Tools of the Trade: Row Cover

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Try This Secret of Success

Every pursuit has tools that make it easier to be successful. Ask any gardener and they’ll pull out their own favorite tool with a wry grin and and a long story about why you have to have this tool

Row Cover is one of my own top secrets of success. I use it in all seasons at all different times of the growing season.  Also known as frost cloth, it is a light-weight white fabric that looks just like interfacing. Row cover’s great attribute is that it creates a protective barrier between the seed, plant or soil against the ravages of sun, wind and cold. It’s also handy for protecting against insects like flea beetles. Here’s how I use it throughout the seasons:

Spring Right now, row cover is in the garden over areas that I’ve seeded that I want to help germinate.  The row cover protects the germinating seeds and seedling from getting too dry because the gardener forgets to water often enough.  It also is a physical barrier that protects against harsh sun, wind or hungry birds.  Temperature under the row cover is a few degrees warmer which is enough to speed up germination.

Any Season When you are transplanting, row cover can be the secret tool that enables your plants to survive transplanting.  I use it when I transplanting out seedlings I’ve grown indoors, or plants from the nursery, or even perennials I’m moving in my own yard.  Keeping leaves from desiccating from sun or wind is the keep to successful transplanting.

Mid Summer Lettuce lovers keep their greens from bolting too soon by covering them with row cover.  In Spring the row cover kept heat in…now, it keeps the hot summer sun out and lowers the temperature around the plants.  Lettuce stays sweeter longer.  Eventually, lettuce still bolts, but about the time that happens, it’s time to reseed the garden for fall greens.  Row covers then keep the seeds moist enough to grow.

Fall So often a frost comes one early fall night that kills lots of your warm season plants.  It’s a shame because there are often another two or three weeks of good growing time for tomatoes or other tender vegetables.  Five degrees of protection under row cover means your tomatoes survive a light frost.

Winter If you have a greenhouse, row cover inside the greenhouse and give you an extra zone’s warmth. I visited an unheated greenhouse in snowy Colorado this week that had lettuce planted last Fall and now being harvested for fresh greens.

When to take row cover off  The one-time row cover isn’t helpful is when your plants need to be pollinated. Bees and moths and butterflies need to be able to fly from flower to flower gather nectar and pollinating the plants.  Lettuces and greens don’t need the pollinators, but strawberries and peas and anything else that flowers and sets fruit does. Once you start to see flowers, you need to pull the row cover aside.

Keeping the row cover on OK, if you’re in a windy area that’s the biggest challenge. Big farming operations dig a trench alongside their beds, put the row cover in and then fill in the trench with soil to hold the row cover down.  Home gardeners can place a few rocks strategically placed or even a heavy piece of lumber.

more info:

http://tinyurl.com/b28755y

http://tinyurl.com/bh983my

Gardening for Beginners

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Try These First Timer Tips

If you are a beginner, you’ll soon learn that Gardening is both an art and science….and a bit of luck. You start by reading books and the backs of seed packets. You ask other gardeners and talk to strangers at the garden center. But mostly you observe. You watch what others are doing. You watch the plants in your garden. You pay attention to the weather and birds and insects and raccoons. And best of all, no matter what you know, or how long you’ve gardened, there is always something new to learn. It doesn’t matter either if you don’t have enough space outside to do gardening. You can easily just get something like these LED grow lights and do some gardening inside, or you could go see if there is a community garden center that you could partake in. There are loads of options.

The Very Basics you Need:

Light. Gardens do better in sun. You can get by with partial shade but if you want tomatoes and beans, you need at least six hours of sun a day. More preferably.

Soil. Roots need soil and air. If you have soil that needs a pickaxe to dig a hole, you need to add “amendments” like compost or composted manure, to lighten the soil. It doesn’t need to be fluffy like potting soil…but it needs to have enough air to receive water and to drain.

Water. With drought at record levels all over the country last year, it’s easy to understand that plants need water. When you’re starting seeds, the soil needs to be moist on the surface till the seeds germinate. Later, the soil needs to be moist an inch down when you put your finger in the soil. In the beginning, when plants are young, you might need to water every day. You have to keep checking. There’s a solution to this problem, if you have a look into the Powerblanket sizing chart and follow up by purchasing the recommended size, this will allow you to have a temperature controlled bucket which will preserve the water supply throughout summer.

Space. Plants need space both above and beneath the ground. Not too much space because they do like growing in groups and communities. But read your seed packet and be sure to give your plants at least a few inches of space.

Time. Gardening is a four-dimensional event. It changes dramatically over time. You need enough time for the plants to grow to full term. Lettuce is ready to eat in a few weeks. Winter squash can take 100 days. As the weather changes, what the plant needs changes, so you have to keep adapting. You also have to keep track of time and can’t let a week or two pass without checking on your garden.

Love. Gardens that children grow will often thrive even though the kids don’t do everything right. That’s the love factor. I look back at my first gardens and can’t believe I managed to get anything to eat. But I loved the process. I loved playing in the dirt and watching seeds germinate. I loved the idea of the garden even when I forgot to go out to water. I loved the red tomatoes in the sun. And the plants forgave my shortcomings and grew in that atmosphere of love.

Watch, Learn and Enjoy.

Or as we like to say at BBBSeed: Grow. Enjoy. Share.

Resources:

‘Organic Gardening’ magazine is a great resource. Years of articles are online. You can start with their basic how to garden. http://tinyurl.com/bhlqfcy

Square-foot Gardening was most helpful to me when I started learning. Gardening seemed like such a big project…but I could do 4 feet x 4 feet without feeling overwhelmed. http://www.squarefootgardening.org/

Gardening is very different in an arid climate like Colorado compared to humid places like Louisiana or Oregon. Check with your local Cooperative Extension (every state has an extension service from its ag university.)

Gardening for newcomers to Colorado is here: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07220.html

www.gardeninginfozone.com

What you Should Never do in your Garden!

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Why You Should Always Avoid Wet Soil

A bounty of snowfall followed by a warm sunny day has this gardener itching at the bit to get outside and play in the dirt.  A nice wet Spring usually makes for excellent gardening all year, but this is the one time you can ruin your garden, harming it sometimes for years. Don’t let Spring Fever lead you to destroy your soil and do what you should never do in your garden!!

Never dig in your garden when the soil is wet.  If clumps of clay are sticking to your boots….it’s too wet.

Don’t dig wet soil.

Don’t rototill wet soil.

Don’t walk on wet garden soil.

Just stay away.

The key to happy plants and happy roots is air in the soil. When you dig in wet soil (unless you are growing in sand) you create clods of compressed soil that stick to your shoes like glue and turn into big chunks of virtual concrete when it dries. It could be years until you get good soil texture again. You can’t easily turn the clods back into good soil.  Hitting it with a shovel when dry (the voice of experience speaks loudly here) just turns the soil into dust.

So start some seeds, prune some trees if they are still dormant, sharpen your tools, but the most important thing to do on a wet Spring day is to stay out of the garden soil!

 

 

Succession Planting ~ Part 2

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Two Week Intervals

Last week I talked about Succession Planting by using varieties that have different times to maturity. There are two more easy kinds of Succession Planting you can use to you have a steady source of the best-tasting food and to make the best use of your space.

Plant the same crop at intervals.

The seed packet again gives you the information you need.  It says things like “plant at two-week intervals.” This is a great idea for crops like lettuces and carrots and beets or similar crops that just taste best when young.  If you plant all your carrots at once, you’ll have nice young carrots mid-season but by the end of the season, you’ll be pulling big gnarly carrots out of the ground.  Sometimes these can taste great and sometimes they get too woody.   Likewise, you’re going to want to have fall carrots because they get so sweet when the weather gets cooler.  If you planted all your carrots in May, you’re either going to run out of them, or the stress they went through during the heat of summer will have made them tough.

I help myself remember to plant at intervals by picking specific calendar dates. I pick the 1st and the 15th of each month as days to plant again.

Plant two or more crops in succession.

This technique is especially good for people with limited space or who practice square-foot gardening.  You start a cool season crop such as greens or radishes in an area. When they are ready, you harvest and eat them, and then you plant a summer crop such as corn or beans in that spot.  It’s like having twice the garden space. Sometimes I’ll “interplant” crops such as green onions or carrots and tomatoes.  Tomato plants stay small until the heat of summer kicks in, so I’ll plant green onions and carrots in front of the tomato plants.  By the time the tomatoes start to get really big, I will have already harvested the onions and carrots and the tomatoes have lots of room.  The more things that are planted and growing in an area, the fewer weeds you’ll have to pull.  And that’s always a good thing. So keep an eye out…if you’re pulling up a crop that’s finished, plant something new.

Crops to plant every two weeks:

Beans Carrots Corn Green Onions  Lettuce Spinach

Crops to plant one after the other:

Peas followed by Corn Radish followed by Zucchini Green Onions followed by Peppers Cilantro followed by Beans

Succession Planting ~ Days to Maturity

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Plant All Varieties

One of the challenges in the home vegetable garden is the cycle most gardeners experience of feast or famine…Either nothing’s ready to harvest or you have so much of a single crop all at one time, that lots of good foods end up going to waste.  Succession planting is the common way to manage the garden, staggering plantings over several weeks instead of just one big planting that first nice warm day. An even easier way to stagger your harvests instead of going out every weekend to plant again is to plant different varieties of the vegetable…each of which has a different time to harvest.  On the back of every seed packet, there’s a little bit of vital information “days to maturity.”

Surprisingly, not every variety of vegetable takes the same period of time to be ready to eat. Taking my spring favorite, the green pea, the labels reveal that Alaska Pea is an early pea and is ready to eat in only 55 days.  At the other end of the spectrum, Green Arrow is a late-season pea…It takes 68 days to ripen.  Dwarf Gray, the pretty pink-flowered oriental pea, is ready right in the middle at 59 days.

If you plant all three varieties on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th and allowing some time for germination, by the last week in May, the Alaska will be ready for eating.  In early June, you’ll still be getting some Alaska but the Dwarf Grays will be ripening.  Another week or so and the Green Arrows finally start. You can keep the harvest going even longer by making sure to keep the peas picked…so they keep making new peas. After a good five weeks of peas, you’ll be ready for something new.

You can apply this technique to any vegetable…If you plant several varieties of lettuces on the same day, the loose varieties will be ready first. Then the slower heading varieties will begin plumping out and finally, a sturdy, late-season lettuce like Black-Seeded Simpson that can handle a little heat will round out the season.  An even easier way to plant lettuce is to plant a mix like the Heirloom Blend which includes several different kinds of lettuces with different maturities all in the same packet.  You can extend lettuce even longer by harvesting with a cut and come again method…Bring your scissors and cut off what you need for your salad.  The plant will regrow for next week’s salad.

So just a little, advanced planning with the backs of your seed packets will keep a nice steady supply of perfect fresh “local” vegetables on your table.  Fresh lettuce right from the garden is something beautiful to dream about during these cold winter days.

Last Frost – Counting the Days

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How to Determine the Day in Your Area

The gardener’s mantra in winter is, “how many days until the last frost?” But if you ask three gardeners you know what the last frost date is in your area, I’ll bet you get three different answers. That’s because determining “average” last frost is a lot like betting. Scientists can’t really add up a bunch of dates and divide by the number of dates and get an “average.”  So they go for the technically more accurate “median” last frost and give you probabilities. You know probabilities….like the days that had an 80 percent probability of rain and the sun shone all day….or the picnic you planned on a day with 20% chance of precipitation and you got drenched in an afternoon thunderstorm. We just can’t definitively predict the weather.  And we can’t say….gee, global warming…I guess I can start my seeds early.

But good gamblers know how to hedge their bets….and that’s what we do with the last frost. We go to the official climate records at https://www.noaa.gov/

There, you select your state, then find your city and look in the third column that lists the 90% probability for temperatures above 32 degrees.  That means that in the last 100 years they were keeping records, the temperatures went below 32 after that date only ten of those years. Good odds.

Hedging your bets though means being ready just in case. Ten of those years it did freeze after the magic 90% probability date.  And there are other variables. All those temperatures were recorded 5 feet above ground…meaning it might have been colder on the ground where your tender little basil was. And you know how many little micro-climates there are in your yard….the south-facing bed next to the house, the bed on the north side that doesn’t warm up till June. So pick your date…but have your frost blanket ready just in case! Here in Boulder, Colorado the 90% probability date we use is May 14th, but the actual last frost back in 1951 was June 3rd!

Get your big calendar out and circle your last frost date in red. Trackback each week and write in how many weeks left until the last frost….and you’ll easily know if it’s time to plant that packet of seed yet.  If you’re really an organized person, you can clip your seed packets to the appropriate week to plant. Or write the date for sowing on the front of your seed packet.

Count the days.  Here in Boulder, it’s 11 weeks until the last frost. Too soon to start tomatoes but about right for starting perennials, cold hardy herbs and onions.

Gardening on Top of the World

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…with Penn Parmenter!

Baskets of Beauty

Food is beautiful.  I love growing hanging baskets of beautifully colored lettuces and greens. They make a wonderful winter gift and I promise you – if you show up to your next dinner party with a full-blown basket of edible beauty – you will win the night.  It won’t be ‘re-gifted’ the way that bottle of wine that travels around your circles does. Use a pretty bowlful of living greens as the centerpiece on the table and just pick and eat them with your dinner! I always find myself admiring the basketfuls of color – dangerous because if you don’t keep cutting them they can slow down and age out right before your eyes!  So cut them an inch above the crown regularly to keep vigorous growth happening. When spring comes – I simply take them outside and hang them in the trees where they are protected from hail, hot sun and wind. As for types – I often make my own mesclun (salad mixture) – starting with colorful lettuce favorites, herbs, brassicas and other greens like claytonia, nasturtium, mache, arugula and cilantro.  Use your artistic eye to pair stunning colors and textures. Or I’ll try some ready-made BBB Mesclun Mix and at this time of year they will grow so quickly I’ll be back in just a minute to write about how good it was. And take pictures of it too – because food is so beautiful.

Simple Instructions on How To Direct Sow a Container.

1. Find the container of your choice – I use the old hanging Petunia baskets from the super-market rolling around my backyard.

2.  Choose a filler like Pine needle mulch, leaf mold or potting soil and fill the container ¾ full.

3.  Moisten your soil-less seed starting mix – I use Coir, perlite and wet it with a liquid kelp solution – a wonder fertilizer – and fill the remaining ¼ of the container.

4.  Sow seeds like BBB’s Gourmet Salad Blend, Speckles Bibb, Freckles Romaine, radish, basil, cilantro, seedling pea, claytonia, mustards, etc.

5. Cover the fine seed with a fine amount of seed starting mix and the larger seed with more.

6.  Use your hand to gently press down the soil-less mix for good seed-to-soil contact.  This is crucial for good germination. 

7.  Gently sprinkle kelp solution on the surface – don’t wash away seeds.

8.  Cover with plastic, newspaper or glass to keep steady moisture – I use a produce bag, which floats on top of the plants as they germinate.  For newspaper – keep it wet, and remove as soon as germination begins, for plastic, I leave it on a little longer to keep everybody germinating.

9.  Lettuces like it cool, basil likes it warm, so place the basket accordingly. Under lights is helpful too but not necessary. Skylights work well with a direct-sown basket.

10. Remove the plastic whenever you like.

11. Enjoy – cut often.

12. Plant another container to keep it coming!

Written by Penn Parmenter Copyright © 2013 mtntop@theironmancord.com www.pennandcordsgarden.weebly.com

Super Easy Seed Starting: The Baggie Method

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Seed Starting Tips

Are you insecure about seed starting? Or uncertain if your old seed is still good? The easiest, fastest way to germinate seeds is one actually developed by a scientist and involves a paper towel and a baggie. Not very hi-tech…but very reliable and easy. Dr. Norman Deno used this method to document the germination of seeds of over 5000 different plants. His three books on his life’s work of Seed Germination have recently been made available to the public domain in the USDA National Agriculture Library: http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/dspace/bitstream/10113/41278/1/CAT10633450.pdf

You’ll find more complicated versions of the baggie method on the internet, but this is the simplest and easiest. My only variation is that I store the baggies with the seeds and paper towels on top of the refrigerator where it is warm.

In Dr. Deno’s words and drawings:

Basic Procedure. The only materials needed for the basic procedure are (A) ScotTowels, a high wet strength paper towel made by the Scott Paper Company; (B) Baggies. a polyethylene bag made by the Mobil Chemical Company; and (C) Pilot extra fine point permanent markers made by the Pilot Corporation of America. A perforated section of paper towel is torn off and folded in half three times in alternating directions to give a rectangular pad 2.5 x 4.5 inches. The name of the species and any other information is written on the outside of the pad with the Pilot marker. The final (third) fold is opened, and the towel is moistened with water. The seeds are sprinkled on the moist open pad. The third fold is closed and the whole thing placed in a Baggie. Fold the Baggie several times so that evaporation of water from the towel is inhibited, yet leaving ample access to air to ensure aerobic conditions. The following drawings illustrate this procedure.

Dr. Deno gave credit for this method to Margery Edgren at an annual meeting of the American Rock Garden Society.

Drawings from Seed Germination Theory and Practice by Dr. Norman Deno, Second Edition. 1993.

See more photos: http://www.robsplants.com/seed/baggy.php

Floriferous! Designing with Annuals

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Our Favorite Wildflower Seeds

More color. More flowers. These are the most common requests I hear from clients and friends who have lovely gardens full of perennials but whose gardens at certain times of the year still look a bit too green. Annuals planted in large drifts or patches is an easy and very colorful answer. And with certain annuals, they reseed themselves so it’s almost as if they are perennials…you don’t have to do much to get them to return each year.

To get this effect of a burst of color in your garden, you’ll want to try a “specimen planting”. This is an intense patch of just one type of flower. It can be many different colors of the flower but just one kind of flower gives a vivid look.

Here are my favorite specimen plantings:

Cosmos bipinnatus in a tall mix of pink, white and crimson is a favorite in gardens.  They grow about waist high and don’t really need deadheading.  There’s something old-fashioned and timeless about cosmos that people love to have them as regulars in their yards.

Four O-clocks.  I was excited to see this new addition to the catalog this year.  Not as ubiquitous as cosmos, they are a magnificent part of a garden, especially when planted somewhere you can see them outside your kitchen window when you’re preparing dinner. They really do stay closed during the day and open around 4 pm.  They aren’t adapted to daylight savings time….so it might be more like 5 pm in your yard.

Zinnias.  These are the annuals you wish you planted, come mid-summer. Each bloom lasts a long time, is perfect for cutting, and the specimen planting provides a tall sturdy vibrant color.  Another old-time favorite for a good reason: they are great flowers.

Chinese Asters. This is another new addition to the catalog this year that inspires me.  Midsummer and fall, in particular, are times that don’t have the variety of colors people desire.  The perennials of this time tend to the yellow/orange range  Chinese asters are a great burst of purples and pinks and creamy whites that have large flower heads that make them perfect for cutting. They’ll handle full sun, but I’ve seen asters thrive in areas with dappled shade where just a little shade enhances their color in the blazingAugust sun.

These four are my current favorites for annual specimen plantings. Add in other annuals like poppies mixed throughout the garden and maybe the calendula mix in the vegetable garden, and your garden will “pop” all season long.

What’s Growing on my Windowsill?

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How To Still Grow Outside

It’s still too early to start seeds indoors in Colorado, but I’m yearning for fresh growing things instead of the brown stubble of winter that greets me outdoors. My growing space is an unheated solarium that dips down to 40 degrees at night but warms up to the 70s and 80s during sunny days.  Last month, I started three containers that now are steadily producing that vibrant spring green color.

Pea greens.  These give me special pleasure because I like the taste of peas and because tiny containers of pea shoots in the grocery store cost $4.99. I snip these for stir-fry or to toss into the juicer.

Microgreens. Yeah! Salad. They aren’t big enough for eating yet but it’s joyful to recognize tiny beets and lettuces growing on my sill.  Hardly any work involved….I just opened the pack of seeds and spread them on some potting soil. I’ll clip them in another two weeks or so and let them keep growing till outdoor greens are ready.

Wheatgrass. My little flat of wheatgrass is just beautiful with its promise of spring meadows. I put some into the juicer, give some to the chickens who love spring grass, and let the rest keep growing a mini field in the house.

Now if I were a hunter like my sister’s Texas family is, it would be much easier to provide my own food in winter. Yesterday, I opened my front door to find at least 100 Canada geese walking around my suburban yard.  If I had been fast, I could have caught one with my hands, they were that close.