Grow It Eat It

Early Garden Chores

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I like Erica’s post about getting some garden chores done early.   And like her, I’m planting some early season cool weather vegetables seeds in the garden and getting some early weeding done.  But, unlike Erica, I am putting down my drip tape (see MG 6 Drip Irrigating Your Garden) to water the bed and covering the it with row cover to provide some frost protection for those emerging spinach and kale seeds.

Extended forecasts for our region (temperature and precipitation) show a good chance of above average temperatures and below average rainfall.  Of course, this could mean by a tenth of a degree or several degrees.  But when comparing the cost of a few seeds to some earlier than expected fresh vegetables for the table, I’ll always plant a few seeds early.

To my surprise, my arugula wintered over and my garlic looks great. My onion sets have been ordered as have my new red and yellow raspberries and new strawberry plants. After all this is the year of small fruit and there is nothing like fresh strawberries or raspberries from the garden

I’m also finishing up the rejuvenation of my 30 year old blueberry bed and will be pruning my trellised black raspberries in the next week or so.  Here are some before and after pictures.

Seeds started in the basement under florescent lights are broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, leeks, kale and fennel.  Toward the middle to end of March will be eggplant and peppers.  And just a reminder.  Fluorescent tubes start to lose some of there brightness (lumens) after about 15 to 20 percent of their life (20,000 hours).  So I change my fluorescent tubes out every two years (16 hours a day x 100 days x 2 years = 3200 hours or about 16% of the tubes expected life).  So if your seedlings grown under lights looked spindly and you had the tops within an inch of the lights, try changing the tubes.

Winter weirding

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2016 was the warmest year on record globally, and given the evidence of the past few weeks, 2017 could well eclipse it (we have a lot of the year to go still, of course!). But certainly we’ve been having an unusually warm February in this region, and while this is worrying, it’s also making us feel like we want to be out in our gardens. And we should be! But not necessarily doing the tasks that are usually completed in April, even if the weather is April-like.

No, it’s not time to plant all your spring crops. We could still have weeks of temperatures dipping below freezing – in fact it’s below freezing in much of our region this morning, and forecasts indicate some chilly nights next weekend as well – and while your overwintering greens are probably loving this weather, young seedlings will be much more vulnerable.

Here are some tasks that you could accomplish on spring-like February days, however:

  • Get the weeding done. Winter weeds are LOVING this weather, and some, like hairy bittercress, are flowering and getting close to spreading their seeds in April-like fashion. Pull them out now! Here’s a photo of hairy bittercress and its friend, purple deadnettle, in my lawn:

  • Do some pruning. I pruned my blueberries last weekend. February and March are excellent times to prune blueberries, but we don’t usually get to do it in short sleeves. Here’s our blueberry pruning page, and you can find information about pruning other fruits on our website as well.

  • Work on your soil. Our winter has been very dry, which is not good for plants in general, but does mean that soil is not heavy and waterlogged, so if you didn’t spend time this fall spreading compost and working it into your soil, you can do that now. If we do get a heavy rain, put that task off for a day or so, because working wet soil can compact it.

  • Work on hardscape tasks like putting in fences, trellises, elaborate support systems for those enormous kiwi vines you’re all going to be inspired to plant this year, compost bins, new paths, etc.

  • Start some seeds inside. It does look like our spring will come early, even if it’s not guaranteed to be here yet, so jumping the season a bit on seed-starting may pay off. By which I mean a couple of weeks, not months. If you start your tomatoes in February you will have GIANT PLANTS in April and then we are guaranteed to have chilly weather that they can’t tolerate.

  • And okay, go ahead and start some seeds outside. I did. I put in radish and pea seeds at the demo garden, and will probably try some in my own garden as well. Stick with cold-tolerant, quick-growing plants, and be prepared to shrug your shoulders if they succumb to frost. But they might not, and it’s only a few seeds lost if they do. Thanks to all the sun, the soil is warm enough for many cool-season seeds to germinate.

  • Just get out there and observe. I’ve had crocuses blooming for a while now, and also have daffodils and miniature iris as of yesterday. Trees are budding and bursting into flower and leaf weeks ahead of schedule (if there is such a thing as a schedule anymore). If you want to participate in citizen science, check out Project Budburst, which tracks plant phenology (the relationship between plant stages and seasonal changes) thanks to data provided by thousands of people like you. Just register, pick a plant or two in your yard, and keep an eye out for buds, leaves, flowers, etc., then upload your observations.
And do have fun out there!

Directions for Folding a Newspaper Container

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Compliments of University of Maryland Extension – Allegany & Garrett Counties

STEP BY STEP DIRECTIONS:

(Any size of newspaper can be used)

Step 1: Cut your newspaper in half

Step 2: Fold the newspaper in half (top to bottom)

Step 3: Fold newspaper in half (left side over the right – like a book)

Step 4: Unfold and use a marker to trace the center line on both sides of the paper (Always keep the folded side of the newspaper towards your stomach.)

Step 5: Fold the bottom right corner up to the center line, then fold the bottom left corner up to the center line.

Step 6: Fold the top of the front side of the newspaper down the top of the part that was folded up in the last step.

Step 7: Fold the front flap down one more time.

Then flip the entire piece of newspaper over. (Keep the point toward your stomach)

Step 8: Fold the right hand side of the newspaper into the center line, then fold the left hand side into the center line. (Similar to shutters on a window)

Step 9: Fold the top of the newspaper to the top of the “shutters”. Then fold it down one more time and tuck it into the “shutters”.

    

Step 10: Fold the point up to the top of the container and then unfold. This fold line will become the bottom of the container when completed.

The rest of these folds are just to help the container open up easier. Fold them and then unfold.

Step 11: Fold the point up to the left bottom corner. Then unfold.

Step 12: Fold the point up to the right corner, then unfold.

Step 13: Open up the container, fill with growing media, and plant your seeds!

Step 14: Enjoy!

GIEI tutorial at Selborne House’s newly created community container garden

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Earlier this year, I was asked by the the property manager at Selborne House in Ellicott City, if I would design a small community garden for residents interested growing their own vegetables.  After viewing the area around the residence, I gave the property manager several options from which she chose to make two large raised container gardens, measuring 10 feet long, two feet wide and a foot deep and three feet off the ground, along with multiple 5 gallon bucket containers.

In May, we filled the containers and I conducted a class with the residents, discussing the vegetables which would grow best in the containers.  I also made the residents aware that the growing media needed to be kept moist and fertilized every two weeks, since the planting media contained no nutrients.

From the looks of the following pictures, the residents are doing well.
They are growing green beans, carrots, onions, lettuce and peppers in double 5 gallon buckets.  In early September, I will be conducting a class on planting fall vegetables (spinach, beets, lettuce, broccoli and other brassicas) as their summer vegetables are harvested.
It’s been an interesting experiment in container gardens and I look forward to talking to the group about fall vegetables and planning for the so called short day factor which adds two weeks to the to days to maturity because there is less daylight in the late summer and early fall.

Rain Gutter Grow System Update

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Back at the beginning of the month, I posted about a new growing method that I am using. I thought I would give you an update on how things are growing.

I couldn’t be more pleased with this setup. I had two harvests of the biggest, most beautiful collards I have grown in the ten years I have been growing food. Here’s a little video of one of my harvests:

I was really impressed that I got this harvest because we have had such extreme heat rather early in the season. The collards have now been replaced with corn and so far they are doing really well. Here are some pictures of how the garden looks now.
The row where the orange bucket has tomatoes and carrots. I actually had to cut back the cherry tomato plant because it was really getting crowded. Since air circulation with tomato plants is really important, and my garden space is limited, I had to sacrifice a few branches. The blue buckets used to be the collards. It will be interesting to see how the corn does now. So far it has grown quite a bit and they have only been planted for about a week or so.
Here are my tomatoes and cucumbers. You may remember that they looked like this initially:
Well, now it looks like this:
You may notice that the tomato plants are not in the middle rain gutter anymore. That’s part of the beauty of this setup that I really love. The cucumbers and the tomatoes were really getting quite bushy and crowding each other. So I took the peppers and the one carrot plant that were on the right and switched them to the middle gutters and put the tomatoes to the far right. Now everyone has enough space. If the plants were in the ground, I would not have been able to do that.
Here are some more garden pictures for you. This was my first harvest of cucumbers. I plan on making some relish with this batch and maybe a few dill pickles if I have enough left over after I make the relish.
I finally see some red on my cherry tomatoes:
I think peppers are my favorite thing to grow. I love catching pictures of them in their different stages of plant life. This is a Chinese Bullnose variety, which is a sweet pepper.
These are Mexican Gherkin cucumbers. They look like tiny watermelons. I will probably pickle these as well. They are only about an inch or so long right now. I had to try one before they were ready and I have to say they taste pretty good. They taste like a cucumber with a bit of a lemony flavor added on.
I have been regularly picking blackberries in small handfuls and they are SO delicious.
I finally noticed one lone zucchini on my huge zucchini plant.
My apple tree is FULL of apples despite the little brown spots all over them. I haven’t been able to find out what is affecting the apples, but I still plan to eat them…I will just cut them open first to be sure I don’t get a mouth full of worm!
So, that’s it for now! Everything is doing really well and I really couldn’t be happier with my rain gutter grow system. Now if my tomatoes would just hurry up and grow and ripen, I would really be one happy garden gal!
See you next time….

Uneven Spring Growth? Could be the MGM

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Manufactured Growing Medium (MGM) is the stuff urban gardeners and farmers often use when soils are degraded, compacted, infertile, or missing in action. Leafy greens can be produced in 100% compost or leaf mould (as long as they are watered and fertilized as needed) but most other crops grow best in a blend (MGM) of two or more ingredients such as compost, soilless “potting mix,” and topsoil. MGMs vary based on the type and amount of individual ingredients.

I visited a small urban grower this week who was seeing some growth variation in leaf crops grown in a compost-topsoil blend. The transplants were uniform in size and appearance, and grown in a commercial greenhouse. Weeks later the grower noticed that all plants had good color but some were smaller in size and these seemed to occur randomly. Soil pH was 7.0- no problem there. Drainage was ok and there were no signs of root or stem diseases, or insect feeding.

The MGM contains small pieces of bark and wood, along with pebbles, clumps of clay, and partially decomposed organic matter. The physical, chemical, and biological properties of the MGM may vary enough to cause growth differences depending on the location of the plant and its root system in the beds. This problem will probably smooth out over the next year with cultivation, freeze/thaw cycles, addition of fertilizers, and further breakdown of the organic components.

 
Same site. These three 1/2 barrels were filled with MGM from the same large pile. Kale plants in the container on the right are much smaller than kale plants on the left.  A non-uniform MGM could cause uneven growth!
MGMs are going to become more important as urban food production expands. Before making a purchase ask for test results and  examine the product closely.