End of season notes.

Fall Comith

Well, lo and behold, it’s now almost fall now. Actually the official start will be a couple of days from now on September the 23^rd. That’s the date when the sun crosses the equator on its voyage to the southern parts of good old planet earth. If I remember my geology correctly, about the only continent that wholly benefits from the warmer weather will be Australia. Blimey mate. (At least the Roo’s will be happy as they hippy-hop all over the place).

Here in the northern latitudes (36 degrees north for me), the days are now getting noticeably shorter and cooler. The chart above represents the actual drop in temperature in the late afternoon to evening hours. The sky, that night, was slightly overcast to partly cloudy with a very light to no wind from the west. I was able to turn off the AC and open the doors! After surviving a very warm summer, temperatures like these are most welcome. (I guess radiative cooling is not a bad thing at this time of year. It’s when we get into winter that it can be a bit brutal).

A Late Sowing of Little Caesar Romaine

Since I had some seed left over, I thought it might be fun to plant a couple of rows of romaine in the outdoor garden even though it is kind of late to be doing that. Arguably I have plenty of time (sixty plus days). Problem is that the beds out back are close enough to the north facing back wall that the sun will not be getting to the plants come sometime in October. I figure if the plants are of any size at all I’ll try transplanted then out in front of the house where I have a little space. I’m not sure how well they will transplant but that will be another lesson for me to learn when the time comes.

It's time for some cold frame lettuce!

It’s almost March now, just a couple of days away. Here in southwest Missouri, you can see how much more bright the days are as the sun now arcs ever higher across the sky. The temperatures are now beginning to respond a little to the increased sunlight. Today, February the 27^th, it we had temps in the mid forties and I can tell you…compared to just a few weeks ago that is warm! With the window sash over the top of the cold frame the air quickly warms into the mid sixties. This is perfect weather for romaine lettuce and radishes.  I just happen to have some seed left over from last season and decided the time was right to put them to good use.

So, with no further ado, I went out this afternoon and prepped the ground in my first cold frame. The space is on the small side, but you’d be amazed at the amount of lettuce I can get from this space. The actual size is just under 24” x 36 inches of growing space or 6 square feet of total growing area. I have two of these frames in the front yard which can provide me with quite a bit of early spring lettuce. The picture at right shows lettuce that was actually planted last fall and even though the plants are small, they are a welcome addition to the dinner table.

My method of planting at this time of year is simple and stupid. I just broadcast some lettuce and radish seed in a random pattern, then wet the surface down, cover everything with newspaper and then water it again. Total time spent was about 15 minutes if that. After covering up the frame, the sun immediately elevated the inside reading to 65F while it was 46F outside. In about four or five days, I’ll take a peek under the newspaper and see what’s germinated. Because it’s still cool outside (and cold at nights) I don’t have to worry much about the top layer of soil drying out. The window sashes also act as a moisture barrier. Kind of a ‘SET IT AND FORGET IT’ deal. My apologies to Ronco.

With a little luck and some supervision, I should have a good harvest sometime in mid to late April or about the time most people are just getting started in their raised beds. Of course, I’ll post an update at that time. Happy gardening!

Cold Frames

If you’re like I am, sometime around January the first you get a hankering for fresh vegetables. The produce on the shelves at the local mart just doesn’t measure up. Its all be shipped in from distant places, often foreign countries and has the price tags to match. Now with all the upheaval in the financial markets and all, I have begun to wonder just how expensive everything may get. I’m in sticker shock already when I buy a head of lettuce. I mean isn’t iceberg lettuce mostly water?

So, that got me to thinking one afternoon when I came across an article concerning the building of cold frames. A cold frame is really nothing more than a wooden box with a lid that admits light. According to the article, you can grow all sorts of veggies outside it, even in the dead of winter! Hmm, I thought, maybe this is for me. I remembered that some years ago a friend had given me two old windows. She was going to throw them out and I’m the kind of guy that hates to waste anything so I took them off her hands and then they ended up in the crawlspace under my house for the next seven years. To my credit, I did remember I had them and I thought that do to their small size (23 x 36), they would be a great experiment to see if I could actually grow lettuce in the wintertime. (Note that the article also indicated that cold hardy crops like spinach, onions, radishes and even carrots could also be brought to maturity).

So, last month in October, I went about the construction of my very first cold Frame. (I also documented this effort for You Tube in case you are interested. You can see the video by typing in ‘Building a Cold Frame’ in the You Tube search area at www.youtube.com). My total construction time using just 2x4’s was under three hours including the time it took me to dig a pit and paint the frame. Since I had all the materials lying around the house, my only cost was the purchase of fresh Miracle Gro™ soil from Home Depot in Branson.

I now have a functional (I hope) cold frame and have planted ten Little Caesar romaine seeds in a seed starter pack sitting in my kitchen. From past experience, the seeds should germinate in about four days and then will take four to six weeks to reach transplant stage at which point I will place outside into the elements. That will put these guys out in early December weather where the average lows will be in the 30’s and 40’s. Romaine goes best between 45F and 65F so I am counting on the sun to warm the box during the day and the natural ability of the earth to insulate to keep things warm at night.

With any luck, I should have something ready for the table in early January 2009.

Start Your '4 by Whatever' Garden Today!

An excellent size small garden can be created easily and quickly by taking 2 lengths of 2x4x8 lumber (non-treated) and cutting each in half to create four 4 foot lengths. Simply nail the pieces together to for a box and lay this somewhere close to your house where it will get at least eight hours of full sun each day during the summer months. (Make sure you dig up and turn over any grass that may be growing inside the box). I like to use wood that has not been treated even though I know it will last only a few seasons before rotting away. That’s fine with me because construction of a new replacement box is relatively easy and I do not have to worry about arsenic or mercury leaching from treated lumber into the garden soil. Of course, you can just berm up some soil and forget about the lumber all together. I just feel that the box structure looks really nice and professional.

What’s really nice about such a small area is the amount of veggies you can grow in this space. You can feed a family of three with no problem from just one of these. In order to do this, however, you must consider using three very important techniques; inter-cropping, succession and companion planting. Oh, and yes, you must water if things get too dry.

Intercropping is nothing more than having the knowledge as to what plants grow at what rates so you can take advantage of every bit of space. For instance, if you plant out lettuce starts in neatly staggered rows, you will initially have a lot of space between the plants. Lettuce will take 45-55 days to mature and fill up this space so, why not strategically plant a fast growing crop like radishes in these spaces that will be up and harvested in about 30 days. This is the way that you can keep every bit of garden space up and in high production.

Coupled with this concept is succession planting that as the name implies helps you to fill a space vacated by a harvested planted with another in its place. The seedling may a younger version of the same plant that was there before or it may be another species that will do better later in the season. For instance, I will grow a run of lettuce plants that are immediately followed by pepper transplants that were started a month earlier. Or, I may just go ahead and put in a heat resistant variety of lettuce to harvest during the summer months. In order to pull this type of activity off, you must become aware of germination times, temperature preferences and even whether or not the different plants which end up next to each other will be happy. That last point is what companion planting technique is all about. Fortunately, there are many books that offer this information in table form to allow you to quickly and efficiently draw up your own unique show. For my part I first list the types of veggies I want to grow that season and then organize a plan around them that allows me to max out the crop yields, keep the garden full of plants while doing little or no weeding. If you make this plan correctly, you will find you have relatively little work to do while harvesting up to 100 pounds of produce from a 4x4 foot area. The only thing you must worry about is making sure you keep you little plot well furnished with compost and other amendments to keep the soil healthy and happy.

One note concerning the soil is that you really do not fertilize the plants with amendments; you actually are feeding the microorganisms in the soil that make nutrient ions available to the plants. This topic alone could fill a book and if you are interested certainly read up on the subject. The bottom line is that healthy, fertile soil has literally billions and billions of micro-organisms living it while unhealthy soil does not. Healthy soil will make you healthy plants whereas dead soil will not – no matter how must fertilizer you throw on it. If you experience problems growing stuff, make sure you get a sample sent in for analysis (soil test locations are listed in the tallow pages or you can go to your local extension office) and then make the needed corrections. Oftentimes, it is just a case of the pH being too high (alkaline) or to low (acidic). In order for effective exchange of ions and cations to occur between to soil and the plants roots, you must have the pH somewhere close to 7.0 (neutral) or perhaps a little on the acidic side. Once again any good gardening book will list the proper pH range for stuff you want to grow.

So let me summarize why 4x4’s are so wonderful; 1) they are easy to create, 2) they don’t take up a lot of space, 3) you can get gobs of food out of them and 4) because of the way you plant, you rarely have to weed them. Not too shabby a state of affairs is it? They also make a perfect area for any young gardeners you might have around the house. Just build one for each future master gardener and let that become their special area. You would be amazed at how creative some kids are when challenged in this way. One child I know of planted a different seed (actually a combination of peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, onions and radishes) randomly across the entire 4x4 surface. Surprisingly, everything germinated and grew really well. As a bonus, because there was not much of any one plant located anywhere in the garden, the little tykes garden did not suffer any of the usual pests that summer. My carefully planned gardens which were located just next door however were subjected to wave after wave of chewing insects. Yes, you can learn a lot from a child.

So What's the Deal with Raised Beds?

After many false starts in the home gardening business I came to realize that for all the rewards of growing your own stuff there was a dark side to it all. Garden, once established require a lot of work. My first effort (way back in '91') was little more than a twelve foot square of ground in the backyard that took me all of one hour to create. I used a shovel to remove the layer of grass and then roughed up the ground a little and spread some seeds. No big deal, I thought at the time. Yes, it was no big deal. Nothing actually grew in the pitiful square but weeds. It was at some point while I was standing over this 'garden' watering the weeds that it come to me there might be more than meets the eye to the business of wrestling large succulent carrots, peppers and lettuce from old mother Nature. I then did what I should have done much earlier. I went and asked a neighbor who was known in the neighborhood for her audacious harvests. She came over and eyed my little piece of disaster and suggested I get a book or two on the subject of square foot gardening and then start slow and work up gradually. A much more humble man now, I followed up her suggestion by a visit to the library where I came across a book by someone named Mel Bartholomew. It was titled, fittingly enough, 'Square Foot Gardening' and it did get my attention. For one thing, the author promised a great deal of vegetable from a small space with little or no weeding involved! After reading that I was hooked and went home with my new mentor tucked under my arm. Years later I am still amazed at how quickly success came once I shifted mental gears and went with a raised bed. More on this to come.