Veggie Gardening for NO $ at All!

Pick a space that thrills you! Backyard, front yard, street strip, a cheerful sunny spot where you can put a bench or a comfortable outdoor chair. Put it near a water source.

Tools - A shovel and trowel will get you started! A pitchfork is handy for turning compost. Check Craigs free, see if a neighbor or friends have extras they are not using.

If you want raised beds, they can be simple frameless mounds, or frame them with reused lumber, logs, a natural stone border, cement blocks, use old leaky kiddie swimming pools – get creative!

Prepare your soil! The least work is making a mound on the ground! It starts with twigs, straw (not hay), stuff that allows air flow. Then layer on green wet stuff, dry brown stuff, 2 wet to 1 dry ratio. The smaller the bits the faster the decomposition. This is the same as sheet composting, literally making soil in place, often called lasagna gardening. Same, same. If you have a raised bed system, build your ‘pile’ right in the bed! No digging, no moving compost! Greens might be your neighbor’s grass clippings. Your straw might come from your local feed store; usually they will let you sweep it up for free! During the fall, after pumpkin events, outdoor events or displays, straw bales are often given away for the taking! These already-starting-to-decompose bales are perfect for gardening! If you get really adventurous, check out Hugelkultur!

Continue Reading →

Planting Tips for Your Favorite Fall Veggies!

#1 Fall Veggie is KALE! Highest in bioavailable calcium, great for women! Super plant per square foot return on space used! Cold hardy, is quite tasty after a bit o’ frost! Though kale will grow year ’round in SoCal, it thrives in winter. In spring to early summer, aphids and white flies are real pests, and rather than fight them, I just take the plant down, replanting again in fall. Especially the curly leaf variety. I prefer the young fresh leaves, and usually I need room for summer plants anyway. Later in the season Kale is susceptible to mildews, so AM ground level watering if possible. Seeds germinate best at 70 to 75 degrees F! Perfect for fall planting here. Mulch the babies until cooler weather. Since they are doing nothing but producing leaves, give them plenty of Nitrogen! There are so many marvelous varieties! Kale is weird and magnificent! Look at the lacinato/elephant kale, flat leaves. Pretty fringy Red Russians are almost as good as flowers. Curly leaf is simply amazing, like green brains! Red Bor is simply gorgeous. Plant several varieties and enjoy your creatures!

Broccoli is a good calcium source, and a great antioxidant, cancer prevention food source. Plant lettuce with it to deter cabbage moths. Cilantro makes it grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener! There are fun varieties of brocs too, including several with purple heads! Waltham 29 is a standard large head fall variety. The beauty of broccoli is it produces side shoots after you cut off the main head! It keeps right on producing! All summer long if you keep harvesting, otherwise it flowers and eventually stops making babies. I plant a batch for fall, mixed varieties, so they don’t all head at once, and that technique confuses pests! I figure where I want that tall plant in my summer garden because, depending on the variety you choose, they can get over 4′ tall! That needs to be where it won’t shade other plants once it is mature. Once they are in production, feed them occasionally. They are a hard working big plant.

Continue Reading →

August, First Fall Plantings!

A treat from blog In My Kitchen Garden – Waltham 29, Green Sprouting Calabrese, & Early Purple Sprouting Broccoli! The joy of planting seeds is you can get varieties not available at nurseries, and plant as many as you like!

August is the time of the turn of the seasons here in coastal SoCal!
It can be blazing hot, with harvests you can’t keep up with, to planting the first seeds of your winter crops! If you have space and want to, another round of fast growers like beans, or transplants of early maturing corn, are plenty successful late summer for early fall harvest. And, as always, plant your year-rounds, beets, bunch onions, carrots, summer lettuces, radish, to keep a colorful variety for your table. Otherwise, keep harvesting and wait for September or October planting.

Design Your Fall Garden! Come to my talk at the Goleta Library Aug 18, 10 to 11 AM! We’ll get into it in detail!

Get your seeds! A hint about broccoli – intermingle different varieties for pest prevention!UC study explains

Plant from seeds! As your hot crop plants finish, improve that soil for fall seedlings to be started there. If there isn’t room for full space yet, start a nursery area mid month August in a semi shaded spot – celery, Brassicas: cabbage, brocs, Brussels sprouts, collards, cauliflower, kale babies. Mid-August is one of the best times to plant Swiss chard from seeds! Move plants from the nursery area as space becomes available. But have a plan. Tall plants to the North or on the shady side, then plants of graduated sizes to the South or sunniest areas. If you are starting them in 6 packs or flats, plant mid month to be put out late Sep, Oct. If starting seeds isn’t your thing, too much tending, or you will be away and can’t keep them watered, not to worry! You can wait and do September transplants, Labor Day Weekend is perfect!

Continue Reading →

July is International Pest Month!

Just kidding! But it is the first month the little buggers come out in force! Taking good care of your plants during pest cycles goes with the territory!

Jet spray off the white flies! That’s those little clouds of tiny white insects that fly away when you bump your plant. They like the heads of your broccoli side shoots, so keep those picked pronto! Smudge off any eggs you see on the undersides of leaves. Use a finer spray for bean leaves and be gentle, beans are a bit brittle. White flies like humidity, so plant less densely, and keep check on the inner and lower leaves. You really don’t want those tiny white flies, cute and adorable as they are, because they encourage black sooty mold and aphids. Not good.

Some aphids are still lollying from April and June. Some are pretty little green tykes, others are dull gray, or black, usually numerous where they have decided to camp. Same principles. Keep vigilant watch so things don’t get out of hand, keep your veggies picked, and jet spray. Look inside curled leaves, under the leaves, and in newly leafing tops.

Continue Reading →

Vacation, Super Busy?! Self Watering Systems!

You still haven’t planted your summer plants?! But want to – and you can, you will just get a fall harvest here in coastal SoCal. If you don’t mind starting your ‘winter’ garden a bit late, in fact prefer summer crops to winter crops, it will work fine for you. Maybe you won’t plant a winter garden, only a few favorites…. Hmm…but, for now, you will be gone vacationing, you just have a super busy lifestyle, maybe you are a single Mom who doesn’t want to give up gardening…so who’s going to do the watering? No problem! Other than drip irrigation on a timer, here are some perfect solutions!

1. Just go buy a self watering container system and plant to your heart’s content. Easy smeezey! And, there are tons of types available:

♥ Waist height for easy tending and picking.
♥ On wheels for convenience and relocating as the sun angle shifts during the season(s).
♥ Sophisticated with feeder systems too!

2. Make a simple DIY watering system. Kids’ wading pools are terrific ‘raised beds’ you can set up to self water! Or any other ‘container’ you have about will do the job! If you are in a windy location or doing rooftop planting, for lettuces, who have short roots and don’t need a lot of soil, only put your soil in to the level where your mature plant will reach the top of the container it is planted in. That reduces transpiration, protects it from drying out, and keeps a somewhat humid atmosphere on non windy days. Lettuces love that environment! Plant mildew prone plants, zucchini, squashes, cucumbers, more near the top of the container so they will stay drier above the top of the container.  Continue Reading →

From Turf/Food Not Lawns, Lasagna Gardening, to Hugelkultur!!!

Say what?!  Why is Hugelkultur, ‘hoogel kultoor,’ considered a Permaculture* technique? It resuses logs – freshly downed or old, wood debris right in place. It fits the needs of the land – less to no water, self fertilizing soil building! ‘Hugel’ means hill in German.  In this case, steep is good, tall makes for easier harvesting!  It is another form of composting in place, or building a raised bed, with more benefits, concentrating heat and nutrients!  Sepp Holzer has used the technique, but never called it Hugelkultur.  His wonderful method is diagrammed in the image.

Paul Wheaton at RichSoil.com explains it simply:
‘Hugelkultur is nothing more than making raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. This makes for raised garden beds loaded with organic material, nutrients, air pockets for the roots of what you plant, etc. As the years pass, the deep soil of your raised garden bed becomes incredibly rich and loaded with soil life. As the wood shrinks, it makes more tiny air pockets – so your hugelkultur becomes sort of self tilling. The first few years, the composting process will slightly warm your soil giving you a slightly longer growing season. The woody matter helps to keep nutrient excess from passing into the ground water – and then refeeding that to your garden plants later. Plus, by holding SO much water, hugelkultur could be part of a system for growing garden crops in the desert with no irrigation.’ He does caution about what kinds of woods not to use, and recommends the best ones to use.

Its’ Tomato Time!

Fine image from TheGardenersEden.com

Relax in the hot summer sun, get a big basket, line it with a light kitchen towel, grab a container for berries, mosey on out to the garden and fill that puppy with your finest! Beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, a couple peppers, zucchini, strawberries, some cooking herbs. Before you leave, top off your basket with some lettuces, chard if you still have it, garden purslane. Last, gather your corn, and hustle to the fridge, or cook it right up, so it doesn’t go to starch.

Gather your seeds before the birds get them all, but leave some for them too, if you can spare them and don’t mind a dry brown plant for a few days. Brown and dry has its own beauty.

Do some watering, give yourself a splash or two, stay hydrated. Make sure any seed/seedling beds don’t go dry. I often weed as I water, checking soil tilth as I go. Add some compost where needed. Maybe mix in some well aged manures. If you have some worm castings, add them too. Summer is for sidedressing – that’s feeding your producing plants. They are working hard! Put on fertilizers high in P, Phosphorus to keep your plants flowering and fruiting. SEE June 15 post on how to fertilize each of your plants! Lay down some more mulch on thin spots, and especially under your tomatoes and cucumbers, but not on eggplant, peppers, melons or winter squash that need all the heat they can get here on the coast. Only exception might be those eggplants. They like humid. A nest of straw might be like a little local sauna for them if you keep it moist.

You can still plant most of your very favorite heat lovers – tomatoes, beans, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, zucchini. Transplants are best now. Too late for winter squash that needs to harden. And, as always, plant your year-rounds, beets, bunch onions, carrots, summer lettuces, radish, to keep a steady supply.

Continue Reading →

Savvy Watering Tips!

Drip versus hand – I favor hand watering for two reasons. Well, make that 3. I like to hand water! I love it when a hummer swoops in for a mid-flight bath or a mini drink, flashing its beauty right on me! Hand watering puts me in a meditative, contemplative, observant state, that connects me with my plants, all my plants, not just the ones I happen to be working with that day. I see what needs doing next. If you squat down and get close to the ground, you see your soil, how it’s doing. I find in my fast-moving veggie garden, babies tucked here and there, plants finishing here, everybody needs different amounts of water. In our 10′ X 20’ plots at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, religious row planting is not what happens most of the time. There just isn’t room. Maybe not all the seeds in a row germinate. A gardener gives you a couple extra plants they had and you can’t resist and pop them in there! Already, there is modification, biodiversity, different watering needs.

Overhead vs underneath – Fuzzy plants don’t like wet leaves, they can’t breathe nor regulate their temperatures properly. Nor herbs. Wet leaves for many plants, especially beans and cukes, brings on the mildew when the temps get right. If you can’t wean yourself from overhead watering, plant less, allow more air circulation. Make it easy on yourself. Get a low flow watering wand, like the nurseries use, that will put a lot of water where you want it without damaging your plants. They are great for containers and hanging plants too! Or if you don’t want to stand there, get one of those bubblers that gently disperse the water as the bubbler lies on the ground. Then you can go do other things and not worry about what the water is doing.

Save water! Plant water lovers in the bottoms of furrows or in basins so their roots remain moist longer. And basins are great for keeping the water where it’s needed if your soil slopes. Plant soil fungus sensitive plants on the tops of slightly flattened furrow hills. That lets the soil drain and dry and the fungus die or be less. Make a mound rather than a basin. Continue Reading →

Fertilizing Your Favorite Summer Plants!

One school of thought is if your soil is great when you start, no fertilizer is needed for the rest of the season! Then there are others who fuss and mother attentively weekly, even daily. The rest of us do what we can when we can or if we have to. Do your best. Most of all, watch your plants. Check on them frequently – at least that, especially after drying winds, super hot days. They will tell you what they need. If you don’t understand the ‘symptoms,’ you can get help and figure it out. If you are container gardening, regular fertilizing is a must because nutrients are leached away as you water.

Humble homemade compost just can’t be beat as a fertilizer! Whether you do it in a bin, a pile, lasagna garden or sheet compost in place, it adds a wide variety of nutrients that are easily taken up by your plants, adds tilth to your soil, that’s loamy nutrient laden soil with excellent water holding capacity. Compost is not only a soil enhancer, but a water saver! Even manures, that are also excellent for your soil, need to be composted first. Composting stabilizes the Nitrogen.

Use the NPK of organic fertilizers to your advantage!

Continue Reading →

Tomato Grafting?!?! THREE times the growth!

No, no, no, it’s scary, hard to do, uh, how do you do it? OK, you might give it a chance? Three times the growth is pretty darn attractive if you are a tomato lover! It’s being called the ‘Jack in the Bean Stalk Effect!’

Well, first of all, it’s easier than you think! Any of you that have grafted fruit trees will take to it immediately.

You get Maxifort seeds (Johnny’s Selected Seed), or any proven excellent rootstock that is turbo powered and super disease resistant. These super rootstock varieties do not bear fruit, or at least, not tasty fruit. You grow your Maxiforts and your tomatoes of choice. When the main stem gets about a ¼” in diameter, you cut the Maxiforts down to about 2” from the soil level, cut off your other tomato, now called a scion, at a matching diameter point, and put them together, wrapping or putting a ‘Japanese grafting pin’ device on the join to hold them together. The stems need to be the same diameter so the cambium layers line up so your plant can grow. Voila!

In two days to two weeks your plant will be healed and ready to plant out. Then stand back! Watch the Jack in the Bean Stalk Effect and be happy!

This method was first developed because tomatoes are so sensitive to verticillium and fusarium wilts. The Maxifort rootstock withstands it and if you love HEIRLOOMS, that have little resistance to the wilts, this is your chance in wilt country. A lot of coastal marine layer gardens have it in the soil, plus it is airborne, so if your neighbor has it or brings in a plant with it….

11 Years ago, the method started in Japan. 4 years later, Canadian agronomist, Andre Carrier, popularized the technique here, and changed everything for North American greenhouse growers. Since rotating crops is often not practical in greenhouses or small urban veggie gardens, grafting is a breakthrough answer! Now many commercial growers are using grafted tomatoes because it is super successful! If you are scared to try it, have never done any grafting, try anyway! At worst you will be out the price of a couple or three seed packets. But, do go to some grafting demos. You will soon see how easy it is, and, the results will be way worth it! A powerful root stalk with the scion of your choice. Doable.

If you don’t order some seeds now, put it on your January 2013 seeds order list! Ask your favorite local Nursery to stock them!

June, Summer Solstice, the Magic Happens!

March and April plantings are paying off handsomely now as we have warmer and the longest days of the year! Harvests are coming in, tomatoes on their way! Pick beans when your plants are dry to prevent spreading rust and mildew.

Plant more rounds of your heat lovers - seeds or transplants – basil with tomatoes, peppers and eggplant best from transplants, corn, beans, cucumbers, okra, zucchini. Put in more melons, and some winter squash only if you are in the hot foothills. Late plantings will often ‘catch up’ since they have more heat, longer hours of sunshine. Plant another round of radishes to repel cucumber beetles from cukes and zukes, and as a trap plant for flea beetles on eggplant. For fall toms, put in seeds now, transplants in July. Pop in some more year-rounds: beets, carrots, chard, bunch onions, turnips, fragrant herbs. Remember, plant seeds and transplants of the same plant at the same time to get continuous crops! And mix things up to confuse pests and prevent disease spread. Some here, some there….

Strawberries want to make runners in June! Instead, clip off the daughters, give your strawberries a quick uptake 0-10-10 type fertilizer, high in Potassium and Phosphorus, P & K, to keep them flowering and producing. Plenty of time to get daughters in October. Keep your strawberries wet! If they dry they stop fruiting.

If you planted garlic in November, now is harvest time! Dig down, see how the little guys are doing. If they are fat enough for you, stop watering for a couple weeks, and harvest! If not, we did have a cool spring, let them grow a bit more….

Time to feed your hardworking plants! Feed them as they start to flower, and while they are producing fruits. Leaf producers like lettuces, kales and chard need a little chicken manure scratched in. Pretend you are a chicken! If you lay in too much Nitrogen, put on some Sea Bird quano high in Phosphorus, to bring blooms as well as leaves. In fact, once your plant starts flowering, you can put some fertilizer on that is higher in Phosphorus to keep them going!

If you laid straw under your tomatoes or along your cucumbers, to keep soil with the wilts fungi from splashing on them, replenish it, make it a bit deeper as your plant gets bigger. Mulch crops that don’t need that much heat, but enjoy moist feet. Plant moisture lovers more densely in summer so they can make a living mulch for each other.

WATER! Be sure your babies have plenty to drink. To be sure things are good, poke your finger in the ground AFTER you water. You will be amazed how the watering you did may not have wet more than a 1/4″ to 1/2″ deep. Your plants’ roots are deeper than that. They can be dying of thirst when things look prettily wet. Regular water is best. Cucumbers especially need that. Their fruit is practically all water, so guess where that water is going! Tomatoes are picky. Too much or too little and they are unhappy. Experience is going to be your best teacher. If you succession plant, you have more chances of learning in the same season.

Clean up and deadhead! Trim away any damaged, diseased, or done parts, remove sick plants or ones that are not thriving, or step up your attention to them. Put in plants instead of letting weeds grow and use up your soil. Beauty be.

Mesclun Magic!

We’re having beautiful weather to be planting Mesclun!

Plant a tray, a pretty bowl, or a patch! This is one crop you can easily do in containers! Mix up some of your favorite lettuce seeds, outdated and new, or buy a ready-made packet. Now that it’s about summer, choose some heat tolerant varieties – Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson. Broadcast them, that’s give them a little fling, making sure they get to the edges of the area, and see what comes up! Grow it in a morning sun or semi shady area if you live in the hot foothills.

You might eat lettuce every day, plant more, or you might eat it as a singular table treat!! Either way, take your bowl and harvest your Mesclun right into it for a 100% fresh salad ! Stash your Mesclun designated scissors in a safe dry handy place.

Mesclun comes in all sorts of variety packs! Mix it up with your Mesclun! Baby carrots are mighty tasty and the tender leaves are edible too! Mix in seeds of baby carrots, tender dwarf kales, Bright Lights chard, broccoli greens – experiment to your pleasure! No row planting here, just broadcast it in patches!

Feed them every week with a tablespoon of liquid fish emulsion in a gallon of water. Remember, they are working hard, and you are making them start all over again when you harvest them. You can cut them up to about 5 times before needing to replant, depending on your soil, how close to the ground you cut them, weather conditions. Don’t be discouraged if your first attempt doesn’t do exactly as you wish. Work it out until you get a system, discover your planting frequency interval that works for you.

Plant a Salad Table! Takes very little soil. Great harvest height, no bending or tending down on your hands and knees!

Succession Planting results in Mesclun of different sizes, for continuous harvest. As one patch finishes, another is still coming. Keep planting for a continuous tasty supply! Enjoy!

Oh, Please, Please, Please, Garden Anywhere!

That means, on your doorstep, porch, balcony, tiny sunny patio, rooftop, hanging from anywhere, your sunny wall, in any container you can find, straw bales, big or little raised beds, mini niches in your landscape! Or in your large yard, starting with fruit trees on your ½ acre! Yes! You can grow trees in containers – dwarf, semi-dwarf fig, avo, citrus, grafted fruit bowl trees having 3 varieties on one tree, have a container orchard!

Did you make it to the Earth Day celebration? Did you see the vertical gardens/biowalls?! Beautifully done. One was structured with little planting pockets. One was a tower including a water and feeding setup. You can do it! Have a whole garden in a few feet of space! Fresh lettuces at your fingertips, strawberries for snacks and to brightly dress your breakfast cereals!

Gophers?! Plant on straw bales laid on their sides. You can plant on/in straw bales on top of concrete or asphalt in a parking lot! One woman I know is experimenting putting soil on top of her bales! Why not?! Or you can carve pockets into the straw, hard labor, be careful. Throw in compost and bag soil, your other favorite amendments, and plant! The decomposing straw makes heat, your plants are happy, and the straw can be spread for mulch when you are done with it!

You can plant just about a whole garden in only 3 five gallon containers! They have a handle so you can move them with the sun during the day, or put them on a plant dolly to roll about. Put tall plants like tomatoes or bean vines in the back, stuff in a trellis to hold them up. Put some draping tasties at the front – lettuces, strawberries maybe. Put peppers, eggplant in the middle. Dwarf, patio, often early varieties, are smaller and quicker! Do a dwarf bush zucchini with a mini melon at its feet, or a SpaceMaster cucumber!

Any place you have 6 to 8 hours of sun you can plant veggies. Containers have the advantages of no gophers, no soil diseases if you use bagged soils/composts. Containers can be toxic free reused items, to the most lovely artistic gems in the world, that you might have even made yourself, right there on your doorstep!

There are super duper self watering systems for purchase or you can easily make. It’s so simple to do you won’t believe it!

Be sure to keep your plants well fed, especially when they are blooming and producing fruits. They are working hard for you.

It’s sustainable to grow your own food! No packaging, the freshest and most nutritious it can be! Live well and have fun doing it!