Short note 2

My lettuces survived the freeze! Just a few freeze burns!
Happy Gardening!

Tonight's lows!

BRRRRR!!!
Just a short note:
14 degrees tonight and 9 tomorrow night? I do not think that my cold frame lettuce will hold up to that! Here’s what I just did- I put two plastic milk jugs full of hot tap water into the cold frame and covered it up with old blankets. I also did the same for two outdoor beds (one of chard, one of lettuce) and covered them up too…and I will repeat this tomorrow if it works tonight! We’ll see if I can save the lettuce! It has been a pleasure to harvest my own lettuce and greens all this winter- I haven’t had to buy lettuce since about August!
Keep warm!

Gardening in the Winter Doldrums

Gardening in the Winter Doldrums

OK, OK, so there just isn’t as much to do in the garden in the winter, but here are some tasks and ideas:

Pruning: January is a great time to prune trees and shrubs, esp. fruit trees. The trees and shrubs are dormant, so they won’t bleed sap and won’t send out new growth to be killed of by the cold. This Saturday, Jan 10th, we pruned the peach trees, pear trees, figs and our apple tree. I also removed the branch spreaders from the pear trees to give them some breathing room and to make sure I did not strangle the branches. I will put new, roomier, spreaders on in a month.

Transplanting: if a small tree or shrub is in the wrong place, this is the time of year to move it, as long as the ground is not frozen. You can plant your balled and burlapped Christmas tree now, too.

Bed prep: to avoid that rush in early spring to get beds ready, get them ready early. As long as the ground isn’t frozen (which is a lot of the time here in central VA) you can dig, or do the easy bed prep method I posted earlier. Mulch them with leaves or pine straw to protect your hard work and to protect any amendments you put in from being washed away by heavy rains. Again, this weekend Jan. 10th I did some digging in a new veggie bed, adding compost, pine straw, and coffee grounds from a coffee shop.

Turn that compost heap: yes, it probably has cooled down and is not breaking down much, but you might be able to get a little more decomposition going, esp. if you water it with fish emulsion solution. Did that today too, and found a huge number of happy earthworms chomping away!

Plan: plan out your garden beds. Figure out your rotation so you don’t plant veggies from the same family in the same place year after year. Plan new flower and fruit beds too.

Indoors: start up some paperwhite narcissus or amaryllis bulbs, esp. ones you get on sale after the holidays (check these bargains for dried and desiccated bulbs before you buy-sitting in an overheated garden center for a few months is not good for bulbs, but I have found some bargains this way). These are very easy to start, just place the paperwhites on a bed of gravel and water in a saucer or bowl; bury amaryllis about 2/3 the way in soil. Water and watch-they are a real pleasure.

Seed starting- see that entry for full details. Some seeds take a long time to start, so read the seed packets and start them accordingly.

Rake up stray leaves, pine straw, general detritus. Compost it.

Wash out flower pots or seedling flats that you used last season.
Sharpen your garden hoe and spade. Oil it afterwards.

Read seed and nursery catalogs and dream!

Happy winter gardening!

Gardener's Resolutions

Gardener’s Resolutions

(Caption: two cool garden gifts I was given this year! Floral enamelled trowel and hand fork from the Victoria and Albert Museum gift shop and a "Compost Happens" ball cap! Thank you Jeannie, Kristi and Joyce!)

I generally don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I thought it would be fun to think about what I might change this year…and what I might not change. So here are the resolutions I would make, if I made any:

1. Garden at least as much as last year. This past year I was in the garden a lot, early and late on the hot days, for hours and hours on nice ones. I find that as I near 50, I have to garden in one hour increments, taking breaks to determine if I can still stand up straight and if my knees will work..
2. Plant some new greens. I love greens and planted a lot this year (lettuces, arugula, chard, mustards, kales, bok choy) in several waves. I hope to find some new and interesting greens to try- would love to hear your suggestions!
3. Continue my New Year’s Day tradition of going though all my seed catalogs and making my seed orders for the next year. Ones I usually order from: Pinetree Garden Seeds, Seeds of Change, Territorial Seeds and Totally Tomatoes (seed order entry coming soon!).
4. Suck it up and tear out a few beds that aren’t working. My herb bed has become “all oregano, all the time,” my day lily bed is “weeds ‘r us.”
5. Write the check to get the water garden installed. I have made several half-hearted attempts to dig it myself, but find it too daunting.
6. Really prune those fruit trees.
7. MUST SPRAY DORMANT OIL on the fruit trees! I always forget!
8. Maximize the use of my new cold frame.

Well, that’s enough to start with….I am sure the list could be many times longer, but I’d rather make it feasible!

Happy New Year and Happy gardening!

Our Own Food

(Photo Caption: greens I picked on Christmas Eve)

On Christmas Eve, I went out to the garden and picked some greens. Some were out in the beds, the overwintering arugula, kales, chard, and mustards and others were in my new cold frame, mostly lovely green and rose-colored lettuces. Italian flat leaf parsley and sage are also overwintering and I picked some for a vegetarian “stuffing” for Christmas dinner. The thought struck me, as it often does, that I find nothing more satisfying than feeding my family on food I grew myself. For Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinner we had home grown braised greens, fresh salad greens, apple sauce made from apples from our tree, and pickled beets and onions. All were organic, from the garden, and grown with love. I have the same feeling of satisfaction often, when I serve a dish or dessert made from home canned tomatoes, pickles, peaches, dried fruit, jams and preserves, even frozen berries…this is why I garden.

Happy New Year, happy gardening….if you garden now, do more next year. If you don’t garden now, start and nurture a pot of herbs and see where it leads. I'll be back after the 1st.

The Southern Gardener's Book of Lists: Book Review

The Southern Gardener’s Book of Lists: A Review of a Book by Lois Trigg Chaplin (1994, Taylor Publishing: Dallas)

This is a great book, though it is not a “great read.” It is not the type of garden book that you read page by page, learning new tips, salivating at great garden photos, finally understanding double digging. However, this book is incredibly useful for the southern gardener. This book is exactly what its title says it is: a book of list after list of all types of garden plants under all sorts of conditions (soil, sun, moisture) in three regions: upper, mid and deep south. Want to plant a tree in a wet site? There’s a list of suitable trees. Want to know the best perennials for heavy, clay soil? What trees produce leaves too big to easily rake? What are good evergreen vines or plants that do well under walnuts? How about shrubs that bloom in shade? It’s all in there.

The book is divided into chapters: trees, perennials, ferns, annuals, vines, shrubs, azaleas, roses and ground covers. Each section has multiple lists. I have found myself running to the book first, whenever I want to plant something new or need to pull out an under-performing plant and replace it with something that will work in a particular site. This book is a great gift for that southern gardener on your list.
Happy Gardening and Happy Holidays!

Seed Starting Indoors

Seed Starting Indoors (Photo caption: starting seeds in the garden, the good, old fashioned way!)

Starting my own plants from seeds is one of the great joys in gardening. When I started gardening, I had mom and dad take me to the garden center where we would willy nilly pick out plants to bring home, mostly lots of tomatoes. It was fun and I continued this practice as I gardened into my adulthood, picking tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc, from whatever garden center had to offer and buying seeds for lettuces and the like. As I read more about gardening, I learned that there were many more varieties available to the home gardener who starts her own plants. I bought my first heirloom tomato seeds (Brandywine) at a festival in Indiana15 year ago and haven’t looked back.

Now, the only time I buy vegetable plants is when I have a seed-starting failure (like this year’s eggplants), if I have failed to get enough of a jump on the season (yes, I bought 9 Romaine lettuce plants this spring for 99 cents, but got an earlier crop than I would have otherwise) or if my ambitions for that year have outpaced my available seed-starting space (which usually means I buy flower seedlings). I am often tempted to buy a veggie plant or two and some flower plants at a High School horticulture program sale (see entry on “Unusual places to buy plants”)-it helps the school and they sometimes do have a flat of two of unusual varieties or ones that are sold out elsewhere.

Starting seeds indoors has a few requirements:

1. Seeds (I love to go to Pinetree Garden Seeds, www.superseeds.com- they sell smaller quantities as low prices so you can play around with varieties)

2. Some sort of flat (I use standard, black plastic flats from a garden center)

3. Some sort of pot (I like peat pots or make my own out of newspaper and staples- they decompose)

4. Sterile seed-starting mixture (again from the garden center- don’t be tempted to use garden soil or regular potting soil- it will lead to damping off, sprouted weeds, bugs, or floppy seedling growth)(I get this at a garden center, though there are recipes available on line to make your own using peat moss and perlite)

5. Florescent lights, hung on chains so they can be raised and lowered.

6. For bottom-heat loving plants, some source of bottom heat (I use grow mats, not cheap, but they last a long time, but some people use old heating pads or set the pots on heat registers or baseboard- beware of this latter idea- it can literally cook and dessicate your seedling very quickly, depending on how hot it is). Plants needing bottom heat include several garden favorites, like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.

Of course, the easiest way to start seeds is to stick ‘em in the ground! But when seeds need special culture, the plants have too long a growing season for your zone or you just want to get a jump on the season, starting seeds indoors is for you. Before you start your seeds, read the seed pack or catalog instructions carefully to learn seed starting requirements. Packages often tell you if the plant is best sowed in the garden or started indoors, time to allow until the plant is a good, transplantable size, soil, light, water and heat requirements. If you cannot find this info on the package, look it up. There is something quite disappointing to find out 6 weeks later that the seed you put under the soil needs light to sprout or the seed that you planted did not come up because it did not have bottom heat.

For most seeds, I start then in rows in a flat. I transplant them to individual peat pots when they have their first 2 true leaves. The first leaf like things that come out of a seed when it spouts are usually not true leaves, they are cotyledons (part of the seed). I prick (dig) out the seedling with the handle of a teaspoon and place it into an already filled and watered peat pot. Remember, if you are starting any plants of the tomato family, they need some sort of bottom heat to sprout. They no longer need this supplemental heat once they are transplanted. And, you can bury the stems of tomato seedlings deeply, leaving the leaves and a bit of stem uncovered, which encourages root growth.

All seedlings need supplemental light to grow. Standard florescent bulbs suspended on chains about an inch or two above the plant are sufficient. Some specialized “grow lights” are expensive and encourage flowering (you do not want your seedlings to flower in the small peat pot indoors-this can stunt its growth). The lights need to be on chains so you can move them upwards as the plant grows. This encourages growth, but make sure to keep the lights at that inch or two distance, or seedlings might get leggy and flop over. Some seedlings need light to germinate and must be spread across the surface of the soil and placed under a light. The seedling packet should tell you this.

I like to run a fan on low in the room with the seedlings for at least half the day. This improves circulation to keep fungi at bay, gently dries plans off after watering and helps make the stems thicker and stronger, thereby helping to harden them off. Once plants are at the transplantable stage, you must harden them off before planting them, or they might just keel over and die in the garden. To fully harden plants off you need to slowly, over the course of a week, put them outside for longer and longer periods of time, starting for a hour or two one day, three the next, etc, until they are outside full time for several days. Some garden books say to do this for two weeks, but I find that conditioning the seedlings by running a fan on them while inside shortens the time needed. They are then acclimated to outdoor conditions and ready to plant.

Some seeds can last, stored in dark, dry, cool conditions, for 5 years (e.g. most of the tomato family), other for just a season (lettuce). Seed starting can be a cost-effective way to produce plants. When you get some experience, you can start seeds that require special conditions, For example, I am cold stratifying (keeping cold in the fridge for 6 or 8 weeks) some paw- paw seeds to start in spring. I’ll let you know what happens with them!

So go to it! Happy gardening!