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