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