Planters Punchlines
Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield
February 2014
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Organic Vegetable Gardening "
@ Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield Febrary Meeting
Monday February 24 @ 7:00 pm in the Pitkin Community
Center
Speakers are
all lined up for the February and March meetings.
February 24 will be Trish
Safner, Master Gardener, who will discuss “Organic Vegetable Gardening”.
March
24 will feature Marty Sienko, Master Gardener and Advanced Master Composter,
speaking on “Backyard Composting”. The
public is invited.
Compostable Matter
By Jim Meehan
It is the
latest step in the gradual New Mexication of our landscape that Marsha and I
have been nurturing over the past few years.
There are a couple of reasons for this horticultural mode of
travel. First, New Mexico is where we
ultimately plan on living – but until then we will make do by bringing as much
of that locale into our immediate surroundings as we can.
We began with
our family room, which fittingly sits in the southwest section of our casa –
note the subtle introduction of the Spanish motif – the walls of which are
decorated with various arts and crafts from “The Land of Enchantment” that we
have acquired or been given over the years.
Among them are three “retablos” (paintings on wood) of San Isidro
Labrador, the patron saint of farmers and gardeners who, according to legend,
was discovered by his master praying while an angel was doing the ploughing for
him.
While I am
certainly not spiritually in a place to deserve any divine yard-helpers the
religious icon’s presence nonetheless inspires me to emulate to a lesser degree
some the Madrid native’s horticultural feats.
Which brings
me to our second reason for New Mexicizing our local terrain – if ordinary
mortals in one of the most sun baked and arid areas in the U.S. of A. can grow
this stuff – then why shouldn’t we, sitting here in the rich, deep, alluvial
soil of the Connecticut River Valley, be able to grow them even bigger and
better.
We started
with hollyhocks, which, while certainly not unique to New Mexico, nonetheless
have gone on to become the floral symbol of the town of Taos and proliferate
the southwest countryside throughout the summer and fall. Depending upon whom you choose to believe
this colorful cousin of hibiscus, okra and cotton was brought to the region by
either the daughter of the territory’s first governor who purchased them from a
St. Louis seed salesman or, Sueño, a near-sighted angel, who while escaping
Herod's wrath took the Holy Family to New Mexico by mistake.
Either way,
they are like-everywhere out there.
Actually even that's an understatement. I would say that you couldn't
swing a dead javelina in Santa Fe without hitting one of these
drought-tolerant, heat-loving members of the mallow family.
We got some
seeds from our daughter-in-law and son’s front yard in Santa Fe and planted
them in our first potentially faux New Mexico garden. Year uno – nada. Year dos – more seeds followed by more and
more and more rain. Mucho agua = drowned
hollyhocks. Year tres – the rains held
off and the ‘hocks soared. Last summer –
not so good. But hope is an integral
part of gardening, especially with hollyhocks.
Next we added
“Maximillian Sunflowers” (this time from our d-in-l’s backyard and harder to
smuggle x-country) – another perennial (more reliable) that also can withstand
poor soils and intense heat, and churns out large yellow flowers from midsummer
onwards. And tall. Like really, really, tall. Like cut them back in June, then August, and
in September they are still eight feet high tall. No problemo with these southwester imports.
So, what next?
Cactus.
Now New
Mexican cactus is not showy and big-limbed like the steroidal, tree-like
saguaro that can grow up to as much as seventy feet in the Sonoran desert of
Arizona. Instead it is the considerably
more modest prickly pear – short plants with flat, rounded cladodes (also
called platyclades) that are armed with two kinds of spines; large, smooth,
fixed spines and small, hair like prickles called glochids, that easily
penetrate skin and detach from the plant.
Only this time
Marsha and I are not planning on secreting these paddle-like cacti in our
carry-on luggage – those pointy needles can be a real turn-off, trust me – and
we probably won’t be going to NM until after the CT growing season anyway.
Instead we are going to sell out a little and seek the plant locally.
Or so we
intend anyway.
Sometimes when
New Mexican Catholics don’t get what they want after praying to their retablo
saints they put the icons in a drawer or out of sight in some other place to
express their anger. So should you drop
by our house this summer and you notice three San Isidro plaques hung with
their faces to the wall – don’t even ask me how our prickly pear project went.
On the other
hand if Isidro’s unsmiling face is looking you square in the eye (saints never
grin after all) then you are welcome to visit our latest little bit of NM in
CT.
More to come.
The Mulch Experiment by Susan Reimer
I am
experimenting with NOT mulching this season, and so far it has all the earmarks
of just that - an experiment. With unexpected results and really bad smells.
I have been
mulching with shredded pine bark for more years than I like to remember. Mostly
because those memories are painful. That's me, in pain, after gently spreading
3 or 4 cubic yards of mulch.
I thought
perhaps I would give my gardens, and my back, a rest this season. I know mulch
is good for holding down weeds and keeping the ground temperature and moisture
levels even.
But I had been
hearing things about arsenic or other carcinogens in mulch and about how mulch
might actually draw nutrients out of the soil. Unable to come to a decision, I
decided not to decide to mulch.
Then I noticed
the mountain of grass clippings my husband was generating.
He'd fed the
grass this spring and the result was predictable. The lawn now required two
cuttings a week, even though DH cuts it pretty high.
I thought
perhaps I would use the clippings to mulch. Seemed like a good use of nature's
resources, right? So I asked my husband to collect the grass clippings in a
garbage can, and I would spread them as soon as I could.
Having mulched
a small bed with those grass clippings, I have to say this might be where the
experiment ends.
Grass
clippings decompose very quickly and when I shoved my GLOVED hands into the
garbage can to pull up a handful of clippings, I could feel the heat in my palms
and it was uncomfortably hot!
I was putting
the clippings around tender new plants and, though it was early spring and the
ground was cold, I immediately worried that I was cooking those little babies.
Grass
clippings smell terrible as they decompose. The stench was so bad from that
little spot by the front porch that my daughter wouldn't let me open windows.
There are
other issues with grass mulch, too. Though there were no harmful chemicals in
the grass, I was probably transferring weed seeds, if not grass seed, to my
bed.
The grass
mulch is an unattractive yellow-brown. And though all that nitrogen is a good
thing, flowering plants need other nutrients.
So much for
the idea of using all those grass clippings as mulch.
But composting
those grass clippings can be tricky, too. They tend to form an impenetrable mat
in the compost pile and have to be worked in carefully. It is almost like
making an oil and vinegar emulsion.
The growth
spurt in the lawn is nearly over for this season and my DH can return to
leaving the clippings on the ground, where they will do no harm and plenty of
good.
The plants in
my gardens have grown, too, and they cover much of the same ground that mulch
would mask.
But if I can
find a few bags of mulch on sale, I might buy them for those bald spots.
And next year,
it will be back to mulching.
Growing Vegetables in Winter
It’s easy to
find locally grown fresh produce in summer, but come winter what’s a
salad-hungry Granite-stater to do? If you’re a gardener, the answer is easy -
grow your own winter hardy vegetables.
While tomatoes and corn won’t flourish through a New Hampshire winter,
there are dozens of crops that will, including lettuce, broccoli, kale, chard,
collards, spinach, turnips, carrots, beets and parsley. All it takes is some
low-tech protection from the cold and careful planning.
Many New
Englanders already use cold-frames to extend the growing season. The photo to
the left was taken in the early 1950s - it was built on the south-side of our
house by my in-laws out of cast-off windows. The bottomless boxes are usually built with one
side higher than the other so that the top is slanted. It is then covered with
a hinged window of glass or plastic. The box is stashed in a warm spot in the
garden (next to a south-facing wall is a favorite location) and the plants are
grown inside the box.
Cold frames
can be great for small crops like baby lettuce, but you have to watch them like
a hawk. Leave the top closed on a sunny day, and you’ll fry the seedlings.
Forget to close it at night, and you’ll have a salad slushie in the morning.
Luckily, garden supply companies sell temperature triggered automatic openers
that can keep an eye on your veggies while you’re at work. Still, even the most
tricked-out cold frame is no match for a killing frost; when nighttime
temperatures regularly fall below 24 degrees, cold frame veggies either die or
go dormant.
However, if
your cold-frame is inside a bigger cold frame, you should be able to harvest
fresh vegetables all winter. This technique has been perfected by Maine
market-gardener Eliot Coleman and is the mainstay of his profitable vegetable
business. Coleman’s latest book, “The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year-Round
Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses,”
is a must-read for anyone interested in harvesting salad greens and other
vegetables when the snow is flying.
Eliot Coleman
spent years studying the techniques of intensive market growers in France, the
so-called maraîchers, farmers who tilled tiny plots within the city limits of
Paris during the nineteenth century. Using the city’s abundant horse manure as
both a fertilizer and a source of warmth for tender fruits vegetables, the
maraîchers not only fed their fellow-citizens year-round, but exported
high-quality produce all over Europe.
Eliot Coleman
still hews to the maraîchers’ basic tenets - keep soil fertility high using
organic materials like manure; plant intensively and rotate crops; figure out
what varieties grow best in your conditions; and protect crops from the cold to
extend the season. Coleman, however, has the added advantage of modern
materials and technology, such as special fabrics that keep plants warm while
letting in the light, plastic-covered greenhouses and drip irrigation.
He estimates
that every layer of protection a farmer gives his vegetables is akin to moving
the garden 500 miles south. By growing
his winter crops inside an unheated plastic-covered greenhouse, and covering
them with spun-poly fabric when the temperatures drop below freezing, he is
able to create a Zone 8 microclimate on his Zone 5 farm.
Cold isn’t the
only problem for northern farmers, though. Light (or the lack of it) is another
limiting factor for winter growers, but it’s not a deal-breaker. You might be
surprised to learn that Concord, New Hampshire sits at a latitude of 43.208
degrees - about the same as the sunny Mediterranean city of Marseilles. Even
with a winter cloud cover, we get enough light in New Hampshire to grow dozens
of vegetables right through the darkest part of the year.
As long as
daylight lasts ten or more hours, most cold-hardy plants (with some protection
from extreme weather) will continue growing.
If such plants are well-established by the time days grow short, they
will fall into a dormant state during the dark days of winter, not really
growing but not dying either, ready to be picked whenever you like.
Around here,
the big drop-off in light happens between October and November, when there’s a
27% reduction in day-length. November, December and January all have around 9
hours of light a day. In February, day-length jumps back up by 25% and finally
tops ten hours.
What this
means is that with proper protection, vegetables will grow (albeit slowly)
right into November. Those that aren’t harvested for Thanksgiving and Christmas
feasts, if they have had sufficient time to grow before November, will go
dormant for the three darkest months and then spring back to life and growth in
February. Even plants that have been killed to the ground by frost will often
regrow in February, and seeds planted in midwinter, if watered and protected,
will sprout in the growing light of late winter.
Greenhouses,
though, are relatively expensive and take up a great deal of space, which is
why in recent years New England farmers have embraced “high tunnels.” High
tunnels look something like miniature hoop-houses. They’re constructed of 10
foot lengths of 1/2 inch electrical conduit bent into a hoops about 5 feet
across. The ends of the hoops are inserted 5 or 6 inches into the soil; the
hoops are spaced about 5 feet apart so that they form the skeleton of a tunnel.
The garden bed
beneath the hoops is planted either with seeds or seedlings and then the hoops
are covered with light spun-poly fabric that’s held in place with sandbags or
rocks. Some of these crops, like fast-growing mesclun, will be harvested before
winter really sets in. Others, such as onions, are timed to get big enough
during the fall growing season that they can survive winter dormancy,
reemerging to produce super-early crops in the spring.
High hoops can
also be used to protect already established crops that are frost-tender, like
peppers and tomatoes, as well as to extend the season for well-established cold-hardy
crops like carrots and lettuce when an early freeze threatens. They are also
invaluable in spring to protect crops from cold weather and pests like flea
beetles.
For crops
intended to overwinter and resume growing in spring, an additional layer of
plastic is added over the spun-poly fabric in late November or early December,
when the weather gets to be too much for the delicate fabric. The plastic, when
pulled taught and firmly weighted at both ends of the hoops, should stand up to
snow and wind all winter. When spring arrives, the plastic is lifted to vent
the tunnel and removed altogether when the weather settles.
The trickiest
parts of four-season growing are choosing the right varieties and timing their
planting. Though certain kinds of vegetables are regarded as cold-hardy,
broccoli and lettuce for instance, not all varieties of broccoli and lettuce
are ideal for winter production. Seed catalogues geared toward northern
growers, like Johnny’s and Fedco, are full of good advice about which varieties
do best during cold, short days, as is Eliot Coleman’s book (click here for a
list of cold-hardy vegetables and recommended varieties).
Keep in mind
that certain kinds of vegetables are sensitive to day length and you’ll need to
seek out varieties that don’t mind short days. Many kinds of onions, for
instance, will only form bulbs when days are long and nights are short and
these varieties won’t be happy in a winter greenhouse. However, the short-day
varieties of onions usually grown in the South, such as Walla Walla Sweet and
Vidalia, planted in fall will overwinter in high hoop tunnels to produce a very
early onion crop in spring.
When to plant
is the other difficult part of the equation. Seed catalogues and packets
usually show the number of days it takes from seeding (or in some cases,
transplanting) to maturity. For example, Black Seeded Simpson, a cold-hardy
lettuce, is, on average, ready to harvest 42 days after seeding. In fall,
however, when the weather is colder and days are growing shorter, it could take
a week or two longer to get a mature head of lettuce.
To be on the
safe side, add twelve to the number of days to maturity on the seed packet. For
outdoor seeding, use this number to count back from the first expected frost in
your area to find a planting date. In Concord, there’s a 50% chance we’ll see a
frost by October 1. So if we figure Black Seeded Simpson lettuce planted as a
fall crop takes 54 days to maturity, that means we should seed it in the garden
by the beginning of August - if it is not going to be protected in any way.
Black Seeded
Simpson, though, as well as many other varieties of lettuce, can take
temperatures well below freezing and bounce back again, especially if it has
the protection of a cold-frame, greenhouse or high tunnel. This means lettuce
can be seeded as late as September for fall and winter crops that will be
protected. In fact, lettuce started inside and transplanted as well-established
seedlings can be transferred to a high hoop or greenhouse as late as October.
Keep in mind
that you want transplants to be big enough to be well-established when the cold
and dark set in, but if they’re too big they may tend to bolt or be frost
sensitive. Even Eliot Coleman with his years of experience says he’s still
experimenting with varieties and planting schedules.
Plan on plenty
of experimentation and some failures along the way, but don’t give up for the
rewards are well worth the effort. Last year for the first time we harvested
fresh food from our unheated greenhouse during every month of the year. There’s
nothing that cures the winter blues faster than a homegrown salad in January.
Timing is
everything. To start your seeds on time, you need to know when in relation to
the frost-free date in spring to plant them. If you need help determining your
spring frost-free date, call your county extension agent who can tell you for
certain.
Horti-Culture Corner
Tomato haiku
left by the chipmunk
a half-eaten tomato-
salad on the deck
— C. Hicks (www.mnn.com)
Seed Starting Chart
A handy chart for knowing when to plant
http://www.organicgardening.com
Go to the following url to download the chart.
Write your
frost-free date in the blank space at the top of the chart.
Get a calendar and add or subtract the number
of weeks in the "Safe to Set Out Time" column. This is the
"Setting Out Date" when you can safely plant the crop to the garden.
Write it in the last column.
Take each date from Column 5 ("Setting
Out Date"), subtract the number of weeks shown for that crop in column 3
("Weeks from Sowing") and record that date in column 2 ("When to
Start Inside").
Top 10 World’s Hottest Peppers
The previous world champion, Moruga scorpion has been
dethroned!! The new Guiness World
Records World’s Hottest Pepper is the Carolina Reaper. As of November 20, 2013
the Carolina Reaper has been throned as the Hottest Pepper. [SHU = Scoville
Heat Unit (A measure of Spiciness) - The average jalapeño ranks at about 5,000
units]
1. Carolina Reaper
2,200,000 SHU
There is nothing normal about this pepper. It was bred
for heat and that it is. Oddly enough this pepper has excellent flavor as well.
Officially the Worlds Hottest Pepper as ranked by Guinness Records.
2. Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Blend (Moruga Scorpion) 2,009,231 SHU
Straight from the depths of hell, Moruga Scorpion is a
rare sought after pepper that was only just recently discovered
3. 7 Pot Brain Strain ~ 1,900,000 SHU
4. 7 Pot Primo ~1,900,000 SHU
5. 7 Pod Douglah
1,853,936 SHU
6. Trinidad Scorpion Butch T 1,463,700 SHU
No doubt it’s insanely hot, but other peppers have been
proven to be hotter.
7. Naga Viper
1,349,000 SHU
Extremely rare pepper cultivated in the UK. Combination
of many different peppers and years of cross pollination created this variety
of “Super HOT” pepper
8. Other 7 Pod Varieties (Red [Giant], Barrackpore, SR
Strain, Primo, Jonah, Brain Strain, Yellow)
1,000,000 – 1,300,000 SHU
9.Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper) 1,041,427 SHU
The most famous “Super Hot” due to the amount of press it
has received in the past. Many mistakenly still believe it is the World’s
Hottest.
10. Red Savina Habanero 500,000 SHU
Back in the early years of superhots the Red Savina
Habanero was KING! He has since been dethroned and many peppers have passed him
in heat. The Red Savina just barely makes the Top 10, but does so in fashion
with its great flavor and extreme heat.
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