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