Is Gardening work or play?

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

How To Garden Wisely

by Sandy Swegel

 

I had to laugh this week when reader Mike Hood commented earlier on one of our sweet inspiring quotes about the virtues of gardening that “Gardening is a Battle.” Now maybe Mike was just trolling, but I am all too familiar with the feeling that gardening is a battle.  When I’m having that experience is usually when I’m about to injure myself.  I was fighting with dandelion roots in hard clay when I torqued my wrist and gave myself carpal tunnel for a few weeks. I was hacking out old lilac stumps with a mini pick ax when I nearly tore my rotator cuff.  And then there was the time when I was furiously trying to get all the work done before dark when I tripped on a stupid piece of metal fencing and impaled it in my leg.  I keep my tetanus shots current for a reason.  Mother Nature is quite solid and stubborn and I rarely win the battles.

However, all the battles are what have taught me how to garden wisely.

Wearing the brace for carpal tunnel on my dominant hand taught me several important things about weeding.

Keeping my tools sharp means less work.
Forget wussy dandelion diggers and get a real weapon for weeds: a Hori Hori knife does a much better job with less work.
It’s the torquing and anger that causes injuries.  A straight wrist and sharp tools and a mindful attitude isn’t so much work.
The non-dominant hand can learn to do an awesome job of pulling annual weeds in soft soil.

 

Over rotating my shoulder with the pick introduced me to a favorite tool, my battery operated Sawzall.  Dig up an entire bush? Easy if you just systematically go round and round the plant using the Sawzall and an Ugly blade for rough wood. Cut through a root, scoop out dirt to get to the next root, repeat.  No sweat.  Divide massive grass clumps or daylilies.  The Ugly blade slides through like going through butter.  The brain and a sharp tool are always better than brute force for getting the job done and for not hacking through irrigation.

 

The best lesson came from getting impaled on the metal fencing.  A puncture wound in the back of my thigh meant I could stand up or I could sit down…changing positions caused all the pain.  That’s when I learned how much gardening can be happily done sitting on my butt right next to the garden bed.  Much less work than bending over. I can even do better pruning if I can see the structure of the plant from the ground level. Pests are easier to spot too.

So yes I do a lot of work in the garden, but it feels like play because I always work in the shade or cool parts of the day. I often sit before the garden bed while working in it. I use really sharp tools and I have colorful orange and purple trug buckets to make me smile. Those are my weapons in battle.

Photo Credit http://www.amleo.com/leonard-soil-knife/p/4752/

 

 

Organic Gardening

Heirloom vegetable seed

Native Wildflower and Grass Seeds

 

My Squash is Wilting

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

How to Save Your Squash

by Sandy Swegel

Eww…Yet another bug thriving this year and ruining my food.  Most of us have experienced our squashes suffering from powdery mildew that coats the leaves white, but knowledgeable gardeners are perplexed here in Colorado by squash that suddenly completely wilts and dies.

Turns out if the squash is wilting it’s often due to a very small bug, the squash bug, that injects a nasty venom into the stems wilting and killing the entire vine.

“Can’t we just all get along?” I holler at them.  There’s an entire large squash plant and I’m willing to share with bugs….but the squash bug wants it all.

This is a pest you need to be aggressive with if you see it because it doesn’t share but will kill your whole plant given a chance. Look for the adult bug (looks a bit like a stink bug) or nymph (distinctive antenna and small head) and kill it (take a small bucket of soapy water into the garden with you and throw the bugs in, to drown them, if you don’t want to ‘squash’ them). More importantly look for the eggs on the underside of leaves and crush them.  Handpicking works well in a small garden if you’re vigilant.

 

We have to stand our ground against creatures like the squash bug. I explain it to them as I dunk them in the soapy water or throw them to my chickens….if you don’t share and play well with others, you lose your privileges in my garden!

For more info:
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05609.html
Photo credit: http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/4h/default.php?page=snr40&stage=larva

 

 

 

What I Learned About Peas this Year

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Tips for Growing the Best Peas

by Sandy Swegel

Two friends each planted a pack of peas back in March and lovingly watered and tended them while I watched.

One garden produced 5 glorious pounds of pea pods and made the gardener, a cook, very happy.  The other garden grew 12 spindly plants that have put out about 10 pea pods…and made the gardener very happy because they were her first ever peas.

Here’s what I learned about peas this year…

 

Soil does make a difference.

Both gardens had soil heavy with clay. One garden was double dug and amended with natural fertilizer and compost last year while the other just had the grass weeds removed. It’s true that peas improve the soil but if your soil is terrible to start with, you aren’t going to get many peas this year.

It’s OK if you forget to thin.

The prolific pea patch was never thinned and the whole packet of seeds went into one area.  Turned out OK.  More water was needed and careful trellising but all those crowded peas produced more than if they had been thinned.

The more you pick, the more new peas grow.

We kept the big pea patch well picked and those plants kept pumping out more. Those plants worked hard for their keep.

Of course, the most obvious lesson is that how many pounds of peas you get isn’t as important as how happy your garden makes you.

3 Ways to Enjoy Gardening More

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Revitalize Your Love For Gardening 

by Sandy Swegel

We had our first 100-degree day which always reminds me that I prefer to be a fair-weather gardener and garden where it is cool and partly shady.  Sometime mid-summer, gardening can become a chore rather than a delight. So on that hot day, I thought about what I could do to revitalize my love of gardening.

Put Down the Phone.

Really.  I know we’re all addicted to our phones and incoming text messages.  Scientists say it’s an actual chemical addiction with little dopamine rushes every time the alert sound goes off.  But it also means you are only half conscious in the garden.  How can you learn to listen to the fairies and devas if you’re always on the phone?  Or how can you see the early signs of pest infestations or the amazing tiny native pollinators if you’re not fully present?

Show the Garden to Someone Who Knows Nothing of Gardens.

City folk or small children are good subjects.  You’ll find out what you love when you’re doing show-and-tell to your garden newbie. You learn your attitude to dandelions has softened when you find yourself explaining that dandelions are the first foods of the year for bees.  And those caterpillars you might think of as pests….you love lifting the leaves to show off their hiding places. Your love of the mystery and surprise of nature shows up when you introduce a garden to someone new.

Forget that you know the difference between Plants and “Weeds”.

Every few years my town has an artists’ garden tour where we visit the homes and studios of local artists.  These artists have gardens with incredible detail to shapes and textures and color combinations.  They are often inexperienced gardeners but rather just using the green growing things as another medium in their art.  They don’t know that pretty purple flowers are thistles that should be yanked.  And uncut grassy weeds look nice blowing in the wind in their minds.  If you forget everything you know about plants and just walk around your garden looking at the pretty colors and textures and how the shapes look against the sky, you’ll have a whole new love for your garden.

Photo Credit: http://20minutegarden.com/2011/06/28/garden-advice-a-phone-call-away/

http://www.liveluvcreate.com/image/weeds_are_beautiful_too-123094.html

 

 

Heirloom vegetable seeds for sale

Wildflower seed mixes

A Year of Surprises

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

A Stellar Wildflower Year

by Sandy Swegel

People often ask how long do seeds last, but they usually are referring to seeds in packets.  The question I’m astonished by this year is “How long do seeds last in the soil?” Colorado is a pretty dry place and there aren’t that many plants that reseed prolifically the way that happens in warmer, more humid places.  But this year is a year of surprises.  Most years we are lucky if we get 20 inches of rain all year. But last September we had 17 inches of rain in one month and the highest annual precipitation ever recorded here.  All that moisture refilled our underground water reservoirs, remoistened soils desiccated by recent years of drought, and awakened seeds and roots that had long been dormant.

Since September, gardens have been a constant surprise for me. It started in October when Naked Lady bulbs I planted 6 years ago appeared. The bulbs had bloomed the first year I planted them and then never again.  I assumed they died….but somehow those small bulbs were deep in the ground just biding their time for the right conditions.

Yesterday I watched new blooms on pink columbines that were first planted 14 years ago. Those hybrid columbines gradually all reseeded to yellow but yesterday, about 20 feet from the original bed of pink columbines, a seed that had waited patiently in dormancy suddenly lept to life.  Pink! That seed had been brought by the wind or birds to a spot where it was just waiting for its moment.  Near the asparagus bed, tulip bulbs that had been planted too deep many years ago found their way to the surface and are now late bloomers blooming with the iris. A strawberry patch that had dwindled to just a few puny plants exploded three feet in every direction. Even weeds seem like old friends.  I thought I had successfully weeded horsetail out of the rock garden years ago but ten shoots are poking up through the snow in summer.  There is something so abundant about this year that I’m even happy to see the weeds.

I can’t wait to go hiking in the foothills this weekend.  Reports from around the state suggest that we are having a stellar wildflower year. All of Colorado is going to look just the pictures on our wildflower seed packets!!!

Photo Credits
Todd Caudle http://outtherecolorado.com/gallery/1735/pictures/281747

 

What to Unplant

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , /by

How to Help Your Plants Stay Productive

by Sandy Swegel

I’ve been watching my neighbor Tory’s vegetable garden with great interest this year. She worked as a farm intern (ie. Full-time farming, almost no money) the last couple of years and has brought farm techniques to her home garden. Yesterday as we enjoyed the latest harvest of arugula she announced it was time to dig these up and plant something else.  I was surprised since she just seeded these arugula in early March.

From a market farming perspective, you grow greens to harvest a lot of food quickly.  She seeded the arugula early and when they are big enough to harvest she cuts them to just an inch or so above the soil level.  Then she lets them grow again and the cycle repeats.  Plants grown like this produce a lot of food, but they also get tired and worn out.  The plant itself is depleted.  Tory made her decision to dig under the arugula because the plants weren’t growing as vigorously as before and, the biggest factor, they didn’t taste as good. Whether it was the hard fast growth or a recent week of warm weather, the arugula was getting a little too spicy.  It seems harsh, but if you want to keep eating from your garden, you have to unplant the less productive plants and know what to unplant.

Things I’ve unplanted this week:
Arugula that has been harvested three times and is losing vigor.HERB, Organic Arugula, Wild
Kale that had overwintered. It was great to have kale from last year’s plants, but the old woody stems are no longer producing as well as the new plants.
Radishes that got bitter.  A week of rain followed by a week of heat made huge bitter radishes. They look great but we crave sweet young vegetables.

Garden more productive and more beautiful.

In the perennial garden, I’ve been unplanting too.
Poppies that have spread everywhere.  They are at risk of becoming a weed.
Plants that have grown too big for where they are planted.
Plants that are blocking sprinkler heads.
Plants that I’ve never liked.

Gardeners are often loathe getting rid of plants. They feel sorry for them.  They’ve come to know them as friends.  But there is a time and season for every plant and a good gardener learns to be a little ruthless. If you want to have succession gardening, you have to create the empty space for the next plant. It may seem harsh, but you have to declutter and make space for new growth!

 

 

Spring Tune-up for your Drip Irrigation

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Irrigation Checklist

by Sandy Swegel

For gardeners in dry climates, irrigation is a necessary evil.  Irrigation makes growing possible, but it can be a

royal pain trying to keep it intact and actually watering the plants it is intended to water.  You will have fewer problems with your irrigation (and thus fewer dying plants) if you take the time in Spring to tune-up your drip system.

To tune-up your drip system, wait for a fine day in Spring after there has been a dry period, and manually turn your drip system on and run it for about 15 minutes.

Here’s your check list:

 Obvious leaks and holes.  This is easy….a big spray of water up in the air is the surest sign an emitter has popped out of its hole or a line has been accidentally cut.  I use the little flags on sticks to mark places that will need repair.

 Dislocated or broken lines. The reason you run the drip system for 15 minutes before you start to check individual plants is so you will easily be able to see the spreading moisture in the soil under each dripper.  If you can physically see a little drip line but no water, then the line is clogged or has been dislocated from the main supply line.  How does this happen?  Squirrels and dogs disconnect lines when they run through the garden.  Little creatures like mice have figured out that water runs through these lines and a little nibbling on the tubing provides a water supply from the water left in the line.  Most of the time you just reconnect the tubing and are done.

 Clogged emitters.  Sometimes emitters just break but most of the time an emitter that’s not emitting is just clogged.  Tiny insects have figured out this water source too….and sometimes lay eggs right in the emitter tip, which from their perspective is probably a nice moist cave. Usually just taking the emitter and blowing into it is enough to clear the line.  I’ve also seen plant roots grow up a tube looking for water.

 Sliced lines.  This is from human error.  A garden full of tiny drip lines and sprinkler supply lines shallowly buried means the gardener accidentally slices through the irrigation system, sometimes not realizing it.  A big puddle of water instead of the small moist area around an emitter is your clue.  Just fix it and resolve not to dig in the garden without checking for the location of the irrigation line.

Spring tuning your irrigation can be tedious, but well worth it in terms of keeping your plants alive.  While you’re at the task, this is a good time to check the times on your controller.  Sometimes in August and September when it’s hot and dry, we crank up the length of time the irrigation runs….Plants don’t usually need so much water in Spring, so you can save water and money by having different run times in Spring and Summer.

Drip irrigation is still my favorite way to water frugally.  You get water to the roots without having the waste of high pressure sprayers over spraying and watering the street.  Sprayers also encourage fungus from the moisture sitting on the leaves.  Installing a drip system requires us to get in touch with our Inner Engineer, but it’s a very successfully way to water if you just do a Spring Tune-up.

 

Photo: http://www.dripirrigation.com/drip_irrigation_tutorial

http:///http://home.howstuffworks.com/irrigation3.htm

 

 

 

First Things: Start More Seeds

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

Seed Starting

by Sandy Swegel

I had the good fortune to go backstage, so to speak, at a CSA farm this week.  Lara’s farm is amazingly

small. On just over an acre she almost single-handedly feeds 35 families.  She has an unheated greenhouse and a rototiller, but otherwise, that’s as high-tech as she goes.  Trying to fathom how one person can feed so many people, I kept asking questions and observing what she did.  One thing was obvious.  Farmers don’t stand around with their arms folded gabbing, at least not at the beginning of the day.  We had a running conversation, but her hands were busy, filling planting trays or picking off dead foliage, watering here and there.  But her primary motto, that she learned from a mentor farmer, was to keep starting seeds.  Every day, every time you go into the garden, “she said” you should ask if seeds need to be started.  Weeding, composting, deadheading and even watering can wait till later but if your seeds aren’t started and going, you aren’t going to have plants which means you won’t have enough food or enough flowers.  Watering is second on the list.  It doesn’t do much good to have started seeds last week if you let them dehydrate this week.

Growing a garden from seed is both miraculous and frustrating.  Miraculous is obvious:  you take this tiny seed and it becomes something magnificent: a pumpkin or a breathtaking flower.  But the frustrating part is that there’s no catching up if you procrastinate getting your seeds started.  You can fiddle with heat mats and lots of extra plant food, but there’s really no way to do last minute cramming to get plants growing.  They need time to grow. 

So let that be the first question in your garden today. Are there some new seeds I need to get started?

Here’s my answer of seeds I should start today:

 

 Spent daffodils and tulips have left an empty spot in the flower garden.  I should plant some cosmos seeds there to have flowers for the rest of the year.

 We harvested the radishes in the square foot garden.  I need to fill that square so I put a few kale seeds in.

 Last year I learned how to roast butternut squash with olive oil and rosemary so I need to make sure I have lots of butternut squash saved up. I need to start six seeds on the window sill (the soil is still cold at my house.)

 I visited a friend’s garden that was full of foxglove which often doesn’t bloom until the second year.  I need to start those seeds so I have a beautiful flower garden like she does next year.

What seeds should you start today?

 

 

 

 

The Indecisive Gardener

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

How to Make Decisions in Your Garden

by Sandy Swegel

Making decisions about where to plant things in the garden is one of my biggest challenges.  Hard to imagine when I spend most of my time in other people’s gardens. But because I rent, my own garden is a blank slate.  And that makes it really hard for me to know what to plant where. I know what the plants need but I can’t decide who should live next to whom or even make simple decisions about succession planting.

If you’re an indecisive gardener, whether you’re a new gardener and aren’t sure where things go, or because like me there are so many possibilities you just can’t decide, here are a couple strategies I use:

Vegetables
Square Foot Gardening is the friend of new and indecisive gardeners.  You can just make the garden squares and plant whatever happens to be in your hand at the moment.  Mel Bartholomew who invented the idea of square foot gardening has simplified plant spacing in his latest refinements of the process.  Each square is still a 12-inch square.  Little plants go 16 to a square, medium plants 9 to a square. Large plants 4 to a square and really large plants 1 to a square.  I can just fill a square and move on to the next square.  Hardly any decisions except to remember to put the tomatoes to the back of the garden where they don’t block the sun. http://www.squarefootgardening.org/#!__top10faqs/vstc20=page-4/vstc100=gardening

 Herbs
I love herbs but worry about where to put them so they are in the right conditions and so that the perennials ones survive without taking over. In my mind, I divide the herbs into categories: Mediterranean herbs (thyme, rosemary, oregano), invasive herbs (mint, lemon balm), and tender herbs (basil).

 Mediterranean herbs go in the hottest driest part of the garden with more sun and not so much water because the flavors of these herbs are best if they aren’t pampered with too much good water and soil.  Invasive herbs go next to concrete…either a wall or a sidewalk….somewhere there is a natural limit to how far they can spread. Tender herbs go in the vegetable garden.

 Perennials
These are the most difficult ones to decide on. Many a perennial has languished in its tight pot waiting for me to decide where to put it.  I learned from another indecisive gardener that the perfect place is a “Nursery Bed.”  The nursery bed is for the plants that are young and need extra attention and for the ones that don’t yet have a home in a permanent bed.  They’ll eventually graduate to the grown-up garden, but now they at least have a home in the ground in the nursery bed where they get some extra attention too.

 Don’t let the desire to have a perfect garden or the fear of making a mistake keep you from having a great garden.  Set some simple rules like these. And if that doesn’t work…then the whole yard can be the “nursery bed!” 

 

Photo Credits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_foot_gardening

http://www.mamamia.com.au/social/what-can%E2%80%99t-you-decide/attachment/indecisive/

 

 

Why I Love Ice and Freezing Rain in April

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Benefits of Freezing Rain

by Sandy Swegel

 

Last week was just beautiful and a bit unseasonably warm for Colorado.  Everybody started gardening and doing spring cleanups and setting out Wall of Waters for their tomatoes.

Then yesterday was a cold drizzling rain that turned to snow and then ice as temperatures dropped.

And I’m really happy about that.

The reality is that we’re in Zone 5 and our last frost date isn’t until May 15th.  So we are due for more cold freezing temperatures.  For gardeners, spring freezes are heartbreaking because it kills the blossoms on the fruit trees….which means no fruit. Last year a late freeze meant we had virtually no apples, peaches or cherries.  Very sad.

So yesterday’s forecast for temps in the 20s could wipe out our fruit again this year.

That’s where freezing rain saves us. 

First, the rain gets everything wet.  Then the rain starts freezing around the little flower buds on the fruit trees.  More cold rain falls and makes a bigger ice crystal around each bud.  Soon the buds are entirely encased in ice.  That means that while the air temperature may have gone to 23 degrees last night there are good chance buds protected in 32-degree ice crystals were safe and will live to bear fruit.  The insulating effects of freezing water are well known in the orchard industry where citrus growers set off sprinklers over the fruit trees when the impending freeze is coming.

Others may curse the ice-slicked streets and frozen windshields today after enjoying 70 sunny days last week.  But I’m delighted.  I see hope for a bumper apple crop.

 

Photo credit:  http://blogs.woodtv.com/files/2012/03/ice-on-peach-blossoms.jpg