Will early plantings survive a late April 2014 chill?

Tomatoes and more ready to go!

Here it is late April with our feet almost in the door of May and more cold weather seems in store for the few days of the month! As of this posting on the 28^th, it's looking like the 29^th (Tuesday) and the 30^th are going to be the most problematic with overnight temperatures getting down into the upper

Broccoli

Red Bells in da ground!

thirties in some parts. Right at this time, I have some tomatoes and pepper plants in the ground, which will need to be covered. So, here I am, scrounging around for cardboard boxes, towels and such.

That said, my plantings are looking healthy as can be. I have about 15 tomato plants that still need a home in the raised beds along with 12 or so pepper plants. I went heavy on all things salad as the cost of produce has really escalated over the past couple of months.

Update: It's early May - see my short video on how everything is doing!

Why would anyone plant and grow Habanero peppers? Are they insane?

At about a gazillion scoville heat units, you'd think anyone that routinely grew these hottest of hot peppers would be also trying to get their mental elevator up out of the basement! Not me! (I have a basement and haven't found any elevators down there)! But wait. It's not really like that! While these 'Scotch Bonnet like peppers' date back to over 8,500 years ago, after they were discovered by some Spaniards messing around in Columbia, they have since found their way into commercial and home-brewed hot sauces all over the globe! This season, I'm going to be growing four or five plants which should yield enough peppers by season's end to supply my needs for chili dishes and beef stir-fries all through the coming winter. And, while these peppers are really too hot to heat raw, they lose most of that heat when cooked! What's left over is a rather interesting sensation of hotness that is hard to describe and has to be experienced to be understood. Suffice it to say that a good bowl of chili with a pepper or two added will keep a body pretty warm!

A raised bed garden for everyone!

[This space reserved for a picture of the raised bed with plants in it!]

At a time when commercial produce continues to spike in price without seeming letup, many a person might get it in their heads to do a little gardening on their own. After all, raising your own food has got to be cheaper than going to a local grocery just for the privilege of buying a solitary bell pepper for a buck! But, hold on! Isn't a garden a lot of work? Don't you have to buy expensive soil and what about the cost of obtaining vegetable starts from the greenhouse? And oh my, all that work what with the tilling and the weeding and – well just forget about it!

Fortunately, I've got some good news! Almost anyone can install a small raised bed in no time at all! Scrounge together four wooden boards, some nails and dirt and you're in business! The boards pictured at right

were were laying around my garage and measured about 36 inches each – after removing the nails that held two of the board together, I had my 'pre-cut' pieces that when formed into a square enclosed an area of about 2.8 feet by 3 feet or 8.5 (or lets just say) 9 square feet overall! That's 9 one square foot areas into which we can plant all sorts of good eats! So far I'd spent about ten minutes scrounging and preparing... not too shabby!

Next, I needed to assemble the boards by nailing them together – happily, I had eight nice looking nails that came from those little cross pieces, so I was all set in that department. But, I still needed to pre-drill some holes to help make the process of nailing then together a little easier. I'm all about easier....

So, out came the drill with which I quickly made eight pilot holes for the nails to get started in. But, before I did that I needed to clear out the grass in the space where my little garden was to go! After all, I wouldn't want grass growing up through my garden soil – would I? Gosh no! The answer, however was easy – I merely dug a shallow trench where the boards would rest (I used a level to make sure they were level with the ground) and then I merely covered the area with weed block material that was available form my local hardware store for a few bucks! Total time to dig the trenches and install the weed block was about 20 minutes. None of this work was very hard either!

But, what about that soil – how much would I need to fill in this empty space. OK, let me see now. The depth of the boards were about 5 ¼ inches – so I estimated I need the thickness of the soil to be about 4 inches – therefore, I needed 2.8 x 3 x .33 feet which equals 2.8 cubic feet.  Another way to figure this is to know that since the area was about 9 square feet, then a height of 12 inches of soil

would equal 9 cubic feet. However, I needed only a third of that height (4 inches) and so one third of 9 is 3)! Voila! You can get 40 pound bags of soil at garden centers for about $2-$3 a bag – and since each bag will cover about 3 square feet to a depth of four inches – I'd need about 4 bags! In they went, and you can see the nice result – a raised bed! That's $8 spent thus far with labor running at about 1 hour. Now it was time for selecting the plant starts that would go in each square! The soil was then going to get a few days to rest.... and then... comes the planting!

I'd already purchased 2 cucumbers ($2) and also had 8 peppers that cost $4. The basil was sown as seed as was the carrots. The sole open spot was left over for anything that might strike my fancy later on! The peppers that come later this summer, will pay the estimated total cost for this setup of $15 pretty quickly. But, I'm not ready to plant anything in this space yet! I need to test the soil to make sure that especially the pH is within acceptable limits!

Next post: Testing the soil!While you're waiting - run out and buy a copy of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening!

Soda bottle greenhouse for lettuce!

Not one to leave an empty soda bottle alone – I hate to throw them into the trash, I perused the Internet and discovered a simple way to make a small greenhouse for lettuce. It took only a few minutes to make and I'll be interested to see how well the Little Caesar romaine lettuce grows in this bottom irrigated device! If it works out fairly well, I plan to do a few herbs in the same manner.

Updates to come!

A garden grows in Forsyth Missouri!

Some people would say that the small town of Forsyth Missouri is but a tiny spot on the map and they'd probably be right. However, it is where I call home and I'm thankful because what the town lacks in size, it more than makes for up in a great climate. Situated down in the southwestern part of the great state of Missouri in Taney County I am most definitely in God's Country! The climate is Zone 6 pushing a 7 and so a gardener, such as myself, can get an early start planting out vegetables ever spring along about mid April!

This year, I plan to experiment with a couple of vegetables that I haven't grown before; namely Seed Savers Hot Portugal peppers and a few MarGlobe tomatoes which I'm told are heirlooms. Both of these have gotten pretty good reviews and look promising. While the peppers took right after being sown as seeds, the MarGlobe's were purchased at a local greenhouse and look ready to go out into the garden as soon as the weather settles a bit more. I'm hoping to get them out into the ground within the next week, or around the first of May. The peppers may not get transplanted until late May, however as they are still fairly small.

At any rate, this spring is shaping up to be a real keeper!

Cherry tomato plants go in lightening struck ground!

My motto - leave no unused patch of soil unused!

A few years ago, I think it was 2010, a lightening bolt struck the ground next to a stately bush and killed it. It then took until earlier this year for the heavy wooden trunk and roots to rot out. When they did, I realized that this looked like pretty fertile earth and decided to make use of it!

After prepared the soil (no amendment needed), I enclosed the 15 inch square space with wood framing material that had been left over form another project. This will hopefully keep the aggressive fescue grass from invading the space as as the tomato plants grow and do their thing! As, always, I'll try and update this article as the season progresses, especially if I can get some cherry tomatoes in July or August – a time when a small one pound basket is selling for as much as $4!

On a more concerning note, I noticed that the ground in this area of my yard was loaded with grubs!

So, it's mid April! Can I plant stuff out yet?

Well, it being past the midpoint of April (17^th), normal wisdom would tell one that we should be past the last average frost date for my Zone 6 garden in southwestern Missouri! Therefore, you should be able to plant out any and all cold loving plants along with root crops. These would include lettuces, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, beans and potatoes to name a few.

The latest graphic showing the highs and lows this year (2014) versus last year shows that we should be seeing a good warming trend from this point forward. For the balance of the week and on into the last week of the month, the weather service is calling for highs close to 70 with overnight lows only down into the 50's! That's good enough for me. Then, by mid May, you should be able to plant out your more tender annuals and vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs and flowers!

Making use of non-recyclables!

After finishing off the the delicious cheery tomatoes that came in this plastic container pictured above, I thought that it might make a good mini-greenhouse for herbs. I used basil seed from a 2012 lot and was surprised when practically all the seed that was sown germinated! I plan to plant some other herbs as soon as I can find the seeds on display at the local grocery store. 

These basil plants will be transferred  out to the garden after I thin them. I've also started a new container with far fewer seeds to keep indoors this summer!

Southwestern Missouri garden soil: The real story!

If you live where I do, in southwest Missouri near counties with names like Stone, you might guess (correctly), that good loamy topsoil is hard to come by. Most of the soil, when you can find it, has a very high clay content that compacts easily and can be a real trial for a vegetable plant to grow well in. that why a lot of folk add all sorts of amendments and often prefer raised beds where the soil is lifted up thus allowing the spring sun to warm it faster that would otherwise be the case. This picture, at right, is a good representation of what I'm talking about. The clod of soil on the left is mostly composed of very fine grains of clay and sand. It compresses easily and will form long sticky ribbons when wet. Not the best of growing mediums. The soil on the right, while not perfect, has organic matter in it and is looser as a result!

Soil amendments do a number of good things for sub-par soils; 1) they will improve the structure, by increasing the ratio of air and water spaces to solid matter. This allows your plants to 'breath' more freely. 2) they most always include some form of organic matter like humus, a material that can absorb and hold water during periods of dryness. And, 3) they promote the rapid growth of fungi and bacteria that supply roots with the needed nutrients to grow stuff like large tomatoes or bell peppers! As a matter of fact, most everyone has such a great soil amendment right in their homes... it's called

kitchen scraps! Anyone who collects scraps can then add them to garden areas to help enrich even a poor soil. Before you know it, earthworms will make an appearance and then will stay – a sure sign of good soil fertility.

April is not tomato planting out time!

Forsyth MO. - While visiting a local greenhouse (Hills and Hollows Gardens), I bought 2 four pack of tomatoes for fun. One was Better Boy, and indeterminate type tomato I've grown successfully before while the other four were MarGlobe tomatoes. A determinate variety that I later discovered was a popular heirloom tomato. I figured these starts would fit right in with the four Brandywine Pink tomatoes I was already growing from seed! The trouble was the time of year. Early April down here in southwest Missouri can still offer up some frosty mornings right through the middle of the month! So, I was gonna have to wait until near the end of the month to plant these babies outside.

MarGlobes now room to grow while they are waiting!

No problem. I have plenty of pots around my place and merely transplanted each of the starts to its own pot using Miracle Gro potting mix to fill each container. The added room will allow the plants to keep growing at a good rate while I wait for better and warmer climes. Then, later in the month when I can see that the weather has settled, I plan to plant them out into a raised bed out back. My only concerns when I do that will be the local deer that like to eat them. To that end, I plan to put metal cadges around each plant! Then, when the fruits finally mature later in the summer time, I plan to do a comparison of each in a tasting contest with some friends.

Dried Great Northern beans and you!

When ever the mood strikes me, I like to make up a pot-o-beans! I generally use Great Northern beans for a number of reasons; I like the taste and they are inexpensive! But not only does a pot of beans satisfy a hearty appetite, they are actually quite nutritious too! Just a quarter cup of these beans will supply the average person with high levels of protein, half their daily requirement for fiber all at only about 70 calories per serving. And, because they digest slowly, the glycemic load on your blood is very low! Oh, and yes, please make sure you use dried beans out of a bag rather than using the canned varieties. Here's a few reasons why that's a good idea:

• Lower sodium: Dry beans, purchased in bags, contain no sodium. By contrast, canned beans are quite high in sodium (1/2 cup of canned beans contain about 20% of your daily sodium requirement). If you're watching your sodium intake level for blood pressure concerns or other health reasons, stick with dry beans.
• More natural: Canned beans can last several years in their cooked state, thus, they have added preservatives. By contrast, when you use dry beans that you cook yourself, you can know exactly what ingredients you've added and how the beans have been prepared. Dry beans are purchased and cooked in a more natural and controlled state.
• Bisphenol A (BPA): This is a chemical found in the plastic white lining of most cans of food. It has become controversial lately because studies have shown that it may mimic the hormone estrogen and may contribute to certain cancers, insulin resistance and birth defects. If you would like to avoid this exposure, stick with dry beans.
  

Posing a contrary view and according to Dr. Loren Cordain, founder of the Paleo Diet movement, beans and even all legumes are actually not all that good for you! An article published by him 'Beans and Legumes: Are they Paleo?' goes into some great detail as to why he feels they should be stricken from human consumption all together! As far as I'm personally concerned, the question is still open.