Garden Planning 2011

Done, such as it is. I won't be growing much this year, but I did the usual draw-it-out-on-graph-paper-and-dream-with-catalogs thing. It never quite turns out like you plan it, but the planning is fun. Husband will help with making sure everything is well-mulched.

On a happy dietary note, the central library in Memphis is a treasure trove for those who live here on a budget. The vegetarian section (the cooking section in general) is quite good. I even found Neal Bernard's Food for Life in the second-hand bookstore for $1. Now I have recipes from Dean Ornish (circa 1996, when he was still strict about his stuff), Caldwell and Rip Esselstyn, and Neal Bernard. I like it when people who publish recipes have science behind them. Did you know even Laurel's Kitchen (first published in 1976) had similar science in it? The science isn't without controversy of course (especially from people who Really Like Clogged Arteries), but the gastroenterological research supports the general approach of those listed above. More vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. Less junk. More fiber, less SOFAS (term from latest USDA dietary standards meaning "solid fats and added sugars"). Helps all conditions (except rare forms of epilepsy, in which cases ketogenic diets are life-saving), hurts nobody. Good stuff.

Getting Ready to Run

My experiments at work are starting to produce data again, after a long, long dry spell. That is good, but it means long hours at work while I stare out at sunny days wishing I could be elbow-deep in dirt and baby plants rather than at work, all clean. I started these peas a week ago. Sunny days lead to remarkably fast growth for these guys! I have to try to get them conditioned and out soon. I'm starting more sugar snaps tonight, and the 4 or 5 varieties of tomatoes I'm putting in this year. The chard, spinach, radishes, carrots, and beets can go out whenever I get time. The buttercups are about to bloom, so I'm waiting for the last snowstorm/severe cold snap to pass, as it always comes when they are blooming. We'll see.

Halfway There

And adjust it has! I dug twice as much today as Monday, in two sessions split by lunch and a rest break, with much less soreness than last time. We went to the Cafe for a sundae, and that always helps, too ;).

A quote about why I'm hacking out bushes by W. Robinson (editor) from The Vegetable Garden by MM. Vilmorin-Andrieux (containing a detailed list of heirloom varieties going back to 1920):

" We cannot grow vegetables well under trees, and in attempting to do so we destroy the roots of the trees... The vegetables, too, would be more wholesome for good light and air, for shade from ragged and profitless trees and bushes and hedges is one of the evils of this hopeless kind of garden. The broken crops, too, (for the most part sickly patches) are not such as one can be proud of."

I'm taking out as many "profitless" plants as I can!

Beaten

It was a beautiful MLK Day today. Sunny, warm, breezy with just a hint of January in the gusts, it was a day to be outdoors. I spent part of it this afternoon at the park, and part of it digging. I got out a huge bush, with corresponding roots, by digging all the way around it and prying it out with pick and shovel as levers. The end was an old-fashioned " 'rasslin' " match. Now I do not want to move anything larger than my fingers. My body doth protest the unaccustomed effort. It will adjust.

Lessons Learned: Broccoli and Cauliflower

This picture is from a few weeks ago. The plants are a little bigger now, but very chewed. Cabbage worms. I do not like them.They are pernicious little beasts, attacking even when the plants are too small to feed them to maturity. I do not want to spray for them, and indeed cannot when it rains almost every day, as it has in the spring and fall this year.

That makes hand-picking the only option, and there again hand picking in the rain is not fun or very efficient. I probably will not grow any more broccoli or cauliflower for that reason. The stores and farmer's market can supply me with those. I'll go for chard and beets and carrots, with maybe some bok choy and kale, and snow peas, as my spring crops.

Radishes and Beets

I sowed some seeds among the transplants last week for beets, radishes, carrots, green onions, and lettuces- all cool weather plants that should thrive as the trees lose their leaves and more sun hits the garden, at least until frost. The radishes and some of the other plants are already up! This fall gardening may work out well. We are due to fall into the low 50s at night, with highs in the 70s during the day this week. The dogwood that shades the garden from the south is losing leaves slowly now, with the rest so wilted that a lot of dappled sun gets through the branches. The oaks to the west are still thick with leaves from all the rain, so we'll see if we get enough sun to keep going. 

Carrots

This is a photo of one of my baby carrots. They are coming up well. Sun today! Life is good!

Calm Times in the Garden

It is hard to be patient sometimes. The lima beans will start coming in soon, but the pods have not completely filled out yet. The cole family and other starts I put out there earlier this week are starting to grow. I caught a cutworm at work out there last night and dispatched it, but the plants are still small and vulnerable. I have three small melons developing, but with no sun and cooler temps, they are not ripening. At least they have plenty of water!

These times come, and we have to wait in patience. The Thai yellow eggplants are finally producing! They're just not yellow- they are white. Maybe that means they are under-ripe, and I should leave them on the plant longer. Patience again. 

Must go look again, and watch the beets grow. Slow work, but fun.

Broccoli and Cauliflower

This is my broccoli and cauliflower bed. Two of the plants have been shorn off an inch above ground, with no slime trail. One had the leaves nearby, and looked like it had been cut. I discovered the second today, leaves gone. Both broccoli plants. I am sad, but I hope the rest survive. When I find suspicious looking grubs as I dig the bed, I try to kill them so they will not eat my plants. Did one of them (that I missed) do this?  I don't know. This is my first attempt at fall gardening beyond nursing the summer plants through cooler weather to frost, so it is all experimental. 

Fortunately the slug count is a LOT lower than in the spring, with a few big ones instead of multitudes of small-to-medium ones. I'm still going out every night to observe and to minimize damage, as a big one could theoretically eat lots of baby plants in a night. Hunting with disposable gloves on actually works, and really cuts down on the "I'm-actually-picking-up-a-huge-slug-ICK!" factor. Highly recommended for the small-scale "organic" gardener.

Finally In the Ground!

I finally got my fall crops out of the flats and in the ground this evening, mostly. A few more plants remain for tomorrow afternoon, Lord willing. Must slug-hunt. Pictures forthcoming.

Finally Digging

Today is a dirty day. I'm finally having a day without POURING rain, suitable for getting the beds ready. It's still a bit too wet (or potentially wet) for planting, but the sand is going in the carrot beds. I was starting the process, turning around to get the pick, when my slimy nemesis waved its eyes in my direction from the garage wall. A slug! AARGH!! I must beer-bait the beds after digging tonight, to see how many are there and if my precious seedlings can survive. All this is an experiment,so we shall see. Back to digging.

Baby Plants A'Plenty

"Recycled" materials make great starter flats if you don't have lots of money or time to spend making the ones you see in the gardening books. Just lay an empty orange juice carton on its side and cut one side out, so that the juice-pouring opening faces up (you lose less dirt and water that way). Then bash several holes in the bottom with a knife for drainage. Then fill with your potting medium, wet appropriately, and you are on your way. If you're like us, and you drink a lot of OJ, or if you consume other beverages from cardboard or plastic containers, they can really come in handy- and they work. Last week-end I planted 2 kinds of carrots, a lettuce blend, Detroit red beets, marigolds, Tokyo bunching onions, and nasturtiums. I move them along with the broccoli and cauliflower starts into the garage at night to protect from slugs, and out in the daytime for sun. Everything is up now but the nasturtiums. Wow! That is MUCH faster germination than I got in the basement in late winter. The warm temperatures (mid-80s today, so the seedlings are in a place that is shaded much of the day) really help things to germinate.

We Have Germination! (and slugs)

Yesterday as I went to water the pots of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage started Saturday, I noticed something: new growth already in all 3 sets! It took weeks back in the winter in the basement for them to germinate! Guess warm soil is important, even for cool-weather crops to germinate. I put the pots in the garage yesterday evening as a storm was approaching, and I did not want them flooded. I went in this morning to find one pot denuded of cabbage seedlings- and a slug therein! I thought moving them to the garage would help avoid that. The slug, sensing the rain coming, was probably on or in the pot already, and I did not see it in the dim evening light. I replanted the pot. I'll know to look next time. If it does not rain more tonight, I may set out the beer traps.

Putting In a Fall Garden

These are my rusty green bean vines, a few weeks ago when they were a lot greener. I was trying to capture a magnificent spider web in front of them. They are coming out in just a few minutes, to make room for fall crops.
This is the first year I've ever tried fall gardening, beyond harvesting surviving crops from summer. Upon the recommendations of the University of Arkansas School of Agriculture, I hope to plant lettuce, kale, carrots, and beets this month. Next month I will plant bok choi, new chard plants, more carrots and beets, and green onions. We'll see how they grow. Fall is coming!

Trap Plants

If you are trying to minimize pesticide use in your garden, an understanding of trap plants is a good thing. I have allowed some radishes that bolted (started flowering) before growing good-sized roots to continue to grow and flower, simply because their leaves seem to attract the slugs away from the lettuces and carrots. The large plants are lying among the carrots and near the lettuces. The leaves are seriously lacy, but they still attract the slugs left out there, which are fewer all the time. I've collected over 7,900, but the rate of collection is slowing greatly with the heat of summer. 

The nasturtiums are supposed to be trap plants for aphids, as well as a tasty radish-y flower for your salad when the weather gets really hot. They're kind of tasteless right now. 

The borage plants do not trap anything as far as I know, but the bees seem to like the sweet flowers, and they're supposed to improve the pollination of your garden plants. Strategic interplanting is good when you have tiny beds like mine. We'll see how it goes.

Side-Dressing

If I were the "perfect" "organic" farmer, I would have beautiful black loam out there with huge and healthy plants sticking insect free out of it, but I'm a science grad student, so I have clay soil with bits of wood chips and decaying leaves sticking out, and some plants thriving, with others struggling. My green bean plants have something going on that is causing some yellowing of some lower leaves, with thinning between the veins. I thought it was a fungal infection, but I see no white or black or reddish brown. It could be a micronutrient deficiency like magnesium or manganese or boron (my soil was low in boron on the tests). These minerals are important in tiny amounts for all living things, for the active centers of enzymes. When you eat plants, you get these nutrients by breaking down their enzymes and building your own for your own purposes.

I decided to side-dress the plants (put fertilizer on the ground close to them, trying not to hit the leaves, to be watered in by the next rain) to try to solve the problem with a 5-3-3 fertilizer (not terribly high in NPK) with lots of micronutrients in it. I hope it helps.

Interplanting

This is the combination of green onions, beets, and cabbage I planted early in the season. A borage plant to the right and a mint plant to the left were added later to try to fend off the bugs. You can see the outline of the cold frame around the plants, and my foot for reference (it is approximately 1 foot long, in this shoe). Interplanting seems to be working well so far, though it is not perfect. I suspect that to get healthier plants, I would need more sun and better soil that did not put a foundation of solid clay under the plants. Someday, maybe I'll have the time to fully rehabilitate soil, and see what we can get.

When Maximum Photosynthesis Happens

Surprisingly enough, it is not on those cloudless, sunny days. Plants actually do best (and take up the most carbon for you carbon-o-philes out there) on bright cloudy days or hazy days, when the sunlight is diffuse instead of concentrated on just a few leaves, leaving the rest in shadow. That's one of the reasons they grow great roses in Seattle, and the rain forests are so productive. Here's a reference for this, and for the unexpected result of a volcanic eruption (more carbon uptake): Roderick M, Farquhar G, Berry S, and Noble I, On The Direct Effect of Clouds and Atmospheric Particles on the Productivity and Structure of Vegetation, Oecologia, 129(1), September 2001. There are a LOT more references than this, but the abstract of this one is pretty understandable, and viewable free at the Springerlink site. So plant out your seedlings on these bright cloudy days with confidence, knowing that their little leaves will be working hard to build new plant growth.

Planting Tomatoes

Oh, rejoice with me! The tomato plants went in the ground yesterday, 2 per cage: 2 Sungold, 2 Arkansas Traveler, and 2 Black Japanese Trifiele. They look vigorous and good. I just read that the "Sungold" is a hybrid, though, and I planted collected seed, so they may not come true to type. Oh, well. We will see. The plants are vigorous, anyway. I may have to thin to one plant per cage if they get too big, but right now they look like they have plenty of room to grow. The cages have an area of about 32 square feet around them, with some borage plants toward the front (and some basil going in a few weeks from now. Must Start Seeds!!

Bean Planting Time

We eat a lot of green beans. They are a vegetable side dish or part of a vegetable blend or in the soup at least 3 times a week, often more. I decided to maximize our bean production this year by planting them along the entire length of a wooden fence we share with neighbors.

That meant germinating a lot of seeds. I started them in cardboard or newsprint tubes full of potting soil. They were big enough to plant last Friday, but it got too cold Monday night to think about it. It is hard to protect climbing plants, and these are pole beans. Kentucky Wonder pole beans truly live up to their name- flavorful, fast-growing in this climate, and producing for a long season if you keep them picked. The flowers drop in the heat of late July and August, but they'll get their second wind when the heat breaks and keep right on going. I did make the mistake last year of planting them in front of a South-facing brick wall. Do not do this. The vines got cooked and did not recover well.

Here are the plants in the ground. Some of the roots were already penetrating the tubes, so I buried the entire tube with the roots. It gives you a way to hold the plant conveniently while planting, and judge the proper depth for the roots, and protects the tender roots from injury while you refill the hole. Works for me.