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.