Expand Your Vegetable Garden the Easy Way

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Heirloom Vegetable Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

Two forces collided around the kitchen table this week.  First I was oogling our seed catalog and indulging in winter snow day daydreams about summer gardens and how I might turn my tiny urban yard into a farm so I could grow one of everything. At that moment I wanted to be surrounded by beautiful shiny vegetables. Then the second force came.  I went grocery shopping for my favorite winter recipe:  a very simple roasted winter vegetable dish with squash and sweet potatoes and beets, marinated in olive oil and rosemary. Yum. The winter squash was even on sale.  Then sticker shock hit. A single large winter squash was $5, even on sale!

The force of wanting to buy more seed collided with the force of not wanting to pay retail prices for food.  The only natural outcome is I have to find more space to garden so I can plant more squash.

It’s too late for any of the summer or fall garden expansion methods of either tilling in land or doing some lasagna gardening.  So I will use the easy method my urban farmer friend Barbara taught me.  Out in a neglected corner of the yard where there’s just some old grass, I’ll dig a shallow hole next May and fill it to an overflowing mound with a bucket of compost.  I’ll plant squash seeds there and cover the surrounding grass with cardboard.  The squash plants will grow over the cardboard as it takes another year to make good garden soil underneath.  I can drape the burgeoning squash plants over the fence and maybe up an old ladder onto the shed roof. (I did mention the tiny yard, didn’t I?)  But the key to expanding my garden this way is that I’m not doing all the heavy work of putting in a new 10 x 10 garden bed for squash.  The squash roots and cardboard are going to help do that.  My yield won’t be as high this year as a full amended composted garden, but then the work will be almost nothing to grow a lot of $5 squash for the price of $1.89 seed packet.

The key to baking yummy winter vegetables is to cut them in 1-1/2 inch pieces, marinate them in olive oil, salt and rosemary, and bake them on flat cookie sheets.  The flat baking sheet is crucial to the outcome because then the sides of the vegetable get a nice crisp roasted texture.  Here’s a more formal recipe:

Recipe:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roasted-winter-vegetables-recipe/index.html

A Gift for Wild Animals

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What to Give all the Animals in Your Life
by Sandy Swegel

After the first big cold snow of the season, I find myself drinking coffee next to the window, captivated by the Wild Kingdom drama of the outdoors…watching the many different kinds of birds foraging or lurking near the bird feeder waiting their turn, or hearing the rustling of unknown small furry creatures in the garden debris.

The best gift for wild animals is a heated bird bath.  I might even put two out, one on the deck rail for the birds and one on the ground in a wild area for all the other thirsty creatures…rabbits, squirrels and even the field mice. When it’s super cold like it is now, snow doesn’t melt and there are no natural water sources near my house.  Maybe a water source will keep the squirrels from eating holes in my irrigation pipes.

Holiday Shopping List for all the Animals in Your Life

Dogs:  Plump baby carrots are the gift of choice for my dogs.   I had to fence off the main garden from their enthusiastic digging, but I leave an area of little round carrots and beets for them to “discover.” Cats:   Catnip of course. Don’t waste your time on anything else. Chickens:  Swiss Chard is my chickens’ most favorite food. I think they like its natural saltiness. I throw bags of dried leaves on the garden bed as insulation just so I can harvest some greens from under the bags all winter. Wild birds:  Sunflower Seeds naturally…and any seeds. I discovered dozens of little birds the other day in the snow in a patch of lambsquarter and tall weeds that I had foolishly allowed to go to seed. Bees:  Wildflower seeds of course. Rabbits:  A wild clover patch, anything green. Field Mice:  Any seeds left to fall on the ground.  Overgrown zucchini and pumpkins left to rot. Squirrels:  Pumpkins.  The Halloween pumpkin left out is the perfect squirrel buffet. Owls, hawks:  Any of the above-mentioned seeds left in the garden bring the mice and voles and other rodents that are the perfect gift for the birds of prey.  The rodents double as gifts for the snakes. Soil microbes: What else but moo poo tea is the ideal gift for the soil Earthworms:  Make them a compost pile.  And forget to harvest some of the root vegetables. As the vegetables decompose in place in early spring, hundreds of hungry earthworms show up for the feast. Humans:  All the vegetables are the perfect gift of health and vitality for the humans in your life, especially when packaged with the love you grew them with.

I wish to all this Winter:  abundant food and water and a warm place for all good creatures.

Photo Credit:

http://birdsandbloomsblog.com/2013/11/09/winter-bird-bath-tips/

http://dipperanch.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-last-purple-rattlesnake.html

Save the Monarch Butterfly!

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Doing Your Part to Save Nature

by Sandy Swegel

The big nature news this week was an article in the New York Times that 2013 is the first year anyone remembers that the monarchs didn’t appear in the central forests of Mexico for the Day of the Dead. It’s part of the cultural tradition there that the annual migration of monarchs to their winter home in the mountains of Mexico represents the souls of the dead.  Last year scientists were worried when only 60 million monarchs came back to Mexico, but this year a paltry 3 million struggled in weeks late.

A primary cause of the monarch’s disappearance is the destruction of milkweed in the Midwest, the monarch’s only food. Native habitat in which milkweed thrives has been destroyed as prairie turns to endless mono-crops of Roundup-drenched fields of corn.  There are other factors such as massive deforestation in Mexico and the transition of prairie land to suburbia. But no milkweed means the monarch starves.

It’s interesting that the New York Times has been a big supporter of the monarch.  This was the third article in the last year in which they have featured the decline of the monarch. They have seen the writing on the wall.

What can you do?  Keep up the usual things you do opposing GMO crops that rely on Roundup to wipe out all native “weeds.”  There’s political action work to reduce the corn subsidies that make Roundup profitable.  But as a gardener, you can plant some milkweed and other native plants that will feed the many native pollinators in dramatic decline.  The monarch might be the prettiest most dramatic victim of our prairie destruction, but there are many others.  Gardeners understand the delicate web of life that depends on native habitat.  Tell your friends.

New York Times on the Monarch: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/monarchs-fight-for-their-lives.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/science/earth/monarch-migration-plunges-to-lowest-level-in-decades.html

Photo Credit:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12butterfly.html?pagewanted=all

Plant Some Garlic!

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Tips for Planting Garlic

by Sandy Swegel

A foot or two of snow on the garden may make it seem like the gardening season is over, but if your ground isn’t frozen yet, there’s still time to plant some garlic.  Fall is the best time to plant garlic (which needs a cooling cycle before growing) and even though it seems like winter already, the garlic will do a lot of root growth before the soil freezes.

Garlic is super easy to grow.  If you have garden soil that’s already in decent condition, you can be finished in less than an hour.

Get your garlic, preferably garlic sold for planting or organic garlic from the grocery.  There’s a chance that non-organic garlic has been treated to prevent sprouting in the supermarket….which would mean no sprouting or growing in the field.

Take your head of garlic and split it into cloves. Big cloves are better….they make bigger plants.

You’re already half done….that’s how easy garlic is.

Plant garlic 6 inches apart. Plant in a grid, not just a single line.  My beds that had lettuce until hard frost are three feet across so I plant in a grid…five cloves the width of the bed and then as long as my row has space.  I just had four feet available….so that’s 40 cloves of garlic that will equal 40 heads of garlic next June.

My soil is wet from two weeks of early snows, so I didn’t do a lot of digging because I didn’t want to ruin the soil texture (i.e. dig up clumps of clay).  I just took my yardstick to make a straight line and poked 40 holes the depth of my index finger.  Then I dropped a clove, pointed side up, in each hole. Press the soil closed around and over the hole. Done.

The two most useful tips that I learned from our local garlic expert Karen Beeman of WeeBee Farms is:

1. Put 2-4 inches of grass or hay (non-pesticide treated of course) as a mulch over the soil. It helps with protection from drying winds and cold.

2. Water very thoroughly, especially if you’re in a dry climate.  I don’t mean just stand there with a hose.  Put a sprinkler on the area and drench it thoroughly.  Or arrange an all-day rainstorm that puts a couple of inches of moisture into the soil.  I didn’t water the garlic in so much thinking winter snow would be enough, but my heads were pretty puny at harvest.  The cloves didn’t get growing soon enough in soil that was parched from a long hot summer.

There, you’re done for this season. You can harvest some scapes in spring and your fully grown garlic next June or July.

Not bad for an hour (or less) work today!

For more tips from Karen: http://weebeefarms.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-plant-garlic.html

Garlic-love Picture: http://lipmag.com/food-2/healthy-bytes-goodness-of-garlic/

Season Extenders

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Season Extenders – Protection for the Garden

 

Here in October in zone 5, we have had a couple of snows now so it’s hard to pretend the garden season isn’t over for most of us.  The daytime temperatures are still well above freezing and downright balmy in the 60s at times.  But nighttime temps dip down to the 30s and can ruin vegetables and fruits still on the vine that otherwise might keep growing in warm daytime weather.  It’s too late to sow late-season crops now but there are ways to stretch the growing season for the fall and the spring.

 

For spring:

 

Mini hoop houses are super easy and there are hundreds of DIY plans available.  These make a pocket of air around the new seedlings and keep the soil and air a bit warmer.  These mini hoop houses or low tunnels can give you an extra month of the growing season.  Your seeds will germinate better, you’ll have fewer pests, and vegetables that require less watering.

 

Here is a simple, inexpensive, easy hoop house plan.

 

6 sections of 2 ft. rebar

6 5 ft. sections of ¾” irrigation hosing

Any kind of large plastic covering. (painter’s plastic, opened-up large trash bags, wrapping from a mattress)

Bricks or rocks to hold the cover down around the edges.

 

Here are some super simple designs to inspire you.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/low-tunnel-construction-mini-hoop-house.aspx

http://growingthehomegarden.com/2014/03/how-to-build-mini-hoop-house-early-start-garden.html

http://www.leereich.com/2012/01/cold-has-yet-to-throw-wrench-into.html

The best part about the popularity of mini hoop houses or low tunnels is that you can now buy pre-made, fold-up tunnels for less than $25 at garden centers, hardware stores, or online

 

For Fall:

Other than hoop houses, here are some ideas of commonly found items to use for protection against frosts and critters.

 

Old worn bed sheets (love the flannel ones with cartoon characters)can be lightly laid over anything that might be hurt by freezing.  This includes vegetables like green beans and squashes and herbs.

 

Plastic bags of leaves.  Just quickly throw the bags over and around root vegetables as temperatures keep dropping to keep the ground from freezing.  If you can still work in the soil, your carrots and turnips and beets are still edible and yummy!  Two bags of leaves snuggled around the basil patch will keep basil alive for a bit longer.

 

Upside down garbage cans.  I can keep a pepper plant going in cold temperatures until they turn red by putting clean garbage cans upside down over them at night.  It doesn’t take much to protect against 29 degrees…just a pocket of warmer air.

 

One of the biggest struggles in the fall is to protect pumpkins and squashes from the nibbling critters hunting for food before the cold sets in.  The squirrels and raccoons love nothing better than to sit down to dinner on my pumpkins and gnaw holes through them to get to the seeds.  A barrier of chicken wire, hooped and secured over the ripening fruit has proven successful in keeping them out.

Plants, at this time in the fall, aren’t growing much, but they are still alive and producing nutrients, which is better than their fate in the back of my refrigerator.

Primping for Winter Interest

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How to Prepare the Garden For Winter

by Sandy Swegel

As Fall proceeds at full speed, our tasks in the garden take a new direction as we start primping for winter interest.  There’s no longer time for flowers to set new buds to bloom before frost.  There won’t be any tomatoes that aren’t already on the vine.  A killing frost will come soon and kill off many of the annual flowers. So it’s time to start getting the garden ready to look good this winter.  Now instead of thinking about colorful flower displays, we turn our thoughts to structure and texture in the garden.  We want to leave tall flower seedheads to dramatically collect snow in winter as well as feed the birds.  There’s no more deadheading roses – now you want to see the rose hips mature and redden as the air gets cooler. Tall ornamental grasses will sway dramatically in winter winds.

In short, here are the things you don’t need to do anymore this year.

Stop deadheading flowers.

You want to see stately stems of echinacea and rudbeckia in the winter garden. Blooms of butterfly bush frozen in place will give a hint of color into the winter.  Small plants you thought were finished like scabiosa or dianthus will throw out a few final blooms that provide some late bee nectar.

Let dying foliage stay in place.

Earlier in the season, I’d pull off dead leaves from daylilies, so things would look their best.  Now, brown and golden foliage against green leaves is part of the vibrancy of Fall.

Let vines wander where they may.

I spend a good part of the summer garden season trying to prevent aggressive Virginia Creeper from pulling down branches of the wild plum and apple trees. Now the crisp red color of the Virginia Creeper delights me and I love seeing its leaves vining all throughout the garden.  Even the weedy self-sowing morning glories have beautiful golden tones as they twine up and down flower stalks.

Let your flowers reseed. 

The easiest way to garden is to let your flowers reseed themselves.  Bachelor Buttons and Mexican Hat and California Poppies are all dispersing their seeds to soak in the winter moisture and cold so they can burst forth again next Spring.  Some seeds I’ll collect for starting in pots next Spring, but it’s nicest when they just seed themselves in place.

Let the annual weeds be.

It’s always time to keep after perennial weeds like thistles and dandelions, but annual weeds that crop up now won’t usually have time to make flowers much less set seed before killing frost.  It’s usually safe to just leave them alone.

Let your vegetable garden reseed itself.

I’ve left the leek flower stalks in place.  Big seed heads of dill and parsley and anise are allowed to stand in the vegetable garden.  Even the lettuce and spinach and chard that bolted in summer heat now remain and drop their seeds to return next Spring.  I usually absentmindedly forget some of the garlic and potatoes….that will all return next year to be vigorous new plants.  Arugula has already multiplied itself a thousandfold in my lettuce bed.

The one task still to do?  WATER if needed.  The dry low humidity days of Fall can desiccate the garden.  If you don’t have rain, be sure to do some supplemental watering so that your perennial plants go into Winter well-watered.  Desiccation from dry air and winds is responsible for more winterkill than mere dry soil.  So give everything a good drink now before all the leaves fall.  You may have to water again in November and throughout the winter if it’s dry, but a well-watered Fall garden has an excellent chance of surviving even brutal winter conditions.

Fall Gardening: Getting Ready

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Preparing Your Garden For Fall

by Sandy Swegel

What a great time of year this is.  And not just because the harvest is upon us and tomatoes are ripening and winter squash are filling out.  It’s a great time because school is starting again and school supplies are in the stores bringing up great memories and nostalgia for the beginning of the school year.  Sure we all hated summer vacation ending, but getting new pencils and notebooks and going back to school and seeing old friends was invigorating. The slight nip in the night air that starts in August in Colorado stimulates a new enthusiasm, much like a new year or a new chance.

Going into the garden in August is a lot like getting ready for school again.  First, you have to get rid of the chaos and clutter of summer.  We’ve been vacationing or sneaking naps in hammocks and somehow, the weeds we were carefully hoeing when they were an inch tall in May, have grown taller than us and have seed heads. So the first step of getting ready for Fall Gardening is taking a deep breath and clearing out the weeds and debris that might have snuck into the garden.

On Your Marks First, you have to be able to see your marks.  Clear out the weeds that are choking things like the bindweed threatening to bring the corn to its knees. Pull out tough stalks of spring lettuce.  They’re done…let them go! Those radishes that have been baking in the summer heat…time to recycle them into compost. Any place with diseased-looking leaves:  clear out every last leaf to reduce the chances of trouble there in the future.

Get Ready. Get ready to meet old friends again…the cold-hardy or cool season crops.  These are all the sturdy plants that don’t mind a morning freeze.  Swiss Chard and Kale or Spinach can be frozen solid on an October morning and be perfect for dinner that night.  The secret to having fresh vegetables in the Fall and long into winter is to plant while the soil is warm so that the plant is full-grown by frost.  After it gets cold, plants don’t grow very quickly, but the garden will keep them ready to eat for months.  Get ready to plant a big garden.  It’s not the end of a garden season, but the beginning of one.

Get Set. Make a plan.  Think about how many salads you’ll want  (or how many pounds of greens you bought last year.)  For greens, you want two general different kinds:  the soft sweet salad greens that will last you until hard frost and the sturdy kales and chards and collards that will be good for cooking. The local farmers call it a “braising mix” that you can pick and stir-fry well into winter. Don’t forget carrots.   This is also time to make a plan if you want a cold frame or want to set up a row cover to extend the season.

Go. It’s just like Spring again…only this time your mind isn’t gaga over a million possible gardens.  So focus on the task at hand—growing enough food for you and your family and friends to eat all Fall and Winter. Prepare the soil. Dig out big weeds. Mix in compost or organic fertilizer. Smooth the surface. Water thoroughly. Let the soil sit for two weeks for soil activity to restore itself. Order the seed you don’t have. Try something a little different like the Asian greens or just something new. They should arrive by the time your soil has rested. Plan a season extender. You can stretch your fall garden into January or February even if you live in a cold place. You can use a cold frame, a hoop house, some row cover or just bags of Fall leaves thrown over plants on extra cold nights.

Make your own Apple Picker

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DIY Gardening Tools

by Sandy Swegel

My beautiful orange apple picker came to a sad end last year under the wheels of a pick-up truck that smooshed it beyond recognition. We sadly have very few apples this year because of late frosts so more than ever I need a picker to reach the apples that are there.  My orange apple picker was very pretty, but its tiny basket area was a little frustrating. I could only pick a few apples before maneuvering the entire 12-foot pole down through the tree, take out 5 apples and wind it back up the tree.  The other problem was that sometimes the apples didn’t want to leave the tree and tugging threw other good apples to the ground, bruising them. So I started thinking about hacking my apple picker.

Well, in a digital world in which “apple” no longer means fruit from a tree, you can’t just google “hack my apple picker.” A search for DIY fruit pickers turns up lots of makeshift basket contraptions with water bottles which while clever and free, didn’t change the small basket problem.  I finally thought to look at what the commercial pickers do (besides bringing in big “cherry picker equipment” or precarious ladders.)  Somehow I couldn’t imagine teams of migrant workers with little orange baskets.

The answer is razor blades!  Rather than having a picker with wire fingers, razor blades at the end of your catching device slice the stems quickly.

So here are two possibilities for getting a better apple picker:  A DIY instructable with razor blades inside a narrow PVC pipe.  And the picker the pros use.  The DIY picker doesn’t include a bag….you have to catch the apples…so maybe you can think of a way to add a bag.  Look at the professional picker with its big sack as a model.

Apple picker: http://www.instructables.com/id/PVC-FRUIT-PICKER/

Berry pickerhttp://www.instructables.com/id/BERRY-PICKER/

Clip-n-pick fruit picker: http://frostproof.com/clip-n-pick-telescoping-fruit-picker-complete/

Tweaking Your Tomatoes

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Try These Two Tomato Growing Tips

by Sandy Swegel

The harvest season is going strong and it’s a good time to look around and notice what garden “tweaks” might have worked this year.  By tweaks I mean the new techniques I might have tried, or tips my neighbors gave me or even changes in location, sun or water.  Tomatoes are pretty much the most important crop in the home garden, at least from the perspective of pride and bragging rights.

Because I help several of my clients with their gardens, I have the advantage of being able to compare techniques in different locations under different conditions.  You can do this in your own garden by doing “controls” like in a science experiment.  You plant some plants in a new way and some plants like you always have.  Here are two tweaks I tried this year that were wildly successful and are now part of “How I Grow Tomatoes.”

BIG HOLE. Wider and Deeper. I’ve always know tomatoes needed a big hole with compost and manure.  This year I was really worried about two different gardens…one was a new garden on not great soil and one was an established garden where the tomatoes didn’t do very well at all last year.  What I did, made the biggest strongest earliest tomatoes I have ever grown.

The holes were big…at least a five-gallon pot size. I always think I dig a big hole, but this time I made sure that a five-gallon pot could fit in the hole before I pronounced it big enough.  I filled the hole halfway with compost and composted manure and then mixed in some soil. At the base of the hole, I spread a huge handful of Alpha One Organic Fertilizer full of blood meal, bone meal, cottonseed meal and alfalfa meal. I filled the hole with water. I removed all but two or three of the transplant’s leaves and planted it up to its neck and filled in with the soil compost mix.  I drenched everything with water again. It looked pretty goofy – such a big hole for two leaves – but the eight tomatoes in each location that I planted like this loved having their roots directly in such a well-fed pre-watered environment.  Control tomatoes where I put equivalent amounts of food mixed in the soil in general or on the surface did well, but not as amazingly well.  I don’t think this would work with synthetic fertilizer because the roots might burn.  More food, more loose soil for air and more water to penetrate, all paid off.

Break the Soil Fungus and Disease Cycle. Lots of tomato diseases last year and a wet spring mean a lot of diseases this year.  I learned that fungi overwinter in the soil and then spread to the plant when rain or water splashes soil up to the leaves.  Early in the season when the tomato plant was small, I kept the soil surface covered with dry grass clippings or newspaper.  As soon as the plant was a couple feet tall, I started pulling off lower leaves so the bottom six to eight inches of the stem was bare.  I kept mulching low and dry on the surface. Keeping the leaves trimmed up and not letting foliage from higher up fall over, kept the air flowing too. These plants had fewer fungus problems than control tomatoes.

The other ruthless thing I did was change my attitude of letting a sickly looking plant stay for another week to see if it improved.  With tomato viruses and bacterial blights rampant this year, I planted more tomato plants than I needed and immediately yanked any plant that showed classic wilting symptoms. It helped that I planted at least two plants each of my favorite varieties so I didn’t have to throw out the only plant of my favorite in the world Black Krim Tomato.

If you had tweaks to your tomatoes this year, let us know.  We’re taking ideas to try next season. It’s a matter of pride and bragging rights.

After the Hail

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How to Recover Your Garden After a Storm

by Sandy Swegel

“Gardening in Colorado sucks” is how my friend described her garden after a violent storm full of hail and tornadoes passed through the towns east of Boulder this week.  Much more vivid expletives were used by all as we surveyed the destruction brought by 2-1/2 inches of rain in less than a half hour and hail that had to be cleared by snow plows.  We were actually quite lucky.  Tornado sirens were going off all over town, but there weren’t many touchdowns.

But the garden is devastated.  Well, let me correct that. The xeric plants are doing fine.  They are thin-leaved and flexible and have adapted to millennia of hail on the high plains. Russian sage and grasses and Liatris look great. Cactus definitely didn’t care.  But the plants we love in our yards: the roses and deciduous trees had their leaves shredded by the hail and broken by the winds.  Thank God we don’t rely on our vegetable gardens as our only source of food.  Corn was broken, squash stems were ripped and shredded.  The zucchini has so many stems and leaves, it will survive, but we can forget winter squash and watermelons and pumpkins.

So what can a gardener do after hail? We cowered in our houses as tornado sirens wailing “Get to shelter immediately.” Unlike Dorothy and Auntie Em in the tornado shelter, we were in furnished basements with our wireless devices googling for webcams of what was going on outside. But once we emerged, the response was pretty much the same.  “Holy xxxx”

After the storm, gardeners have to take it easy.  Remove the huge broken branches to the curb. Clean up fallen leaves.  Get your roof patched.  But don’t start cutting back the garden.  Plants are going to need whatever leaves they have left to photosynthesize for the rest of the season.  Take a day or two off so you don’t overreact.  I spent hours picking up debris and cutting stems that were completely broken.

Perennials:  do as little as possible to let leaves keep making food.

Annuals:  Cut back broken parts of flowers like snapdragons and cosmos.  Leave trailing things like sweet potato vines be for a week or so. They will often make new leaves at each node.

Shrubs:  Cut broken parts and let them be.  Like trees, they will start putting out new leaves.  I’m not completely convinced fertilizing helps now because it will stimulate new growth.  I’ll do regular fall fertilizing with a slow-release natural fertilizer.

Trees:  The trees have had such a hard year.  They struggled with late frosts this spring that killed off their first set of leaves and they had to generate a second set of leaves.  Now the hail means they’ll start growing a third set of leaves.  They will really use their food reserves.  I hope it’s not a hard winter.  When the tree dies a year or two from now, we often forget that it was the hail this year that helped do them in.

About the only other thing to do besides keep filling the compost bins is to make sure everything is well watered and mulched going into winter. Don’t pull out plants that look dead…their capacity for regeneration is amazing.

Well, there is one more thing to do:  heal the gardener’s soul by planting some new plants to bring hope and beauty back into the landscape.