Saturday, April 15, 2006
Spring Planting
Spring Plantings 4/15/06
Whoopee! A delightful spring shower! Just what the garden needed. I was actually telling myself that if it didn't happen, I might get out my hose, which I have never used before until mid-July. Probably half the 28 seasons that I have gardened, I have not watered with a hose at all. In none of the other seasons have I used it more than 3 times. Incidentally, if you ever do hose your garden, be sure to do a thorough job so that the roots don't think the surface is a good place to grow. Water for at least an hour straight on or 3 hours if your spray is rotating.
This is now planting weather. Use your watering can in each hole before you plant and then to water down the newly planted plant. Its roots can't get any food from the air, so it's important to fill the air pockets around the roots with good tasty soil (from a root's point of view).
Now is a good time to plant out broccoli, cabbage (which I don't do because it takes too much space per plant), celery, parsley, pak choi, and kohlrabi, among others. If you don't have them around the house, you can buy seedlings. My favorite place is Bartlett's, which is on Grove Street north of Montclair before you get to Rt. 3, on your left. Fourteen members of the same family in four generations support themselves on 3.5 acres of land. Their greenhouses go back, back, back. If you get a family member, they know lots. Their hired help at the desk may not be as helpful.
Plocks is another family-based business with a huge outlet on Broad Street just north of where it intersects the G.S. Parkway. I'm not sure whether it is in Clifton or Bloomfield. They have everything.
There is another place on Center Street Nutley, not far east of the Parkway on your left. Yesterday, the health food store on Church St. Montclair was selling parsley and tomato plants. It's perfect timing for parsley, but allegedly a month early for tomatoes. My guess is that it would be safe to put them out now (we haven't had frost after this for several years), but I'm taking the Wall of Waters off my broccoli plants and putting them over tomatoes. They are full of water, which is a nuisance, and I might as well use them.
Incidentally, my broccoli that I planted under floating cover on March 11 is doing fine, but it isn't as big as the plants protected by WoWs. The latter were bigger all along, so this isn't definitive. My peas planted March 11 are a couple of inches high, and some of the Sugar Snaps planted later are peeking through.
It's always a good time for sowing lettuce seeds, but this may be better than most. You could also sow kohlrabi, chard, pak choi outside. It's a good time to sow carrot and parsnip seeds, but I don't recommend that for beginners. Root crops need a fine, friendly soil, which Montclair's clay surely is not. I suggest digging compost into your soil for three years before attempting root crops.
I also interplant corn and bean seeds under floating cover in mid-April. The early corn will then be available in July. Somehow the raccoons eat all the corn that comes ripe in August, but aren't corn-hungry in July. Okay. For years I've humored them by planting only early corn, eating it in July, and going to a math conference in August. The traditional "three sisters" are corn, beans, and squash, which grow well together and provide the basics for a vegetarian (native American, among others) diet. I don't put out squash until mid-May because it really does want only warm weather. Or so I think. Hmmm... I haven't tried yet to defy THAT conventional wisdom.
It's a good time for double digging if you haven't had that pleasure yet. John Jeavons told me that after your soil is good, it is better not to disturb it. However, after last year's troubles (nobody around here I know had a good garden last year), I've been raking in some compost and lime on the top. If you had wood fires this winter, their ashes are great as a cheap replacement for lime to raise the PH. We're at the end of the acid rain trip of the continent, and our Eastern soil tends to get too acid. So lime, wood ashes, or calcium pills (yes! a pharmacist friend gave me calcium pills like the ones he uses to raise the PH in his garden) are advisable.
If you need to know how far apart to place plants, consult John Jeavon's book HOW TO RAISE MORE VEGETABLES THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE ON LESS LAND THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. I just scatter seeds and later thin to an appropriate spacing.
Happy digging, planting and sowing!
Pat
Whoopee! A delightful spring shower! Just what the garden needed. I was actually telling myself that if it didn't happen, I might get out my hose, which I have never used before until mid-July. Probably half the 28 seasons that I have gardened, I have not watered with a hose at all. In none of the other seasons have I used it more than 3 times. Incidentally, if you ever do hose your garden, be sure to do a thorough job so that the roots don't think the surface is a good place to grow. Water for at least an hour straight on or 3 hours if your spray is rotating.
This is now planting weather. Use your watering can in each hole before you plant and then to water down the newly planted plant. Its roots can't get any food from the air, so it's important to fill the air pockets around the roots with good tasty soil (from a root's point of view).
Now is a good time to plant out broccoli, cabbage (which I don't do because it takes too much space per plant), celery, parsley, pak choi, and kohlrabi, among others. If you don't have them around the house, you can buy seedlings. My favorite place is Bartlett's, which is on Grove Street north of Montclair before you get to Rt. 3, on your left. Fourteen members of the same family in four generations support themselves on 3.5 acres of land. Their greenhouses go back, back, back. If you get a family member, they know lots. Their hired help at the desk may not be as helpful.
Plocks is another family-based business with a huge outlet on Broad Street just north of where it intersects the G.S. Parkway. I'm not sure whether it is in Clifton or Bloomfield. They have everything.
There is another place on Center Street Nutley, not far east of the Parkway on your left. Yesterday, the health food store on Church St. Montclair was selling parsley and tomato plants. It's perfect timing for parsley, but allegedly a month early for tomatoes. My guess is that it would be safe to put them out now (we haven't had frost after this for several years), but I'm taking the Wall of Waters off my broccoli plants and putting them over tomatoes. They are full of water, which is a nuisance, and I might as well use them.
Incidentally, my broccoli that I planted under floating cover on March 11 is doing fine, but it isn't as big as the plants protected by WoWs. The latter were bigger all along, so this isn't definitive. My peas planted March 11 are a couple of inches high, and some of the Sugar Snaps planted later are peeking through.
It's always a good time for sowing lettuce seeds, but this may be better than most. You could also sow kohlrabi, chard, pak choi outside. It's a good time to sow carrot and parsnip seeds, but I don't recommend that for beginners. Root crops need a fine, friendly soil, which Montclair's clay surely is not. I suggest digging compost into your soil for three years before attempting root crops.
I also interplant corn and bean seeds under floating cover in mid-April. The early corn will then be available in July. Somehow the raccoons eat all the corn that comes ripe in August, but aren't corn-hungry in July. Okay. For years I've humored them by planting only early corn, eating it in July, and going to a math conference in August. The traditional "three sisters" are corn, beans, and squash, which grow well together and provide the basics for a vegetarian (native American, among others) diet. I don't put out squash until mid-May because it really does want only warm weather. Or so I think. Hmmm... I haven't tried yet to defy THAT conventional wisdom.
It's a good time for double digging if you haven't had that pleasure yet. John Jeavons told me that after your soil is good, it is better not to disturb it. However, after last year's troubles (nobody around here I know had a good garden last year), I've been raking in some compost and lime on the top. If you had wood fires this winter, their ashes are great as a cheap replacement for lime to raise the PH. We're at the end of the acid rain trip of the continent, and our Eastern soil tends to get too acid. So lime, wood ashes, or calcium pills (yes! a pharmacist friend gave me calcium pills like the ones he uses to raise the PH in his garden) are advisable.
If you need to know how far apart to place plants, consult John Jeavon's book HOW TO RAISE MORE VEGETABLES THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE ON LESS LAND THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. I just scatter seeds and later thin to an appropriate spacing.
Happy digging, planting and sowing!
Pat
Labels: Spring Planting
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Composting Primer
Composting Primer 4/9/06
Composting and organic mulching are the keys to gardening without poisons and chemicals.
Mulching is easy. Just take grass clippings, leaves, or wood chips and put them around your plants. Grass clippings are friendliest to most vegetables, and my neighbors' landscapers are glad to give them to me because otherwise they have to pay for their disposal. An organic mulch will decay and add nutrients to the soil. Meanwhile, it keeps the weeds out and the moisture in. My mulch is a major reason I so rarely water my garden. Ruth Stout advocates using ONLY mulch for your garden's fertilizer. I don't feel I have enough space to completely abstain from compost, but I do love her book GARDENING WITHOUT WORK -- FOR THE BUSY, THE AGING, AND THE INDOLENT. I normally keep my vegetable garden mulched with others' grass clippings, which I pile no more than 4" high when they are fresh.
Composting is more subtle, but it's comforting to remember, "Compost happens." It's hard to go wrong. Leave organic matter alone for long enough, and it composts. There are caveats, of course.
Plastics take centuries, but you wouldn't think of putting them into your compost heap anyway. Styrofoam takes 80 years, the books say. I haven't checked it. Some people do worm composting in their kitchen, and that works well in Montclair, even in apartments. I haven't done that because outdoors is easier and always available to me. In the winter I cover the unsightly stuff with leaves, which I keep nearby.
My compost heap is primarily leaves, kitchen waste, and garden left-overs, both welcome (used plants) and unwelcome (weeds). The ideal compost heap integrates carbon and nitrogen as well as possible. I try to alternate at about 4" thick layers, but I never measure and don't worry if they are thinner or thicker.
Carbon-rich matter is dead, like autumn leaves. Fred brings me 100 bags of leaves each fall that others wastefully leave on their curbs. Silly Americans! Leaves alone take a long time to compost. My daughter in MA used to compost leaves from a condo property with eleven homes in a wire container and found that by the following July she could use use the partially decayed leaves as mulch under the shrubs. So the container was again available the following fall when she wanted to use it again. I call the carbon-rich matter "brown."
Nitrogen-rich matter composts fast and can stink if there isn't enough brown in with it. I use stuff from the kitchen and garden, and sometimes grass clippings that are too far gone to use as a mulch when Fred (or some other donor) brings them to me.
Alternating green and brown is the trick. It typically yields compost in this climate after a few summer months. Once I borrowed a barrel on its side strung up for easy turning (you may have see them, at least in advertisements) and filled it about equally with leaves and grass clipping on Memorial Day. Each day I turned the barrel once, and I had beautiful compost in 3 weeks.
I use the three-pile method of composting. I pile a heap as the material accumulates to 4-5 feet. Meanwhile, I'm taking from a second pile, and the third pile is sitting still, "cooking," as the jargon goes. When the second pile is gone and/or the first is too high for comfort, I change piles. I begin taking from the one that has cooked, leave the high pile to cook, and pile new stuff on the empty spot from which I have just taken finished compost. Commercial compost containers are available and look prettier.
You can use manure for the nitrogen-rich contribution ("green"). I did for a few years, but then it lost its charm. It helps compost heaps go fast, but it should NOT be used in your garden until it is composted.
Composting kills pathogens (in manure, etc.) and weed seeds. It gets quite hot. Some people have long thermometers to stick into the heap and see how hot it gets, but that never entertained me. Someone brought one to an Open Garden, asked permission to stick it into my "cooking" heap, and was pleased with the results. The thermometer rose as it should.
The ideal place for compost heaps is under trees, which is the least ideal place for gardening. The trees keep it cooler in the summer and minimizes evaporation. Some people water their compost heaps to keep them moist, but I've never done that and my compost heaps compost. Compost happens.
Some people buy "compost starters," but if you put some weeds and used plants in your heap, the bacteria on the roots serve as starters. That works fine for me.
Commercial compost is available, but home-compost is much cheaper. It also recycles, as we should all be doing. It saves your municipality lots of tax money in waste they are not picking up. Dick and Jean Roy put out only one garbage pail of garbage a year (two a year when they were raising their three children), and composting is crucial for that.
Happy composting!
Pat
Photography by Lesley Cecchi
Labels: Composting Primer
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]