amygwh

State of the Garden, mid-June

18 June, 2021 by amygwh

It was a long and interesting spring in my garden, with the usual round of successes and set-backs that included excessive rain, an abundance of slugs, and a fairly steady-but-small harvest of root crops and greens. Currently, we are bringing in tomatoes and cucumbers every day, with an occasional summer squash or eggplant. The summer squashes (both green and yellow zucchini) are a bit of a miracle at this point.

The squash plants have been attacked by squash vine borers and by cucumber pickle-worms. Half the plants have been killed by the borers, but I have done my usual treatment for borers a couple of times now, and the remaining plants are still un-wilted on sunny days and still putting out squashes, some of which do not (the miracle continues…) contain pickle-worms.

Zucchini plants showing the mound of compost heaped over stems that have been treated for borers.

My “usual treatment” for squash vine borers is to slit the stem open lengthwise in the area that looks damaged, saturate the inside of the stem with a liquid version of Bt for caterpillars (I use one called Thuricide), spray the Bt all up the length of the rest of the stem, then heap compost over the slit-open part of the stem, as shown in the picture above.

This treatment usually gives me at least a couple of extra weeks of zucchini. You can read more about squash vine borers, with more detail of the treatment and pictures of the damage, in my article on Summer Squash in the Southern Garden.

Plastic tub containing harvested tomatoes and arugula from the garden

In addition to the summer veggies currently coming into the kitchen, we have some volunteer arugula. I had let my entire 3×3 foot patch of arugula go to seed in the spring, so that I could save seeds for next year, and some of the seedpods shattered in the garden. Sometimes, the plants that come up on their own are the best surprise!

Pretty soon, though, those volunteer plants will start sending up flower stalks. At that point, I will pull them from the garden.

Also in the garden right now

Meanwhile, we have okra seedlings coming up in the space where we recently harvested the sweet corn, many varieties of peppers that will soon be adding to the daily harvest, and eggplants finally putting out an abundance of flowers and very small fruits.

One day's harvest of cucumbers, green and yellow zucchinis, and a red tomato.

Black-eyed pea plants have their first flower-buds, winter squashes are forming on a hilariously long vine, the sweet potato slips are all planted, and even though a mole tunneled under the area where the watermelon seeds are planted, one seedling is growing well. This is all good news.

And some flowers

One of my “special projects” for the garden this year is adding more flowers for pollinators. My garden seems to have plenty of “pest insects”, but we are woefully short on beneficial bees and flower-flies, which are (in general) more efficient pollinators than butterflies and moths.

Anise hyssop and dill are two of the flowers that I planted with pollinators in mind. Back in north Georgia, flowers on these plants would be covered up in bees and flower-flies. Here, there are times when I do not see any insects nearby, even when the flowers are fully open on a beautiful, sunny day.

In other news

We visited a son in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago, and we were able to see the Brood X cicadas. They weren’t too abundant right near my son’s home, but when we hiked in the Forks of the River Wildlife Management area, their collective sound rose and fell in a rhythm almost like breathing. The experience was pretty glorious.

I am happy that I did not miss this round of the 17-year cicadas.

Hope that your gardens are all growing well, and that you also are having some pretty-glorious moments!

Learning from a Soil Test

28 February, 2021 by amygwh

I finally sent off a couple of soil samples to the state testing lab. The soil here is new to me (sand, not north Georgia’s red clay), and last summer’s garden was less productive than I had hoped. Getting a baseline set of measurements will boost my understanding of what the soil needs to produce more good food.

The routine test for home gardens provides quite a bit of useful information, but I also paid for a couple of extra bits, the organic matter content and percent nitrogen. One sample that I sent in (labeled Veg) was a composite of two scoops each from seven garden beds. The other (labeled Fruit) was a composite of several scoops taken down the length of a newly-dug 6×30 foot bed that will be home to some berries and other small fruiting plants.

The results came back, and they contained some surprises. Here is the information in table form:

Component	Veg — 7 garden beds	Fruit — one garden bed
pH	6.4	5.4
Phosphorus (P)	353 lbs/acre (very high)	104 lbs/acre (high)
Potassium (K)	171 lbs/acre (low)	39 lbs/acre (very low)
Magnesium	334 lbs/acre (very high)	79 lbs/acre (high)
Zinc	28.6 lbs/acre (very high)	22 lbs/acre (very high)
Calcium	2331 lbs/acre	496 lbs/acre
Soluble Salts	0.1 (low)	0.1 (low)
% Organic Matter	4.2	3.6
% Nitrogen	0.16	0.11

What this all means

Seeing the numbers for the two areas side-by-side makes the differences stand out, but I will go over the components measured, one by one, to explain how I am using the information.

pH

For both samples, pH was on the acid end of the spectrum. The pH of 6.4 for the Veg sample is excellent for most vegetables, and no additions of limestone were recommended for that set of garden beds. However, the pH for the Fruit sample, at 5.4, was too low, too acidic, for many fruits. Blueberries will be happy at 5.4, but not much else. The Fruit test results came with a recommendation to add limestone: 75 pounds per 1000 square feet, to bring that pH up a bit.

The surprise here is that I had used a simple, home pH test kit last spring on part of the vegetable garden area. The pH as measured with the kit was at least 7 (neutral) or possibly higher. The pH kit relies on color-matching, and it seemed to me that my sample could have been between the colors for seven and eight.

We did find, though, when digging the beds, a couple of the plastic tags that come with tomato plants, that tell which variety they are. This suggests that a previous owner also had a veggie garden in this area, and they probably added lime to bring up the pH. Last spring, the soil sample for measuring the pH was from just a couple of beds, because it took awhile to get them all dug. It is possible that the new sample, a composite from seven beds, includes a mix of high and low pH areas.

I will need to check the pH of each of the seven planting beds to figure out which have a higher pH and which have a lower pH. Some may need a little limestone to improve the pH.

Phosphorus

Just wow. Neither of my planting areas needs any more phosphorus, possibly for years. These came back High (Fruit) and Very High (Veg). It may seem as though having high nutrient levels would be a good thing, but high levels of phosphorus can interfere with a plant’s ability to take up micronutrients, like zinc, that it may also need for good growth and productivity. The Texas A&M article Phosphorus — Too much and plants may suffer indicates that phosphorus levels above 150 ppm may harm plant growth, and levels above 350 ppm can kill some plants. It may be a miracle that my garden has been able to support any crops at all!

The high phosphorus levels mean that I should avoid composts that include manures, especially chicken manure, since those can add extra phosphorus to the soil.

My fertilizers also need to be low on phosphorus. Most fertilizers are labeled with the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium they contain. These are listed in that order, as N-P-K (nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium). That middle number, for my garden, needs to be as low as possible. The good news here is that one fertilizer that I keep on hand is a fish fertilizer labeled 5-1-1. This product offers plenty of nitrogen with a low amount of phosphorus.

Potassium

Measurements for potassium (K) came back low for both areas.

My 2018 article about potassium sources for organic gardens describes pros and cons of several potassium sources. In addition, my Garden Planner and Notebook contains, on page 12, a list of some commonly available organic fertilizer ingredients and what nutrients each one provides. Looking down the list, I can see that greensand is the one I will want to use.

Wood ashes add potassium but also can raise the soil pH. Since the “soil” here generally seems to have a low pH, that is not a drawback. The issue is more one of finding the wood ashes. Kelp meal would be a possible source to try, except that it can also add phosphorus, which I need to avoid. And, sul-po-mag brings magnesium with it, which the garden also seems to have in abundance.

Magnesium

Measurements for magnesium content for both planting areas came back as high (Fruit) and very high (Veg). No magnesium is needed, apparently, even though epsom salts (a magnesium source) did seem to help last year. I wonder whether the super-high levels of phosphorus made it harder for plants to use the magnesium that was already in the soil

Alternatively, it is possible that the magnesium in the soil was tied up somehow, bonded in a way that made it less available to the plants. Also, if the soil pH is very low, plants are less able to take in nutrients they need, like magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium. So, low pH could have been a factor in some of the Veg beds. (Another reason to check soil pH in each of the seven beds…)

The limestone recommended to bring up the pH in the Fruit area also will add more magnesium to that space, since limestone contains both calcium and magnesium in abundance.

Zinc

Zinc measurements came back high in both planting areas. If all the yards around here are high in zinc, that might explain the success of pecan trees locally. Pecans are big users of zinc. Many yards here have at least one pecan tree, and we saw lots of pecans in the fall. In north Georgia, pecan trees often need supplementation with zinc in order to make good crops, since zinc is less abundant in the soil up there.

Calcium

Calcium level in the Veg sample was a lot higher than the level in the Fruit soil sample, but a value-judgement of whether the levels were low-medium-high-or-very high was not given. A Mississippi State University Extension article includes this bit of information about calcium availability in soils that have low pH, such as in the Fruit sample:

Soils with favorable pH levels are normally not deficient in calcium. Acid soils with calcium contents of 500 pounds per acre or less are deficient for legumes, especially peanuts, alfalfa, clovers, and soybeans. At this level, limited root system crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and cucurbite would also need additional calcium. Soluble calcium is available as the Ca2+ ion and is needed for peanuts at pegging time and for peppers and tomatoes to prevent blossom end rot.
Secondary Plant Nutrients: Calcium, Magnesium and Sulfur ; publication number IS1039, by Larry Oldham, phd, 2019

For my garden areas, this means, again, that checking soil pH for each of the seven beds in the Veg area will be a good thing to do, in case any of these show a super-low pH. Maybe low calcium explains the wimpiness of last year’s green bean plants!

It also provides more support to add the recommended limestone to the Fruit area to improve plant health.

Soluble salts

The low measurements for soluble salts were another big surprise. Here we are, just five blocks from the beach, and the soluble salts are low! I will count this as a blessing. Many garden crops are less productive when soluble salts are high.

Organic matter and percent nitrogen

These measurements are just to provide a little more information about this new (to me) soil. The percentages of organic matter are better than I had expected. At 4.2 and 3.6, I may have to stop calling my yard a sand dune and refer to it instead as a sandy loam.

When working in the garden, it just seems like a lot of sand, but my past 30 years of working in north Georgia’s red clay may be coloring my judgement here. However, in that clay soil, I would want a higher percentage of organic matter, to help break up the clay and improve how it both holds and drains water.

To work on these numbers, to boost them slightly higher, I will need to rely more on cover crops than on composts and manures (because of that phosphorus problem…).

Fertilizers for the year, based on the soil test results

The soil test reports recommended additions of 34-0-0 fertilizer, for the nitrogen, and muriate of potash (0-0-60) for the potassium. These are both conventional fertilizers that are in the form of soluble salts. Muriate of potash is, essentially, potassium chloride. (You may recall from a long-ago science class that table salt is sodium chloride.) These salts dissolve readily in water and are instantly available to plants as soon as they are watered in to the garden.

However, I am an organic gardener. Soluble salts are not part of my game plan. Hence, the decision to use greensand as a potassium source. In addition, I will be adding some Azomite (not listed in the Garden Planner and Notebook), another kind of pulverized rocks, as a source of additional micronutrients and a tiny bit more potassium.

My nitrogen source, selected by looking at page 12 of my Garden Planner and Notebook, could be either feather meal or alfalfa meal. Feather meal smells a lot like dead things, but the odor only lingers for a few days. No local stores carry feather meal, though, which leaves me (thankfully) with the better-smelling alfalfa meal.

I plan to follow Kevin Meehan’s instructions for DIY alfalfa fertilizer, posted on Rodale Institute’s website, which uses alfalfa pellets that can be found at any local feed store. This should be — yet another — interesting adventure, along with the other “special projects” I have listed in my Garden Planner for the year. Wish me luck?

The Radish Capital of America

21 January, 2021 by amygwh

When we moved to Long Beach, MS, we did not know that it had once been known as the Radish Capital of America. That information appears in the history of the town as posted on the website of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Museum of Photography.

Had we known, we might have tried to move here sooner. My Joe loves radishes.

I did some hunting in the old newspaper archives (online) of the Library of Congress to see what additional information I could find about the radishes here. This is some of what I found:

From the Mississippi Gulf Coast the Northern market is supplied with the early radish and lettuce, beans and potatoes. Long Beach is called the radish town. The early radish built up this agricultural community, and prosperity smiles upon this well-built-up town, with its thrifty and enterprising citizens from the North and West, who have invested both their money and brawn in the soil.
The Sea Coast Echo, October 2, 1909, in Bay St. Louis, MS

The truckers of Longbeach and other coast points are shipping a great deal of radishes, lettuce and other produce to Northern markets and receiving handsome figures for it. They are in a position to reach markets early and get the highest possible prices. Think of Mississippi shipping vegetables in January, and that, too, raised without the aid of glass or other artificial methods. It is a great old State and the sooner our people fully appreciate that fact the better for all concerned.
The Oxford Eagle, February 1, 1906, in Oxford, MS — note: “truckers” refers to truck farmers

Long Beach, Miss., March 12 – Thirteen cars of vegetables were shipped from this parish last week, radishes, lettuce, shallots, carrots, turnips and cabbage making the variety.
St. Tammany Farmer, March 18, 1911, St. Tammany, LA — note: “cars” refers to train cars, not automobiles

The Long Beach truck farmers are rushing shipments of radishes to the Northern markets for Thanksgiving Day.
The Port Gibson Reveille, November 18, 1909, Port Gibson, MS

And then there was this great little story:

Red radishes, four round types and three long types, in a shallow basket — The long ones are ‘Cincinnati Market’ radishes.

Long Beach, Miss., is the home of the radish king in the Mississippi Valley. His name is Richard Inglis, and five years ago he visited Mississippi on an excursion from Youngstown, O. Having his eyes with him, he perceived such wasted opportunities that he paid $6 an acre for 20 acres of sandy loam which seemed suited for vegetables. Since then he has purchased 200 acres adjoining his original purchase, but he had to pay $35 an acre as the penalty for demonstrating to the natives what the land was really worth. There is more money in radishes than in anything else, because they mature in 20 to 50 days, according to the weather and the amount of fertilizer, and four crops can be raised on the same ground during the same season. Smith and Inglis have raised as high as 100 barrels of radishes to the acre, counting 600 bunches of five each to the barrel.
The Democratic Advocate, April 9, 1909, Westminster, MD

The radish that was grown here back in the early 1900s, that boosted the livelihoods of so many farmers, was not one of the small round radishes that we mostly see in stores today. Instead, it was a longer radish.

In 2018, MS Extension published an article about a search for the radish variety that made Long Beach famous; MS Extension Horticulturist Gary Bachman determined that the ‘Cincinnati Market Radish’ is the likeliest candidate. Not too surprisingly, after I read that article last spring, when I was learning about the history of Long Beach, I ordered a packet of seeds for the Long Beach ‘Cincinnati Market’ radishes.

Other information gleaned from the old newspaper pages indicated that most of the truck farms and market gardens were on the north side of town. The soil there is more suited to farming than is the sand dune where my garden is located. However, my sandy yard has produced an abundance of radishes for us in our first year of gardening here.

I think I will be able to harvest good radishes from the yard at least 8 months out of the year, possibly more. The problem months will be the hot ones, in summer.

My copy of the Whole Seed Catalog from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds arrived today. The radish section is full of beautiful radish varieties. I will be re-ordering ‘Malaga’ radish seeds this year, because they are delicious and my current seed packet is almost empty, but I am going to hand the catalog to Joe to let him pick a couple more varieties to try.

Can I Grow Food Organically on a Sand Dune?

31 December, 2020 by amygwh

This past summer, I was told by a farmer at a local farmer’s market that growing food organically is impossible here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. However, I have found that to be not precisely true.

What is true is that my organically-managed garden is supplying a small but steady flow of veggies to the kitchen. What is also true is that a lot of those veggies have been eggplants and okra. As long as I love eggplants and okra, my summer veggie garden will be a smashing success. Ditto for radishes in the spring and fall.

Gulf coast early fall harvest of okra, peppers, greens, and one winter radish.

Unlike market farmers, home gardeners like me have the benefit of not needing to compete with the produce section of the local supermarket. We don’t expect our gardens to supply all the standard veggies the whole year round. This means we can focus our efforts on crops that don’t need chemical interventions to produce food in our yards.

It can also help if a gardener is a bit flexible in how to measure success in the garden.

Part of the path to success is identifying which exact crops will produce well in our gardens, then growing and appreciating those crops. Another part of the path is to keep in mind the part of the Serenity Prayer that reminds us to not get too fussed about the “things I cannot change” and focusing instead on knowing which things can be changed and which can’t.

My sand-dune-based garden

This Gulf Coast sand dune, 28 feet above sea level in plant hardiness zone 9a, is very different from the location of my previous 30 years of gardening in the red clay of the Georgia Piedmont region in hardiness zone 7b. In the “things that cannot be changed” category, the soil here is, as mentioned already, mostly sand. I can pile compost on top of it, but I cannot change the basic sandiness of the yard. I also cannot add more cold to our winters, which means some plants that need a lot of cold, like Rhubarb and many varieties of apples, will not thrive here. The flip side of that is that now I can grow some sub-tropical fruits.

Radishes pulled from the garden, with leaves still attached. Some radishes are round and red, some round and purple, some long and red. — November radishes, three kinds.

Many crops are more adaptable than Rhubarb and cold-loving fruits, especially the annuals that I usually grow in the garden. In our move from Georgia last spring, I brought seed packets for some of those crops left over from the past couple of years. Some of those crop varieties have worked well, and some haven’t.

I’ve already noted that eggplants, okra, and radishes have been wildly productive here. However, a whole lot of crops have been less happy here on my sand dune.

A sadness of beans

Bean crops, which always totally rocked the garden in north Georgia, have not done well here. The first planting gave us a few handfuls of beans, not the usual superabundance, before they died, and I was puzzled, but planted more. When the next planting died, I had to start thinking harder about what could be wrong. English peas planted in early fall met the same fate as the second sad planting of beans. They just faded away.

I can see a few possible reasons for the problem. One is a lack of some essential nutrient, and another is a high soluble salt content in the soil. Until I can deliver a soil sample to the state testing lab, those are both just guesses.

A third possible reason is the relatively high pH of my sandy soil, which is way above 7. Beans tend to prefer a lower pH. This year, as I prepare the planting beds, I will be digging in some sulfur to start bringing that down (sulfur can take years to have any effect). In addition, I hope to hunt up some gypsum to use for a calcium source, since that can also help alleviate the high pH — and it might help with the soluble salts, too.

There is a good chance that I can change the soil pH a little bit, and I can amend the soil to bring in missing nutrients. I might not be able to do much about soluble salts, since my garden is only five blocks from the beach. Salt is in the air! If salts are the problem, beans may never do well here. It will be interesting to find out.

Every crop turns a bit yellow as it grows

As my summer crops grew this year, I saw that they all became less richly green over time. Back in north Georgia, a little bit of Epsom salts (an affiliate link to the product), a source of soluble magnesium, would fix that when extra nitrogen (like in a fish-based fertilizer — see article at this link) didn’t seem to help.

I discovered that Epsom salts works here, too, but they need to be applied much more frequently. The sandy “soil” lets dissolved nutrients, like the magnesium in Epsom salts, wash away, down out of the root zone, very quickly. Clay soils, like those in north Georgia, hold on to nutrients much more tightly, keeping them up in the root zone longer.

This summer, I ended up needing to apply a weak solution of Epsom salts (two rounded tablespoons dissolved in two gallons of water, then applied as evenly as I could manage over two 3×12 foot beds) every couple of weeks to keep the plants looking healthy. For my fall crops, this schedule stretched out to 3-to-4 weeks.

One item on my “to purchase” list this spring is a big bag of a crushed-rock-magnesium source that will not wash down through the sand so quickly. Big, gravel-sized chunks are my preference, but more finely pulverized products are easier to find. I am considering Sul-Po-Mag and Azomite (two affiliate links) as possible sources.

With some additional research into sources and work in applying what I’ve found to the garden, there is a good chance that I can fix the low-magnesium problem.

Other crops that grew less well than preferred

My corn patch was a bust. We ended up with a few patchy ears of sweet corn, which was a disappointment. I think the cause was a mineral-nutrient deficiency problem. I plan to try again this coming year after amending the soil more intensively (I had added a lot of purchased compost this past spring.)

Zucchini squash was very productive for a very short time, then was killed off by squash vine borers. The winter squash did not do well at all. I had planted a butternut, which can withstand the borers, but the squashes that the plants produced were tiny. Then, the leaves all got mildewed and the plants died. For winter squashes, I will — again — keep working to improve the soil with composts and mineral amendments and also try some different varieties. I know that ‘Seminole’ pumpkin squash should do well here, but I am hoping for something thicker-fleshed, sweeter, and with a shell that won’t require a sledgehammer to break through (I have grown it before…).

Sweet potatoes were not nearly as productive as I would have preferred. The good news is that I did dig up about 20 pounds of sweets from the garden. My experience in north Georgia, though, shows me that a much larger harvest is possible from the number of plants grown. From similar space and number of plants in Georgia, the harvest was typically twice that amount.

Tomatoes from the fall plants, brought inside in late November.

Tomatoes in the spring were not very productive. A couple of plants just plain died (drowned, when the garden flooded) and the rest quit making fruit in mid-summer. Apparently, that is a normal occurrence here, caused by nighttime high temperatures. The late-summer tomatoes that I grew were only just beginning to ripen before our first frost on the last night of November.

These tomato issues can be fixed (I hope) with changes in the timing of my plantings. Luckily, this year I am already here, and the garden beds are dug, so I should be able to get tomato plants into the ground well before April. (Our last frost should be around the end of February.) Last year, I was just starting to prepare the garden beds in April, because we moved here at the end of March.

Beets have been a bust. I planted one set of seeds in the late summer, and they came up, but then the little plants faded away. A second planting produced more little plants, and most of them are still present, but they have not grown much.

Stink bugs! Caterpillars!

In addition to soil problems, there were some pests. This is not really a surprise, since tiny plant-eaters are everywhere. My two largest categories of pests were stink bugs and their relatives, and caterpillars of several species.

Immature leaf-footed bugs, the nymph stage, on Southern peas.

Stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs damaged tomatoes, peppers, and the Southern peas. Most evenings beginning in early summer, I spent a few minutes out in the garden with a large plastic cup of soapy water, hunting for these pests. A whole platoon of immature leaf-footed bugs could be dislodged into “the cup of doom”, where they would drown, with one shake of the bean, leaf, tomato, or pepper on which they were gathered.

Caterpillars plagued the garden until late summer. Every leafy green vegetable that is normally recommended for the summer garden was attacked, in addition to tomatoes and peppers. Weirdly, though, the caterpillars that I expected to see on cabbage-family plants in fall never appeared. My kale, collards, and arugula have been unmolested. I count this as a blessing.

Fire ants

Fire ant mounds were all over the yard when we moved in. It took awhile for me to get around to dealing with them, but I did find that the Texas A&M recipe, noted in my second article on fire ants, that uses Medina Orange Oil (affiliate link) and Blue Dawn dish soap works great here. Smaller mounds were destroyed with one treatment. Larger mounds took two or three tries. As new colonies have moved in, I have continued using the DIY recipe. This recipe is not strictly organic, considering the range of ingredients in the Blue Dawn dish soap. When my giant bottle of Blue Dawn is finally empty, I plan to try using liquid castile soap, which does not include the petrochemical ingredients, as a replacement for the dish soap.

Before I started seriously hunting down and destroying the fire ant colonies, the ants were eating okra in the garden. It was a surprise that the ants on the okra really were fire ants, not like the kind of ants back in Georgia that farmed aphids on the okra. Figuring this out was painful. Welts from fire ant bites/stings take a long time to heal.

Some happier crops

Plenty of crops have done pretty well in my sand dune garden. Here are some happy pictures of examples:

The plan for now

One great feature of this garden is that digging holes and creating new planting beds is much easier than in the clay in north Georgia. Even better, wet sand never sticks to the shovel in huge messy globs like the red clay can. However, the big drawback is that the sand doesn’t hold onto much of anything. Water and nutrients — like from fertilizers — wash right through.

To improve this situation, I will keep adding composts — my own compost pile is far enough along to reduce the amount I need to buy this year. In addition, I will be buying those crushed rock sources of nutrients, to improve the health and productivity of my crops, as noted above. These additions should make organic gardening in the sand more successful.

In future posts (I promise, they will be more frequent in the coming year), there will be more information about the actual plants in the garden.

I hope that your gardening has provided good food through 2020, and that the coming year brings more garden adventures and successes! Keep well.

Gardening into Fall

12 August, 2020 by amygwh

Even though I know a lot about “how to garden”, it will be awhile before I am an expert on gardening in this new, sub-tropical, Gulf Coast yard. If I were still in North Georgia, I would be getting ready to plant the first of my fall crops.

Back in 2017, in early August, I was already preparing to plant that Georgia garden. By late August in 2013, much of the fall garden was already planted.

The best timing for planting fall crops depends on two factors:

estimated date of the first frost
estimated time it takes for a crop to reach harvest-size

For that previous garden, I knew that the first frost, on average, occurred around the first of November. Many of my favorite fall crops needed at least 70 days to reach full size, and the cool weather of fall usually slowed them down enough that the “70 days” listed on the back of a seed packet could translate to “80-90-or more days” in my garden. As a result, planting started NOW.

Here on the Gulf Coast, I have an extra month before it is time to plant fall crops. This pushes most of my fall-garden planting to mid-September. Luckily, a I wrote a book that I can use as a guide in sorting out the exact planting schedule for this new gardening situation.

In my garden now

Meanwhile, I am still learning about what grows in the hotter and muggier (than North Georgia) weather that this new garden is in. Local gardens have already been emptied of most summer crops. One nearby vegetable garden has okra still in it, and another has eggplants and peppers. That is all.

My garden has all of those, with okra and eggplants as the strongest producers. Most of my pepper plants had a late start, and they are just beginning to step up their production of peppers.

From experience in Georgia, I know that Southern peas and peanuts can also do well in hot, muggy conditions, so those are in this garden. I’ve also recently planted a new patch of ‘Provider’ green beans, to harvest in (hopefully) early October. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

The sweet potatoes, another crop that produces reliably through a hot summer, planted right at the first of April, are muscling out of the ground. Those will be ready to dig up in early September, leaving that bed open for the first of the fall planting.

Today, I pulled out the rest of the tomato plants. They are making flowers, but not setting fruit. About a week and a half ago, I started seeds for a couple of tomato plants, a paste type called ‘Wuhib’, so we can have tomatoes again in November. Wish me luck with those?

Here is a visual “report” on the current garden:

We have been visited by some beautiful insects, in addition to the (sometimes also beautiful) insect pests. Caterpillars, stink bugs, pickleworms, and thrips are on the pests list.

Butterflies, enormous moths, bees, and iridescent flies are on the list of beautiful insects that make me stop and spend extra time smiling in the garden.

I hope that your gardens are all growing and productive, and that you are keeping safe and well.

When Things Go Wrong in the Garden

15 June, 2020 by amygwh

Our new garden on the Mississippi Gulf Coast already is providing plenty of food and education. So far, besides the early spring radishes, we have harvested ripe cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapeño peppers, about a dozen zucchini, and several small bunches of green beans.

In addition, we have harvested a few gallons of wild dewberries not far from the house, and I have identified several other wild edible plants in our yard and neighborhood.

This all sounds amazing, right? Like we have moved to a land of abundance.

Swiss chard and Chinese Multicolored Spinach plants growing in the garden. Sticks standing around the plants deter squirrels from digging nearby.

Challenges in our Gulf Coast garden

Let me just list, though, some of the challenges facing the garden (and gardener!) in this yard, starting with zoological forms:

Fire ants — many, many colonies — which will take awhile to discourage. I have plans, though, based on my organic fire ant control articles, part 1 and part 2.
Moles, which have tunneled through the garden, damaging roots and making it impossible for some plants — the ones with tunnels right underneath — to develop deep root systems.
Squirrels, which dig random holes in the garden and uproot smaller plants as they dig.

In addition, other insect pests and the first diseases have already attacked. First, caterpillars destroyed the Swiss chard (Just like in Georgia!). When I finally pulled up the chard to replant that space with another kind of crop, the caterpillars moved to the tomato plants.

It took days and days of spraying the plants with an organic-approved Bt product for caterpillars (Thuricide) and hand-smashing the larger caterpillars to stop the infestation. I think that I finally got them all, but would not be surprised to find a couple more.

Then, the zucchini leaves got covered up in mildew. The cucumbers have been attacked by pickleworms, and then we had a tropical storm.

Backyard and garden flooded by rains from tropical storm Cristobal. — The vegetable garden completely flooded in Tropical Storm Cristobal

The storm waters have receded, but the ground stayed saturated for several days. Not all plants in the garden will recover from having their roots under water for so long. The okra looks fine, but the tomato plants are still wilted, the green bean plants are turning brown, and the rosemary (not surprisingly) is totally brown.

How does an organic gardener address these many challenges?

It helps if a gardener has a good sense of humor, a lot of patience, and a readiness to observe, experiment, and learn.

To reduce risks of flooding

We had placed the garden in the highest part of the back yard that gets full sun, but that was not high enough. For this particular garden, an obvious place to start addressing our challenges is in building raised beds, to keep the garden from drowning in future storms.

Considering where we live, future heavy-rains are a certainty. Raised beds would allow the garden to drain faster, even if it goes underwater again.

Raised beds might also reduce some of our mole-tunneling issues.

We didn’t start with raised beds, partly because we wanted to get things planted right away, but also because of the fire ants. I had observed in Georgia that fire ants seem to be attracted to raised beds. However, an underwater garden is worse than dealing with ants. Raised beds are definitely in our future.

How to address other garden challenges:

For other critter issues, bugs, and diseases, reaching for “products” is not, usually, my first choice. An exception is when I am caught totally off guard — for example, by unexpected rampaging herds of caterpillars.

Instead, these are strategies that I use:

Try different planting dates, to avoid the pest or disease that is causing problems. In Georgia, planting bush beans as early as the weather would allow meant I could harvest more beans before the bean beetles attacked the plants.
Try a different variety of the crop. Birds and other wildlife can be confused by varieties of crops that ripen to an unexpected color (when “ripe” is white or green instead of red, for example). Also, some varieties of cucumbers and squashes can stand up to mildew diseases longer than others, before dying. In addition, it is possible to find varieties of most crops that ripen sooner/faster than others, so gardeners can harvest more before an expected disaster strikes.
Switch to completely different crops. Some crops might be inappropriate for a particular garden. If the only way to harvest from the crop is to provide constant application of sprays/powders, that could be a clue that it is time to try other crops. Learning to love a different crop that is better suited to your yard is a strategy to try. (Note: I did not used to even LIKE beets, but now they are a favorite.)
Expect and be satisfied with a short harvest window for a crop. My zucchini plants produced veggies for about three weeks. Now the plants are done, partly due to mildew and partly to being underwater, and I can use that space for another crop. Even though I would love to have more zucchini from the garden, the ending of the crop is not a disaster. Instead, it is an opportunity to plant another crop. Maybe sunflowers…

Strategies in action for this current garden

We won’t have time to put in raised beds until fall. The house we moved into has had a lot of updates, but it was built in 1948. There are things that need to be done.

Today, for example, we crawled under the house (18 inch clearance) and pulled out the dead animal that has created an awful smell and attracted about a million flies over the past couple of days — it was a possum.

However, we have considered some different options for raised beds, checked prices of supplies at the local hardware/lumber stores, and figured out how much of each supply we will need, when the time comes.

For changing the timing of planting — this is our first season of planting in this garden. I have recorded planting dates and crop notes in my copy of the Garden Planner and Notebook, so that next year I will know which crops — such as zucchini, cucumbers, Swiss chard, and green beans — I should try planting earlier. Because I have kept notes, I will be able to compare results from the different planting times.

For switching out to different crops — I already have switched out the Swiss chard to something completely different. Peanuts are growing in that space, and the plants withstood the flooding like little champs. The seed packet is leftover from 2013 (!!!). I don’t really know why I kept the packet, because it took up a lot of space in my seed box. Glad I did, though. The seeds all came up.

I am still looking for edible greens that can withstand the heat, humidity, caterpillars, and other hazards of a Southeastern US summer. I have tried Malabar spinach in the past, in Georgia, and it does well, but I have been unable to love it.

My parsley is still too small to provide greens for the kitchen, and so is the purslane. I might try Good King Henry next, even though it is related to Swiss chard. Maybe as a “wilder” type of plant, it will not be as attractive to caterpillars.

Ripe red tomatoes, green tomatoes, smaller cherry tomatoes, a cucumber, and small butternut squashes all harvested from the garden, set on a tray indoors. — The good news — harvested from our garden. Green tomatoes are from wilted plants.

To address the challenge of a short harvest window, the best move might be to just plant LOADS of whichever crop is going to have only a few weeks of productivity. Even if the garden is small. Then when the crop comes in, it will be glorious, for just that short time.

This is the strategy I will likely try for Swiss chard next year. In addition to planting it earlier, I will plant more seeds closer together and harvest them smaller. At the first sign of trouble, I will harvest the whole crop to bring into the kitchen. We can luxuriate in the Swiss chard for awhile, then move on to another crop.

Gardeners Rely on Each Other

26 May, 2020 by amygwh

Gardeners learn and improve their gardens not just through personal experience, but also through the shared experiences of other gardeners. Sometimes we learn from these gardeners through their books, sometimes through workshops or formal presentations, sometimes through in-person conversation or over the phone, and sometimes over the internet.

One of my favorite gardeners to discuss gardening with is my Louisiana sister. In the past week, we have confirmed that our favorite bush-type green bean for flavor, reliability, and abundant productivity is ‘Provider’. We also agree that green beans from the supermarket, along with most other commercially-grown veggies, are pretty bland in terms of flavor, even when they are beautiful to behold.

Knowing that I am not alone in finding that ‘Provider’ produces an abundance of tasty beans here in the Southeastern US boosts my confidence in recommending the variety to other gardeners in the region.

I have more gardening friends, too, with whom to share successes, failures, and puzzlements. These gardeners share similar kinds of stories with me. We all learn, as a result, about varieties that do well and varieties that don’t. We also share different gardening strategies and methods, opinions on flavor, and tips on preparation in the kitchen.

Without this community of gardeners, my own gardening successes would have piled up more slowly.

Mostly yellow, with bits of red, ‘Amish’ tomato.

Some gardeners, though, I have met by chance, just once or twice, but that can be enough. One gardener that I met by a seed rack at a garden center one spring convinced me to try yellow tomatoes. He claimed that they were the sweetest, best tasting of all tomatoes. He even saved seeds each year for his favorite. Turns out that I agree, after growing some, that yellow tomatoes are extra sweet.

Other gardeners I have met by seed racks are looking for particular herbs or flowers, and their enthusiasm also influences my choices of what to plant in my garden.

This spring, I have been lucky to have many existing gardening friends to talk with — at a distance — about our gardens. I hope that other gardeners have similar good fortune. However, there have been no opportunities, for most of us, to meet more gardeners, from whom we can learn, just randomly at the seed racks in garden centers.

If you are looking for more gardeners to learn from, and are ok with doing that online, I know some you might want to check in on. I am a participant in a “phone group” of garden writers, and one or more of their websites might hold the information or inspiration you need.

Gardening websites to visit

We are a little group, and all are members of Garden Communicators International (used to be called Garden Writers Association). We have had monthly phone meetings for a couple of years.

We don’t talk a whole lot about gardening, since we are focused on the technical parts of having garden-related websites, but the love for plants and gardening shines through each person’s contribution to the group. These are our most-frequent-participants and their websites:

Kathy, our coordinator, writes the Washington Gardener Magazine for the Washington DC area. Her website includes specific details for the DC area, such as local events, but much of the gardening information is also good for a wider area (all the way to metro Atlanta!).

Keri writes the Miss Smarty Plants site. Keri was living and writing in Florida, but recently moved back north to a farm in Iowa where she writes about edibles, landscapes, growing hops, and her chickens.

Duane’s site is The Geriatric Gardener. He writes from experience! His perspective is helpful for younger gardeners, too, since many of us can benefit from simplifying our gardening tasks in the ways he describes.

Gerald is an artist – painter, photographer, gardener. If you are longing for beauty, visit his site. You will be inspired!

Marianne writes the site Small Town Gardener about her mid-Atlantic (near Washington, DC) garden and farm, the ducks and chickens and bees, and she hosts a mini-blog for her dog Mungo. If you want to read some lovely garden writing, visit her site.

Gail co-writes a blog called No Farm Needed with her daughter. Topics of the blog range from pressed flower crafts, to starting seeds indoors, to making “shrubs” (vinegar-based beverage/tonic) and more.

That is the list from my phone group. You can also, of course, visit the linked sites in the sidebar of my own website.

I hope that you all are keeping safe and well and enjoying your gardens!

Gardening for the Pandemic

8 May, 2020 by amygwh

I harvested the first radishes from my new garden earlier this week. Not everyone loves radishes, but we do, and these are the first crop from a new garden in a new yard, with different soil and in an unfamiliar climate zone. They also are the first organically-grown radishes we’ve seen since the pandemic kicked into action.

The news is full of stories about problems with the food supply chain that have resulted from the pandemic and lockdowns.

Evidence of the supply-chain problems that all of us can see is in the grocery stores. Their shelves have carried fewer items, and less variety, than they did only a couple of months ago. As my Louisiana sister says, her shopping list has become a wish list.

We are not the only ones, I know, who have decided to enlarge the vegetable garden, to make sure that we will, at least, have some fresh vegetables while the food-supply chain gets unkinked. We also have been growing sprouts and microgreens, to help our groceries stretch a little further.

Sprouts and microgreens

Sprouts growing in two mason jars. — Growing sprouts is one way to provide fresh salad greens without visiting a grocery store.

Wood flat with microgreens growing in it — Growing sprouts is one way to provide fresh salad greens without visiting a grocery store.

We grow sprouts even when there isn’t a pandemic, so we already had jars and the sprouting lids. In the picture above, the large jar is a half-gallon size, and it is growing a mix of sprouts that includes radishes, alfalfa, and some other seeds. The smaller jar has mung bean sprouts.

When sprouts in a jar reach our preferred level of maturity, Joe shakes off as much of the water as he can, puts the dry-ish sprouts in a fresh container in the fridge, and then he starts a new batch of sprouts in the (cleaned) jar. He has observed that if the sprouts are very wet when they go into the fridge, they don’t stay fresh as long.

Joe is especially fond of sprouts, so he makes sure that we have a steady supply and that they are high quality.

We buy seeds for sprouts by the pound; a pound of seeds makes a lot of sprouts and lasts a long time. We did order more seeds a couple of weeks ago, and the selection at that time was limited. I have seen, though, that a supplier for Amazon.com currently has alfalfa seeds for sprouting.

We had seeds for microgreens already, too, but Joe built the box out of a fence-board that he found lying on the ground (with some other fence boards) by the back fence. The “soil” is a mix of compost, sand, and organic potting mix (equal parts), since my supplies of each, except for sand, are low. I have grown microgreens successfully in organic potting mix and in plain compost.

Edibles in Containers

One of the first crops I ever grew — decades ago — was cucumbers, and they were planted in pots on a front porch. The porch was “old-timey”, with metal scrollwork supports holding the roof-overhang in front of the door. The cucumber vines climbed up the scrollwork, and they made a surprisingly large number of cucumbers.

Some new gardeners, or gardeners with limited space, might want to expand their food-growing for the pandemic by planting in containers. Plenty of people grow vegetables in containers with good success. Here are some examples:

Bush bean plants growing in containers, lined up on a concrete-block wall — Bush beans growing in containers.

Three terra cotta pots, with a young pepper plant in each, lined up on a blue bench. — Pepper plants growing in terra cotta pots.

Gardeners who are rigging up their own growing containers should keep some guidelines in mind:

Provide drainage holes in the bottom, so the containers don’t fill with water in a big rain and drown the plants.
Use a potting mix designed for outdoor plants, or a good compost, to fill the containers. If in a windy area, add some sand to the mix, to make it heavy-enough that the container stays upright.
Match the size of the full-grown plant to the container. Minimum size for a tomato plant is a five-gallon bucket, and that is a bit tight. Peppers and eggplants can do well in slightly smaller containers.
Container-grown crops will need more watering, more often, than in-ground crops.
If growth and production seem to stop, while the plants don’t seem diseased and the weather is not super-hot (which can slow plants down), they may just need some fertilizer to resume growing.
If the potting mix used in containers already contains fertilizer — it will say on the bag — don’t add more unless it is needed (see note above). Too much fertilizer can promote spectacular leafy growth, but it can also stop the plant from making things like the tomatoes or peppers that you planted it for.

How important is it to grow vegetables right now?

We are living in a weird time, and some of that weirdness has caused losses in the global food supply. An example in the Southeastern US was described by Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner Nicole “Nikki” Fried in a Covid-19 crop assessment report, which listed crop losses for her state. These include:

75% of the lettuce crop
50-75% of the green bean crop
almost 100% of the cabbage crop
possibly 20-25% of the pepper crop
potentially the entire cucumber crop

The losses are not from pests or diseases, but are from crops being plowed under rather than harvested. The usual buyers are not buying, and there is no profit in the harvest.

Florida is not the entire world, but Fried’s report provides a snapshot of the kinds of losses that can occur elsewhere. Most of these lost vegetables in Florida would have ended up in restaurants, schools, and other parts of the food service industry; they would not have been sent to grocery stores.

Shifting the destinations, from food processors to grocery stores, for instance, for all of these vegetables is not easy, apparently, which means that if we want to enjoy plenty of fresh vegetables, foods that support our good health, then we might want to grow a few of them ourselves.

How much can we grow?

Most of us can’t grow a whole lot, certainly not even all of our own family’s vegetables. I saw a recent article about an examination of the food-growing potential for Sheffield, England, and it determined that Sheffield could, if it used all the available gardens and greenspace, provide the recommended five-servings of vegetables per day for 15% of its people.

In other words, the food-growing potential is large, but it isn’t enough to feed everyone in Sheffield all of the vegetables they need to support good health. Many of our cities in the US may face a similar shortage of growing space. However, that doesn’t mean we should give up on growing good food.

In my own home, the sprouts and microgreens add up to a few servings of fresh greens each week. We have radishes to add our meals over the next few weeks, and then there will be green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and more, but all in home-garden-sized amounts. For example, when we harvest green beans, it will probably be one cup at a time. Even this, though, contributes to the whole.

Any food from our garden reduces the amount we need to buy from other sources. This leaves more for others who might not be gardening. Growing some our own vegetables also makes it easy to share with our neighbors when a crop does really well.

Considering the losses on US farms, the waywardness of the food delivery system, and the randomness of supplies in grocery stores, my handful of radishes is currently a bright spot in my own food supply.

Protect Seedlings with Paper Collars

24 April, 2020 by amygwh

When I planted part of my new garden a few weeks ago (zone 9a!), the seeds set directly into the garden included zucchini and cucumber seeds. The cucumbers all came up, but no zucchini plants appeared.

I checked the zucchini seed packet — it was stamped for use in 2019, which is plenty recent, and it was stored in the same container, in the fridge, with the other seed packets. The zucchini seeds should have been ok.

There was no sign of critter activity above ground. No holes had been dug, no remnants of the seeds were visible nearby. When I dug down to look for the seeds, they were just gone.

Zucchini seedlings coming up within protective collar. — Seedlings in paper cup collar.

I suspected a critter, but the below-ground kind, something similar to a cutworm.

To verify this idea, and to thwart a future loss, I planted the next set of zucchini seeds inside collars that I made by cutting up a saved paper cup.

I pressed the collars into the garden soil and planted a couple of seeds in each one. The good news is that the collars worked. We now have little zucchini plants.

If your garden experiences a similar seed failure, consider using the paper collar method of protecting seeds and seedlings. First, though, consider some of the many other reasons that the seeds might not be sending up little plants.

The actual seeds

Seeds need certain conditions for them to stay “viable”. If the seeds are old or were held in poor conditions for too long, they may have lost their ability to grow. Ask these questions:

Seeds in their storage box, with a gasket-type seal, to use in planning this year's garden. — Seeds in storage box.

How old are the seeds? Seeds for some crops are only “good” for two-to-three years. If the seeds are older, they might not be able to grow.
Have the seeds been kept in cool, dry conditions? If seeds have been exposed to warm, humid air for long (like being left in a hot car for a few hours sometime last summer), then they might not be able to grow.
If the seeds are from older packets, not newly purchased this year, have they been stored properly? Vegetable seeds keep their ability to grow longest when they have been stored in airtight containers in the fridge or freezer.

Planting and care of the seeds

Planting depth, soil moisture, and soil temperature are three factors that can have a huge effect on whether seeds will unfold into little plants that are able to push up to the soil surface.

One big reason for seeds to not come up is that they have been planted too deep. Think back to the day of planting. Does the planting depth match what is recommended on the seed packet, or did the seeds get pushed, or slip down, more deeply into the soil? Seeds that are too deep may unfold down under the ground, but they might not be able to push up through all that soil to the surface.
Was the soil kept evenly moist? If the garden soil dries out, seeds will not come up. If the soil dries out after the seeds begin to unfold, the little plants will die before you ever see them. Soil that is too wet is just as bad as soil that is too dry. Seeds and their unfolding little plants can drown and/or rot in soaking-wet soil.
Was the soil warm enough? Some seeds need warmer soil than other seeds. If you are still waiting to see your okra plants, for example, be prepared to wait a while longer. Okra seeds unfold faster in warmer soils.
Have you waited long enough? Some seeds take longer than others to come up, even with the right warmth and water conditions. For example, parsley seeds can take a couple of weeks (or three, or four) to unfold their inner plants.

Critters

A gardener can have done everything right, using excellent seeds and providing perfect care to the garden, and still not see the expected little plants emerging from the soil. After thinking back carefully to consider where else in the steps something could have gone wrong, the gardener may then need (like me) to consider critters as a possible cause.

Seedling in the garden, with its leaves bitten off. — Common type of critter damage.

A wide range of critters dig up and eat seeds, both the newly planted seeds and the seeds that have begun to unfold into little plants.

The helpful thing about most critters is that they tend to leave signs, or clues, about who they are.

Some birds will scratch up seeds to eat, and crows, in particular, will pull tiny plants (especially corn) out of the ground. You may see tossed-aside leaves that are their left-overs.
Small mammals, like chipmunks, rats, and squirrels sometimes dig up seeds and seedlings to eat. They may leave holes in the ground, or dirt may be kicked up around the planting area. Sometimes, too, they leave footprints.
Rabbits and deer may bite off the tops of the plants, leaving a shortened stem standing in the garden.
Underground pests, like cutworms, can destroy seedlings, and other similar larvae can eat the softened seeds. The damage from these may be harder to spot.

Paper collars when there are no cups

Paper cup cut apart to make protective collars. — Paper cup collars for seedling protection.

When I have planted corn inside collars, the birds have left it alone. Corn was the first crop that I protected in this way.

In a small garden, using paper collars to defend your seeds and seedlings is not too much work. Finding enough material to use is the biggest challenge. Right now, we are short on saved paper cups.

However, my Louisiana sister told me this morning that she has used paper-towel tubes and toilet-paper tubes, cut to shorter lengths, to protect seedlings in her garden.

I am pretty sure I can find some cardboard tubes to cut into shorter lengths (an inch-and-a-half or two inches), which is good, because I have more seeds and little plants to set into the garden this weekend.

I hope you are all keeping safe and well and enjoying your gardens, no matter how small.

How Much Does it Cost to Start a Garden?

2 April, 2020 by amygwh

I have been moving this spring and am starting a garden in a new yard. Like many other gardeners, I prefer to keep the budget for this project fairly low. Garden costs can shoot skyward easily, but it is possible, with some thought and extra work, to keep costs down.

Near the upper end of the “garden cost” range, there is the garden of William Alexander, who wrote a book about how his beautiful, ripe tomatoes, after figuring his expenses, cost $64 apiece to grow. Not too surprisingly, his book is titled The $64 Tomato (it is a hilarious book, if you are a gardener). However, Mr. Alexander paid for things like garden design, wrought iron fences, an irrigation system, and other elements that are nice to have, but not essential for food-growing.

For gardeners who have smaller budgets and are hoping to grow food for a lower price than, say, $64 per tomato, the range of costs extends pretty far downward, to a less painful level.

Each element of the garden can be either cheap or expensive, depending on choices the gardener makes. Most of the lower-cost options involve more work or more planning or both, but they do exist.

Boundaries of the Garden

These days, it is common practice for home gardeners to build their gardens using some kind of boards or other material to create deep beds. What are our options for this element of the garden?

Boards

Treated lumber is not recommended for use in organic gardens. Cedar boards are recommended, instead, for building gardens because they resist rotting without added chemicals. However, sturdy cedar boards can be expensive.

Gardeners who have access to free, non-treated lumber, such as pine, may want to use those boards. Most non-treated wood — that isn’t cedar or redwood — rots readily, and will need to be replaced every two or three years, so there will be extra work if this option is chosen.

Alternate materials

Garden beds can be raised up or edged using rocks, bricks, concrete blocks, metal roofing, or other kinds of non-toxic materials. Many of these are at greater risk (than boards) of shifting around while the gardener is working near the edges.

A couple of my Georgia gardens were edged with rocks and bricks that were mostly free (long ago, we bought some bricks), so I know they can work if the gardener remembers to be careful when working around the edges. If a gardener has access to any of these materials for free or a low price, they can be an option.

However, raised beds are not required.

An in-ground garden

One of my favorite garden books is The Joy of Gardening, by Dick Raymond, and the author uses a system called wide rows. These garden beds are slightly raised, but they are not edged with any hard material.

Newly dug and planted in-ground garden, in a sunny lawn, with corners marked by short stakes and sides by string stretched between the stakes. — An in-ground garden, not raised.

Look for the book in the library and read it. The basic idea for these wide rows is that good soil is pulled onto the designated “bed” space from around the edges. This soil, plus any amendments, gives the wide rows a little height, but not the kind of height provided by most raised beds. Each wide row is three-or-so feet across, providing plenty of space for either multiple rows of a crop or for the intensive spacing (on a grid) used in square-foot style gardening.

My experience is that the lack of edging can increase the risk of soil loss in heavy rains and allows more weeds to creep in from the lawn. In spite of those drawbacks, this is the option I am using for my new garden this year. Since I am in the learning stage for gardening in this yard, a non-permanent bed seems like the wisest choice.

Raised beds pros and cons

Gardener sitting on the edge of a raised bed. — Raised beds can mean less stooping.

You may decide that raised beds are the best choice for your yard. The following information may help you decide —

Raised bed advantages:

increased height can make them easier to tend
defined edges make them more obvious for dogs and small children to “see”, potentially reducing the number of times little feet run through the plants
increased depth of loose soil can improve garden productivity, IF the soil used to fill the beds is truly good stuff
increased height allows beds to drain faster in wet weather, decreasing risk of floods killing your plants
increased height also allows beds to warm up faster in spring

Raised bed disadvantages

can be expensive to fill with good soil
can be expensive to build, if free materials for edging is not located
improved drainage means that extra watering is needed during drought time (most of August and September, most years, in the Southeastern US)
hard to move if an error in garden placement has been made (location too shady or too far from a water source, or laced through with tree roots that suck up all the water and fertilizer)

The Soil

Filling a raised bed garden

If your heart is set on having a raised bed garden, the soil to fill it is the next element to consider. It can take a full cubic yard of soil to fill a 4×8 foot bed that is 10-inches deep. Buying that much garden soil in bags is going to get pricey. A cheaper option, if you have a pickup truck or a good friend who is willing to share theirs, is to buy a cubic yard of good garden soil at a landscape supply company.

I have done this, so I know it is possible. My cost at the time (years ago) was around $35 for a cubic yard of a good planting mix that included compost. The price has gone up since then, but a scoop of soil from a landscape supply place is still a lot less expensive than buying enough bagged soil at a garden center.

At a landscape supply place, the soil will get dropped into the bed of your pickup truck for you to drive home. Moving it out of the truck and into the garden is some work. Be ready with shovels, wheelbarrows, and helpers. You may need to bribe helpers (only immediate family members, this spring) with their favorite foods.

Choosing the soil product for filling raised beds

When choosing soil to fill a raised bed, DO NOT choose “top soil”. I have seen some miserable results from gardens that were filled with products labeled “top soil”.

Instead, look for a soil-product that is a mix of materials that includes compost. The product needs to drain well, so sand in the mix can be helpful. Some landscape supply places offer garden soil mixes that are designed for use in raised bed food gardens and that have a guaranteed nutrient analysis. Look for the best you can find.

If there is no garden soil option available, check to see if the place offers something like mushroom compost by the cubic yard. Growing in pure compost will be great for most crops, but it can be too “nutrient rich” for others, especially root crops.

Another option for many Georgia residents is to purchase a cubic yard bag of compost (the Big Yellow Bag) from Soil3. The price includes delivery, and it can be used “straight” to grow garden crops in. This option will cost more than a cubic yard scoop of planting mix or compost from a landscape supply place, but the convenience factor may over-rule the cost factor for some gardeners.

Amending an in-ground garden

If you choose an in-ground garden, the soil will need to be amended with compost to improve its fertility and how it holds water. Sandy soils and clay soils both will make more productive gardens if a two-inch layer of compost is worked into the garden before planting.

Tumbling type compost bin — Backyard compost tumbler.

For some soils, more compost is even better.

However, if you don’t already have a compost pile in the backyard to provide this magical assistance to your garden soil, that compost may need to be purchased. Costs for this can add up, so start a compost area for leaves and kitchen veg/fruit scraps now, for use in fall, to limit how much needs to be purchased later, when you replant for fall crops.

Some counties maintain a compost facility for yard waste, and then allow residents to come get the finished compost for free. In the metro-Atlanta area, Dekalb County is one that has done this. If your county does not offer free compost, you are stuck with buying bags from garden supply centers or buying a full cubic yard of compost from a landscape supply place.

Also, you should be wary of offers of free horse manure, even if it has been composted. In the past, some horse manures have been contaminated with a persistent herbicide. This herbicide stays active for a few years, and it is not approved for use in human food crops. In the first year or so, when it is most strong in the composted manure, the pesticide can kill some of your crops.

Fertilizers

If you’ve filled (or mostly filled) a raised bed with a good compost product like Soil3 or BlackKow, your garden may not need much (or any) additional fertilizer until next spring. For those of us whose garden soil is less nutrient-rich, fertilizer is another expense.

Look for a complete fertilizer — one that includes many nutrients and not just the “big three” of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. All of the organic fertilizer products labeled for vegetable gardens will meet this goal.

This year, my garden fertilizer is from Dr. Earth. If the summer weather is dry, I will supplement that with a fish fertilizer, since those are meant to be poured on after mixing with water.

Organic products are not as concentrated as many of the chemical fertilizers, so be aware that your garden may need more of these than you think.

In addition, you may need to apply more as the plants grow, if the package says to side-dress at certain times through the growing season. Read the fertilizer labels carefully to find your best option.

For gardeners whose budgets are very tight, the cheapest fertilizer option may be a chemical fertilizer. If this is all that your budget will allow, look for a complete fertilizer similar to MiracleGro, and avoid the products that include only the three major nutrients (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus). Reading fertilizer labels will help you identify the best fertilizer for your situation.

Plants and Seeds

newly planted small tomato plant with label poked into the ground beside it, showing that this purchased plant is the variety 'Creole' and grown by Bonnie Plants.

The final big expense for the garden is the actual crops. Some may need to be purchased as plants, but some should be planted as seeds directly into the garden.

Crops to buy as plants

For plants to set into the ground, we typically purchase the kinds that take a long time to reach maturity. For summer crops, these include tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Sweet potatoes are another summer crop to set into the ground as plants, because seeds are not typically available. Sweet potato plants are grown from stem cuttings.

To save money on plants, buy the smallest size available. A 4-inch potted tomato plant may cost around $4; a larger plant will cost a lot more. If some plants are available in “6-packs”, those are usually the most economical.

Starting with smaller plants may mean that the first harvest from those plants is a little later than it might be for larger plants. However, the delay may be only a week or two.

Crops to buy as seeds

Almost every other crop that you hope to plant will be more economical when planted as seeds, unless you are planting only one or two of a particular crop. This includes cucumbers and squashes, all the beans and summer peas, corn, okra, Swiss chard, amaranth, grain sorghum, and more.

Garden planner, trowel, fertilizer, and seeds on a small tray. — Seeds, fertilizer, and journal, set for planting.

If you can find another gardener to share seed packets with, you can split the cost. In this spring of pandemic weirdness, the sharing may get a bit tricky, but it should be possible to arrange drop-off locations for seeds, to help maintain your “social distance”.

An additional savings for seeds is that, stored properly, this year’s seeds can also be planted in next year’s garden. Store leftover seeds in an airtight container (not a plastic bag) in the fridge.

In the past, I have pooled my seed order with a friend, to reduce shipping costs in addition to sharing the contents of our seed packets. However, the mail-order seed companies are running out of seeds this spring, and they are also running behind in filling seed orders. Gardeners who have waited until now to buy seeds may find that their selection is limited.

A warning: it is possible to get carried away with seeds. Each packet may not be all that expensive, but I have seen “seed stashes” that represent hundreds of dollars in costs. Leftover seeds can be used for a few years, for most crops, but around year three or four, many seeds will not reliably make good plants. Only buy what you think you will need.

Extras

For preparing the garden, some tools are needed. The basics include a shovel, a hoe, and a trowel. Keep the hoe and shovel sharpened, so they can slide through the soil more easily. It helps to have a bucket, too, for gathering weeds (to add to a compost pile) and for moving compost.

Front cover of Garden Planner and Notebook: a vegetable garden guide and journal

The shovel is for digging. The hoe is for moving soil (pushing/pulling) and for scraping out the weeds. The trowel is for planting — digging holes, especially.

Another totally optional but nice to have item is a journal to keep track of garden activities. I have been using the one I created, and it is good to have written down exactly which varieties of crops are going into the garden, which fruiting plants I’ve added to the yard (‘Albemarle’ muscadine, Chickasaw plum), and how the ground was prepared for each crop.

Creating a record of amendments, crops, weather, pests, and more will help improve the productivity of future gardens.

Best wishes for great gardening!