June Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar
19 Weeks to first frost date in zone 6

With June comes the dead heading of all the May flowers. And ticks.

By: Kathi

Things you will need:
Scissors
Bucket to haul dead plants to the compost pile
Dry Ice
Sticky paper
Cardboard tubes
Cotton
permethrin
Guineafowl

Dead heading (removing spent blossoms) your flowers will encourage reblooming if they are annuals or perennials that set seed. If you cut the seed producing pod off before seeds are formed, most plants in an effort to procreate will shoot up more blooms and again try to make seed.

Not only does the dead heading encourage blooming, but on plants that will not rebloom, the energy that would have been spent making seeds is redirected to strengthening the root system. Another benefit of dead heading is two fold, 1) it makes the yard/garden look tended and well manicured, and 2) it eliminates frequently taller plant material that will harbor insects, particularly ticks.

Ticks carry lime disease and reproduce at astounding rates. There are two types of ticks, soft ticks and hard ticks. Both kinds of these ticks transmit a wider variety of pathogens than bacteria, protozoa, and viruses.


Soft tick on left. Hard tick on the right.

Hard ticks seek hosts by a behavior called "questing." Questing ticks like to climb up plants to a height of 24-36 inches and wait for the signal that there is a host passing by so they can drop off the plant onto you or your kids or pets. Some soft ticks seek hosts by questing on low-lying vegetation, but the vast majority are nest parasites, residing in sheltered environments such as burrows, caves, or nests. The presence of higher levels of carbon dioxide as well as heat and movement serve as stimuli for questing behavior. The feeding behavior of many soft ticks can be compared to that of fleas or bedbugs, as once established, they reside in the nest of the host, feeding rapidly when the host returns and disturbs the contents.

People pick up the vast majority of ticks when in the woods, or come in contact with weeds, shrubbery, brush, or pets that have roamed off into taller vegetation... Well-kept lawns are pretty safe, unless you have moles, mice, rabbits or other critters that nest in your yard.

So how do you control ticks?

Organic tick control is not the easiest thing to do. Integrated pest management…one of those corporate buzz terms…is what you need, unfortunately.

Most important: Keep your yard clean and your lawn mowed. Staying away from taller grasses and shrubbery is not happening in my yard. I like my zebra grass and my forsythias.

Since ticks are attracted by carbon dioxide, you can set a block of dry ice out near where you have found a nest, and the ticks will be drawn to it. I suggest you place a paper under the dry ice to keep from freezing the ground and use the paper as a tick trap by putting something sticky on it. The sticky can be anything that will hold them in. Honey or syrup works pretty well. Or use a commercially available sticky paper of some kind.

Because so many ticks live in burrows with their blood host, you can reduce deer ticks by placing paper towel or toilet paper cardboard tubes stuffed with, a synthetic chemical permethrin-treated cotton. Mice will collect the cotton to line their nests. The pesticide on the cotton kills immature ticks feeding on the mice. You must of course put the tubes where the mice hang out, like under dense shrubs. Do it twice a year; early spring and late summer. You should notice reduction in the tick population the following year. For some reason, this does not work on the West Coast. Permethrin is OK to use this way, but NOT in a lawn spray, where it is seriously or fatally toxic to cats, and fish. It’s not good for you either.

There is also a parasitic wasp Ichneumon wasp Ixodiphagus hookeri that will lay it’s eggs into the ticks. When the eggs hatch the emerging wasp attack and kill their host. Parasitic wasps can be ordered online.


If you live where you are allowed to do it, and your yard is fenced, 2 Guineafowl will clean your yard of ticks, fleas, and all manner of insect pests. This is by far the best and most effective treatment of all listed, and is certainly the laziest way to control ticks I know of. Not to mention you get eggs.

June Week 1

Organic Gardening Calendar
21 Weeks to first frost date in zone 6

It’s June. Let’s talk about Japanese Beetles. These pests arrived in the United States around 1916 as visitors from Japan. They enjoyed New Jersey so much they decided to stay and raise families. These Japanese bugs were successful in spreading their kind to all parts of the eastern United States. It is now our solemn duty to kill them. If you are not doing your part to eradicate these pests, then you are failing your fellow countrymen.


By: Kathi

Things you will need:
Bug bags
Milky Spore

What to do?

There are basically three methods of dealing with Japanese Beetles; Milky Spore, traps, and spraying.

There are lots of opinions out there, and well, here is one more. I disagree with a few things which have been written about these pests, including the directions on placement of the traps. I advocate using both the milky spore and traps. Forget using chemical sprays.

I found the following text online that is a widely accepted notion about placement of beetle traps.

"Don't use them close to plants which the beetles
are attracted to. Place traps as far away from your
plant life as you can. In fact, if a neighbor wants to
use traps, try to locate your traps as close to theirs
as you can. The big problem with traps is they lure
many beetles to your property which may have never
come there in the first place. Japanese beetles are
not the best flyers and tests show they will actually
miss a trap by several yards about half the time they
are following the scent from the trap. If your trap
is placed away from plants you want to protect, the
beetles that miss the trap will probably go to some
wild plant or a neighbors yard and miss yours all
together. If your trap is close to beneficial plants
you want to protect, the beetles are likely to miss
the trap and find their way to what you are trying to
protect!"

It was written by people who make chemical sprays for Japanese Beetles.

It doesn’t make sense. I started out using these guidelines and had no success at all. I know of no other trap that is placed away from the plant it is trying to protect. When placed away from the plant that needs protection, the random bug that flies near the bag gets caught. And the protected plant gets eaten.

Place the bags next to the plant you want to protect. Don’t worry too much about upwind or downwind, wind directions change. Bags should be placed in the sun, anywhere from 3-5 feet up. Plant hangars work nicely as bag supports.

As the article says “Japanese beetles are not the best flyers and tests show they will actually miss a trap by several yards”….Yes, and they will miss a plant by several yards to hit the trap.

Actually I’d keep it as close to the plant needing the protection as possible. Once I moved my traps, I collected the first year, enough bugs to require changing the traps twice a day. My plants did not get eaten. Each year I have repeated this process. And every year the number of beetles caught have been fewer and fewer. Last year, I set out traps and barely caught a handful of the beetles in each trap. No Japanese Beetle pest problem any more.

There are some options for traps. I found this description of how to make your own…never tried it, but putting water in a jug with mashed fruit sounds stinky and nasty to me. Not just because of what it is, but because of what it will become.

Japanese Beetles are nasty. They ooze dark fluid that will collect in the bags. It stinks. It stinks a lot. You must change the bags if they get nasty or the bad odor will overwhelm the pheromone scent that is the lure. The beetles will then go to your nice smelling roses.



As a second option there are the hard bottled type that are washable and reusable. Very green to use…but for me…see paragraph above. These bugs are nasty. I don’t want to be handling that weird fluid if I can avoid it. Then there is the problem of when you go to empty the trap that the beetles on top are still alive and they fly away as soon as you take the lure off.

This brings me to the third option; the replaceable and disposable plastic bag type. These are my preference. Get the ones at the big box stores. Traps are traps. Make sure they have a good supply of replacement bags or buy several replacements so you have them handy.


As soon as the bag fills to the narrow point, or gets nasty, whichever comes first…replace the bag. I like these because I can usually avoid the drippings and the top of the bag acts as a quickly closeable lid keeping all those not dead yet beetles trapped inside. I fold the top over and lay the bag in a hot sunny location. This quickly kills the remaining live beetles.

Timing: Place traps as beetles emerge in mid-May to early June in Georgia and South Carolina; early June to mid-June in North Carolina and Tennessee; mid-June to early July in Kentucky, Delaware, Washington, DC, Virginia and West Virginia; early July to mid-July in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey; mid-July in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

The other way to deal with Japanese beetles, (and for best and quickest results use with the traps) is milky spore. Milky Spore is a naturally occurring microscopic bacteria (Bacillus popilliae) that kills Japanese beetle in their grub phase; while in the ground, before they can grow wings and fly out of tiny holes in the ground that are about 3/16th inch in diameter. It is a strange thing to witness. Beetles emerge from a single hole at about one every 2 seconds or so. They all fly off in the same direction, in a nice undulating formation. Off to eat your goodies.


The product is easy to use, just sprinkle on the ground. Milky spore is a long-term solution because it survives winter temperatures. The Milky Spore population increases each year, reaching peak effectiveness about three years after application, and lasts ten years or more. Nice for lazy gardeners, but use the traps too.

May Flowers

Lavender Azaleas:


Azaleas come in many colors:


Iris:

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Pink Diamonds Hydrangea:


Wedding Sipria:








A few caladiumns in the shade:

May Week 4

Organic Gardening Calendar
22 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Sammie Jo Mitchell

The Spring flowering season is over and the summer heat lovers are just beginning to bloom. Cleaning up the residue from Spring and preparing for Summer is this week’s task.

Things you will need:
Snail and Slug Bait
Compost pile

As the spring flowers fade, you must get out in the garden…I recommend the hour or two just before sunset. At this time of day you are less likely to spread disease through dew or plants otherwise being wet, it is generally less hot, and I find that the low sun angles enhance the colors in the garden.

First of all there are the faded buttercups and Lycoris that need to be cleared out. When they are brown or flopped over as you see here;



They are ready to be pulled from the garden. Generally if they are no longer serving the bulb a gentle tug on a hand full will pull them right out.

Buttercups, Lycoris, Tulips all leave behind decaying plant material that attracts snails. These snails function to eat that dying material, which is perfectly OK until they decide they want to eat your Hostas too. If you have more than a ten square foot plot I would not recommend hand picking of the snails. Although mechanical means (hand picking) is the most ecologically safe method of pest removal, it can get to be tedious, unless you have a few 4-5 year olds that will make it a game to collect and crush snails. They make a cool pop sound when you step on them.

Since I have acres of dead and decaying material and no kindergarten class to collect snails for me, I must turn to pesticides to control the snails. After last year’s historic kill off from a late freeze, the snail population has exploded.

There are basically two ways to go about getting rid of the snails. One is organic, the other chemical.

The chemical product you will see on the store shelves at all your big box stores is a product by Ortho called Bug-Getta. Read the label. Down in the lower left hand corner of the bag….”product can be fatal to dogs”. And in the more prominent warnings: "Pets and children should not be present when treating. Active Ingredient: 2% Metaldehyde."

[This from Wikipedia: Metaldehyde is classed as a ‘moderately hazardous’ pesticide by the World Health Organization and is toxic to all animals that ingest it. Metaldehyde is highly toxic by inhalation, moderately toxic by ingestion and slightly toxic by dermal absorption. There is widespread concern that there have been an unacceptable number of poisoning incidents[citation needed], especially involving domestic pets, wild animals and birds. Metaldehyde is also known to be carcinogenic in large quantities or through prolonged exposure.]

For the organic product, again I refer you to Gardens Alive!. (No photo, their stuff comes in brown paper bags printed with vegetable ink) I am not a paid promoter of theirs and there are (I assume) other organic products out there that work just as well. I use the GA! product line in the blog because it is what I have used with success in my yard. That said, the GA! Product Escar-Go Supreme is available by mail order.

Yes there are shipping charges, but generally there is no sales tax, so at least in my State, it’s a wash. Here is the GA! explanation of their product: "Gardens Alive Escargo Contains two potent natural controls. The first is iron phosphate, the original ingredient in the original Escar-Go! Slug and Snail Control. It causes slugs and snails to stop feeding and die within 3 to 6 days. The second is metabolite made by fermenting bacteria (Saccharopolyspora spinosa) that causes insects to stop feeding once they ingest or come into contact with it. This tackles cutworms, earwigs, pill bugs, sow bugs, ants and crickets."

Notice there are no warnings of pet death from it’s use.

How do they compare cost wise? I got these prices off the internet….

Bug-Getta - 2 lbs – coverage: 200 SF cost: $8.49

Escargo Supreme – 13 ounces – Coverage – 1,100 SF cost: $9.95

I know it hurts, but let’s do some math.

Bug-Getta covers 6.25 square feet per ounce
Escargo covers 84.6 square feet per ounce

With those coverage rates you would have to purchase 5 ½ bags of the chemical pest control at $8.49 for a total cost of; $46.70 to get the same coverage as the $9.95 bag of organic control. Not to mention it is delivered to your door saving you about $4 per gallon of gas to go to the store to get it, where you will purchase other things on impulse - costing you even more. (No I don’t have that problem…not at all – a friend of mine does…)

Oh yes! We were cleaning out the dead butter cups. Pull up all the decaying leaves and deposit them in your compost pile. Where you removed the dead leaves and around other plants snails love to eat; like Hostas; sprinkle the snail killer about.

If you use the chemical stuff, expect to see a few dead birds, ‘cause they will eat it. Maybe your puppy too.

May Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar
23 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi
Every year about this time I get lots of questions from friends asking if it is OK to transplant or dig up something.

Things you will need:
Bulb clumps you want to thin
Shovel
Bone Meal
Bulb fertilizer
Compost
Flour

Just yesterday a friend was telling me about her flower bed she is refurbishing. In the process of digging it up (something I try to avoid) she found that her tulip bulbs had reproduced and she now had hundreds of them, but did not know how to store them until planting time in the fall.

Tulips, buttercups, Lycoris, Iris, every bulb or tuber I can think of prefers to be in the dirt. When you dig up that clump of buttercups that are no longer blooming because they are so crowded, you replant them immediately. It is the same with all bulbs. Select their new home and move them. Certainly professional growers have specialized refrigerated storage for their bulbs, but I don’t have that sort of equipment. We all very often think that if it comers from the grower this way, that is the proper way to treat a plant at home. Not so much.

When you dig up your bulbs the first critical calculation you must make is depth of bulb and angle of your shovel. Many a bulb have been sliced in two by not anticipating how deep the bulbs are. Here I must say, however, if you slice open a bulb like a buttercup or Lycoris, if there is a root section and the growing tip is still there-if you cut off the side of the bulb…go ahead and plant the bulb. It will grow. Throw away any parts that do not have a tip and at least a bit of root area. They won’t grow.

Bulb planting is one of those things that should not be done lazily. After all my advocating for lazy gardening, here I’m telling you, the more effort you put into replanting the bulbs, the better off you will be bloom wise and in the long run effort wise.

Take the clump of bulbs and separate them. If I get a particularly nice “mother bulb” and fully grown new bulb that are still attached to each other, I will keep those together. These large bulbs will give some fullness to the blooming pattern for the first year or two until the replanted bulbs begin to look full again.

Don’t make the mistake I’ve made of digging a trench, however wide and planting the bulbs in an organized pattern. Invariably the bulbs get planted too close together, so you are re-digging in just a few years, and besides they look dumb planted that way.

For each bulb dig a hole that is 4-5 times the width of the bulb and 4-5 times the height of the bulb. Take out the soil and mix it with bone meal, some compost, sand if you have heavy clay soil, and a good organic bulb fertilizer. Also include a dose of mole med if you have moles and voles eating your bulbs. Use your shovel to chop these ingredients together to get a nice uniform mix, and get rid of clumps of dirt. You want the dirt going in over the bulb to fill in around the bulb completely and not leave air pockets.

Then remember your spacing. With bulbs, spaced randomly is what I prefer, but if you are going for a formal look, still separate those bulbs at a minimum 15 times their width. This gives them room to grow and reproduce. Once the bulb(s) are covered, I top off each hole with flour. Flour??? Yep. That way I can see where they are, most critters don’t care for bleached white flour and it is pretty cheap. Then I water them thoroughly but very slowly. A fine mist or a soaker hose is the next best thing to rain. If done slowly enough, the residue of the flour remains so you can see where not to dig when you go to set out the annuals you use to over plant your bulbs,

May Week 2

Organic Gardening Calendar
24 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

Spacing was the hardest thing for me to learn. First of all don’t space your plants based upon the spacing dimensions listed on the plant tag.

Things you will need: A little bit of math
Tape measure

You must remember that plant tags are written up by growers and growers want to sell product. Second, until a local nursery has proven time and again (this takes years) that they are knowledgeable about the plants they sell, don’t go by what they say either. My biggest spacing mistakes were from listening to the horticulturist at my local nursery. In his case, I’m not sure if he just took the initial growers word for eventual plant size or if he intentionally misled me. Either way, spacing mistakes are costly and end up causing you more work. Something we lazy gardeners (or efficient gardeners) tend to want to avoid.

In this day and age, there is no reason you cannot look up and species and variety of plant you are considering purchasing. When you look them up, of course the sun/shade aspect; water requirements, etc. are all there and certainly pay attention. However, the big thing to look at is ultimate size, and length of time it takes to reach that size. If it is 50 years to maturity…unless you plan on living where you are for more than 50 years, you can decide to plant closer than I am about to suggest.

For lazy gardeners trees and shrubbery need to go in place first as discussed last week. It is essential once these are planted that you keep in mind – particularly with shrubs- their eventual height and girth. The temptation is great to stick your new perennials within 3 feet of that new shrub, because it all looks so empty…been there done that. The next thing you know, you lovely perennial is covered up by the shrub and will die unless you crawl under there and dig it up. Not fun at all.

For instance, a Burning Bush (Euonymus alata "Compactus") says that the bush will get 6-10 feet tall. But how wide? The site does not say. So what to do? First of all look at the photo of the plant. Is it tall and thin – vase shaped- or is it a mounded shape? Certainly from the photo you can tell it is a mounded shape. In order to appear “mounded” or “dome” shaped a plant must be wider than it is tall. The text said 6-10 feet tall. This means the bush will probably have a diameter of at least the 10 feet and most likely; at least by my experience, given the space, shrubs, not just the Euonymus, will get almost twice as wide as they are tall. With a 10 foot tall shrub – yes use the larger number – figure 10 feet plus 60% or 6 feet, to get the diameter of a “No Planting Zone”. Sixteen feet!!!! Yep. Diameter…not radius…still doesn’t plant anything within that area, unless it is an annual or other short lived plant. Now we have a Burning Bush, and a no plant zone anywhere in an 8 foot radius. So you can plant your expensive new perennial or smaller shrub at 8 feet out? No…you must do the same math for every plant. If the perennial you are planting is say, a peony that gets about 4-5 feet in diameter you must add the distance to the 8 foot radius. OK, so we are at 8’ + 2 ½’ = 10 ½ feet out. Is that where you want to plant the peony? Nope…more space…I have found that especially when dealing with trees, shrubs, and perennials, that open space between the plants gives the garden a manicured rather than wild look. Add ½ the width of the perennial again. 10 ½’ + (call it) 2’ = 12-13 feet out from the base of the center shrub. This gives them both room to grow and space for you to tend them.

Learning to have space between plants is hard. You are thinking, this is crazy…at these distances maybe you can only plant 3-4 plants…yes, exactly...but your eye and your heart want to buy 20 to go in that slot. Save your money. Select the finest varieties of what it is you want to plant then give them room to grow without being cramped and malformed due to over crowding. With most plants you will reach your ultimate size in just a few years…time that passes quickly in a garden.

Fill in those empty voids with annuals and each year you will need fewer and fewer of them. Less cost, less work, healthier plants due to better air circulation and less competition, and a neater cleaner looking garden will be your reward.

May Week 1

Organic Gardening Calendar
25 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

Garden Structure

Things you will need:
Trees
Shovel
Tape measure



What to plant first? Look at your yard or garden. What in it is the “back bone” of the area? What about it attracts your eye? Of course if this is a new bed then you must decide, how you plan to structure the bed or yard to give your work the greatest impact visually.

If you are starting with a bare lot…or one of those precious “contractor” landscapes…you have a perfectly new pallet to begin your garden. Unless you just KNOW what species your contractor planted…I’d be leery. Better to rid yourself of a night mare earlier than later. Generally in the plant world, cheaper is what contractors buy, and cheaper plants are not going to have any “special” features as the hybrid varieties will exhibit.

Ask the questions? Is this for sun or shade? If you have established shade trees, and you cut them down, you are an idiot. Shade is the hardest thing to come by of all the garden pleasures and shade beds are by far the easiest to tend and maintain. Even if the tree(s) that give you the shade are crummy trees…they are better than the baking hot sun.

So the answer to the question is first, decide how much shade you want in 10 years. Select these trees carefully. Unfortunately the first big decision is the very one that will either make your garden sing, or make oh so ho hum.

After many massive mistakes, I think you should have at least 1 real good fast growing deciduous shade tree. Where I live, I love the October Glory Maples. You get the tiny red blooms in spring before anything else blooms, great growth rate and dense shade, and a most magnifiscent red leaf in autumn. I have a large yard, so I set out 4 different varieties of Maples that are known for their fall color, but I set them so that when they are full grown their outside tips might barely touch each other. The point of the spacing is to allow you to get the hade from the tree, but it allows sunlight to reach in and hit all those shady spots at low sun angle hours.

Most plants, except those that love the hottest part of the day heat, will appreciate being in shade during high sun angles and getting several hours of sunshine in the morning and before sunset.

Don’t plant your anchor trees in a little box square, or a straight row. Try to make it look random. These will be the biggest things in your yard and you don’t want your brain thinking about geometric patterns while you are enjoying your garden. Nature plants things in free flow…only you should space them…

The next plants to consider are the under story trees. Trees that do not reach beyond 20-25 feet,. Most of these trees; dogwoods; redbuds; crabapples; all like to be where they get a good bit of sun. Their tags will tell you shade. They lie. If you want blooms...plant then in the sun. Now consider where you planted your tallest anchor tree(s). Plant these trees where the shadow of the taller tree will pass over it for a short period, basically in the northern hemisphere…plant it to the north of your anchor tree. Again pay close attention to the spacing. When the tree is fully grown, how will it interact with the anchor? If you are lazy, like me always use the “will barely touch” rule. Add the widths of the trees at fully grown…remember to select fast growing trees…and then add 10% more distance between them.

That’s enough structural planting this week. Give them a chance to get growing before you move to the shade loving shrubs like Rhododenrons.

April Week 4

Organic Gardening Calendar
27 Weeks to first frost date in zone 6

By: Kathi

What better time of year is there? The trees are blooming with reckless abandon now. It seems that after the historic warm winter of ’07, followed by the historic late freeze of ’07, followed by record rainfall, followed by record heat and drought of ’07, that the plants are a bit skittish about coming up. Never the less, it is planting time.

Things you will need: Plant Material
Seed

Whether you are vegetable gardening or flower gardening, or both, the general aspects of good gardening technique remain the same. Personally I go for as good as I can get without going nuts with the back breaking labor.

Here I think it is worth repeating myself somewhat about compositing and mulching. These two things will save you more work and gain you more than anything else I know of.

It’s all about the soil. Every thing regarding growing is about the soil. So your job as a grower is to give your plants the very best opportunity to thrive. Good soil will get you 95% of the way there. It will help, but not compensate for drought.

I have my vegetable rows out in the field. All winter long they have been sitting with a covering of grass clippings on top of them. When I mow, I bag the grass clippings. These bags, when full, can then be taken to each row and dumped out. I sling mine along the length of the row, and do two bag widths of clippings side by side for each row. Once the row is covered with the fresh clippings, take out a leaf rake, the springier the better, and first rake out the clippings to cover the entire row width. Then take the leaf rake and bounce it up and down on the spread out grass clippings. This lifts the clippings; will allow you to make the clipping depth uniform across the bed; and will add enough air to the clippings that they will decompose quickly and not smell like rotting plant material.

The optimum depth of fluffed up grass clippings is 6 inches. This is a nice full depth that will smother weeds, and block light from getting to the soil. Grass clippings that touch the soil will begin a rapid decomposition, that will signal to every near by earth worm that food is available. This is the primary objective….to attract worms. The clippings insulate the ground to stop the daily cyclic warming and cooling and helps retain moisture all the way to the surface during dry spells.

What do the worms do? The worms break up your soil, loosening it so that plant roots may more easily penetrate the soil. They munch on the composting grass (or other: leaves; mulch) and as with all critters excrete the remains of dinner. Those remains are the richest; most expensive to purchase; best all round fertilizer on the planet. Go ahead, look it up in the catalogs. At those prices, any amount of home made worm poo is worth it’s weight in gold.

In my hardiness zone, I put organic pre- emergent on my grass clippings in late November. Our average winter days can be in the upper 40’s and low 50’s easily, creating a perfect sprouting temperature for winter weeds. Using the organic pre emergent will rid your bed of 90% of the viable winter weeds.
After the winter is gone, I take my tiller and turn under the grass clippings into my rows to prepare them for planting. Be sure to allow the planting row to sprout. Then till it under again. If you can do this a second time all the better. (Of course seeds from grass clippings can be reduced drastically by cutting your grass before it goes to seed. If you cut it too late, you are certainly increasing your work.)

Now that it is planting time, if you started your seeds indoors, you should set out the transplants and put down another dose of pre emergent.

If you are setting out seed, do so, but hold off on the pre emergent until your seeds have sprouted and have obtained their first true leaves. Rake or pull out any weeds that have appeared, then put down your pre emergent. Again – ORGANIC pre emergent. It is cheaper, it works better, and it won’t leave chemical residues in your crops.

April Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar
0 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

It’s planting time! Let’s get out those transplants we started or make run to Big Box to get some new plants.

Things you will need:
Perennials
Annuals


Which to plant? Perennials? Or Annuals? In my mind you plant both. If you are planning your yard or your flower garden you must think of it in 4 dimensions. The fourth dimension, Time, is the one that everyone seems to forget to consider.

You have laid out your flower bed, and you are at the Big Box trying to decide what to buy. Perennials are more expensive and bloom only for a few weeks; generally…annuals are real cheap and bloom all summer.

At least that is what it seems.

A single perennial, will cost as much as 12 annuals more or less. The perennial will grow larger each year until it reaches its maximum size…generally by the 3-5th years. It will most likely reproduce or can be divided after several years to make more of them, and they reliably do their thing year after year without out you having to anything other than basic bed maintenance and watering.

If you have a new bed just getting started, Put out a ratio of about 75% annuals to 25% perennials. This will give you the color you want, and will start you toward a perennial bed. Each year do the same plant a 75/25 split. In just a few years there won’t be any more room to plant anything. You bed is done, It is maturing and all you have to do is spread pre emergent to keep it looking professional. There is no lazier or more rewarding gardening than perennials.

You must select them carefully. Always consider bloom time. With careful consideration, you can have something blooming from mid February through late November. My favorite perennials are the ones that do their thing then go dormant, leaving the space for something else to grow. Great shade garden combinations are Virginia Bluebells and Hostas. The bluebells come up, blooms, and fades with in a month or so. Just as they fade the Hostas are getting big enough to need the Bluebells space.

Lycoris are also great for going dormant – basically the same timing as a daffodil- but then pooping up in August with fabulous blooms, that vanish as soon as they are done with their annual display...

Use annuals to fill in or if you have favorites, by all means have them…but for lazy gardening. Go perennials.

Next week:
Planting your row crops

April Week 2

Organic Gardening Calendar1 Week to frost free date in zone 6
By: Kathi

Now is a dicey time. Do you plant those annuals or wait? And what of the sprayer mentioned earlier?

Things you will need:
Plant Material
Pest Traps
Dormant Oil
Sprayer

If you have a Farmers Coop, it would be the best place to find traps for fruit tree pests. One of the worst is the apple maggot. Now just as the apples start to bud get your traps either at the farmers coop, big box, or mail order company. Look for apple maggot traps that have large yellow squares around the red “apple” in the center of the trap. All apple maggot traps rely on putting sticky goo on the trap that keeps the unsuspecting maggot from being able to fly away. The ones that are just red balls will work, but they attract 75% fewer maggots.

Apples are also susceptible to Codling Moths. These moths burrow down into the fruit to eat the seed leaving these unsightly brown oozing tunnels in your fruit. These moths are hard to control but with the use of two traps for standard size trees for apples, peaches, pears, and three traps for an English walnut trees set out two weeks before bud break, (NOW!) and again in 7 weeks, these pests can be controlled. The traps release tiny amounts of pheromones continuously for up to 8 weeks. You must set out the traps in proper timing. If you miss these first traps you will have populated your fruit with these pests to produce their second generation this season, and all of your fruit will be ruined.Timing. NOW. Two weeks before bud break. Then again in the 1st week of June, to catch the second generation of moths.

Peach Tree Borer traps are another pheromone and sticky goo trap that time releases the sex pheromones to attract the pests to the trap. These adult moths lay their eggs at the base of peach, plums, cherries, and apricots. Then when the eggs hatch the larvae bore into the tree trunks leaving nasty holes that are ripe for infection. You should set out two traps per mature tree before May 15. These are pesky critters.

To help control Peach Tree Borer and for disease prevention, I also spray my trees with Horticultural oil or Dormant Oil in the winter to kill the borer eggs.  Continue spraying the Horticultural Oil on an every 7-10 day regimen throughout the season even though you have set out the traps. The spraying is to prevent disease not control pests.

Oh but the fun stuff. To Plant or not to plant? Yes plant, but be smart about it. First check the 10 day weather forecast. If it looks pretty safe, plant annuals that will tolerate some frost, such as Salvia, Verbena, Dusty Miller, Petunias, Violets or Pansies. In fact if you had a mild winter in zone 6, you may very well have Petunias and Dusty Miller coming up from last year’s roots, as well as annual Dianthus. Plant these in sunny locations protected from cold winter winds and 50% or more might return.

Do not plant the very tender annuals like hot house grown Dahlias, or Impatiens. Give them another 7-10 days before you set them out. Of course you can go ahead and plant Dahlia tubers, Gladiolus, lilies. There should be no more nights cold enough to freeze the ground between now and the time they wake up.

If you have up your row covers, you could have planted those tomatoes already, and you would have lettuce greens so fresh young and tender. Beats store bought any day.
Next week: Jump Starting Spring
Annuals or Perennials?

April Week 1

Organic Gardening Calendar
2 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

As the weather warms up the ground warms up and seeds start sprouting. The balancing act is to put down pre-emergent where you don’t want weeds and not put it where you want your summer annuals to return.

Things you will need:
Keen eye
Photographs for comparison

For years I went to the nurseries and big box stores and bought annuals…lots of annuals. I spent hundreds of dollars on annuals every year. Every spring I would go out into my flower beds and pull up hundreds of weeds. I’d turn, fertilize, and plant my annuals, all in nice little soldier rows.

What it took me many many years to figure out was; 80% of all those weeds I pulled up were in fact, seedlings of the very thing I was planting year after year. Yes I pulled up Impatiens, Violets, annual Rudbeckias (Black Eyed Susans), Phlox, Petunias; Vinca….It makes me ill to think about all that I have yanked out of the ground.

I noticed that very few horticultural sources show photographs of plants before their first true leaves appear. I wonder if this could be a plot to keep us buying millions/billions of dollars worth of unnecessary annuals every year.

There were two ways I made these discoveries. The first by being lazy and not properly weeding the flower bed, and allowing this “weed” to grow to a recognizable size. The second was when I began starting my own seeds. Once most of them sprouted, I realized immediately I had seen those hundreds of times before.

So what to do? I f you have a new bed or did not have annuals in it that you want to have again this year; weed the bed! They’re all weeds. That is, unless you get real lucky and get “weeds” that are the most wonderful native wildflowers. If you have wild flowers, pamper them. You will not believe what a “weed” will do if fertilized and watered! My very best plants are “weeds”. If you will look at the photograph on my bio page of the daylily bed, you will see wild daylilies, “Roadside Variety” is what they are called in catalogs and magazines, a native purple Rudbeckia, and a weed that I don’t know what it’s called but everyone asks if I’m not pulling that weed… No, I like it. Just with these you need to cut them back before they go to seed. You’ll keep getting blooms until frost, and you will cut back the seed count by a few million.

These are my favorite type of weed. They have a long bloom period. They are resistant to bugs. They like the climate. No watering. No need to fertilize, but do. A bit of extra water in dry times will keep these weeds fat and happy.

To manage annual beds or weed beds you must be able to recognize the seedlings each spring. My recommendation on weeding is pull only those plants you absolutely know are bad weeds and wait and watch what the others do. Most plants, by the time they are a couple of inches tall, you can tell exactly what they are. It’s those very early days when they might not look like the adult plant.

Once you recognize the seedlings allow them to grow to a 2-3 inch plant and then thin them out if you want to transplant the lifted plants. If you don’t want to keep the extras, pull them as soon as you determine which ones are the biggest and/or healthiest.

I have found that by buying a handful of annuls I can get that early color I crave, but hold out for the volunteer seedlings. By June, they will be bigger and nicer than the store bought transplants. Every year that you allow the seedlings to grow and reproduce, you get a plant more and more specialized for that particular flower bed, or micro climate.

Obviously the bane of these plants is pre-emergent. With practice you can scatter it where you tend to get weeds and use it very sparely where you want seedlings to sprout. HUH? Well yes, some seedlings like the unidentified white mini daisy plant in my yard, with pre-emergent will still send up many more seedling than you want. So with each plant there is a happy spot that balances the pre emergent to number of sprouts. Just a word of caution: wild Geraniums and wild Polypodium do not tolerate pre emergent at all. You will completely wipe out an established bed with a properly timed single application.

Notice properly timed. If you are sprouting spring annuals, after the bed has sprouted, use the pre emergent for the rest of the year, stopping 3 months before its time for the desired seeds to sprout. For annuals, this is almost always in the spring, except Violets and they will sprout any warm day after October through spring.

There are also many perennials that will reproduce by seed. Treat them the same way.

As soon as it stops raining, I will take some photos of seedlings and post them.


Next week:
Fruit Tree Maintenance – spraying setting traps
Getting a jump on spring, planting cold hardy annuals

March Week 4

Organic Gardening Calendar
3 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

I love this time of year! A whole entire season ahead of us, and every year I just know this one will be the best. And to assure that it is one of the best, you must get your head into regular pest control management.

Things you will need:
Duster
Sprayer(s)
Bug traps

Now, not next week, is the time to really get into the pest control matter in your yard. When you use organics and mechanical methods of pest control timing is everything. You must know your pest and know exactly when and how to get to them.

There is no way that this post can cover 16 encyclopedias worth of garden pests. But what it can do is point you in the right direction. I keep going back to GardensAlive!; I’m not pushing them intentionally, but I have to confess that their catalog is one of the most informative publications you can get on pest control management. If you have not yet, go to their web site Http://www.GardensAlive.com and sign up for a free catalog. At least once a year the catalog becomes a small book. Save that one. It has everything about pest and of course what they sell to remedy the pest all in one nice neat spot.

I highly recommend that you take the catalog and mark it up. If you buy every product they advertise for every pest, you just could not afford it. But, the information is there, you just have to pay attention…but 3-4 products will take care of everything. Read those long lists of bugs and compare products.

If you get other mail order catalogs you will see that many of these same products are offered under different brand names. What you want to be sure to note on other companies is to verify that the product is organic. With GardensAlive! You do not have that worry.

Bacterial Infections: In orchards you must control the critters and diseases or you will not have a harvest fitting for anyone but the birds. One of the primary products you will need is a Fungicidal Soap. Fungicidal Soap will control almost every canker, downy and powdery mildew, mold, blights (including fire blight), and various bacterial spots. Mark up your calendar beginning NOW, to spray all your fruit trees and roses, and later your veggies with fungicidal soap every 7-10 days. If you are infested with molds, mildews and blights, do it every 7 days for the entire growing season. Next year every 10 days will be enough, and after that if everything stays under control, I’ve had success spraying every 2-3 weeks. You must cut out all damaged wood from blights, and get all infected plant material out of your garden. DO NOT PUT SICK PLANT MATERIAL IN YOUR COMPOST PILE!!! Did I stress that enough? I burn mine. You do what you gotta do for where you live. Always collect and remove diseased fallen leaves from under your fruit tress.

Japanese Beetles: Nasty critters. First things first. Purchase a can or two of “Milky Spore” you can get it at any big box garden center. Broadcast the spore according to directions. The grub phase is the weakest link in the beetle’s life cycle and therefore the most vulnerable point to introduce an infection. Milky spores in treated areas are swallowed by grubs while feeding. The Spore disease cripples the grubs, killing them within the next 7-21 days. As the grubs decompose, they release billions of new spores. Milky Spore is not harmful to beneficial insects, birds, bees, pets or humans, and will not affect wells, ponds or streams. This stuff is cheap, so use liberally.

Fleas, Weevils and Grubs: In order to fend off damage to root crops or all cabbage crops including broccoli and cauliflower, and to prevent corn earworms, you should spray the ground, a moist ground, preferable right before a rain with Beneficial Nematodes. Nematodes kill every kind of grub, including Japanese beetles, but also get the Iris borers, carrot weevils, and cutworms. Beneficial nematodes come to you in a plastic bag with a sponge and a bit of water. At first you will feel ripped off, because it looks like you bought a few tablespoons of dirty water. But in that sponge are millions of microscopic nematodes that are hungry and ready to eat your pests. These in my mind are expensive. You do not have to soak the ground with the solution, but don’t skimp either. Hosing the nematodes in after spraying is a good practice. Spray only the areas around the things you want to protect. For my irises, I spray an area of maybe 8 square inches around each tuber. Spray the plot where you intend to plant any root crop, and spray the immediate area around transplanted slips to keep off the cutworms. I spray the beneficial nematodes only once a year.

Traps: There are specialized traps that are inexpensive and easy to use that can be purchased locally. I use Japanese beetle traps and they do work. The directions on the positioning I dispute. They say put them 50 feet downwind of the crop to be protected. Silliness. I think this was written in Japanese, and translated into another language before it got translated into English. The pheromones in any trap will draw bugs from down wind. So you want to place your traps up wind of the things to be protected. But not 50 feet away either. Stick that trap right beside your roses and hollyhocks. You will catch every bug those plants attract.

Otherwise, every fruit tree has a particular bug that attacks it and those specialized traps are readily available. Trapping is actually the best most ecological and safest way to control pests. No bug can develop a resistance to glue. Replace the traps when they get full.

Remember too…Put down pre-emergent as the Forsythias bloom.

Next week: Start watching out for volunteers!

March Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar4 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6By: Kathi

If you don’t know by now to get those seeds started, there’s no hope for you. But this week I would like to talk about orchard planning.
Things you will need:Recommend Starks Brothers Catalog
Internet access for research
Soil amendments

Before you begin digging, it would be wise to stop and consider what you want from your orchard? Are you looking for a cash crop, or do you want seasonal fruit for your family, or do you want blooms and bird food?

First of all, investigate your local growing conditions. What fruits are typically grown locally? If very few or none, there may be good economic reasons for not growing fruit in your area. As far as this article is concerned, fruit can be apples, pears, cherries, or even woody shrubs like blueberries. We will leave strawberries to another day.

Cooler climates grow apples and pears very well. Obviously you must be in a no freeze zone to grow citrus fruits. Apples in the Deep South are probably going to die or be eaten up by pests. But most people can have some luck with certain varieties of fruits no matter where you live. The easiest way to determine what types of fruit will grow in you region is to visit the local big box nurseries or if you have them available actual nurseries where you can ask a real horticulturist, rather than a kid working after school about your orchard planning.

What you will see in these places are the varieties that will grown in your area, but they may not necessarily thrive. Big difference. Beware of mail order catalogs. They are a wonderful source of information about very specific things, but determining if they will grow in your yard is tricky. Always remember, they are trying to sell you their plants. If it says "Will tolerate…” that’s one way of saying it will live, but it won’t be happy. With fruit, your plants must be happy or they will never produce properly.

Once you get a list of the fruits you see at these stores, go home and Google for each type. Look for micro climate issues that relate to your garden plot. Does your soil have a lot of clay? Check which varieties will grown in clay. If this fruit is very early blooming, is your yard in a low spot that will freeze later than the general no frost date in your area? In my yard…that could be a month later than at the nearby airport.

The next big consideration is your winters. Look at the horticultural information for the fruit you want. How many chill days does it require to set blooms and fruit? If your winter is not cold enough and long enough, many trees, especially apples and Pears will not set properly.

Once you determine what types of fruits you want, and determined they will grow in your area, then you must decide how much do you need, and how much work are you willing to commit to. Now you know I’m all for lazy gardening. You can be somewhat lazy with fruit, but you really can’t ignore your trees or all you will get is blooms and bird food.
With most all fruit trees these days there are multiple varieties to choose from. Its great idea to get one of each, but not necessarily practical or productive. Some trees are self fertile, meaning they can pollinate themselves without the need of other trees. But a lot of tree varieties require pollinators. I have never seen a tag on a tree at the big box store that said it required a pollinator. That information is best gotten on line. Stark Brothers list which of their trees require pollinators and which do not.

For cross pollination to occur you need two trees that bloom at the same time. Don’t think that just because you have two cherries or two apples you are going to get fruit.

Now what size tree? Trees come in Standard, Semi Dwarf, Dwarf sizes. If you want a back yard garden that is the easiest to deal with, get the smallest trees that variety of fruit is available on. I recommend any time possible getting the dwarf sized trees. The fruit will be better if for no other reason that you can better access the tree for pruning, spraying, and picking. If you have limited space, choosing Dwarfs will allow you to have more varieties in the same area than large trees will allow.

Spacing. Now here is where I deviate from the conventional wisdom. I figure if you are reading this, you are most likely not wanting to go into the fruit farming business, but want fresh uncontaminated fruit to serve your family. So Spacing? If you buy a tree and the label says to space these trees at lets say 10 feet, I recommend spacing them at 20 feet. The spacing guidelines assume the full grown trees will slightly touch each other. I’m telling you, this happens rapidly, and it makes tending the trees a pain in the rear. Lazy gardeners should separate those trees, so there is room to drive a lawn cart or a wheel barrow down between them. You will need to get on all four sides of every tree with a sprayer, (I prefer the backpack kind) and pruning shears to remove dead, mal formed, or diseased branches. This takes room. If you have another tree scraping your back while performing these procedures it makes for an unpleasant experience. I know. I planted my 20+ tree orchard by the directions. By the 4th year, I was mad because I could no longer get to my trees they were so thick. Disease set in and I lost most of my trees. Oddly those that lived were on the outside, where I could better reach them. Once the others died out, I had a good spacing pattern that allowed room to work around each tree.

This is another reason for carefully planning an orchard. A mistake made today may not be realized for several years. That’s a lot of wasted money time and effort.

When you purchase your trees, look for thick central stalks with lots of buds. Look for signs of disease or pests and do not purchase those trees. If there are several diseased ones, and you find a nice on in the pile….you will be lucky if you don’t bring home all the pests and diseases you saw on the ones you left behind. I strongly reccomend that you wipe your newly purchased trees down with an orgainic fungicide/pesticide from dirt to tip prior to planting.  Check the root ball for signs of soil pests.  Remove any found by hand and treat the root ball and surrounding new fill with an appropriate control for the pests encountered.

Once you settle on trees, and wipe them down, get out your tape measure and space them out properly with extra room. You want as much direct sunlight as you can get, minimum 6 hours per day. Don’t plant trees that will get taller to the south of trees that are shorter. You must consider where your trees will cast their shade when fully grown.

Digging the planting hole. Ever hear the expression, “dig a $10 hole for a $1 tree”? This is a must. Dig it deep and dig it wide. I like to plant my trees in holes that are 20X or more wider than the trunk at the base and twice the depth of the root ball. While I have all that hole dirt out of the hole, I amend mine with peat moss, greensand, bone meal, compost, and specially formulated fruit tree fertilizer. Again, GardensAlive! has wonderful fertilizers for fruit trees that are all organic.
Stir all those ingredients together. Replace the soil into the hole to a depth that will cause the previous dirt line to be set above the new dirt line, by several inches. Continue filling in the hole and packing the dirt in, not with your heavy foot but with a rod. Poke it in and out repeatedly to remove air pockets. Fill until you have completely filled the hole. Now turn on the hose and let the hole fill with water. Stop the water. You want the hole to absorb this water and it should drain right through. Repeat the watering process until the water stops draining out immediately. By now you should have all the air pockets out of the soil, and a well watered new planting. Fill in more dirt if needed to bring the soil line up to where it originally was on the new tree. Tamp it down lightly. Mulch. Mulch all the way out to the tree drip line or a minimum of a 36 inch diameter circle, if it is a tiny tree.

Now all you have to do is determine for your fruit and your location when to spray the trees. Put this on your calendar. Missed sprays cannot be made up. They are timed to the weather and the seasonal progress of the tree. If you do not spray the trees or use judicious means of debugging you will not get a lot of fruit. Trust me on this, if you want fruit you must spray. And again GardensAlive! (I should get a commission!) has a full line of organic sprays, with great educational literature explaining how to and when to.

If you do all these things, you should get a small crop of fruit by the 3rd spring. Each additional year you maintain happy trees they will produce more and more fruit up to their top limit.

So go forth without fear and set out your fruit trees. In our clay, in zone six, we settled into cherries as our fruit of choice. We get all the cherries we can eat in pies, and leave the rest for our feathered friends.

Next week: greater detail on spraying routines, pests, and diseases, in the orchard.

March Week 2

Organic Gardening Calendar
5 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

If you don’t know by now to get those seeds started, there’s no hope for you. But this week is a good time to look at all the woody plants in the yard and do some trimming.

Things you will need:
Pruning Shears
Hand saw
Bleach

Around here 2007 was the most devastating year on record weather wise. We had a very early spring and a very late hard freeze in Late April or early May, I can’t recall which, but the damage was beyond anything I could have imagined.

Even if you were spared the wrath of Mother Nature last year, there is always dead wood and suckers that need to be trimmed.

First, you need to get out your cutting tools and disinfect them. Use a bleach/ water mix; wipe down the blades, handles, every thing. You want to be sure you are not bringing in any fungi or mildew spores to your plants. After every cut, dip your tools in the bleach water mix.

Inspect your trees, for dead wood. Remove dead wood with a straight cut that is sloped such that water will not accumulate on the surface of the cut. Cut the dead wood as close to the main stem or trunk as possible without digging into green wood.

Fruit trees need to be trimmed back so that branches do not rub against each other. The rubbing will cause; essentially an open sore that with invite disease. Remove branches from fruit trees that are growing in toward the center of the tree. These branches block light and air to the tree interior. As with all things growing, being crowded together where moisture can be trapped is a sure recipe for disease.

If last year, you noticed that some of the leaves were turning brown and dying back on a particular branch, you should trim back that branch and take a look at the heart wood. If the center of the open cut has any brown in it whatsoever, there is a good chance the tree has developed fire blight. If you see this brown on the heart wood, SANITIZE your pruning shears or handsaw and cut the branch back at least 12 inches. Check for brown in the heart wood again. Repeat until you have removed all the brown heartwood and are into clean healthy wood by at least 6 inches, 12 is better.

Unfortunately, if all this cutting gets you into the trunk, your tree is probably not going to make it. If it is a tree you don’t care much about, you are better off getting rid of it so it doesn’t spread the blight to other trees. If it is a tree that is important to you, you must start a spraying regimine. The best product I have found for this is MVP. It can be purchased by mail order through GardensAlive! and other organic gardening retailers. When you spray, be sure to follow the label directions carefully. Spray not only the tree that is exhibiting symptoms of blight, but every tree, especially every fruit tree in sight.

But we were talking about trimming. Examine all grafted trees for growth coming up from the ground or below the graft and remove it. These are never going to develop into the variety you purchased. They will suck the life out of the desired plant, or at the least, will over whelm it with growth from the root stock.

I had one experience where in my early gardening days, I did not understand how named varieties are grafted onto sturdy root stock, of a similar type plant. I had purchased a weeping cherry tree from the nursery and it ha been growing very well for 3 years, when our neighbor’s cow came over and used it for a scratching post. The cow broke the tree about 4 inches up from the ground. I straightened up the tree, bound the open wounds tightly together in an effort to save the tree. Very quickly shoots came up from the ground. I didn’t cut them down because I could tell by the leaves it was a cherry tree coming up. I hoped I would get my weeping cherry back. And I did, not the variety I had purchased but a native weeping cherry. The tree grew to 20-25 feet tall and a bit wider in just a few years, and every spring is covered with the palest pink flowers I think I’ve ever seen. It looks almost silver when the sun hits it. It is now my favorite tree. But that was dumb luck. It could have grown up to be a messy tree, but instead I have a 5 trunk weeping cherry.

Trim back Hydrangeas. If you cut into one and the wood is green, be careful to remove only the dead stalks. Some Hydrangeas bloom on last years’ wood. If you cut that out, you will not get blooms this year. Beware of landscapers, if you hire someone to do your trimming, keep a close eye on them. In my experience they don’t know anything about growing plants, just tossing mulch.

If you think you want to cut back Rhododendrons or Azaleas, DON’T. At least not until after they bloom. Their blooms are formed in the preceding summer, so ignorant landscapers or deer can wipe out a full season’s blooms in nothing flat.

Clean your cutting tools thoroughly to store them. You’ll probably want to do more trimming after the leaves pop out and you can see if any are not looking too healthy.

As for the branches you’ve cut off, pick them up immediately. You do not want any parasites or diseases getting into the soil from the diseased wood. Personally, I burn mine. I figure that kills the nasty stuff in the wood and keeps at least that much of it from spreading. If you live where you cannot burn the trimmed wood, bag it and get it to the garbage bin immediately.

Next week planning an orchard.

Next week you will need:
Mail order catalogs, preferably Stark Brothers….

March Week 1

Organic Gardening Calendar
6 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

As always this time of the year get those seeds started! Otherwise, its time to start thinking about weeds, and spring cleaning.

Things you will need:
Pre-emergent
Spreader

In zone 6 the buttercups are blooming. We live out away from urban heat islands, so ours are just breaking open now, while in town the blooms are a full week ahead. The ground is no longer frozen and the days are warming up.

Now, before the weed seeds start to sprout is the best time to apply pre-emergents. The buds on the forsythias are plumping up, the signal that it is the time to apply the pre-emergents in your area. If you are going to err on your application dates, it is better to be early than late. Pre-emergents do not kill weeds that are already sprouted.

Apply at the rate indicated on the box. Then rake it in a bit to get it distributed through the top ½” of soil. This is where almost all seeds germinate. When you plant your annuals later after the frost free date, and you disturb the soil, mix a bit of pre-emergent in the top of the soil as you firm it back around your transplants. If you don’t do this, you will have stirred up buried seeds which will then sprout up around your newly planted specimens. I have always liked to mix the pre-emergent in with manure to spread around the newly planted slips. There’s less dirt with seeds in the top ½” this way, and you get weed prevention and fertilizer in one step.

To apply the pre-emergent I have found the easiest device is a hand held spreader that has an under arm brace. This brace is great if you have weak wrist or arms. The brace prevents the spreader from wanting to rotate or dip downward in your hand. Unfortunately, I have only seen these in right handed models.

Set the spreader to where it slings out a uniform field of pre-emergent granules a distance of about 4 feet. Then you can walk along the beds at a semi fast walk, churning out the pre-emergent. You will get very close to the recommended rate using this method. Don’t worry if you apply too much as long as you are using an organic variety, it won’t hurt anything.

Invariably, there will be chunks in the pre-emergent that clog the spreader. Just stick your hand in the pre-emergent, get those clumps and crush them between your fingers. The crumbs will then go through the spreader with none wasted.

There will be weeds to pull up but be careful not to pull up seedlings that do sprout from last years annuals. I pulled up thousands of Impatients before I figured out what the seedlings looked like. The best way to learn to recognize the volunteers is to purchase seeds, plant them indoors and pay close attention to their shape when they sprout. Volunteers will almost always be bigger and healthier by the middle of the summer than store bought transplants.

If you have a wild flower bed DO NOT use pre-emergents on it. I lost 90% of my wild phlox, polomonium, and geraniums by using pre-emergents.

Zinnias, on the other hand are such prolific germinators that you can put a light dusting of pre-emergents where last years plants were and you will get a bed of zinnias that you won’t have to thin.

Next week we will trim out the old to make room for the new.

Next week you will need:
Trimming and cutting devices
Bleach
Garden hoe

February Week 4

Organic Gardening Calendar
8 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

Once again this week we need to get our seeds started. At 7-8 weeks from frost free date, its time to plant all your annuals, tomatoes and peppers. By the time your frost free date rolls around you will have slips to set out.

Things you will need:
Seeds
Seed starter mix or pellets
Dormant Oil/Horticultural Oil
Sprayer

The technique for planting seeds does not change, just what you are planting. Read the directions on the seed packet carefully. Some seeds require being exposed to light, others do not. If you do not plant the seeds at the proper depth, they most likely will not sprout.

If you are like me, you already have several trays full of plants, some ready to go into the row covers, others are still to young and tender. If you have seed trays with these plastic domes, watch them carefully. The domes allow the humidity to stay nice and high while the seeds are sprouting. During this period, that is a good thing, but once sprouted, that dome can be the death of your seedlings. Too much humidity will cause them to “damp off’. Damping off is where seed or soil bourn fungi are given the proper conditions to grow. I have tried every commercial packaged soil on the market, I think, and order seeds from many large sellers. This damping off fungi is in all of them. So you must start removing the dome off the seedlings to allow the very top surface of soil to dry out. Always water from the bottom. Even if you completely remove the dome, but keep the soil too wet your seeds will damp off. Do not try to rescue them. They are toast.

Right now, here in zone 6 the days are warming up to where they are above 40 degrees. You can see the tips of the trees turning red and the buds are beginning to swell on the fruit trees. Now is the time to spray your fruit trees, dogwoods, crab apples, and most any other tree or bush that can develop insect related damage. Do NOT spray Japanese Maples, Red maples, Cedars, Hickory or Walnut trees. You will likely kill them. Other than these, most everything, especially the fruit trees need to be sprayed to suffocate any insects that are wintering over in the bark. Spray the entire tree or bush including any buds that are forming. After spraying the bark will take on a slightly glossy appearance similar to having been waxed. Dormant oils, also called Horticultural Oils, or Superior Oils are inexpensive, easily applied.

Since horticultural oils kill insects mechanically, by suffocation, they cannot develop a resistance to it, making future generations of insects evolve into oil resistant critters.

Next week you will need:

Pre-emergents

February Week 3

Organic Gardening Calendar
9 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

Wow! It seems like its been forever since the last post, but doing a 4 week month means twice a year, you have to skip a week to get back in sync with the calendar. What better time than February to not garden for a few days?

But I believe I promised a way to get rid of your dandelions and reduce your wild onion populations.

Things you will need:
Lawn Mower

I have never read this technique in any book, or heard any old timer tales about getting rid of dandelions. I discovered this back in 1992 completely by accident. But as you would expect, I did not realize I had done anything that would get rid of those pesky boogers until mid summer when I realized that I only had a handful of dandelions rather than thousands.

It took me some hard thinking to try to figure out what was different that year than any other year. I decided the only difference was in mid February I mowed the grass. The next year I purposely did not cut the grass in February and the number of dandelions increased from the prior year, but nothing close to the original number. During the third year of this test, I mowed the grass in February, and this time during the summer to my delight, there were absolutely no dandelions in my yard.

I don’t know why this works on the dandelions. With the onions I think by cutting the leaves down you are weakening the bulb, so the more often you cut the less healthy they will be. With the dandelions…if anyone can tell me why this works, I’d love to hear about it.

The trick is you need to mow your yard when the onions are popping up before anything else starts to grow. Set the blade as low as it will go and still clear the ground. I am convinced that setting the blades as low as possible is what does in the dandelions.

If you try this, you neighbors will talk about you. Who in their right mind mows in February? But there are advantages. 1) It kills dandelions, I promise. 2) it makes your ragged old winter yard look pretty good 3) it removes all the dead grass and leaves from the yard making it look greener, 4) if your lawn mower is going to break, it is best to find out now, rather than in April.

I will say right now, I bag my grass. It keeps the yard neat, provides lots of material for the compost pile, or for sheet composting, and means you never ever have to rake again. Bagging is so much lazier than mowing and raking. Not to mention all the free mulch you get.

Next week you will need:

Seeds and seed starting pellets or mix.

And put up those row covers if you haven’t yet! You want tomatoes in June? Row covers. You want a full crop of greens, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, and English peas?…Row covers, baby. I also put my annual flower flats out under my covers to get then big and healthy and ready to transplant in April.

February Week 2

Organic Gardening Calendar
10 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

This week, if your weather is beginning to warm, to the point that your normal low does not get below about 28 degrees you can start using those row covers we put up in January.


Things you will need:
Soil thermometer
Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower slips
Onion and Chive bulbs
Organic vegetable fertilizer
Bone meal

If you did not put up the row cover, you should go ahead and do it. Days are getting longer and warmer and the large PVC hoops with clear plastic trap the solar heat gained during the day in the dark soil, warming it much faster than exposed ground.

On sunny days in February when it is in the high 20’s –low 30’s it will be in 70+ degree range inside the row cover. At night there is enough residual heat to keep everything happy until the weather does that inevitable dip. On those nights, run Christmas lights through your plants. The bulbs will keep the slips warm enough to make it through nights in the low 20’s. Cloudy days and cold nights could get to be a problem, but so far, I’ve not lost any plants under my row covers. The trick to keeping everything warm is of course, making it as air tight as possible.

In my row covers the soil is about 50 degrees. Too cool to plant seed but fine for transplanting cold weather crops like Parsley, Broccoli, Kale, Cabbage, and Cauliflower. If you are a bit further south, or the weather is predicted to be warm for the next week, put out the lettuces, mesclun greens, spinach, and English peas. If the weather this week is unusually cold and nasty, wait until it’s tolerable. Timing is everything and where you live has everything to do with the timing.

Plant chives, onions, and garlic now. Plant them in the center of the row where the soil is warmest. Chive and onion bulbs should be planted near the surface with their tips up and just barely below the soil. Garlic should be planted tips up about 3X the size of the clove you are planting. With bulbs, you must consider how large the onion or garlic clove will grow. Be sure to space them so that they can mature fully and still have some room between them.

When you dig each hole to plant your bulbs or your transplants, dig the hole out to about a 5 inch diameter and deep hole. Mix in a generous dose of bone meal in the soil you removed to make the hole. I usually put in 2X as much as the package directs. If you can get other amendments, compost, organic fertilizers (dry not liquid); mix them into the hole dirt. Rake as much of that as you need to reach the bottom of the roots of the transplant or bulb. Then refill hole, pat it down gently with your fingers or the back of a hand shovel. Where you planted the bulbs, sprinkle enough bone meal on the soil directly on top of each bulb. The bulb appreciates it and it is white, so you can see where you have bulbs planted, thus avoiding an accidental bulbicide.

Now that your row under cover is planted, put those covers down tight. Block all drafts possible, and watch out for cold spells. Do this with your cold weather crops every week, weather permitting, up until the last frost. By then you will be in full harvest mode. Each week you should get a succession of veggies until the middle of spring.

Next week I’m going to share my personal discovery about dandelion eradication.

Next week you will need:

Lawn mower

February Week 1

Organic Gardening Calendar
11 Weeks to frost free date in zone 6

By: Kathi

Every week up until your first frost free date, start seeds indoors according to the package directions. With cool crop vegetables like lettuce, spinach, and English peas only plant the number of plants it takes to feed you for a week or two at the most. If you have those big row covers start your seeds a couple of weeks earlier than the package says.

This week again, it’s time to mow.

Things you will need:
Lawn Mower

Where I live, the Narcissus have broken ground. And since I believe in getting as much out of a garden plot as possible (there’s that lazy streak again) I plant as many different types of plants together as possible.

For example, this week the (Liriope) monkey grass gets mowed. The timing is critical because in the monkey grass bed Narcissus, reblooming bearded iris, Asiatic Lilies, Lycoris haywardii and Lycoris radiata are all planted together. If we get a warm spell, the Narcissus will grow too tall to be mowed over without damaging them.

Let us assume you are planting a new flower bed or refurbishing an old one. You want to select plants to commingle that will give you foliage and/or flowering plants whose bloom time or peak display periods are distributed throughout the growing season. Personally I prefer beds that mix it up rather than the same plant repeated throughout the bed.

When you select which plants to put together there are several important things to consider. There is no order here. You must have all of them to select a group of plants that will succeed together.
Amount of light: Do not mix shade loving plants with sunflowers. One of them will not make it. This is almost impossible to affect, so don’t bother trying, unless you are working on a 10 year plan for shade and are planting trees.

Amount of water: Bog plants and dessert cacti don’t mix very well. You can, of course start with a dry spot and water artificially, but who needs the work? Don’t bother doing that either.

PH: Plants may like acidic soil or basic soil. If your soil is neutral, you can probably have fair success with most things. But there are those plants like blueberries that will not survive outside of a very acid soil. PH is easily and cheaply adjusted, but if you are truly lazy like me, you pretty much stick with what you got. Plants in microclimates that suit them always do better. Always.

Size: This, I think is the hardest of all the concepts to master. When you plant with proper spacing, the bed will look empty. Trust me on this; plant your bulbs, shrubs, and perennials twice as far apart as the tag tells you to. Nurseries are in business to sell product. You’ll end up digging it up. Definitely not lazy.

The second tier considerations are:

Bloom time: Select plants that will bloom at different times. I like to combine Narcissus, reblooming bearded iris, Asiatic Lilies, Lycoris haywardii and Lycoris radiata with monkey grass. (You thought I had forgotten about the Liriope- “monkey grass” didn’t you?)

What does the plant look like when it’s not at its peak? Monkey grass makes a great border along concrete sidewalks. It grows about 12 inches tall and produces a uniform manicured look. It looks good all year, but once a year it must be mowed. Mine never turns completely brown during the winter, so I leave it in place until the Narcissus first break ground. Then generally this week, I set the mower on the highest setting and mow the monkey grass. It leaves a very nice level finish and opens up the ground to sunlight to begin to warm the soil.

a. In my yard the buttercups start up by mid February and are beginning to bloom by March 1. Narcissus’ come in many varieties that bloom over a 2 month period. Plant different colors and sizes, but spread them out. Narcissus leaves turn brown and hang around for a couple of months. Do not cut off the leaves after they bloom. The leaves feed the bulbs for next year’s blooms. As I said, their leaves turn dark, - slowly. Spread the bulbs out so there won’t be big clumps of dying leaves. A scattered plume distributed about the bed looks better because the monkey grass can conceal small clumps better than big clumps. To expedite the removal of the Narcissus leaves, I take scissors and trim off ONLY that part that has died back. I admit, not the laziest thing to do, but well worth it.

b. The bearded iris bloom next in late April. Repeat bloomers will bloom again during the summer. Same deal, after they bloom cut back the bloom stalk. Later if the leaves turn brown, you can trim them, but more likely they need to be treated with beneficial nematodes for Iris Borers.

c. Then the Asiatic and Oriental Lilies start blooming in June and if you’ve selected your varieties well they will continue to bloom through July. As soon as they quit blooming I dead head them and like the buttercups, snip them back as they die down.

a. Lycoris are the best for out of bloom looks. From mid spring to August or September there are no leaves. Then overnight a bloom stalk will pop up. These absolutely look better in clumps of 5 or more. As soon as the blooms fade, cut the stalks down. In the fall when everything else is dying back, the leaves will sprout and at least here in zone 6, will stay green all winter.

All of this was to get back to mowing the monkey grass. With the proper mix, you can do very little work over the growing season, have lots of blooms coming and going, and never have to replant that area. The older it gets the better it looks. A good dose of bone meal once or twice a year will make it sing.

If you are real good you have a bagger on your mower. Free Mulch. No mess to clean up. For me, I bag my monkey grass clippings then spread them evenly out over that new bed I made last week.

Next week we will start to move the early crops out to the cold frame or row covers that we put up last month.

Next week you will need:
Soil thermometer
Broccoli slips
Onion and Chive bulbs
Organic vegetable fertilizer
Bone meal