'll post the list on the website. Single issue price is $6.95. So the least expensive way to get your hands on a copy, and the surest, is to subscribe. You can do it online, with a credit card, Pay Pal, or by printing out the order form and mailing it with a check or money order.

If I don't say so myself, the first issue looks AWESOME! We hope you'll agree.

Countdown to Issue Number 1!

The first issues of Zone 4 magazine should be in the mail and in the newsstands the first week of February 2009. It's been a fast and crazy ride since last June, when Andra and I decided to found a new gardening/local foods magazine for the Northern Rockies.

We are working with two talented graphic designers to create the "look" of the magazine as well as all the other pieces that go with starting a new business, like letterhead, envelopes, subscription cards and much more. After meeting with a national magazine consultant we revamped the logo, so you may see a few different versions. The latest has a flower in the O.

Today we hit 100 subscribers—a milestone! Hey, every journey begins with a single step. The 100th came from a woman in Wyoming who said she saw our Sneak Preview mini-issue in a doctor's office. How it got there we have no idea. But we're getting the good feeling that news of Zone 4 is spreading rapidly by word-of-mouth. (Keep talking!)

One indication is that we're receiving more emails from people thankful that finally there will be a publication devoted to the difficult growing conditions in this dry, short-season, high-altitude region. The line-up of articles in the first issue is strong, and we're already lining up content for the second issue, scheduled for May 1. Please write and let us know what you think. Give us your opinion, stories, ideas, photos. Best way to contact us is by email: dan@zone4magazine.com. Stay tuned!