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.

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.

January Week 4

Organic Gardening Calendar
12 weeks to frost free date in zone 6
By: Kathi

This week plant a few more seeds and clean up the flower and vegetable beds. And Bonus Time! We’re going to start a new bed. Yes now, why not?

Things you will need:
.........Gloves
.........Compost /Manure
.........Rake
.........Garden Hose
.........Lawn Mower

Again this week you should inspect you seed packets and plant the seeds using the timing methods described in the January Week 3 post. Check last weeks seeds for sprouting, and as soon as you see green, get them in front of a sunny window. Rotate the seed tray every day. More often if you can.

If the weather was too bad where you are, there’s still plenty of time to build those row covers and get that plastic on. The sooner you do it the sooner your soil will warm up to a toasty 60o. That’s the magic temperature to plant seeds or transplant slips. Buy a soil thermometer; guessing will just cause you to screw up. Been there done that.

By this time we will assume you have your compost pile set up and you are turning it as often as you feel like it. (I’m loose on rules) The more you turn it the better. I never turn my small one that’s in a plastic bin, but I get out the tractor tiller and turn my very large bed every time I use the tiller.

Get out in the yard and pull up last years annuals that are dead. Be careful…some of those little boogers will come back if you don’t have severe winters. Snip off tops of perennials that have died back. Put all that dead plant material in the pile. Always. Never waste any of it. Don’t put sticks in it that are bigger than small twigs unless they are rotten. They will take a much longer time to compost than your everyday plant scraps. Put those in their own pile, or if you have a chipper…have at it. I use my small sticks, anything 4 inches and smaller for firewood in my chimineas.

In January Week 1 we briefly talked about getting the vegetable beds ready for spring. Likewise now is a perfect time to decide where you want your next flower bed. Feel free to go ahead and make it big.

All the books will tell you to go out there with a shovel and dig the bed up to some ridiculous depth and add, add, add….Don’t do that! Good grief, why make something very easy so hard?

Get out your hose pipe (garden hose to you Yankees) and use it to lay out where the edges of your bed will be. It should form a complete loop or back up to something like a fence or a driveway for terminating the border…..

OK go get the other 75 foot hose…I’ll wait.

The trick is; the curves you put in the hose have to match the curvature of the turning radius of your lawn mower. If you can get out the lawn mower, and set it very low, mow around the perimeter. Do this mowing with the mower on the side you intend to mow later, rather than the flower bed side. Be sure there are no turns where you have to adjust the path of the mower, and that you are using the side of the mower that is closed to form the edge (not throwing grass clippings into the bed). Long smooth curves. If you do this correctly, mowing will be a snap. No weed eating the edges either….

Once your bed is laid out, do what you did to the vegetable beds in January Week 1 Spray every thing in the bed you want to get rid of with a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water. Take your sprayer and get the nozzle about 4 inches from the hose, hold it steady, and spray the hose as you walk the perimeter. This will begin the edging of the new bed.

Mulch. Compost or leaves are the best mulch if you have them now (next year you will). If not, go to the big box store and buy an equal amount of compost and manure. Get enough to put down a layer 1 inch thick. Don’t bother mixing them together. Just spread one the first half inch deep, and then spread the other. Sequence does not matter. Anything green that pops up, spray it with vinegar. Diligence. It may take several times to kill some tough weeds.

Now is the hard part. You are not going to plant this bed this spring. The earliest you can plant this bed is late fall. But it will be easier the longer you wait. This year you are going to let the bed rest. As the year progresses we will go over the individual steps you need to take to get this bed ready to plant.

The other chore you have with the new bed is to watch it carefully all year long. Notice where it is sunny and where shady. Also pay attention to when it becomes shady in which areas. What is blooming when it gets shady right here? Where does it get blasted by mid day heat? As the year progresses, you need to mark on a diary, (I use a five year diary) what particular things are blooming when in your area. As time goes on, this will be the most valuable little book you have.

With this information you can plan the planting for your bed to be suited to the micro climates within it, but most importantly, to have things coming into bloom from the earliest spring days until the first hard freeze.

So back to the catalogs. Pay attention to bloom time. They probably won’t bloom exactly at that time in your yard, but relatively speaking, you can determine bloom sequence. For new beds, concentrate on the back bone the first year. Plant those things that will grow into the largest items first.

Next Week we’ll trim the monkey grass. Continue planting with next week’s seeds, tend to the sprouts, and discuss starting an apple orchard.

Next Week; Things you will need:

Lawn Mower