What does a groundhog know anyway?

Six weeks ago Punxsutawney Phil made his prediction - an early spring.











 Here we are six weeks later and this is what my garden looked like this morning.










It has been challenging this year to get an early start in the garden.  I have planted my kale seedlings under the row cover and they are alive but not growing.  I looked at the 10 day forecast and they haven't predicted any days that will be in the 50's.  This is the middle of March.  We should be experiencing some exhilarating spring warmth.  There isn't any logical reason to plant peas or spinach directly in the ground, so I have not. 

I have trays of lettuce ready to go in the ground. I have been hardening them off every day outside for the past week. I have put black plastic on the ground and covered the row. I just can't make myself plant them when the forecast calls for snow. So I have been harvesting the leaves and enjoying fresh salad greens.

 

 

Carrots pulled last week from under the row cover
that were planted in September

And since it is St. Patrick's Day here is part of an Irish blessing -

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
... and rains fall soft upon your fields.

Winter Dreams

Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year. For gardening begins in January with the dream. ~Josephine Nuese

Garden plans for this year are slowly taking shape.  The first seeds have been sown and glimmers of new life are always the reality of the dream.

Kale and lettuce sown Jan 17. sprouted Jan 21

 

 I am still picking spinach, lettuce, kale and carrots from under my row cover in the garden.  We are anticipating the coldest temperatures of the winter this week.  I am not doing anything extra to keep the plants under the cover from freezing.  Time will reveal how hardy they are.







(This was written in January and I failed to publish it, oops!)

New Year

Here is a good article from The New York Times.  I met Jack Chambers, Rhonda Sherman and Norm Aracon at a seminar at NC State.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/science/worms-produce-another-kind-of-gold-for-farmers.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130101&_r=0

Hugelkultur

Wooden debris will decompose faster,
(and be transformed into a resource)
when hugelkultur techniques are
employed.

If you have trees that were taken down from Sandy, this is a great way to make something good out of the destruction.

Used for centuries in Eastern Europe and Germany, hugelkultur (in German hugelkultur translates roughly as “mound culture”) is a gardening and farming technique whereby woody debris (fallen branches and/or logs) are used as a resource.
Often employed in permaculture systems, hugelkultur allows gardeners and farmers to mimic the nutrient cycling found in a natural woodland to realize several benefits. Woody debris (and other detritus) that falls to the forest floor can readily become sponge like, soaking up rainfall and releasing it slowly into the surrounding soil, thus making this moisture available to nearby plants.
Hugelkultur garden beds (and hugelkultur ditches and swales) using the same principle to:

• Help retain moisture on site
• Build soil fertility
• Improve drainage
• Use woody debris that is unsuitable for other use

Applicable on a variety of sites, hugelkultur is particularly well suited for areas that present a challenge to gardeners. Urban lots with compacted soils, areas with poor drainage, limited moisture, etc., can be significantly improved using a hugelkultur technique, as hugelkultur beds are, essentially, large, layered compost piles covered with a growing medium into which a garden is planted.
Creating a hugelkultur garden bed is a relatively simple process:
1. Select an area with approximately these dimensions: 6 feet by 3 feet
2. Gather materials for the project:

• Fallen logs, branches, twigs, fallen leaves (the “under utilized” biomass from the site). Avoid using cedar, walnut or other tree species deemed allelopathic.
• Nitrogen rich material (manure or kitchen waste work well and will help to maintain a proper carbon to nitrogen ratio in the decomposing mass within the hugelkulter bed).
• Top soil (enough to cover the other layers of the bed with a depth of 1 – 2”) and some mulching material (straw works well).

3. Lay the logs (the largest of the biomass debris) down as the first layer of the hugelkulter bed. Next, add a layer of branches, then a layer of small sticks and twigs. Hugelkultur beds work best when they are roughly 3 feet high (though this method is forgiving, and there is no fixed rule as to the size of the bed. That is where the “art” comes in!)
4. Water these layers well
5. Begin filling in spaces between the logs, twigs and branches with leaf litter and manure of kitchen scraps.
6. Finally, top off the bed with 1 – 2” of top soil and a layer of mulch.
The hugelkulter bed will benefit from “curing” a bit, so it is best to prepare the bed several months prior to planting time (prepare the bed in the fall for a spring planting, for example, in temperate northern climates), but hugelkultur beds can be planted immediately. Plant seeds or transplants into the hugelkulter bed as you would any other garden bed. Happy hugelkulturing!

End of summer

Another summer has swiftly come to an end.  The garden is still producing baskets of produce.  My freezer is filling up and I am looking forward to a slow down in the garden.

Here is a quick recap of the summer.  Our corn did great this year.  We planted honey select and it was delicious.  We picked approx. 450 ears - froze some, sold some and ate some.  We had 7 fifty foot rows so we were happy with the amount of ears that were produced.  We watered twice - once when the corn was waist high and once when it started to tassle.  When planting the seed, vermicompost was sprinkled on top of the seeds before closing the furrow.  Leaf mulch was spread between the rows and we side dressed with compost after the corn was about 1 foot high.  I went through the rows once or twice and pulled the few weeds that emerged (maybe 15 min. total spent weeding).

I have struggled with the tomatoes this year.  They developed septoria leaf spot.  They look ugly but are still producing nice tomatoes.  I sprayed the tomatoes specifically with compost tea that had trichoderma added to the brewing cycle.  Nothing else was done.  Trichoderma fungi is a beneficial fungi that occurs naturally in the soil.  It will consume disease causing fungi.  Most diseases that affect tomatoes are fungal - early blight, late blight, leaf spot.  I did not start spraying soon enough to prevent the disease from occurring but the spray definately held it at bay.

I am picking loads of peppers - red, yellow, orange, purple, hungarian wax.  The peppers were trouble free this year.  We have dug many pounds of potatoes.  My goal was to produce 100 lbs. in a 50 ft row.  I was inconsistent with weighing them as I dug them so I think that I will be close.  I still have some fingerlings and a few late plants to dig.  The sweet potatoes look good and time will tell how abundant the harvest is.

I have started picking the second planting of green beans and am picking lima beans.  I have harvested large eggplants and they are still hanging full.  We are eating luscious watermelons. 

One the the best things that I planted this spring was a day neutral strawberry.  I planted 10 Seascape roots in the spring and mulched them with rotted wood chips.  I pulled the blossoms off until the end of June and did not allow any runners to grow.  This allows a strong crown to develop.  I did water them one time during the driest part of the summer.  Once they started producing fruit, I have been picking about a pint every few days.  The berries are sweet and a nice size.  It is a wonderful treat to have fresh strawberries.  I would recommend this for every home garden. 

More later.

Cucumber Beetles

This is the time of year that adult cucumber beetles will begin to appear in the garden. You will first notice the leaves of cucumber and squash or melon plants being eaten.  The mated beetles will lay eggs at the base of the plant.  About this time of the year, the eggs will hatch and the larvae will dig down into the soil and start feeding on the roots of the plants for about six weeks.  After they emerge as adults, the next problem they cause is spreading disease.


Spraying with chemicals or organic sprays is only a bandaid to the real problem.  If your soil has a healthy community of predatory nematodes, they will control the beetles.  Predatory nematodes feed on the larvae of beetles.   Last year I had cucumber beetles and squash beetles on my plants.  It was not an infestation but there was damage.  This year I have not seen any damage yet.  I did find 3 Colorado potato beetles on my potatoes.  Last year my potatoes were badly damaged but survived.  By adding our vermicompost to the soil, I am reintroducing the life that is necessary for a healthy soil community.


Cucumbers

Zucchini

Water, erosion and earthworms

It has been raining here consistently over the past week and the forecast for the upcoming week is predicting more rain.  Here are some interesting facts about water retention in soil, erosion and the role that earthworms play in the soil's ability to hold water.

Earthworms improve water absorption and prevent erosion.  The castings increase the water stability of the soil, because earthworms castings can take a direct hit by a raindrop and maintain their shape, which reduces erosion and runoff and helps the soil absorb water.  A research study conducted in Minnesota showed that earthworms added to cornfields increased water absoption rates 35 times over control fields without the earthworms within a six-week period.  In soil in a field with 100 night crawlers per square yard, 2 inches of water (a very heavy rainfall) could be absorbed by the soil in 12 minutes.  The same soil without earthworms took over twelve hours to absorb that much water (USDA National Soil Tilth Lab).  Another study found that if the top 3 feet of soil contained 25 percent macropores (earthworm burrows), then that soil should  be able to absorb at least a 9 inch rainfall without runoff.  Note that tilling the soil not only kills beneficial fungi but reduces the number of earthworms, which affects runoff.  One study showed that on a sloping field with no-till practices, there were 155 earthworm holes per square yard and an average runoff of 0.08 inches per year.  This compares to a tilled field with 6 holes per square yard and 4.9 inches of runoff per year (the average rainfall for this area is 39.4 inches).

To attract and promote earthworms, the soil needs to be mulched with organic mulches that help stabilize soil temperature and moisture.  The mulch provides food and shelter for earthworms.  Native mulch and compost are the most valuable for promoting earthworms.  The increased particle surface area of the small particle sizes in native mulches that have been ground also allows for the greater microbial activity that is preferred by worms.  Worms ingest mulches for the microbes that inhabit the surfaces.

Some scientists now believe that earthworms have the potential to eliminate soil erosion.  This could save society billions of dollars in erosion control, reduce pollution from dangerous synthetic chemicals, and improve the environment.

The secret to attracting earthworms to your soil in to restore the diversity of soil life that is needed for a balanced soil foodweb.  We are building that diversity into our worm bins continually.  Our goal is to provide the building blocks for a healthy soil community.