Straw in the Garden: Be Careful!

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Straw May Be Killing Your Crops

by Sandy Swegel

Straw bales are one of my favorite garden tools.  They are useful to the gardener in so many ways.  All nicely tied up, straw bales are like giant Lego blocks that can be stacked to make so many things. I’m using the term “straw” bale, but old “hay” bales have the same great features.  Three bales make a great compost bin.  A row of bales makes excellent walls that double as sitting places.  Open the bales up and you have the perfect mulch to keep strawberries or squash off the ground or to make a path protected from mud.  Give the chickens one bale and an hour later they have spread it evenly over the coop floor in their pursuit of worms or food in the bale.  A square of bales with some plastic thrown over is an excellent cold frame.  And I haven’t even begun to touch on the usefulness of bales as a fort.

So it was distressing this week to be reminded that we can no longer just trust the wonderful bales that we scavenged in the past because modern agriculture has rendered hay, straw, and even the gardener’s best friend, manure, unsafe for growing food.

This conversation came up because tomatoes are very sensitive to herbicide damage.  The most common cause of herbicide damage extension agents used to see was from “herbicide drift” where chemicals sprayed nearby go airborne and are spread by the wind onto your garden.  But my experience this week was with tomato plants, a very susceptible plant – sort of the canary in the mine.  After considering dozens of diseases from virus and fungus and bacteria that might be stunting a friend’s tomatoes and keeping them from setting fruit, we had to face the likelihood that the culprit was last year’s straw that was liberally mulched throughout the garden.

Hay and straw become hidden poison bombs in the garden when farmers use the new generation of weed killers (that are very effective on weeds) like Milestone or Forefront or Curtail.  Milestone is aminopyralid it is a very persistent killer of broad-leaf plants.  Farmers like it because it kills weeds and because unlike other weedkillers, they can feed treated pasture to their animals without any waiting time.  The label says clearly that while animals can still feed on the pasture, the herbicide survives being eaten by the animals, and it survives composting.  So even year old hay that you’ve composted or nice old manure from free-range animals on pasture still has enough herbicide in it to kill your tomato crop.

The bottom line is you can’t just get straw at the feed store or old hay or manure from a neighbor’s barn to use in your garden unless you know how the original pasture was treated this year and last year.  It’s another sad but true example of the destructive environmental impact even small actions such as applying some weedkiller can have. And it’s not even just the farmer who has to take care.  Grass clippings are a gardener’s favorite mulch…and some of the new weed killers or weed and feed products contain these long-lasting poison time bombs.  It’s easy to want to kill some thistle…but you have to read the very tiny small print to see if you are destroying your own garden by using the organic practices of mulching with grass or hay or straw that generations of gardeners have sworn by.  It’s not your father’s straw bale anymore.

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/fletcher/programs/ncorganic/special-pubs/herbicide_carryover.pdf
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Grow-It/Milestone-Herbicide-Contamination-Creates-Dangerous-Toxic-Compost.aspx

Start your Seeds…Again.

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Why You Need to Restart Your Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

This time it’s going to be a lot easier. You don’t need lights and cold frames. You don’t even have to use trays and little pots. You can start your seeds again and put the seeds directly into the earth.  You don’t need much time.  Seeds germinate in warm soil really fast. All you really do need this time of year is water.  Seeds you start mid-summer are at risk of germinating and then drying out, so you have to remember to sprinkle them daily and keep the soil moist.  But that’s about it.

  1. Why Start Seeds Now?

The least romantic reason is to Save Money.
The second least romantic reason is to Save Time.
The romantic reason is Beauty and Abundance.

Veggies


Lettuces. In most gardens, your lettuces and even spinach have bolted and gone to seed.  You’re probably trying to salvage individual leaves here and there, but they are pretty bitter because of the heat.  Seeding new beds will give you young sweet leaves and plants that will feed you well into Fall and even Early Winter.

Cold Hardy Greens.

The key to being able to eat out of the winter garden is to have big plants with enough leaves to feed you all winter.  Chards and Kale and Spinach seeded now will be big enough come to Fall that even in cold climates you can pile leaves on them and harvest from under the snow.  But you need big plants because come October and November the plants aren’t going to be re-growing much.

Peas.

Peas germinate and grow easily this time of year.  By the time they reach maturity, the chill of Fall nights will make them sweet and yummy.  In Colorado we kind of got cheated out of our peas this year because it became so hot so fast, the peas dried up.  But we have a second chance.

Root crops.

Carrots and beets planted in summer have time to grow to maturity and wait in the soil until cooling Fall weather turns them into sugar. As long as the ground isn’t frozen solid, you can continue to harvest delectable root veggies that taste much better than the spring and summer harvests.

Herbs.

Parsley and thyme are among the many herbs you can harvest all year.  Thyme can be frozen solid.  Even parsley that has frozen will plump and be bright green on warm sunny winter days.

Perennials

You know the adage about perennials. First, they sleep, then they creep, then they leap.  Perennials need their first year to establish roots and many don’t even make flowers until the second year.  Perennials that you seed now will still consider this their first year and then be ready to bloom next year.  If you wait until next Spring to plant perennial seed….you won’t get flowers until 2016.  Planting perennials is one of the most thrifty things you can do in your gardens.  Foxglove and lupines are both underused magnificent bloomers in gardens.  And they can easily cost $8 each in garden centers. You can have dozens and dozens of them blooming next year if you seed now.  All those flowers for cutting you’ve always wanted — daisies and echinacea and rudbeckia – they are simple from seed. One packet of seed will give you dozens and dozens of flowers next year.

So save an entire year of time by planting perennial seeds now. And save a bundle of money by growing your own perennials and by having greens you can pick from for the next six months.

 

Photo credit:  www.modernfarmer.com

 

 

 

Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

Wildflower Seed Mixes

Grass Seed Mixes

 

 

It’s Time to Divide Iris

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Wildflower Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

Bearded Iris meet many of my criteria for a flower garden.  Their flowers are big and colorful.  They are sturdy and withstand hail. Here in Colorado they are virtually disease free.

One of the best and the worst things about iris is that they reproduce like crazy.  Especially in rainy years like we’ve had the last couple of years.  You can ignore the massive clump of green blades, but if you want more flowers, you have to divide iris every few years.

A few facts:

July to September is iris dividing season. After bloom but give the roots some time to reestablish.

The roots of iris are called rhizomes…big clunky and ginger-like.  Photosynthesis occurs in the rhizome.  If the rhizome doesn’t get some light, the plant rarely blooms.

The fan (the leaves) that bloomed this year will never bloom again. So you can cut it off and throw it away.  Two buds on either side of this fan will send up their own leaves and bloom next year.   Those are what you’ll be replanting.

Giving away iris is like giving away zucchini in August. Some gardeners are thrilled but others run when they see you coming.

The two most important things to remember when replanting iris:

Good drainage.  Iris will handle drought and bad soil, but standing water rots them.

The rhizome needs to be slightly above soil level.

Now iris come in many colors and there are definitely fads.  This year no one can give away purple iris.  They’ve somehow become commonplace.  But I  brought a huge clump of white iris to a garden meeting and grown women were fighting over single rhizomes.  Go figure.  Fortunately, before digging from the mixed iris bed, we had used a permanent marker to write on the leaves the color of the flower.

It’s a bit of work but there is one awesome secret about iris that means you have to grow them.  They smell just like their color.  Purple iris smell like grape snowballs.  Yellow iris smell exactly as you’d think yellow should smell.  Apricot iris have a delicate sweet aroma. What a delight to plant a walkway with irises.

 

Photo credit txmg.org/elpaso/event/farmers-market-series-2014-07-26/

Art by Nancy Baker www.hear2heal.com/bearded-ladies-limited-edition-fine-art-iris-garden-nancy-baker-p-756.html

It’s Caterpillar Time!

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Beneficial Insects

by Sandy Swegel

Protect our friends. So many butterflies in our area have laid their eggs and their baby caterpillars are getting big and fat and chewing up plants. Be sure you know who your friends are before you squash any of them! You’ll love having the butterflies.

Swallowtail caterpillars
I found these this week, not on the dozens of dill plants I planted for them but on a leftover parsley from last year. Next year, more parsley.

Monarch caterpillars
Also yellow stripey…they look a little more serious. I’m watching for these now. Quite a few eggs on the milkweed plants I let take over part of the back garden…so I’m hoping

Painted lady caterpillar
I almost never see these although I see lots of the butterflies. Skinny little black prickly caterpillars. Their host is the Malva family like thistles or hollyhocks.

Cabbage looper
Well, this is one you’re probably seeing a lot of right now. Cute little white moths fluttering everywhere. Bright green little loopers inching along devouring your cabbages. If you want cabbages, you have to treat these as pests.

 

 

Photocredit:
lagbchbutterflies.weebly.com
www.monarch-butterfly.com
wildones.org

Going to Seed

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by Sandy SwegelGoing to seed

After weeks of rainy days, we were rewarded with a week of hot sunshine. This is great news for the tomatoes, but it means all those cool-season veggies started to bolt and are going to seed. When summer temperatures warm, all the cilantro and spinach, and lettuce put out lovely seed heads. That’s a sign there won’t be many more leafy greens growing but all the plants’ efforts will go into reproduction and making seeds.

Seed making in the leafy greens means the leaves are going to turn bitter. And once bitter, you never get the sweetness back on those spinaches and lettuces.

Now it is time to make some choices.  Gardening is always about choices.

There are early choices about what to plant.
Choices about whether to treat pests.
Choices about when to harvest.

You can yank the plants out and re-seed.

For us, that means big salads for dinner every night this week. We took out our harvesting knives and cut the lettuces and spinach to the ground. Lots of cilantro was done also…so an armload of cilantro greens will go into awesome pesto this week. Dozens of flat edible pea pods were plucked for salad and stir-fry. As the evening cooled, we sat around the outdoor table and watched the tomato plants put out more yellow flowers.

If you are growing your garden primarily to feed yourself, you need to harvest as the market farmers do.  When it’s time to cut kale, you don’t just take a few leaves.  You get your knife and cut that plant to within two inches of the soil.  That shocks the leafy greens and they immediately triple leaf production and you will get two more big harvests out of each plant.  Ruthless cutting produces more food.

Another choice is for beauty and generosity.  If you allow some of those plants to bolt and start going to seed, you end up with a garden that generously feeds the pollinators and butterflies and birds with flowers and seed heads.  The swallowtail butterflies ignored all the dill that I planted for them and instead congregated on one old parsley plant to lay their eggs.  Nature’s creatures have reasons for choosing that we don’t always understand.

With the rain this year, bolted lettuce is statuesque, four feet high, and visible across the yard.  Purple Merlot lettuce at this size is stunning next to the sweet peas.  The dill is taller than I am in the well-watered garden and surrounds all the tomatoes like protective warriors.  Yellow mustard flowers and white arugula flowers lean out across the walk begging to be nibbled.  Broccoli heads opening up into flowers are beguiling.

So once again you have a choice.  You can go out in the hot sun and tidy up your garden that’s going to seed and harvest the last of the good lettuces, or you can let Nature’s idea of Beauty run amok.

Tomato season is now on the way.  Life is good.

Why Cilantro will bolt

Why Broccoli will bolt

 

 

Pill Bugs, Sow Bugs, Roly Polys, Doodle Bugs

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Save Your Crops

by Sandy Swegel

Kids love roly polys. There is no end to the fun of having these cute little non-biting bugs roll up in their hands. So cute.

Teachers love roly polys too. It’s a great teaching opportunity for a critter that is everywhere and the kids can open the rolled-up bug and count legs. Teachers can build terrariums. Amazon sells roly poly playgrounds! It’s a great entertaining moment when the kids learn the roly polys eat their own poop. “Ewww” or “Cool” depending on the kid.

 

Gardeners aren’t so impressed. In a year with a lot of spring rain, as much of the U.S. just had, pill bugs are the bane of our existence. In one night, a whole row of young beans can be toppled. Lettuce seedlings are so riddled with holes there’s no hope of a crop.

This is not a time to be entertained by stories that roly polys are related to crawfish. The gardener needs to watch out for pillbug infestations and act quickly if you want to save your veggies.

While there are poisons to use, it’s fairly simple to discourage the little beasties.

One, Keep the top of the soil dry.

Two, Remove all the leaf litter or mulch.

If you still have a lot of pill bugs, there are two more advanced techniques:

Trap them with Beer (little containers of beer buried to soil level).

Vacuum them up. One friend with a really infested garden went out each night after dark with her shop vac and sucked up hundreds of them one wet spring. After a week or so the numbers were down although the neighbors were puzzled.

Good luck with the garden this year. All the extra spring rains inspired population explosions of critters.

 

 

Photo credits:

http://squarefoot.creatingforum.com/t2380-pill-bugs

The 27 Happiest Invertebrates In The World

www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Playing-with-Pill-Bugs-Lab-Pack-with-Pill-Bug-Information-Lab-Sheets-FREE-1328929

My Number One Secret for Growing Tomatoes

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It’s All in the Soil

by Sandy Swegel

A local grower and I were chatting today about all the ways people grow tomatoes. My friend was laughing at somebody who had an elaborate setup with walls of water in the snow. I don’t necessarily use walls of water, but I understand our local Zone 5 competitions to have tomatoes by the 4th of July. The walls of water help warm the soil and of course, entertain the gardener.

There are many “secrets” to growing tomatoes. Some people put their hope in fertilizers and supplements like Epsom salt. Others do a lot of pruning of “suckers.” And there is no substitute for regular consistent water that doesn’t let the soil dry out.

But for me, the most important part of growing tomatoes is digging and preparing the hole you’re going to plant in. I generally plant little plants…2-1/4 inch pots…somewhere around May 15th. And I do believe in planting deep so roots can grow all along the stem. But back to the importance of preparing the hole you’re going to plant in.

My secret for growing tomatoes is a big humongous hole at least half full of compost.

Step One. Take a five-gallon pot (a bucket can work too) and dig the hole so big that the bucket fits completely in the hole. That usually means you have to keep going back and widening the hole to get the bucket all the way down. And it’s usually a pain digging into that subsoil. If the soil is very clay like, I loosen up the bottom and sides by slicing cuts in both for draining. I fill at least half the hole with finished compost. I put in some finished composted manure if I have it. I throw in some rather unfinished compost too. I mix in an organic fertilizer that includes phosphorus. I’ll also add any other goodies I have like kelp or alfalfa meal. Leaf mulch if I have some. I don’t mind if a worm or two ends up in there too. I then fill the rest of the hole with original soil and mix it well. I water it.

Only now is the hole ready for the tomato. I pluck off its lower leaves and plant the tomato up to its neck. I put the trellis or whatever support I’ll need now. And that’s it. I personally run a drip line with a timer since it’s so dry here and I don’t want my sporadic memory to sporadically water. I’ve done comparison tests year after year with people who dig holes only large enough to squeeze the plant in. They never get the number of tomatoes I get. My large composted planting hole means the tomato puts out a huge rootball that gobbles up all that good compost and fertilizer food produces a huge crop of tomatoes. If you only have a shovel-sized hole in the ground for your tomato, you only have little roots to feed the plant. If you don’t believe me, when winter comes this year, pull up your tomato and see how big your rootball is.

So if you want a lot of healthy tomatoes this year, take out your shovel and work up a sweat preparing that soil!

Photo credit:

World Tomato Society

 

No Neonics: Three Easy Ways to Help

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Protecting Yourself and Creatures from Pesticides

by Sandy Swegel

Just a moment to be serious now. Spring has arrived and stores are filling with bedding plants and seeds. At the same time, homeowners are noticing all the weeds in yards and some still go out to buy weed killer.

There are three easy quick things you can do that make a difference to help protect bees and yourself from the “neonic” pesticides.

Learn One Name

Imidacloprid
That’s the neonic most likely in retail products. If you’re an overachiever, the other names are Clothianidin, Thiamethoxam, Acetamiprid, Dinotefuran. These are ingredients in weed killers, especially products marked Bayer or with names like Systemic or Max. Just check your labels and don’t buy these.

Watch For the Label

Customer pressure led Home Depot and Lowe’s last year to agree to put labels on all plants treated with neonics. The label is deceptive….makes it sound like neonics are better…but watch for the label.

Ask Your Retailer

There’s no government regulation (Alas!) that says neonics have to be labeled. The best thing you can do is ask at the garden center if the plants you are buying have been treated with neonics. If they don’t know…then you can probably assume the plants have been sprayed. The treatments can last up to two months in your garden…making your pretty flowers potentially lethal to bees that land on them.

Every time you ask a garden center employee or a grower if their plants have been treated with neonics, you are educating them. That’s what we are after. Nobody really wants to harm bees or the environment. Two years ago when I asked a major grower here in the Denver area if they used neonics, the owner looked at me like I was some crazy Boulder liberal. Which of course I am. He said, “Bah humbug, there’s no way to grow plants without neonics.” But last week, his greenhouse (Welby) had an open house in which they proudly said that most of their plants were grown without neonics and they were continuing to work on how to get neonic-free.

Oh, and of course there’s a fourth thing to do to help the bees. Grow your own plants from good non-pesticide treated, non-GMO, often organic, often heirloom, always neonic-free seeds like ours!
For lots of info on neonics in consumer products, you can read this pdf put out by Xerces.
http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/NeonicsInYourGarden.pdf

Photo Credit
http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/10/global-ban-bee-killing-neonics/

 

7 great reasons to put up some bat houses this weekend.

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Help House the Bats

by Sandy Swegel

Need a project this weekend while you’re waiting for winter to finish? How about building a bat house, or just installing one in the eaves of your house. This is an excellent weekend project and there are lots of great reasons for sharing your property with bats.

7. Bats eat mosquitos. Each bat can eat 500 mosquitos just in the first hour after dark. Think about bats eating all the mosquitos in your backyard or near your grill. That’s 500 fewer possible bites on you!

6. Bats eat bad bugs.
In addition to mosquitos, bats also eat garden pests like rootworms and cucumber beetles.

5. Bats are a lot like us. They are mammals like we are. They have long life spans and can live as long as 40 years. It’s a myth that they are dangerous dirty creatures carrying rabies. They clean themselves constantly (like cats). They don’t bite unless you try to pick them up. Raccoons, skunk and fox are much more likely to have rabies.

4. Bats need our help. Suburban development has wiped out lots of the natural wild habitat of bats. Female bats, like humans, generally only have one baby per season. They need a home to keep their only baby safe and keep the species going. Nearly 40% of American bat species are in severe decline or already listed as threatened or endangered. Spring is bat mating season, so hurry up with the new house.

 

3. Bats make gardener’s gold, i.e. bat guano. Bat poop is an excellent fertilizer. In the days before growing marijuana became legal and high tech, weird hippy guys would come into our garden center every Spring to pay cash for the 50-pound bags of bat guano we ordered every year just for them.

2. Bats give us tequila. Yep, bats are the pollinators for blue agave, the tequila plant! No bats, no new blue agave plants, no summer margaritas.

1. Bats are super cool to watch on summer evenings. You can see bats in the magic hour between sunset and full darkness. They fly erratically in the darkening sky, flitting and diving for insects.

Here’s one link to building your own bat house or you can buy bat-approved houses or bat house kits from Amazon or your local wildlife store.

http://www.batconservation.org/bat-houses/build-your-own-bat-house

Good Bones

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Winter Garden Treasures

by Sandy Swegel

Oh, Look. More Snow in the forecast.

I’m trying to be a grateful gardener. Really, I am. I watch the weekend forecast for yet more snow and utter to myself, “Oh, it’s good. We need the moisture.” I squint to see if daffodil shoots can push their way through old hard ice and console myself, “Snow is so good. It insulates the plants and protects them from howling subarctic winds.” But after weeks of cold, I’m running out of gardening reasons to love the snow.

Then I remembered Winter Bones. There’s that old adage that the secret to a good garden is good bones. From a design standpoint, that means the basic structure of the garden. The trees and paths and arbors. It’s hard to see the bones during the summer with all the foliage, but looking at the winter garden is like viewing an X-Ray of your garden. The foliage and flowers are gone and now you can see the skeleton of your garden.

Want to strengthen your garden’s bones? Take an inventory now of what you see as you walk in the apparently barren yard. Walk around your neighborhood and see what gardens are enticing even though it is winter.

 

Here’s what Winter Bones I like to see in the garden. Which ones do you have? Which ones can you add in this year?

Trees that make archways over paths.
Judicious pruning of trees you already have can make lovely walkways. Prune branches up so that branches along a path are at least 7 feet high. You can walk under them but not hit your head.

Thin Your Trees.
Apple and Plum trees can get quite dense without regular pruning. They block the sun from getting to the garden beds underneath and they produce less fruit. While these trees are still dormant, cut out some of those water shoots and old broken branches so you can see the structure of the tree now.

Grow interesting Bark
Paperbark trees are my favorite trees in winter. Their peeling, colorful bark called out to be touched and admired. Paperbark maples are great as are the Paperbark Birches which survive better in arid Colorado. The white bark of aspens and birches are great in summer and winter. In warmer places, sycamores and crepe myrtles and eucalyptus are exquisite bark

Grow tall shrubs
Twig dogwoods (red and yellow) stand out now. Pruning out a third of the old branches each year gives a beautiful shape and vivid color. Nine-barks in winter show off their great peeling bark.

Strategically place grasses
Clumps of grasses placed on corners or edges of beds or even as a mini hedge help create “rooms” in your garden, Grasses grow just in one season, so if you have a new garden and are impatient for structure, grasses provide it in one season.

Photo credits:
www.davesgarden.com

T

Native grass seed

Heirloom vegetables

Wildflower Mixes