Robot Farmers & The Book Of Weeds

I noticed a copy of The Book of Weeds: How to Deal with Plants that Behave Badly in the new book section at the library today. I started glancing through it because I've been trying to figure out what the weed that takes over my back lawn each summer is and this book had really nice, big pictures which made it very clear what you are looking at. Often times books like this will have squinkly little line drawings which make it hard to figure out what you are looking at, but this book made it very easy. (Common plantain by the way). It also gives advice on what causes a particular weed to thrive and how to get rid of it.

It also had a couple of pages about the Field Robot Event. This is a contest for universities working on small robots which can navigate the rows of plants on a field and take action in much smaller spaces than conventional farm equipment. Think a swarm of small, solar powered robots which patrol the rows all day spot digging weeds or spot applying herbicide on specific plants rather than needing to spray the entire field. The site has some interesting pictures and videos.

Seed Starting: Cardboard Box

As mentioned in the last post, the seed starting trays you buy at the garden center are often very small and require one or two transplants as the plants get bigger before the final transplant into the garden. I think if you start with a bigger container in the first place, the re-plantings can be avoided later on.

I haven't tried this previously, but plan on doing so in the spring.

1. Get a corrugated cardboard box that was used to hold bottles which has card board dividers in it used to separate the bottles. A case of bottled beer is a good example of the type of box I am referring to.

2. Drink the beer. Gardening is hard work and this is one of those thankless tasks you'll need to suffer in order to ensure a successful crop.

3. Cut the box to the height of the dividers. This should be about 3 - 4 inches high. If the dividers themselves are very high, you may need to trim them to about 4 inches.

4. With a screw driver, poke three holes in the bottom of the box under each of the squares of the divider.

5. You should now have about a 4 inch deep cardboard tray with either 12 or 24 compartments made from the divider. Fill the tray with potting soil and plant seeds in each of the compartments.

6. Place the tray on a cookie sheet or similar and use as you would a normal seed starting tray.

The compartments of the box are probably 4 or more times the size of the seed starting trays from the nursery center. It also has the advantage that you can simply tear away the cardboard when it is time to transplant in the garden rather than having to knock the plants out of little pots. The cardboard will also bio degrade if it is not wax coated and can also be used in the garden as mulch after the seedlings are removed.

Seed Starting: Yogurt Cups

Seed and garden companies often sell nice plastic trays with individual compartments for starting seeds. These usually start out great, but are often too small once the plants get a little bit bigger and I often end up needing to transplant once or maybe even twice before the plants get transplanted into the garden.

Yogurt cups are about two to three times bigger than the average seed starting container. While some towns recycle yogurt containers with the plastics, many do not, and they are seen as a landfill problem that won't bio degrade away. They stack inside each other for storage.

1. Use an eco friendly brand like Stony Field Farms. They stopped using plastic lids and the product itself is good.

2. Wash the cup.

3. Carefully poke 3 holes in the bottom of the cup using a screwdriver or other sharp tool being careful not to press so hard as to crack the plastic. The power drill with a small bit will also work.

4. Fill the cup with potting soil and plant your seeds as you normally would.

For those of us in the North East, the time to start seeds is a little over three months off which should leave plenty of time to collect enough cups for the home gardener.

Strawberry Jam Smells Like June

Back in the early summer we had gone strawberry picking and made Strawberry Jam. The jam had a light, shimmering pink translucence and when the jar was opened a thick, rich smell of strawberries came tumbling out along with a deep strawberry taste.

At the time, I had wondered why store bought jam did not smell and taste that same way. Most store bought jam uses corn syrup rather than sugar and they often cut the fruit content with grape juice, but I assumed that the real reason had to do with the long time the store jam needs to sit on the shelf. I also assumed the homemade jam would also wither over time once it was allowed to age.

I did not think I would get an answer to my question because, at the time, the jam we made was eaten very quickly and whatever wasn't eaten was given away to friends and neighbors.

Recently, however, one of the family found one last jar tucked away in the back of the pantry. Opening the jar produces the same rich taste and flavor as it did back in summer as if it were still June. Homemade jam is ridiculously easy to make with only four ingredients basically boiled together in a single pot. While this didn't answer the question about the blandness of store jam, it did tell me I need to make sure I make enough next year to last the entire winter.

Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution

I just watched Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution which was a documentary about a small town in France in which the mayor mandates the food served in the local school must be organic. This experiment is interspersed with commentary on the different farming methods used in the region, the condition of the water in the region and other food related issues.

The movie itself is a little slow moving, but the images of the village and surrounding countryside are beautiful and exactly what you would expect a small village in France to look like. The food the kids are eating is about as far away as you can possibly get from chicken fingers and PB&J. The film itself is a good reminder why I started my own garden and gives good pause to reflect on a lot of other actions.

Recycled Buckets

Cat Litter usually comes in a paper bag or cardboard box which can then be recycled. The economy size, however, comes in a big, plastic bucket and while the convenience and cost savings of the larger size are nice, the bucket itself does not lend itself to curb side recycling.

Peel the labels off, however, and it simply becomes a white, plastic bucket with a lid and a handle. The lid fits tight and makes it a squirrel proof bird seed container, it doubles as a small garbage can in the tool shed and functions well as a sturdy bucket in the garden for hauling water, dirt, etc ...

Tips On Buying Seeds

The Seeds of Change catalog came in the mail yesterday and this is one of my favorite places to order from as they have a huge selection of organic and heirloom seeds.

When I speak with people who are looking to start their first vegetable garden, I usually suggest they go to their local nursery or big box store and start with some transplants. Transplants, having already been sprouted and partially grown, are in many cases easier to grow than by starting from seed.

The varieties at these locations, however, can be limited and certain varieties are either very simple to start from seed (peas, beans, squash) or simply don't make sense for the nursery to sell as transplants (carrots) and this is when seeds make sense.

When buying from a catalog or from a seed rack in the store, there are a number of terms used to describe the seeds. Many of these, like "partial shade" or "water often" are self explanatory, but here are a few that may not be obvious to everyone:

Zones: The U.S. Department of Agriculture divides North America into "hardiness zones" which are geographic bands which are similar in temperature. If a plant or seeds list a range of zones, you need to be certain you live within that range or the range of the temperature will not allow the plant to flourish or even survive. This is particularly true if you are buying a big money item, like a fruit tree, which you expect to live for more than one season.

Determinate vs. Indeterminate: Most often seen with tomatoes. Determinate give fruit in one big burst while indeterminate give fruit the entire season. Determinate plants tend to be shorter and bushier while indeterminate tend to be more long and sprawling.

Annual vs. perennial: Annuals live for one season while perennials will come back year after year. Many herbs are perennials. Take care that you plant the perennials in a location where you want them to stay for years to come rather than right in the middle of an area that you expect to dig up at the end of the season. Some plants are labeled as "perennial grown as an annual" which means that in their native land they would last season after season, but in other regions they will last only one season. You may occasionally see the "biennial" which is something that will last for two seasons.

Seeds in the packet: The smallest size packet is usually the right choice for the home gardener. While 25 seeds or 1/8 ounce may seem like a small amount, chances are you only want a few plants of each variety anyway and you will more often than not end up with half a packet left over. The seed companies are pretty good about knowing what they doing in this regard.

Germination percentage: The percentage of the seeds in the pack expected to sprout. Seed companies have various controls in place to try and ensure good seed, but plant genetics, nature, and processing factors are not going to allow for 100% success. This is not usually significant for the home gardener and is more important for the farmer who might spend thousands of dollars on hundreds of pounds of seeds.

F1 or Hybrid: This plant is the result of crossing two other plants which hopefully results in the best characteristics of the parent plants. Seeds from these plants, however, will not produce the same results when sown the following year and are usually not good for saving.

Heirloom: These are seeds which have been saved and passed down over many years and will reliably produce similar characteristics year after year. These are the best types for seed saving.

Disease Resistant: This may often be followed by a number of letters such as PM or the name of the disease which the plant does well with such as "powdery mildew". This may not factor into your decision making process unless you happen to know you live in an area where a particular disease is common.

Chickens & Ducks

The McMurray Hatchery catalog came today.

Firstly, this is an amazing catalog with some really beautiful birds in it. Showing birds is not something that I would normally be interested in, but reading this catalog makes a person want to run out and join a 4H club. The game birds, pheasants and quails, are particularly nice.

Araucanas Americanas, however wins it for being the most interesting though as this bird lays multi color blue, green and brown eggs earning it the name "Easter Egg Chicken".

I've been interested in raising 3 or 4 hens and maybe a few ducks for eggs for quite some time now. The mental road block I still need to reconcile is the difference between the intimate commitment of getting a pet versus the more business like relationship of owning livestock.

Getting a cat or a dog is a commitment that will last 10 years or more and the relationship is intended to last. The animal will often feel like a member of the family and will live in the house with the people. Very seldom will you eat your pet (although the physiology of a cat looks a lot like a rabbit) and it is no unheard of for a person to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on vet bills for a cat or a dog.

Livestock, on the other hand, is typically grown to be eaten or sold and the relationship is intended to be of a much shorter duration. While livestock needs to be fed, watered and cared for, I doubt there are many who would pay a vet hundreds of dollars on a single chicken. While a person may have 2 or 3 cats and dogs, livestock is often owned in much larger quantities and I doubt anyone is going to take the trouble to name each of a flock of 50 chickens.

These comments are obviously the result of the societal norms of where I am from and how I grew up. They will seem right on the money to some people and completely off the wall to others, but I'll need to have it straight before moving ahead. The hatchery won't ship until February at the earliest, so there are still a few months to plan this out.

Thoughts On Melons

I've never had too much luck with growing melons. Most of the books say they should be fairly easy and they are, in many ways, like squash and cucumber which I do grow well, but I seldom get good results with melons. More often than not they die off early in the season and, if they make it, very seldom do I get fruit.

Winter is a time for for reflecting on what went well in the garden this year and planning for the next season and I picked up a copy of Melons for the Passionate Grower hoping for some pointers. This is largely a picture book written by a true melon aficionado, but it also has some good chapters on melon history and growing technique.

Melons are originally from Africa and, not surprisingly, need long hot days. After reading this, I'm pretty sure one of my problems is I'm putting them outside too early in the spring. The author suggests for zone 5 to put your plants out after Memorial Day. I am zone 6 and I usually have them out well before that.

There was also some good suggestions about growing them on black plastic which not only will keep the ground warmer, but it will also help keep the weeds down. Ensuring proper drainage and planting on mounds to further improve drainage is probably the other thing I can do better.

Hopefully with these relatively small adjustments I'll have a better melon season next year. Here are the varieties I am planning:

One item I got last year from the Hudson Valley Seed Library which I'd like to try again was the Banana Melon. Not only does this melon have an unusual shape, but it is also supposed to smell like a banana.

A second one I got from the Hudson Valley Seed Library was Schoon's Hard Shell which is supposed to do well in this area of the country. This too did not go well this year and I'd like to give it another try.

The final variety I am planning is theCream Saskatchewan Watermelon. I had been admiring this in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog and then happened to come across it again in the Novella Carpenter book which described it in equally glowing terms.

Early Seed Catalogs

The 2010 catalogs for High Mowing Seeds and The Seed Savers Exchange have both already arrived in the mail. In both cases this feels a lot earlier than in past years and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the result of the recession and the current boom in people planting their own vegetables.

I've bought from High Mowing the last four years in a row. Even though the are a relatively small company, they really take the time to make sure your order is correct and have excellent customer service. All their seeds are organic and they have a nice selection. I'll be using them for all my cucumbers, squash, and beans although I haven't figured out which varieties I am going to order just yet.

Seed Savers is dedicated to saving the vanishing heirloom varieties. They have a huge selection in the catalog and an even bigger selection as part of their member exchange program. Even the non gardener will be impressed looking through their catalog a the huge number of pictures. I'll be using them for some heirloom tomato transplants, melons and chard. They also have a broad selections of unusual flowers and I'll probably also get some poppies and morning glories for planting around the patio again this year.

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

I just finished reading Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter.

While there is a lot written lately about eating locally, growing your own food, etc ... this book takes on the unique twist that it was all done in a run down section of Oakland, California rather than some sprawling acreage in Virginia, New Mexico, or British Columbia. In a relatively small, urban space she not only has a vegetable garden, but bees, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and, eventually, pigs. The many solutions she comes up with to the problems unique to her tight conditions are extremely interesting and give food for thought to those of use who may have previously felt constrained by the proximity of our homes to those of our neighbors.

There is also much on eating locally and the value of community which are also very interesting and the entire book makes for a good read, even for the non gardener. She also has a blog at Ghost Town Farm.

Simple Saturday Bird Feeder

This is quick and easy to make and a fun thing to do with a young child on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon.

It will also remind the birds that your yard is a good place to eat to which they will hopefully return in the spring to eat the bugs in your garden.

1. Mix several packets of unflavored gelatin per the package instructions with enough bird seed to make a good, dense mixture.

2. Pour the mixture into a small bundt pan or other container and chill it for several hours. Try to find something with a fun or seasonal shape to it.

3. After the gelatin is very firm, turn the pan upside down and gently tap the back until the gelatin / bird seed mixture falls out.

4. Poke a small hole through the birdseed using a pencil, screwdriver or similarly shaped item and thread a loop of stout twine or ribbon through the hole and hang the entire thing to a tree, porch railing or similar near by a window of the house and enjoy watching the birds eat.

Our favorites are the boldly colored birds. We get blue jays, cardinals and gold finches, but even the chickadees are fun to watch. It's also fun to watch the frustrated antics of the cat as he also watches the birds through the closed patio door.

6 Reasons To Rake Your Own Leaves

This year, all the leaves in the yard were raked by hand with a rake. It really wasn't all that much more effort than with the leaf blower and made me feel good for several reasons:

1. A rake does not make exhaust and does not contribute to global warming.

2. Raking leaves burns more calories than watching t.v..

3. It saves money. Rather than hiring someone, it costs very little to do it yourself and a rake costs less than a leaf blower.

4. A rake de-thatches the lawn and brings up maple seeds, small rocks and sticks and other junk that the leaf blower would leave behind which makes the lawn healthier.

5. Rather than going to the landfill, the leaves can be dumped in the vegetable garden for some added carbon to the compost.

6. Have the family join you. Raking leaves together as a family is better for you than watching t.v..

Eating Things To Save Them

Marketers tend to only offer the varieties that they sell the most of. As time goes by, this results in certain varieties being dropped. This happens both with fruits and vegetables as well as animals. Sometimes people will keep passing on the disappearing species, such as heirloom tomatoes, but sometimes they just disappear forever.

Here is an interesting idea in the times people eat more of these endangered varieties as this will, in turn, drive up market demand and increase the incentives to breed these species.

New York Times Story

Sunflower

The Circle Of Life

A lot was written in the newspapers and gardening blogs about what tough year this was for growing things. In addition to this being a very rainy and very cold year, there was also a tomato fungus that impacted in a good part of the east coast. In spite of all the troubles that people had in getting plants to grow where they wanted to grow, here are several examples I've found recently of things just growing without any help:

I had been sprouting seeds in trays on the patio earlier in the year. Here shiso and basil sprout next to the patio from seeds which most likely dumped from the sprouting trays.



At the end of the year last year, there were some green tomatoes left on the vine which Sean was tossing around. On the right of the shiso patch is a grape tomato plant which grew from one of those discarded tomatoes.



I had transplanted some tomato plants which later died, but which had dropped a lot of tomatoes which rotted on the ground before doing so. Now there are dozens of small tomato sprouts in that spot.



I had hung some pea plants upside down to dry for saving the seeds. Here a few peas must have fallen off the drying vines and sprouted on their own.

Seed Saving - Tomatoes

Tomatoes are in full swing now and we have more than we can use ourselves. Next week I'll probably try to make some sauce, but this week I'm saving the seeds for next year.

1. Select the best fruit which will carry on those good genes to the next season. Free of cracks, good shape, good color, and plants that have a lot of fruit are all things to look for.

2. Slice open the tomato and put the seeds in a small bowl. Cover the seeds with 1/2 - 1 inch of water and place the bowl in a warm, dark place. Let the bowl sit there two to three days until it starts to ferment. That little sack around the tomato seed is there to keep it from sprouting inside the tomato and this process will remove the sack.

3. Skim off any junk which float to the top of the bowl.

4. Gently rinse the seeds under running water.

5. Spread the seeds on a dry paper towel to dry. Throw out any seeds which are brown, green or otherwise look odd. Let the seeds sit for a few days until completely dry. Store them for next year in a cool dry place.

3.

Mid Summer Planting

Last year I got a copy of Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long which is an excellent book, but I got it too late in the year to actually do anything with it.

This year, the very rainy June knocked out a few plants with root rot and the peas and the lettuce, both of which are early season varieties, are drying up and going to seed leaving me with a decent sized empty space.

Seeds of Change had some good suggestions on their web site for late season planting and I dug out my seed box looking for varieties that I had on hand that would be ready in 60 days or so. I planted pole beans, swiss chard, and some summer squash and all have sprouted very quickly. I also transplanted some Ramapo tomatoes which had not been doing too well in pots on the patio and they have almost doubled in size in just one week.

Seed Saving - Purple Peas

Peas are an early season crop that like the weather slightly cool. As the days are getting hotter and longer, the pea vines are now turning brown and it is time to start saving their seeds. This year I had planted Purple Peas from the Hudson Valley Seed Library.

1. Save from the best stock which will pass on their good genes to the next generation. The one that climbed to the top of the trellis first or the one that started to look like a small shrub rather than a bean bush are good choices. Make sure the plants you pick are free of disease or any other problems. Take from more than one plant to add some diversity.


2. Select the best fruit. Do you have fruit that you took a picture of to show off? Those are the ones for saving.


3. Let the fruit dry on the plant until the pod turns brown. This will usually be 4 – 6 weeks past the time you would have picked the fruit for eating. If you are doing this late in the season and the weather is turning cold or wet, pull the entire plant and hang it upside down where it is warm and dry until the pod is finished drying. Now should be early enough to let them dry in the field.


4. Shell the peas as if you were preparing them for dinner. Discard any seeds which are unusually small, wrinkly, mushy or otherwise odd. Place the seeds on a cookie sheet or paper towel and put them in a warm dry place allowing them to dry further. Do not put them in the oven, toaster or other artificial heat source as this cook them and render them useless for planting.


5. Put the seeds in a container and store them in a cool, dry place. An envelope like a seed company would use is more than sufficient or for larger quantities a jar or piece of Tupperware will work well.

Late Blight Fungus

A recent article in the New York Times explains about a tomato blight that “has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined”.

It seems one of the culprits is a single nursery which supplies many of the big box stores where the staff are not trained to spot problems like this. The article also explains how to spot the symptoms of the disease and references advice on using a fungicide to treat it. Given, however, that the purpose of growing your own vegetables is to avoid additives this is not very encouraging.

I’ve written in a number of older posts about the saving seeds and starting plants from seeds and here is one more example where it pays off and while my plants are not currently infected, if they do become so it will not be because I carried it home with me.

Companion Planting

Companion planting is the is the idea that two varieties of plants can do better when planted together rather than each of the plants being planted alone. One plant may repel a particular pest that bothers another plant or one plant may add something to the soil that another plant needs.

Some people will plant flowers next to their vegetable plants to lure pollinators who can visit the vegetable plants while they are there for the flowers.

Last year, I tried planting sunflowers at least a dozen times, but the groundhog would get at them every time they got to be more than a few inches tall. This year, the combination of a better fence and a cat in the yard has kept the groundhog and rabbits at bay and the sun flowers are doing very well.





I also planted some poppies although were a little too early and only a few have made it.





Here is a picture of the cat on the roof of the garden shed which is right next to the garden. No one is really sure how he manages to get up there, but no one really cares either as he works much better than the plastic owl I put up there last year.

Strawberry Jam

Now is the middle of strawberry season and today we went to Sussex County Strawberry Farm. They have 15 acres of berries, the plants were full of berries and the air smelled like strawberry jam as you walked between the rows.

It only took about 45 minutes to pick six quarts which we then took home and made strawberry jam with about four of the quarts. The jam was extremely easy to make with only four ingredients (5 cups mashed berries, 7 cups of sugar, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1 box of pectin) and even the canning process was not too bad once you got the hang of it. We ended up with nine, 8 oz jars, the jam is a light, shimmering pink and the strawberry flavor is clear and distinct. Given how easy this was and how well it turned out, we are now looking forward to blueberries in July and peaches in August.

Update On The Compost Heap

I’ve read in a few places that landfills are approximately 1/3 yard waste. In previous years, I would mow the lawn place the clippings in big, paper bags sold for this purpose and set them out by the curb for collection at the rate of 2 or 3 a week. This year, however, I’ve been dumping the clippings into a pile the vegetable garden and mixing them with leftover straw mulch and dirt. I mix the pile twice a week with a shovel although mixing is not quite accurate as I simply shovel the pile to a new location and “restack” the pile. I’m also supposed to keep the pile moist, but with the almost constant rain for the last three weeks that has not been an issue. The heat coming out of the stack is tremendous and the grass clippings are rotting away at a very rapid pace usually being mostly gone by the next mowing. The pile is also densely packed with very large worms.

The key to making compost that does not smell is making sure that sufficient air is allowed into the pile and the straw mulch and the frequent turning both provide this. Here are a good link on composting:

http://www.howtocompost.org/

The Return of the Farmer’s Market

Last year, the town started hosting a farmers market in the town hall parking lot. This resumed this past week and will be held every Friday from now until mid September. Between the backyard garden, the victory garden, the farmer’s market and the organic cooperative, it will a good while before we need fruits or vegetables from the supermarket. Many towns have these options available, but don’t do a great job of publicizing it. In my case, the town hosts both the farmer’s market and the victory garden. Periodically checking out the township and public library web sites on a regular basis is a good place to start and the following two sites are also very good.

http://www.localharvest.org/

USDA Farmer's Market Search

The Future of Food

The Future of Food is a documentary about genetically modified food and the moral, ethical, and health issues associated with it. It has a definite slant against, but unlike a lot of documentaries which try to terrify you; this one leans more towards the perspective of this is a relatively new technology, maybe it should be studied a little bit better before it is too late. It is analogous to an intelligent dinner guest offering a point of view rather than a protestor screaming at you with a placard and is worth the watch.

Daikon!

Similar to the regular radish which would not grow well in the heavy, clay soil at the home garden, the daikon radish turned out well in the much looser soil of the victory garden.

Groundhog Update

The groundhog got into the home garden and did a lot of damage to the peas and beans. I’ve put up a bigger door and that seems to have kept him out. The beans have recovered nicely and are producing well, but we were not so lucky with the peas.

Meanwhile, at the victory garden, another groundhog has been getting in. A number of the other people at the victory garden have complained of similar and a few have even taken to setting out traps. The two odd things about this groundhog are that it only eats the squash plants and seems to be going over the fence rather than under it.

Here is an article from the New York Times about the raising popularity of rooftop gardens. That’s certainly one way to deal with groundhogs!

New York Times Story

Free Fruit

Every year, there is always one or two vegetables which we end up with much too much of and we end up giving it away to friends and neighbors. Some people seem genuinely happy for this, but there are always a couple which seem to be just polite.

Last year, we put a box at the end of the driveway with a can to put coins in and let people help themselves. People actually paid including some random strangers who just happen to be driving past the house.

Here is an article in the New York Times about networks of people sharing fruit that falls off of trees and is other wise just going to waste.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/dining/10Fruit.html

The article also had links to two other sites that allow you to trade excess fruit and vegetables with people in your area.

veggietrader.com
neighborhoodfruit.com

Beans & Radish

I went to the Victory Garden and was surprised to find string beans ready to pick. String beans always come a little bit earlier than a lot of other things, but the ground hog wrecked the plants last year and I guess I had forgotten.

I also picked a nice bunch of radishes. The dirt in the yard has a lot of clay in it and root vegetables like radish and carrots never did very well. The dirt at the Victory Garden is much looser and these turned out well.

Recent News Stories

A couple of interesting stories from the New York Times this week.

The first is about two regular people who quit their day jobs and bought a farm in Georgia where they are raising organic meat. Click through to their web site after reading the article. Their blog would make James Herriot envious.

New York Times story
Nature's Harmony Blog

The second is about Stonyfield Farms, the yogurt maker, trying to make the cows that supply them produce less methane (and global warming) by feeding them a diet that is more consistent with their natural diet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/05cows.html

When To Water

I’ve been asked a couple times lately do I follow a watering schedule and / or what is my watering schedule.

I do not actually follow a schedule and let the plants tell me what to do. In the case of the plants in the backyard, I simply look at them every day and if they look droopy I give them a good soak. In the case of the plants at the community garden, I do not see them every day and need to exercise a little bit of judgment mostly by keeping an eye on the weather. If it has been rainy or mild, I am comfortable leaving them for a few days. If, however, it is pounding hot, I will increase the frequency of my checks, but use the same rule of thumb regarding how rigid or droopy the plants are. Additionally, not all plants require the same amount of water (e.g. tomatoes need less, cucumbers need more) and will only water the sections that need it.

Some other general watering advice:

Early morning or late afternoon are best. Mid day allows most of the water to evaporate off in the heat. Night watering promotes fungus.

Water the base of the plant and avoid watering the leaves directly.

Less frequent, heavy watering promotes deep roots.

Frequent, short watering promotes shallow roots. Deep roots are better.

Use mulch (straw, newspapers, ground tree bark, old grass clippings) around the base of the plants to keep down weeds and keep moisture in.

The First Dinner of the Season

Tonight’s dinner had a salad with Oak Leaf Lettuce out of the backyard making it officially the first item harvested this year.

Canning Goes Mainstream

Not but two days after I bought a big stack of canning supplies and the New York times runs an article that canning is the new hip thing to do on the heels of the local food movement.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/dining/27cann.html


The article also has a good slide show which shows canning step by step and a useful link to The National Center for Home Food Preservation which also has a number of good resources on canning and freezing.

Getting Ready For Canning

After looking all over for pickling salt, I checked the Morton salt web site which listed the only store carrying anywhere near me as Wegmans.

Wegmans is a very nice, upscale grocery store with very good produce and fish as well as many other organic and natural products you might not find in the regular supermarket. In addition to the pickling salt, Wegmans also had Ball canning jars and I picked up two dozen quart jars and a dozen jelly jars and some pectin. Strawberry picking is right around the corner and I also hope to put up a lot of pickles and tomato sauce. I had wanted to do this last year, but hadn’t wanted to pay the shipping charges on the jars so it was good to find it all in one place.

Wegmans also had a display of seeds from Seeds of Change which you don’t often see. I got a packet of snow peas and will figure out where to plant them later.

http://www.espoma.com

Last week I picked up a bag of plant fertilizer at the nursery because the plants were looking a little pale. I used a product from Espoma and it worked great. The plants are a lush dark green now and are full of blossoms. The product is also all natural and organic.

Check out http://www.espoma.com for the product details and a lot of other useful information about fertilizers and plant feeding. This is a very useful web site which explains the difference between natural and chemical fertilizer, the difference between fast and slow release fertilizer and why some fertilizers burn your plants.

They also have a lawn product which I am eager to try out.

Lettuce Update

A few weeks back I posted a picture of the lettuce peeking out from under the straw mulch. Here is an updated picture with the lettuce looking almost ready to cut.

Squash and Zucchini!

I went to the victory garden this morning to weed and noticed that the yellow squash and zucchini already had small fruit on them. The fruit was small, only about an inch or so and I didn’t bring the camera because I thought this was too early in the season for anything to sprout yet. If the weather holds, they should be ready to pick in the next week or so.

Peas On The Trellis

Starting seeds from seeds is a lot harder than buying transplants at the nursery. Too cold, too deep, too wet or any of a number of other factors can go wrong and the plants will not sprout. Here is a picture of the peas. Not only did they sprout, but they found the trellis and are starting to climb on their own.

The Mint Patch - Spring Time

When I first started this blog, one of the first pictures I posted was of a patch of mint brown and dry sticking out of the snow. Mint is a perennial (it comes back every year) and it also spreads. Here it is in the spring:

Nice Nursery Pots

This year, the local nursery is offering slightly larger transplants in slightly larger pots in addition to the usual “flats”. The plants are slight more expensive ($20 vs. $12) for fewer plants per flat, but I think the hardiness of the plants more than make up for it.

The pots are also a better size for seed starting:

Organic Plant Food & A First Feeding

Both the home and community garden were looking a little pale, so I fed them both. For the home garden I used an organic product from http://www.espoma.com. The web site is very well done and very informative.

For the community garden, I used a product from a different company which is a mixture of ground tree bark and lobster shells. The product used on the home garden suggested an application once a month and the other product did not specify. I’ll watch them both for a month and then switch to whichever of the two does better.

Heirloom Tomatoes @ The Nursery

The eco boom is catching on with the local nursery and they have a host of heirloom varieties which they have not had in previous years. They are sold by the single plant and are slightly more expensive then the usual nursery stock, but the plants are bigger and healthier. Ox Heart, Old German, Mr. Stripey, Cherokee Purple, and Mortgage Lifter are a few of the names offered.

The Mystery of the Mystery Plant

We throw any vegetable scraps (e.g. carrot peels, rotten fruit, etc …) directly into the garden to rot away with other yard waste and every year we get mystery plants. Mystery plants fall into a strange gray area as they are not weeds in the familiar sense, but they are plants not intended which grow from seeds thrown out from the kitchen. Given that it can be tricky to start plants from seed, there is a temptation to want to let them grow if for nothing other than to see what they are even if they are out of place. Cucumbers and melons are the most common mystery plant, but tomatoes and potatoes have also made previous appearances. One year, a grape vine even managed to sprout which we later transplanted to a nicer spot near the backyard fence.

Stopping Off After Work

Today we stopped by the victory garden after work and spent 10 minutes planting carrot and radish seeds.

After the seeds were planted and watered, we walked the rows to see what the other gardens were doing. A few of them had some very impressive results already for so early in the season.

Being outside like this was also a very relaxing segue in between the drive home and getting home.

Victory Garden - After

Here is a picture of the victory garden after clearing out the rocks and weeds, putting up the fence and planting the plants.

The fence is made out of plastic "poultry netting". It is the same premise as regular chicken wire without all the scrapes on your hands and arms.

The dirt itself is very nice. The dirt at home has a lot of clay in it and is very dense. This is much more loose and will hopefully be good for carrots and radish.

The home garden is for things which get used every day: tomato, cucumber, etc ... and this space for the slower growing items like melons.

Victory Garden - Before

Here is a picture of how most of the plots at the victory garden look when you first receive them:

Groundhog Captured!

Last year, a good portion of the garden was wrecked by a groundhog who thwarted every effort to keep him out of the garden. Today, my neighbor mentioned he caught and re-located a groundhog. I've buried the fence in the ground this year, but hopefully that was the same one and I'll have one less problem to worry about this year.

Early Lettuce

Straw mulch surrounds the early lettuce.

Victory Garden - Part II

A few weeks back I mentioned that towns will often set aside space for community gardens.  Our town opened up the application process for first time applicants the first week of March.  We applied for and got two plots.  The cost is $30 per plot for the entire season.  The plots themselves are fairly large and it looks like I've increased my total space by threefold. 

The gardens themselves are not too far from the house and the plan is to ride bikes there during the warm months to maintain them.  The plan is keep the fast growing crops, like cucumbers, in the home garden and the slower crops, like melons, in the town garden.

It is funny to note that there is a caution in the rules regarding anyone caught growing illegal drugs will both lose their garden plot and be prosecuted given that the land is owned by the town and the application form is submitted at the town hall.

Putting Up The Fence

Last year, we had a problem with a ground hog. That was the first time we had a serious problem in the vegetable garden as the rabbits are usually content with the flower bed. We tried several things including a rock boarder along the base of the fence, fox urine, and a ground hog repellant that killed more plants than anything else, but he ended up ruining a substantial part of the crop.

The garden itself is surrounded by two deep railroad ties. The fence I use is just 3 foot chicken wire that I got at the Home Depot. I've dug a trench about a foot deep around the perimeter and buried about the bottom foot of the fence. This gives me about a foot below the ground and three feed above the ground which will hopefully be enough to limit going both over and under the fence.

The First Transplants of Spring

We stopped by the nursery and the first transplants of spring were out. Lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, red onions, and cauliflower are all a little bit more cold tolerant and can be put out in the earliest in the spring. The winter has been the strongest in several years and I don't think we are past the last frost yet, but we got some lettuce, cabbage and broccoli all the same.

Vertical Apartment Garden

People often comment to me that they do not have enough space to grow a garden.

Here's a clever use of vertical space in an apartment. An old bookcase set next to a window gives space both horizontally and vertically and the varieties selected lend themselves to this type of set up. Most of the types are either short plants or, in the case of the peas, vines which can grow down the length of the bookcase. Another nice feature of this set up is that if you decide you are not getting enough / too much sun, you can move the garden to another window.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35952825@N02/sets/72157614654796077/

The Giving Gardens Project

The Giving Gardens Project at Wagner Farms Arboretum could not be a more perfect volunteer opportunity for me.  The project donates land for a garden and the tools to work it.  Volunteers work the soil, plant the plants and maintain them throughout the season.  The crops are then donated to local charities to provide fresh vegetables to people in need.  A group in the community working the land to help another group in the community is about as simple and honest as a charity can be.  I've submitted my application and I am looking foward to the orientation later this spring.

Sprout Clean Up

Today I thinned the sprouts to two per container by snipping the extra sprouts with a pair of scissors. I also reseeded some of the containers that had no sprouts in them. Overall, it looks like about a 75% germination rate. The tomatoes are doing well and seem strong, but the herbs are a little bit slow. I've noticed the upstairs bedroom is very sunny in the afternoon and might move the trays up there.

Victory Gardens

Many towns offer "Victory Gardens" or "Liberty Gardens" for free or little money ($20 per year in the next town over) to local residents. These are areas of land owened by the town split into medium sized plots which are used by people who don't have their own space to grow a garden. The town provides the land and a water hook up. The resident provides the plants, the time and maybe a small fence. In addition to providing the space, this is also a good opportunity to speak with other gardeners about what they are doing and what is working for them. Check your township web site as spring approaches. The posting on the web site for my town is as subtle as "Victory Garden lot applications are now being offered in the Mayor’s Office. For more information contact Leslie at 973-555-1212. ".

Getting Ready For Spring; The First Tilling

Saturday was warm enough and the dirt was soft enough to give the garden the first tilling. The first tilling mixes in the straw, leaves and household scraps that were deposited during the fall and winter and will give it about two months to rot away before the second tilling.

I have a Mantis tiller and I hate it. It is as hard as can be to start and is very unreliable. The only reason I tolerate it is because it was given to me for free by someone else who could not stand it. It is not only me who has this issue as the web is full of postings by others with similar problems. One of these days Sears will have a good sale and I'll replace it with a Craftsman.

Burpee Seed Sprouter

The Burpee Seed Sprouter was only $10.00 at Home Depot and works great. This is much cheaper than a lot of sprouting kits on the web. All the extra water drains away which prevents the mold and fermentation you might get if you try sprouting with just a dish. It is very easy to keep this watered and the sprouts it made were not bitter at all.

The First Sprouts of Spring

The tomatoes have started sprouting! They are about 2 - 3 inches now and growing quickly. I'll thin them to one sprout per container next week. I've read a suggestion to cut out the extra sprouts with scissors rather than pull them out so you do not disturb the roots of the spouts that will stay.

The tomato sprouts in the growing tray:

Japanese Pickles

Japanese pickles are not quite a side dish and not quite a garnish. Those little yellow daikon pickles that come with a curry are a good example. Unlike Western pickles which need take some time to make, many kinds of Japanese pickles can be made in a few minutes and are ready to eat in a day. They do not, however, last forever like Western pickles and need to be eaten in a relatively short period.

A common way of making Japanese pickles is to simply slice the vegetables, coat with salt and place under pressure for half a day. The pressure is often applied with a "pickling stone" which is literally just a good sized rock from outside placed on a board, but you can also buy a "pickling press". Pickling presses are a little over priced because they are imported Japan, but are a little bit nicer than keeping a rock in the kitchen.

One of my goals with the garden this summer is to jar or preserve as much of the vegetables as possible. We tried a first batch for practice, it only took about 10 minutes to make and 1/2 a day to pickle and the results were not bad.

Here are two good recipe books and an example of a pickling press:

Quick & Easy Tsukemono: Japanese Pickling Recipes


Easy Japanese Pickling in Five Minutes to One Day: 101 Full-Color Recipes for Authentic Tsukemono

Tsukemono Japanese Pickle Press 2.2 L

http://www.theblackmoon.com is a good site which goes into more detail and also has a number of simple recipes.

Early Seed Starting

It is probably a little bit early given that the winter has been so long this year, but I am starting the tomatoes and some of the other more delicate plants now. Peas, beans, cucumber, melons, and squash are all a lot more robust and grow very quickly. These varieties will all be started from seed directly in the ground after the frost has passed sometime between March and April.

I'm using some left over containers from plants bought at the nursery last year. They are a little bit bigger than what you normally get at Home Depot, etc ... for starting plants, but there will be less to worry about in terms of the plants getting root bound or needing to move them to a bigger container later.

I'll plant 3 - 4 seeds per container and thin them to 1 plant per container once they sprout. There are 72 containers between the two trays.

The dirt is regular dirt from the garden which has been sifted and cleaned.

I keep them in the living room next to the big picture window. There is also a heat vent right there, so they will be warm at night in addition to getting the sunlight. The living room has the basement under it, so I do not need to worry about the floor getting too cold. Some people will put a heat pad under the seedings, but with this set up I do not think that is necessary. In previous years, I used to put the seedlings next to the patio door where they would get light, but the heat vent was not there and the floor was much colder. This is also a less trafficked area and once they seeds are planted, they will not require too much care other than keeping the watered.



Note also the cardboard under the planters to help keep dirt and water off the carpet.

A Simple First Garden

When I mention the garden, people often comment that they would love to do the same, but simply do not know how. Looking back, here are the three things I would suggest to get up and running with as little effort, knowledge, expense or equipment as possible.

1. Buy this book All New Square Foot Gardening. I do not think it is possible to make starting a garden any simpler and easy to maintain than the information in this book. If space is an issue, keep it small and plant small things. Lettuce, carrots, radish, and herbs do not take up much space at all. Tomatoes will do just fine grown in a big planter on a patio.

2. Buy seedlings at the local nursery. Seedlings are plants the nursery has already started from seed in the greenhouse and buying the plants already started takes away a lot of the risk of just getting the plants to sprout. Worry about seeds, organics, etc ... after you get the hang of the basics. Cucumbers, beans, peas, and squash are the exception as they are fairly easy to start from seed.

3. Buy a hoe. Weeding by hand is time consuming and a lot of work. As soon as the garden becomes work, it stops being fun. Simply chop the weeds into the dirt with the hoe and turn them into mulch to feed the dirt.

Set up the garden bed as outlined in #1, purchase the plants as outlined in #2, and water and hoe as required. Use the first year to have fun and learn the basics and use the winter after the first year fill in the gaps in your technique for the second year.

2009 Varieties - Part IV - The Kitazawa Seed Company

Growing vegetables and fishing, two things I enjoy, have a lot in common. Both require optimism and both require a certain degree of luck no matter what your skill level is. No matter how much you plan and prepare, there is always a chance that nature is not going to cooperate.

The Kitazawa Seed Company specializes in all types of Asian vegetables. This is the forth year I have ordered from them and while their prices, products, etc are all good, their customer service is GREAT! There have been at least two occasions where they went amazingly out of their way to ensure my order was correct.

Most of their varieties are best suited for warm climates with long growing seasons rather than frosty New Jersey and these are easily the hardest things I will attempt to grow this year which will require the biggest component of luck. Not organic and many hybrid, they are the exception to everything else being planted this year.

Here is what I am trying this year:

Green Shiso
Yard Long Bean
Ant, Hybrid Bitter Melon
Green Skin Bitter Melon
Katsura Giant Pickling Melon
Sweet Mama, Hybrid Kabocha
Ichiba Kouji Hybrid Japanese Melon

2009 Varieties - Part III - The Hudson Valley Seed Library

The Hudson Valley Seed Library is similar to The Seed Savers Exchange in many ways, but with a few important differences.

The first is that they specialize in the varieties, some organic, which do well in the New York Hudson Valley area which means they will also very likely do well in my area which is only slightly less frosty.

The second is that they encourage you to save and exchange seeds by offering a membership plan. For $20, you get 10 packets of seeds to start which is about $.75 less than the normal per packet price. They will then supply you with instructions on how to save seeds and will apply a $2.00 credit per variety returned at the end of the season. They also offer reduced prices on other varieties to members.

Here is what I selected with my membership:

Melons

Banana Melon
Schoons Hardshell American Melon

Squash & Pumpkins

Bennings Green Tint Patty Pan
Connecticut Field Pumpkin
New England Pie Pumpkin

Corn

Ashworth Sweet Corn

Herbs

Mammoth Dill
Sweet Basil

Peas

Purple Podded Pea

2009 Varieties - Part II - The Seed Savers Exchange

The Seed Savers Exchange is working towards protecting biodiversity and encouraging seed saving and sharing. The sell both seeds and seedlings for both vegetables and flowers. Many, but not all, of their varieties are organic. The variety they offer is huge and their catalog is just interesting to read for the number of items offered. I've ordered from them the last two years and have had good results.

Here is what I got from The Seed Savers Exchange this year:

Cucumber

Jelly Melon Cucumber
Japanese Clmbng Cucumber OG

Okra

Silver Queen Okra

Tomato

Crnkovic Yugoslavian Tomato
Hungarian Heart Tomato
Trophy Tomato OG
Wisconsin 55 Tomato OG

Greens

Five Color Silverbeet Chard OG
Dwarf Blue Curled Kale

Sunflowers & Poppies

Heirloom Flower Collection

Saving Seeds

Many years ago, farmers had no choice but to save some seed at the end of each season. There were no mail order houses or easy / cheap ways to get seed, so they simply set aside a little bit from the best part of their crop to use the next year.

There are many reasons why people still save seed today.

Some people feel it is cheaper than buying new seed each year.

Some people are concerned about the genetic modifications that the big seed companies make to the seeds. Some seeds have been modified to the extent that you cannot plant a new crop from the previous year's crop.

Some people feel it gives them a connection to the earth and the cycle of life by using what was grown and died this year to start the cycle again next year.

Some people like the idea of being “off the grid” with their food supply.

Some people are concerned about biodiversity. Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem. If a farmer sells 90% of one crop and only 10% of another, he is likely to slowly convert to the crop which he sells more of. If a particular crop ships or stores better, it will also crowd out other varieties (even those that taste better). An heirloom plant is a plant or vegetable that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but for reasons similar to those just mentioned start to disappear over time and many people enjoy saving seeds to keep the varieties going.

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners is the de facto standard on saving seed. You can also Google “seed saving” to turn up a number of useful sites.

I started simply with the leftover Halloween pumpkin, some sunflowers from a farmer’s market, and some late season tomatoes from a very productive plant we had this summer by following the instructions in the book and packing them away with the regular seeds I bought mail order. I plan on planting them in the spring along with everything else and, if it works well, plan to expand on it at the end of this year.