By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Killing frost is the horticultural version of The Grim Reaper. Usually stealing into the garden on a calm, clear, dry autumn night, it cuts down all remaining summer fruits and flowers. It is worth noting on your calendar because it marks the end of the growing season, which began with the last killing frost of spring.

Once the growing season starts, you plant beans, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, peppers, squash, and tomatoes. Then you start counting.

When the seed packet says you have an 85-day tomato, or a 110-day pumpkin, it’s giving you the number of days between planting and harvest. But your growing season better be significantly longer than that.

Here’s why.

•For starters, actual days to harvest depends on location. If you’re growing warm-season crops in a climate that gets warm days, mild nights, and plenty of moisture, plants mature fast. But if you’re growing the same varieties along the coast, where summers never get very hot, plants mature very slowly. Many national seed sellers assume optimal growing conditions for their days-to-harvest numbers. So a tomato that might mature in 85 days in Ohio might take 125 days to mature along the mild Oregon Coast.

•Days to harvest clocks the time from planting to the day your pick your first fruit. But plants can bear for weeks or months after that first fruit. So an 85-day tomato could keep producing fruit from day 85 to day 145. That means you really need a 145-day growing season to let you get the most from your plants.

The best way to calculate your garden’s growing season is by writing down first and last frost days (start now!) The second best way is by looking up your town’s historical weather information on one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s regional climate center databases. These vary widely in ease of use, but you're in luck if you live in the West, which has a complete, easy to use climate center. Navigate to your state, your city, then click on the link to "Freeze Free Probabilities," which gives you growing season information.

You can also get map-based information from the Internet Accuracy Project.

I could close with warnings and disclaimers, but you know the drill: nature does what she wants, when she wants. Just get to know her better by writing down last and first frost dates as they occur in your garden, and you'll be a better gardener for it.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I'm very interested in Amy Stewart's work, so I was happy to see Sharon's post about her yesterday. But I think Stewart probably overstated ergot's part the Salem witch trials—if it had any part at all. (Ergot is a fungus that infects grain and can cause hallucinations and erratic behavior in those who eat it.)

My great grandmother, 10 generations back, was a woman named Rebecca Nurse, who was hung for being a witch in those trials. I've spent a lot of time reviewing the trial transcripts to see what really happened. In a nutshell, it started with two girls, cousins, who had seizures that the adults around them blamed on witchcraft. It is these seizures that Stewart attributes to ergot—a charge that has been refuted by academics, and which doesn't make sense to me based on what followed. The afflicted girls singled out a West Indian slave girl named Tituba and two women who were social outcasts as witches. To deflect the anger of the community, they falsely implicated others, who implicated others, who implicated others. 

In Rebecca Nurse's case, her family had had a property dispute with the family of the woman who accused her of witchcraft. During the trial, the accusers contended that Nurse used supernatural arts to inflict great pain on them. To bolster their case, when she cocked her head to the side during the trial to hear something more clearly (she was 71 years old, and reportedly hard of hearing), a couple of her accusers jerked their heads to the side and screamed. That kind of thing was obviously theatre designed to get a conviction. 

As it happened, Nurse was acquitted by the jury. But sadly, this was before the day when one couldn't be tried twice for the same offense. Nurse was in the presence of others who had been accused when one of them said "she was one of us." When Nurse didn't respond, the jury took it as assent that she was a witch like them. But other explanations are more likely: she didn't respond because she didn't hear, or if she did hear, she didn't respond because she understood "one of us" to mean "one of those falsely accused." But then her accusers and the jury went to the governor and convinced him to override the innocent verdict and hang her, which he did, even after receiving a petition from dozens of people who put their own necks on the line by supporting her.

After the execution, the thing mushroomed until so many people were accusing so many people that the governor finally said "enough!" No more charges were entertained, no more trials conducted, and the thing died away as quickly as it came. 

Rebecca Nurse's conviction was reversed posthumously, one of the girls who had charged her admitted to having fabricated the charges—and her house is now the Salem Witch Museum. 

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote the following, which is on Rebecca Nurse's granite monument in Danvers, Massachussets.

O Christian Martyr who for Truth could die

    When all about thee owned the hideous lie!

The world redeemed from Superstition's sway

    Is breathing freer for thy sake today

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I have read and enjoyed all of Amy Stewart's books from her first From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden to her most recent, Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities.  But I heard her speak for the first time on the 17th of this month at the excellent Annual Garden Seminar of the Master Gardeners of Orange County.

Turns out Stewart is as interesting in person as she is in print.  Low-key, drily funny, full of surprising facts told entertainingly.  If she comes to your area, don't miss her.  Check her speaking engagement calendar here.

Some tidbits from her book mentioned in her talk, which was based on Wicked Plants:

.  Rye ergot, a fungus that grows on rye, especially after wet winters, may have caused the deranged behavior that lead to the Salem witch trials.  The fungus causes wild hallucinations.

.  The ghastly symptoms of pellagra, a syndrome caused by a diet containing too much corn, could have inspired the myths of vampirism in Bram Stoker's Dracula --- pale skin that erupted in blisters when exposed to the sun, sleepless nights, an inability to eat normal food, and a morbid appearance just before death.

But the most important thing I learned from Amy's lecture was that Sago palms are one of the most toxic plants your pet may encounter.  All parts of the plant, but especially the seeds and leaves, contain carcinogens and neurotoxins. I was grateful to know this because there are Sago palms all over my neighborhood.  Now I know I need to be attentive when I take Lucy, my Cavalier, for her daily walks because she thinks everything is edible.

To find out what other plants that might be harmful to your pets' health, visit the ASPCA website.

You might also want to check out our article on dog-friendly landscaping.

By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

If you love Michael Pollan’s work as much as we do, you’ll want to see The Botany of Desire, a TV special based on Pollan’s book of the same name.

Focusing on four crops—apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes—the show explores how the plants may very well be exploiting us instead of the other way around. And it’s packed with interesting factoids. Some of my favorites (that won’t spoil anything for you if you’ve not read the book):

• Most apples in the wild aren’t sweet, and are basically inedible. (And Johnny Appleseed isn't quite the person you thought he was...)
• During the Dutch “tulip mania” in the 1600s, tulips were valuable commodities that signified wealth—bulbs of one variety cost $10 to 15 million each in today’s dollars.
• Cannabis extract was found in many over-the-counter medicines and was basically available anywhere before states starting outlawing it in the early 1900s.
• We might think we have a lot of choices between Idaho russet, Yukon gold, fingerling, and red potatoes. But in Peru, where spuds were first domesticated, people still cultivate more than 5,000 varieties.

The Botany of Desire airs on Wednesday, October 28 at 8 p.m. on PBS.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

The connection is not accidental, since endorphins produced by your brain are responsible for both. (Endorphins are hormones that activate your body’s opiate receptors, reduce pain, and generally make you feel good. So when people mention hot-pepper addiction, they are not far wrong.)

Here’s how researchers proved the connection. First they fed their happy volunteers potent hot peppers, noting the burning lips and mouths that immediately followed. Then, after a little time passed and the pepper eaters’ lips didn’t burn any more, the guys in white coats administered endorphin blockers. Soon the volunteers were in an agony of unrelieved burning from capsaicin, which is the peppers’ active principle, and science was served.

So have some hot chile peppers—but stay away from those endorphin blockers.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Sometimes I walk into the hardwood forest behind my house just to stand under the magnificent old bigleaf maple pictured at right. For sheer venerability, it's hard to beat. Perhaps that’s why I’m such a fan of American Forests' National Register of Big Trees.

The program's goal is to find and document the biggest tree of every species in the United States. They've been on the hunt for 69 years, and located 733 trees that they think are the biggest of their kinds. Of course, you may not agree. If you think you know one bigger in any species listed, you can nominate it, and perhaps unseat the reigning champ.

There are also many species currently without champs. Just find a big one, and your specimen will be registered as the biggest until somebody finds one bigger. Among species without champs are several willows, oaks, western sumacs, and ceanothus. Pick one and go for it.

Last week we relayed a story about very clever squirrels we'd come across in the book Squirrel Wars. And we promised to mail the book to anyone who could top the story.  I think Kirsten Begg has done it.  Here is her story:

"We thought we had finally thwarted our squirrels (and amused our cats at the same time) by installing a window-mounted bird feeder to a bay window.  It was 6-7 ft off the ground, the seed was covered by a plastic "roof", and there did not appear to be a squirrel in sight, just birds.

Then about 2 wks in, we hear a loud thud.  A squirrel had dropped off a second-story roof onto the bay window roof and had then dropped off (not always succesfully) onto the small roof on the bird feeder, an area maybe 3" x 10", which was only attached to the window with rubber suckers.

At which point, although nose-to-nose with my cats through the glass, the chubby squirrel would sit in the feeder undeterred by bangs on glass or any kind of attempt to scare it away.  He would chomp away until either the seed ran out or the feeder fell off the window, at which point he would be joined by all his squirrel friends.

It turned out to be easier to raid the window feeder than it was to attempt the 8 foot leap from atop a nearby tree to the top of our baffle-protected, pole-mounted bird feeder.

Incidentally,  they mastered that, too, landing on a tiny bar of wrought iron, not always successfully but successfully enough that it was attempted regularly."

Kirsten sent photos to prove her tale.  Squirrel Wars is headed her way.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

The gray squirrel, says George H. Harrison, author of Squirrel Wars: Backyard Wildlife Battles & How to Win Them, is public enemy number one when it comes to America's backyards.  It is, he says, the number one suspect in half of all unsolved fires, the acknowledged perpretrator in most nonweather-related power failures, the wire chomper responsible for twice bringing stock trades on the NASDAQ to a halt, and responsible for creating its own industry, the $4-million-a-year business in squirrel-proof bird feeders.

The cute little creature requires a lot of ingenuity to foil because he is persistent, intelligent, and skillful.  As this war story from Harrison's book illustrates.

"At the Schlitz Audubon Center in Milwaukee, a bird-seed study was to be conducted to determine the food preferences of the different species of birds in the area.  A dozen bird feeders were strung on a wire, each filled with a different kind of seed.  The study was immediately jeopardized by a horde of local gray squirrels that gobbled up the experimental seed before the birds could get to it. . ..

The Audubon researchers tried to foil the squirredls by stringing beads, coffee cans, and plastic milk bottles at both ends of the wire to keep the squirrels off the feeders.  That failing, they set up large plastic walls at both ends of the wire.  But the squirrels soon learned to leap over the plastic walls, land on the rolling coffee cans, and do their balancing act all the way to the feeders.  The birdseed experiment was abandoned."

Can you top this story?  If you can, I'll send you my copy of Squirrel Wars, which I ordered after a visitor to the Sunset Celebration Question & Answer booth recommended the book.  (It also covers rabbits, deer, skunk, chipmunks, bully birds like crows and starlings, and other wildlife challenges.)  Funny some years it's rabbits most complained about at the booth, often it is gophers, but this year, for some reason, squirrels were the troublemakers we heard the most complaints about.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Jim gave you his hard truths of gardening yesterday -- a riff inspired by the editor's page in a recent issue of Fine Gardening. Now here's mine:

• You’ll never get to grow everything you’re curious about in one short lifetime. 

• Dead plants aren’t tragedies; they’re opportunities.  They create an opening to try something new.  I’ll make an exception for trees, though.  Losing a tree breaks your heart.

• Garden writers may get tired of seeing them, but there’s a reason designers keep using things like New Zealand flax and French lavender over and over again.  They don’t fail.  I guess that’s why they call them landscaping staples.

• Flowers, from a design standpoint, are non-essential--throw pillow equivalents.  It’s foliage that makes the garden.  Or, as a former Sunset garden writer once put it, “Buying a plant for its flowers is like choosing a wife for her bonnet.”

• Growing edibles is like raising children; if you don’t pay attention to them on a regular basis, they turn out badly.

• If you’re traveling, see a plant you’re tempted by that’s new to you, and don’t buy it, you’ll never find it again.

• If you’re traveling, see a plant you’re tempted by, buy it and tote it home, you’ll see it in your local nursery the next week.  Especially if you carried it home on a plane.

• Widely spaced paving stones with a tapestry of ground covers between them always look charming in photos, but don’t go there.  Spending hours weeding where you walk is dumb.  Attempting this look is the worst garden decision I ever made.

• Plants like being in the ground, not in pots.  Or am I the only one with a black thumb when it comes to container gardening?

• Wild gardening ideas—like painting your block wall a dark red—usually turn out to be the best ones.  But finding the courage to try them out never gets easier.

• Hand modeling and gardening are incompatible activities.  Respectable is the best I can expect from my nails.  Barely presentable is more likely.

• If you can’t kill a snail with your bare hands, you’re not a gardener.  Judy Wigand, a former boutique nursery owner and gardener extraordinare, told me that.  Frankly, it never occurred to me to try before her comment, but, after the first one it’s easy.  Even gratifying.  And perhaps helps explain the condition of my hands.  (See above.)

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine