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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/