amygwh

How to Plant a Tomato

12 April, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Most of the work of planting takes place before the actual planting day; the work is in soil preparation and careful selection of your tomato variety, finding one that will do well in your yard and that makes delicious fruits.

Once that part is done, though, there is more to consider. I made a little video that tells about setting a tomato transplant into the ground and how to defend it from cutworms. Here is the video:

The tomato that I planted today is a Park’s Whopper. I don’t usually plant my tomatoes this early, but I know that plenty of gardeners are planning to do just that this weekend. Hopefully, the video will be helpful.

If it is, please remember to “like” or “share” the video or blog post. Thank you!

Growing (and Eating) What’s Good for the Garden

7 April, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

New gardeners often are advised to grow foods that they and their families like to eat. It makes sense. Why grow tomatoes if no one at home will eat them? That advice, though, is less firm for gardeners who have been working their soil for a few years. Longer-term gardeners should consider branching out a bit, with regard to what they grow. Here is why:

Different crops can improve your crop rotations

Crop rotation is the practice of growing different kinds of crops in succession within a growing space. “Different kinds” here means plants from different plant families. An example of crop rotation, to illustrate the practice from one space in my garden, is this: kale (fall/winter), followed by peppers (summer), followed by garlic (fall/winter).

Why should you be concerned about your crop rotations?

Bowl filled with shelled cowpeas surrounded by garden vegetables including okra, tomatoes, and peppers. — Cowpeas, in the bean family, help diversify my crops in summer.

University of North Carolina’s article, Advantages of Crop Rotation, explains that rotating crops can reduce buildup of pests and diseases. It can also improve the balance of nutrients in the soil and improve soil structure.

Organic gardeners, especially, who may see themselves as stewards of the soil, will find that crop rotation is a practice that can enhance their gardens.

A chef argues for eating more kinds of crops

I remember reading a Yale Environment 360 interview with chef Dan Barber who explained how he came to understand that supporting sustainable agriculture can mean learning to eat new crops.

The central example discussed in the interview was a farm that was growing emmer wheat, an ancient variety that Barber was excited about using in recipes. This is the relevant bit in the interview:

…I was standing in the middle of a field, and all of a sudden discovered that he [the farmer] was growing very little wheat, and that instead he was growing a whole suite of lowly grains like millet and buckwheat and barley, and leguminous crops like Austrian winter peas and kidney beans. He was growing a lot of cover crops like vetch and clover. And they were all meticulously timed and spread out among the 2,000 acres I was standing in the middle of. And that’s when I sort of had this agricultural epiphany. But it led to this gastronomic epiphany, which was that here I was as a farm-to-table chef waving the flag of sustainability and realizing that I wasn’t supporting most of the farm. In the case of Klass [the farmer growing the emmer wheat], he needed these lowly crops and cover crops and leguminous crops because his soil health needed it to grow wheat. You couldn’t get the wheat unless you grew all these other crops. And you had to time it in this way that brought the fertility to the soil to give you this incredible tasting wheat.
Diane Toomey, How to Make Farm-to-Table a Truly Sustainable Movement, interview with chef Dan Barber, Yale Environment 360, 15 Sept. 2014

Most of us are not going to develop elaborate rotations for the production of emmer wheat, but the interview made me feel like less of a loon for growing – and learning to prepare and eat – crops that are not my favorites, all because I thought they’d be good for the garden.

Adding more plant families to the rotation, for home gardens

An example of adding beets

Red beet with red-veined green leaves growing in soil. — Garden beet in April.

Years ago, I decided to expand my spinach/amaranth family plantings by growing beets, even though I didn’t really like beets. I could have planted more spinach, instead, but the phosphorus level in my soil was a little high. I knew that a root crop like beets would use up some of that extra phosphorus, helping to rebalance the nutrients in my garden’s soil.

Over time, as a result of this decision, I learned how to prepare beets in a way that Joe and I actually like. Now, beets are just one more good food that we look forward to bringing in from the garden.

I have worked on collard greens in the same way, but with less success. The good news is that Joe likes them.

Why grow collard greens?

A good reason to grow collard greens is that collards (and mustards) help suppress the root-knot nematodes that are such a big problem in Southern soils. At the garden/farm where I used to volunteer, the winter mixed-greens crop of collards, mustards, kale, and radishes was called a “fumigant” crop for the good work it does in cleaning up the ever-present nematode pests in the soil.

These greens can stay in the ground all winter long in the South, harvested leaf by leaf, so they work on the soil for many months. Tilling in the remaining leaves and roots about a month before spring planting just frosts the cake of their beneficial effects.

Plant families for garden crops

The list of plant families that include food crops, to enhance your own garden crop rotations, is large. Here are examples of plant families and some crops in each one:

Tomato family – tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato, tomatillo
Cabbage family – cabbage, broccoli, kale, collards, mustards, radish, turnip, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, arugula/rocket
Bean family – bush beans, pole beans, Lima beans, peas, Southern peas, cover crops like clover and vetch
Onion family – onions, garlic, shallots, chives
Carrot family – carrots, parsley, cilantro, parsnips, dill, fennel
Spinach family – spinach, Swiss chard, amaranth, beets, Good King Henry
Squash family – cucumbers, summer squashes, zucchini, winter squashes, pumpkins, melons
Sunflower family – sunflowers, lettuce, chicory, radicchio, escarole, endive
Mallow family – okra, roselle
Morning glory family – sweet potatoes
Mint family – mint, basil, oregano, thyme, anise hyssop, rosemary, sage, marjoram
Borage family – borage
Grass family – corn, wheat, rice, oats, lemongrass
Buckwheat family – buckwheat, French sorrel (and rhubarb, which is not a plant for the South)

Growing some chicories

Pale green lettuces and dark red radicchio plants growing together in a garden bed. — Radicchio (right) is a kind of chicory, which is in the same plant family as lettuces (left). Growing them together makes crop rotation simpler.

Personally, I would like to see more gardeners branching out a bit into the unknown, in terms of crops. That is why I took seedling chicories to the Soil3 Garden Show, to give away with a handout of information about chicories.

I have found that these plants are relatively pest-free in our area. For organic gardeners in the South, pest-free crops are an amazing gift! Chicories also have deep roots, which can help break up heavy soils and can bring up nutrients from deeper soil layers.

Clump of 'Italiko rosso' chicory - upright leaves are dentate and have red veins. — ‘Italiko Rosso’ chicory in the fall, ready to for harvest to use in salads or on pizza.

In addition, they are useful in the kitchen as greens, which we all probably need to eat more of (chop some up to put on your pizza), and the roots can be roasted to make a coffee substitute. If the plants stay in the garden over a winter, they will produce a tall stem with blue flowers, in spring or early summer, that will support many pollinators.

Not everyone will appreciate the bitter flavor of chicories, but if you like the flavor of radicchio in your salads, you may like other garden chicories, too. The very first one I grew, Italiko rosso (which Baker Creek labels as a dandelion, possibly because of its leaf shape), is still a favorite.

Hope your gardens are all growing well!

(If this blog post is interesting or useful to you, please “like” or “share” it. Thank you!)

After the Soil3 Garden Show

2 April, 2019 by amygwh 6 Comments

The Soil3 Garden Show gave us all plenty of opportunities to learn more about gardening and to make new gardening friends. I had great conversations with fellow-gardeners, and the handouts in our “swag bags” contained helpful information.

Information from presenters

Woman with long hair standing next to taller man, both middle ages, both wearing glasses, standing in front of a banner that says Small Garden News. — Me (Amy) with Ken, longtime gardening friend and leader at my local Plant A Row for the Hungry garden, who also attended the Soil3 event. PHOTO/C. Sqrow, another gardening friend!

Night Song Native Plant Nursery in Canton, GA, provided a list of native edible plants. Many of these are lower-care fruits, like elderberry, paw paw, persimmon, and mulberry. Unlike most cultivated apples, peaches, and pears, these native plants need very little (or zero) pruning or spraying.

The handout provided by Brie Arthur contains a summary of the main points of her Foodscape Revolution. It also includes a short list of ideas for limiting mammal-damage in the garden – like from deer.

I am adding her favorite deer repellent, I Must Garden brand, which incorporates botanical oils, to my post about protecting plants from deer. Just so you know – I cannot find confirmation that the product is OMRI-approved; strictly-organic gardeners will want to try PlantSkydd deer repellent, instead, even though it will smell less pleasant.

On display at the Garden Show

Of course, Soil3 offered an attractive discount on its cubic-yard bags of OMRI-approved compost. The sales tent was a busy place during breaks between presentations, and the main vendor area was also busy with gardeners considering purchases of plants and other garden-related items, and asking questions of the expert gardeners on site.

Soil3 display and sales tent at the garden show
Vendor area at the Soil3 Garden Show

Participation of local college students

Lanier Technical College horticulture program sold plants grown by its students, with proceeds supporting the program. Lanier Tech students also entered the Raised Bed Garden contest. They put together an “adaptive” garden space, for people with physical limitations.

The tilted container-beds that improve access to the far-side of the bed, the one container that rotates like a “lazy susan” serving tray, and the drainage system that keeps wheelchair-bound laps dry, were all impressive. I was told that the students took turns using a wheelchair and a walker to gain an understanding of the modifications that would be most helpful.

Raised bed demonstration garden built by Lanier Tech students.
Garden “bed” is higher in back than in front.

If you bought plants last weekend

I hope no one north of Atlanta planted the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, and other summer vegetables that they took home. North Georgia had a freeze warning Sunday night, and none of those warm-season crops takes well to temperatures in the low 30s.

Most of the other plants, though, should be planted soon, if they haven’t been yet. That includes the dill, borage, fennel, and bee balm (Monarda) that I saw at Lanier Tech’s booth, and the fruiting shrubs and trees offered at the Night Song Native Plant nursery booth.

The attendees

I visited with many wonderful people, some of whom agreed to take home a tiny chicory plant – that I had brought to give away – to try in their gardens. For many gardeners, new crops are an adventure!

I also met a family that has a homestead business in Georgia, the Rehr family of Big Bear Homestead. We talked about gardening in Georgia, and I learned about their work with pastured animals and about rebalancing the local animal populations through trapping.

Best wishes for great gardening! – Amy

Soil3 Garden Show in Cumming, GA

27 March, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

On Saturday, March 30, Small Garden News (aka: Amy) will be at the Soil3 Garden Show in Cumming, GA. The event will be at Silver City Farm, an inspiring setting; the weather is forecast to be warm and sunny; and there will be fellow-gardeners everywhere you look. It will be a great day!

Fall Garden Planning book explains how to choose crops, create a schedule, and prepare the garden for fall planting. — My book will be available at this Soil3 event.

The lineup of presentations, about organic gardening, mixed garden landscapes, and edible native plants, will be perfect for beginning the new garden season. In addition, there will be raised bed garden examples, as part of a competition, that could provide planting ideas for new gardeners.

Plants and garden-related items (including my book!) will be sold at the event’s Garden Market, and food trucks will be on site at lunchtime.

Soil3 is the product used the past few years at the local Plant-a-Row-for-the-Hungry (PAR) garden to fill raised beds and amend the soil of in-ground beds. If you want to see whether Soil3 really works in the garden, view pictures at my post about the Winter Harvest at that garden.

Garden Crops in March

24 March, 2019 by amygwh 2 Comments

Spring crops in the Southeast are in a mixed state of early, middle, and late, here in late-March, in terms of being ready to harvest.

Your fall-planted kale may be starting to send up flower-stalks. Mine is.

When leaf-crops like kale start to make flowers, it means they are going to stop making new, tasty leaves very soon. When you can see flower buds forming, it is time to harvest the rest of the crop. I brought in my kale this weekend.

Cilantro (L), rocket gone to flower (R), and kale (background)
Tip of central stem of kale with a cluster of flower buds.

Any early-planted rocket will have sent up flowers, too. When the space is not needed right away for another crop, I leave these in the garden for a week or so, for the bees. Fall-planted cilantro may be flowering in a few weeks, too. Mine is starting to show a thickened central stem. This is usually the first indicator that the plant will switch over to making flowers soon.

Flowers of earlier-planted rocket. Bees love these.
Later-planted rocket in a half-barrel.

If you planted a later patch of rocket at few weeks ago, it may be at a perfect size for harvesting right now. Mine is planted in the half-barrel. Leaves from my later patch have been going into sandwiches and salads for a couple of weeks. It is about time to plant another round of rocket, to avoid having too large a gap between crops.

Bowl of harvested salad greens, with green lettuces and rocket and red lettuces and raddichio.

The spring garden can provide other salad-type greens, too. A small home garden might not have a large salad patch, but it can produce specialty greens that make meals more interesting.

My garden has been giving us rocket, radicchio, and a dark red lettuce that make beautiful salads.

‘Garden babies’ lettuce and some radicchio in a March garden.

Some gardens will have large beets, ready to harvest, started last fall. Spring-planted beets may still be just clusters of small leaves (like mine).

Salad radishes planted in late February may be ready soon, too. My ‘German Giant’ radishes were planted in the same bed and at the same time as my beets. The radish roots are more than a half inch across already.

Knowing that the spring crops are nearly done would be more sad if I weren’t looking forward to summer crops. I have started tomato and pepper plants in the house, and I have seeds for many more kinds of veggies that I am planning to grow.

How is your garden growing this Spring?

Planting Dates for Summer Garden Vegetables

18 March, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

As spring advances and weather warms, the urge to plant the summer garden becomes almost overwhelming. Knowing which crops can stand a bit of cooler weather and cooler soil can help us make good choices about what to plant when we just can’t wait any longer.

Understanding the last frost date

Most of the garden vegetables that we grow in summer are frost tender, which means that they won’t survive freezing weather. This is why most seed packets use the “last frost date” — the expected date of the last freezing temperatures — as a marker for when to plant summer crops.

Where I live, the average date of the last frost in spring is in mid-April. The date is not exact; we estimate the date based on the dates of the last frost in previous years. Annoyingly, we won’t know the exact date of the last frost for this year until we are well past it. Some years, the last frost in my yard is in March, and one year my yard had a frost on April 23rd.

The role of soil temperature

Cucumber seedling with three true leaves, already planted in the organic home garden. — Cucumber seedling transplanted into the garden in April.

Part of finding the best time to plant vegetables is knowing the best temperature for seeds to sprout and for plants to grow. Texas AgriLife Extension points out that these two temperatures are not necessarily the same. For example, bean seeds may sprout best at a soil temperature of 85 degrees F, but that temperature isn’t best for plant growth and productivity.

The AgriLife article lists reasonable, “compromise” soil temperatures for planting many crops:

cucumber (64°F)
cantaloupe (68°F)
okra (73°F)
pumpkin (75°F)
squash (70°F)
watermelon (72°F)
beans (72°F)
beets (45°F)
tomato (55°F)
turnip (50°F)
corn (55°F)

From the list, you can see that beets and turnips (cool-season crops) can do well in cooler soil, corn and tomato plants slightly warmer, and cucumbers and cantaloups a bit warmer still. This information can help in planning your schedule.

Recommended date ranges from University Extension programs

UGA publishes a Vegetable Planting Chart that shows suggested planting dates for garden vegetables. The dates are for middle-Georgia (a line through Macon across the state), which means that the dates need to be adjusted for areas north and south of that line.

Tomato transplants for the organic home garden, indoors under lights on a cold day.

For my area, just north of Atlanta, I would add about two weeks to the ranges in the UGA planting chart to get a reasonable planting date range for my garden.

North Carolina State University Extension publishes a planting chart for Western North Carolina. The dates are similar to those that I would use for my garden.

You may notice that the recommended date-ranges in the linked publications for spring planting can be quite large – up to six weeks for some vegetables. The whole range of dates might be good theoretically for a particular crop; however, for organic home gardens, there are some good reasons for choosing to plant either at the early end of the range or the late end.

Reasons to consider dates at the edges of the recommended ranges

For both bush beans and pole beans, I usually plant as early as I think the plants can survive the experience. The early planting — as early as the first week in April, if the weather forecast looks ok — means that I start harvesting beans before the end of May. By the time the Mexican bean beetles show up to demolish the plants, I will have harvested plenty of beans.

I also choose an early planting date for cucumbers, squashes, and melons. Those plants all are attacked by mildew diseases in late summer and an assortment of pest insects in mid to late summer. Early planting allows a larger harvest, before the plants are affected by whichever problem attacks first. For these crops, planting seeds in the first week in April, or transplants a week or two later (when the soil is warmer), can make a big difference in how much food I can harvest before the plants die.

Okra and sweet potatoes are two crops that I plant at the later end of the recommended planting date range. Both of those two crops grow slowly in cool weather, and I have found that keeping ahead of the weeds, which grow faster, is more work when these two crops are planted early. When okra and sweet potatoes are planted later, in early or mid May in my yard, they grow fast enough to shade the ground sooner, and weeds have less chance to take hold.

Tomatoes are another crop that I plant later than almost every other gardener I know. My experience is that later-planted tomatoes, like at the end of April or early May, are less troubled by blossom-end rot than earlier-planted tomatoes. They also are more likely to survive whichever soil-borne wilt disease is in my yard, and infection by the ever-present early blight disease is usually less severe.

Organic gardeners won’t use the chemicals that are available in garden centers to control all the above problems. Instead, we have be a bit wily about getting around the diseases and pests that can reduce the productivity of our organic home gardens. I have found that adjusting my planting dates to the edges of the date ranges, for some crops, is all the “control” I need.

Of course, keeping a good attitude about the vagaries of the natural world also helps.

Amy’s planting schedule

In case you are curious, this is when I plant the standard summer crops, most years, in my garden, zone 7B, just northwest of Atlanta:

first week in April – plant seeds for bush beans and pole beans if forecast is ok; if a freeze is in the forecast, I start these in a flat or tray, to transplant to the garden after a couple of weeks. I also start squash-family plants – cucumbers, zucchini, winter squashes, melons – in little pots this week, to transplant to the garden when the soil is warmer.
mid-April – plant corn, if any is planned. For me, that is usually popcorn. Early planting for corn reduces problems with corn ear-worm. Later plantings almost always have more ear-worms. Plant the transplants (beans, squash family plants) when the first true leaf is a couple of inches across.
late-April – plant pepper plants, and seeds for Swiss chard (if planned).
early May – plant tomato and eggplant transplants, seeds for okra.
mid-May – plant sweet potato slips.
mid-summer – plant Southern peas when one of the earlier crops comes out of the garden (bush beans or cucumbers are usually the first to go). After bush beans have been gone from the garden for a couple of weeks, if there aren’t any pole beans also in the garden to harbor more Mexican bean beetles, plant a new patch of bush beans.

What the above schedule doesn’t show is that I start tomato and pepper plants from seed, indoors, in early March. It also doesn’t include annual herbs, like basil or borage, or flowers, like nasturtium and Zebrina hollyhock, that I plant most years.

Protecting early-planted crops from frost

The summer crops are frost-tender, but I plant some of these crops early enough that the risk of frost is high. A couple of different strategies can be used to protect your crops.

The first strategy is the use of transplants to allow an early start for some crops, like beans and cucumbers. This strategy takes some planning, and it takes space in your house. It also, though, protects plants from cooler weather, since they are indoors. The plants can be planted into the garden when the risk of frost is lower.

The second strategy is the use of row covers to protect tender crops in the garden from a light frost. If a hard freeze happens and the row cover does not fully protect a crop, some replanting might need to be done. The good news here is that most seed packets contain enough seeds to replant a small home garden.

For further reading, my older post about planting seeds in the garden contains reminders about planting depth and plant spacing that might be helpful.

(If this post is helpful or interesting, please “like” or “share” it. Thank you!)

Broccoli, Beets, and Boron – Updated

8 March, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Soils in the region where I live are short on the mineral boron, an essential plant micronutrient. The University of Georgia soil lab doesn’t measure boron levels in its routine test for garden soil, but it does include a recommendation to add some to a home vegetable garden. This is the recommendation:

“Apply 1 tablespoon of borax per 100 feet of row to broccoli and root crops such as turnips and beets. This can be applied by mixing the borax thoroughly with approximately 1 quart of soil in a container and then applying the mixture along the row; or it can be mixed with a quart of water and applied to the soil in solution.”
University of Georgia, Soil Test Report, basic soil test for Home Vegetable Garden, 2018

What is a micronutrient?

Boron is one of several micronutrients that plants need. The micronutrients are needed in tiny amounts, but they are essential for plant growth. Other micronutrients include copper, iron, and nickel, among others.

For boron, the difference between not-enough and too-much is a pretty narrow range, according to K. Kelling at the University of Wisconsin and Ron Goldy at Michigan State Univ. Extension. This means that great care must be taken to not use too much.

How does boron help plants?

Golden beets growing in the garden - beets are a crop that need a little more boron than others. — Golden beets growing in the garden – beets are a crop that need a little more boron than others.

UMass Extension, Amherst, says that boron “is required for many different aspects of plant cell functioning, including protein synthesis, development of cell walls, carbohydrate metabolism and sugar transport, pollen growth, fruit set, and seed production.”

Sounds important, to me!

What happens when plants don’t get enough boron?

The UMass information about boron deficiency lists these possible effects of too-little boron:

“stunting and distortion of the growing tip”
“brittle foliage and yellowing of lower leaf tips”
reduced flowering
reduced fruiting
distorted fruit
“brown heart” (mushy brown centers) in root crops like turnips and rutabagas
hollow stems in broccoli and cauliflower
brown or otherwise discolored curds on cauliflower

Kelling’s Soil and Applied Boron publication adds that cabbages that are low on boron may show an “internal breakdown of head”.

Which plants need the most boron?

Some vegetable crops need more boron than others.

Broccoli growing in the organic home garden.

Ron Goldy’s U Michigan publication lists crops and their relative need for boron. The high-need vegetables for boron he includes are these:

broccoli
cauliflower
celery
table beets
turnips

How can I provide boron to my garden?

One way to add boron is to follow the instructions on the UGA soil test report, to mix a tablespoon of borax in water or with soil and to spread that across a 100-foot row of garden, especially in areas where higher-need vegetables are growing. If your garden is not in rows, or is smaller, it will need less borax.

The borax you will need is in the laundry section of your grocery store, in the box of 20 Mule Team Borax. This should be fine for organic gardens, because it is a mined mineral.

You will need to be careful with this product, though, because it is easy to use too much. Do not apply the boron every year without having the boron levels tested at a reliable soil lab.

If you prefer to use another product, one that contains many micronutrients, including boron, to safely fill any gaps, try kelp meal. It is much more difficult to use too much boron when using kelp meal, because it is a much less concentrated source of the micronutrient. There is enough, though, to help your plants. Just follow package directions for safe use in your organic home garden.

Georgia isn’t the only state with low-boron soils

The 20 Mule Team Borax company notes that boron will be at low levels in soils that are sandy, or acidic, or that are low in organic matter (like Georgia clay!), or that are in areas of high humidity.

The company has found that low-boron levels are a common problem in soils east of the Rockies and in the Pacific Northwest. The middle of the country and the Southwestern region mostly have sufficient boron.

To learn more about soil fertility in organic home gardens, read my posts about potassium sources, soil pH, building good garden soil, and side-dressing your garden crops.

Build Bee Hotels for Native Bees

3 March, 2019 by amygwh Leave a Comment

Planting more bee-friendly flowers is a major way we can support native pollinators like our solitary bees — the ones that don’t live in hives — but planning safe nesting sites can also help.

Some of the solitary bees we can provide nesting sites for most easily are different kinds of tunnel-nesting bees, like Mason bees and Leaf-cutter bees. You may have seen various versions of these hotels for sale at garden centers and online. Most include blocks of wood with holes drilled through or bundles of tubes such as straws or bamboo.

Bee hotels for our native, solitary bees can increase the number of pollinators in our small gardens, without taking a lot of space.

My husband made this bee hotel for tunnel nesting bees. — Bee hotel for tunnel-nesting bees.

What you need to know to build a bee hotel

I am not going to give specific “how to” instructions for putting together a good bee hotel, because University of Nebraska has done an excellent job in their publication, linked here: Creating a solitary bee hotel. It includes photos showing a diversity of bee hotels.

However, these are University of Nebraska’s basics:

Build a frame for your blocks or tubes. The wood should be untreated. The frame should be about 6-inches deep.
Fill the frame with blocks of untreated wood in which holes are drilled to create the tunnels.
More simply, skip the frame and just drill holes in big-enough pieces of untreated wood.
Different diameters of holes attract different kinds of bees.
In general, tunnel diameters should range from 3/32″ to 1/2″. The Nebraska publication includes a chart that shows which bees use which sizes of tunnel diameters.

The Nebraska publication focuses on drilled blocks of wood. Xerxes Society’s publication Tunnel nests for native bees tells more about using bundles of hollow stems or straws to create nests for tunneling bees. In general, though:

gather your hollow stems, all about 6-inches long
bundle them together in a protective container
inside the container, the stems/straws should be horizontal

If you do not have a ready source of bamboo or other hollow stems, consider these Milliard Mason Bee Nest Tubes, made of cardboard.

Cleanliness saves (bee) lives

Parasites, moulds, and diseases can build up inside a bee hotel if it is not well-maintained.

Blocks should be replaced after one or two seasons of use. Old blocks that may still have bees developing inside should be kept aside someplace cool and dry until the following spring, when they can be set out for the bees to emerge.

Hollow stems and straws should be replaced, also, after they have been used and vacated.

After a couple of years, if the bee hotel is still holding together well, in winter, remove the blocks and bundles of tubes, then sanitize the frame by soaking it for about five minutes in a strong bleach solution. After the frame has dried completely, refill it with fresh blocks or tubes.

Smaller bee hotels may be better than larger ones

The Xerxes Society publication includes this information about the benefit of creating several smaller nests and hanging them at intervals through your landscape:

This prevents the unnaturally high populations found at nest blocks with many holes, and mimics natural conditions of limited, spatially separated nest sites. These smaller nests also decompose more rapidly, and can be allowed to simply deteriorate naturally, while new small nests are added to the landscape periodically.
Xerxes Society. Tunnel nests for native bees.

Keep the hotel simple

Insect hotel seen in Florence, Italy, in 2017. — Too much going on?

Entomologist Jo-Lynn Teh-Weisenburger, in a blog post on the site The Entomologist Lounge, cites information that indicates the “increasing number of badly-designed artificial nesting sites contributed to higher loss of (solitary) bees by parasitism.”

The problem seems to one of trying to do too much with one hotel. She says, ” The warning sign of such designs is the unnecessary use of pine cones, glued snail shells, wood shavings and clear plastic tubes.”

Teh-Weisenburger suggests that better success may come when we focus on the kind of insect we want to attract and support. After creating a successful nest habitat for that insect, then we might consider adding structures — elsewhere in the yard — for other species.

Placement of the new nest

Bee hotels need to be set in place in early spring, before the first solitary bees emerge to start looking for flowers and for nesting sites. In my yard, that means placing the bee hotel in the yard by mid-March.

Publications agree that the bee hotel for tunnel-nesting bees should face south or southeast, to catch the morning sun, and it should be mostly in the sun all day. The hotel should be 3-5 feet above the ground, and any vegetation in front should be pruned away. It needs to be secure, so the hotel doesn’t sway in the wind.

Tunnels will stay drier if the hotel has a bit of a roof built onto it, that overhangs the front.

If the information in this post is interesting or helpful, please “like” or “share” it. Thank you!

Difference Between Determinate and Indeterminate Tomatoes

15 February, 2019 by amygwh

Understanding the differences in how determinate and indeterminate tomato plants grow and set fruit can help you choose the best type for your home garden. The differences can influence not only which type you choose, but also how the plants should be spaced, trellised, and pruned.

Differences between the growth types

Plant size at maturity

The first difference that we can easily see in the garden is how large the mature plants become.

Determinate tomato plants usually grow between one and five feet in height, which means they are less likely to overwhelm a small garden. Many patio and container type tomatoes have a determinate growth habit.

Indeterminate tomato plants can grow to become much taller, as much as 8 or more feet tall. Main stems of plants in this growth type continue to grow in length/height for as long as they are healthy. Many heirloom varieties are indeterminate type tomatoes.

Semi-determinate tomato plants are a third growth type that you may see. As you might have guessed, the characteristics of a semi-determinate plant are in between those of the two other types. These plants are a little less tall and rangy than indeterminate type tomatoes, but not as compact as determinate types. This growth type can work well in a small garden.

Differences in when they set fruit

Timing of fruit production and ripening — when it is ready to harvest — is another difference between the growth-types that we can see in the garden.

Costoluto genovese is an indeterminate type tomato. — ‘Costoluto genovese’ is an indeterminate type tomato.

Determinate type tomato plants set almost all of their fruit within a few weeks, and then their productivity slows way down. The fruits form on side-branches that are fairly closely spaced on the plants.

Indeterminate type tomatoes produce fruit all summer and into the fall, if they stay healthy. The fruits are spaced farther apart on indeterminate plants than they are on determinate plants.

Semi-determinate type tomatoes can produce fruit through the whole season, but they may not be as productive toward fall as an indeterminate type.

Trellising the types of tomatoes

Tomatoes need to be trellised one way or another to keep the fruit off the ground. The fruits are more likely to rot or attract small animal pests if they touch the ground.

Up North, many gardeners prune and tie an indeterminate tomato plant to a single stake. Here, that practice would result in a lot of ruined fruit, from sun-scald. We have too much heat for too long for staking tomatoes to be a reliable option.

Tomato plants with inadequate supports. — Inadequate cages for indeterminate tomatoes – but good plant spacing.

Home gardeners in the South mostly rely on tomato cages to support their tomato plants, for both growth types. Research has shown that caged plants produce more tomatoes per plant than trellised tomatoes (I learned this at a Georgia Organics conference), so caging is a great option for small gardens.

Determinate tomato plants, since they stay smaller, can be supported by less robust structures than indeterminate plants. Indeterminate tomato plants need strong, tall structures.

Most garden centers do not sell sturdy enough cages or supports for indeterminate tomatoes. One option is to make your own out of strong hog fence or other wire mesh. Find a mesh that has its wires about 6-inches apart, and create a cylinder that is about 2-feet across. The wire cylinder makes a good cage/support for tomato plants, but it will need to be held upright with stout posts. Otherwise, a tall, heavy plant will topple the whole thing.

Another option is Texas Tomato Cages. (This is not a sponsored or affiliate link. I just like their tomato cages.) These strong but collapsable tomato cages are awesome — I use them — but they are pricey.

Pruning tomatoes

Another great aspect of caging a tomato plant, instead of trellising or staking, is that it reduces the amount of pruning needed. Texas A&M Extension goes so far as to say this about pruning tomatoes: “Suckering or pruning the plants is not necessary when you use cages.”

A day's harvest of tomatoes, indeterminate and semi-determinate types.

Clemson Extension says that, if any pruning is done on caged tomato plants, it should be early and just once, adding this about caged tomatoes and less pruning: “Caged plants are less prone to the spread of disease from plant handling and do not have open wounds from de-suckering and tying them up frequently as with staked plants.”

If you feel a need to prune, thin the number of main stems of indeterminate plants to just three or four, early in their growth, then leave the plant alone.

For determinate plants, any pruning should be very early in the plant’s life, just enough to guide its growth. Pruning this growth type can result in lower production of tomatoes.

Tomato plant spacing in the garden

Recommended spacing for tomato plants in the garden for the South, for plants in cages, is 3-4 feet, for both types. Determinate types tolerate a tighter spacing than indeterminate plants.

However, when plants are in cages, a wide spacing allows more air-flow between the plants. Good air-flow helps the leaves dry out in damp weather, and as a result reduces the spread of leaf-diseases in the garden.

When first setting out plants in the garden, when they are little transplants in 4-inch pots, the 3-4 foot distance looks absurdly large. As the plants grow, though, you may wish that you had given them 5 feet instead of just 3 or 4, if you planted a very large-growing variety.

Which type is best for my garden, determinate or indeterminate?

The different growth habits have benefits and drawbacks. Here are some things to think about as you plan your garden:

Determinate tomato plants

Ripen most of their fruit in a short time-frame– this is great if you plan to do some canning, where having a lot of tomatoes all at once is helpful.
Shorter productive-lifespan means that there will be space in the garden in late summer for other crops. This can be good if you are short on space but want more variety from your garden.
If space in your garden is so tight that an indeterminate variety won’t fit, you can plan to have another determinate tomato plant ready to replace the first one, when it quits making abundant tomatoes. You can have a second harvest in September!

Indeterminate tomato plants

Produce over the whole summer, as long as the plants stay healthy. This is great if you like to have a few tomatoes to eat every week.
Long-time in the garden means these plants are exposed to more plant diseases and pests for a longer time than determinate plants. Relying on disease resistant varieties becomes increasingly important.
Many heirloom varieties are indeterminate, and the heirlooms offer a wide range of flavors that is hard to find in determinate types.
These can grow to be quite large. Read the variety information carefully. I grew a ‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’ that erupted out the top of its cage and sprawled across 10-feet of garden. Do you have room for that?

Examples of determinate and indeterminate tomatoes

Some determinate tomato varieties, with good disease resistance for the South:

Celebrity (hybrid)
Dixie Red (hybrid)
Mountain Fresh (hybrid)
Patio Choice Yellow (hybrid)
Homestead 24 (old, open-pollinated, but not heirloom) may be semi-determinate
Long Keeper (heirloom, I think) a storage tomato
Rutgers (old, open-pollinated, but not heirloom) may be semi-determinate

Some indeterminate tomato varieties:

Park’s Whopper (hybrid)
Better Boy (hybrid)
Cherokee Purple (heirloom)
Sweet 100 (hybrid) cherry tomato
Mortgage Lifter (heirloom)
Arkansas Traveler (old, open-pollinated, but not heirloom)
Black Krim (heirloom)

Planting in the Winter Garden

11 February, 2019 by amygwh

Years and years ago, I figured out that sowing larkspur seeds outdoors in February or early March gave me more and hardier flowers than when I planted them in April. Other spring-blooming annual flowers respond the same way to early-planting in the garden. I have found that some herbs and cool-season veggies do well when planted early, too.

It may seem wrong to set out seeds when the odds of freezing weather are still so high. However, the early-planted seeds tend to delay their sprouting until the deepest cold has passed.

Seeds for winter planting

Cool-weather herbs

The herb I am most likely to strew across a couple of square feet of prepared garden bed in February is dill. I grow one of the shorter, leafy varieties of dill. Another herb to try in a winter planting, for anyone who forgot to plant it in September, is cilantro.

My fall-planted cilantro is nicely established, but if I had forgotten to start it in the garden back in September, I would be putting seeds in the garden now. Many gardeners learn the hard way (sad experience…) that cilantro grows best in cool weather.

Another herb to seed into the garden now is parsley. Seeds for parsley can take two or three weeks to sprout indoors, which is the method I usually use to get more parsley, but I have had good success in the past setting parsley seeds directly into prepared garden soil early.

Parsley has a taproot, which makes it tricky to transplant without causing damage to the root. If you have had trouble growing parsley in the past, when set into the garden as transplants, you might be happier with direct-seeded parsley.

Winter-planted dill in early April
Winter-planted dill in early May

Vegetables for winter planting

Week-old rocket (arugula) seedlings growing in a half-barrel planter. — Rocket (arugula) seedlings, from seeds planted the first week in February.

Cool-season greens are ideal to set out early as seeds in a prepared garden bed. I have already planted seeds for spinach, which may be the most cold-hardy of greens, and more rocket.

Leaf-chicories and lettuces are also good choices. Beets are a good choice, too. Pretty much every vegetable that can stand up to a hard frost will work.

Other seeds that I plant early in the garden are peas; English peas and Sugar Snap types can sprout and grow in the garden when planted in February. Before planting these, I usually wait until I see flowers on the trout lilies in my backyard.

Winter planted peas have plenty of flowers and a few mature peas at the end of April. — Pea patch in April from seeds planted in the garden in February.

The flowering of the trout lilies, which are native plants in Georgia, is a signal that the soil is warm enough that the peas will sprout, and they won’t rot in the cold, wet ground. My trout lilies usually send up flowers in the last week of February, but I noticed yesterday that many leaves in the trout lily patch are already up. The flowering may be early this year.

Winter seeds in containers outdoors, following WinterSown guidelines

There is a method called WinterSown, that calls for seeds to be strewn in containers rather than the garden. You can plant this way, too, but then the little plants need to be removed from the containers and transplanted into either a larger container or into the garden.

If you have never tried the method, you should, because it is fun. However, I am in the Southeastern U.S., which has fairly moderate winters, so I skip the protective containers and go straight to the garden.

How to plant seeds in the winter garden

Prepare the soil

Check the general guidelines in my Good Garden Soil article if your garden is new. Otherwise, remove weeds, amend the planting area with compost, and mix in your organic fertilizer.

Soil texture — how fine or chunky the soil particles are — affects seed sprouting. Chunkier soils (like most clays) allow small seeds to slip down into cracks in the soil, so deep that they can’t break through to the surface. Texture is improved by a thick addition of compost. Try to add a layer of compost that is at least two inches thick, to mix into the top layer of the garden.

Soil fertility is important, too. That is why mixing organic fertilizer into the top several inches of soil is recommended, even after adding compost.

Setting in the seeds

Garden design and the characteristics of the mature plants both influence how I place the seeds.

For a crop like parsley that will be in the garden for a long time, I drop a pinch of seeds into a slight depression (fingerprint-size) in the soil in the exact spot where I want a plant to grow. Then, I sprinkle a little soil over the spot and press the area to firm the seeds into the ground before lightly watering.

For a crop like a short, leafy variety of dill that will be in the garden only a few months, I strew seeds more loosely across the small planting area that I have prepared. Then, I press those onto the soil before lightly watering. Pressing the seeds to the soil cuts back on the odds they will wash away in the next rain.

“Strewing” should take into account the final spacing. If you strew too many seeds, there will be some thinning to do. Keep in mind the recommended spacing for mature plants as you watch the seeds fall onto the soil. If you have tiny seeds, mixing them with some dry sand makes the strewing easier. This is the method I intend to use for a mixed flower/herb area this year.

For larger seeds like for beets, that need to be planted more deeply, I plant into individual little depressions. The depressions are made by poking a finger about a half-inch into the soil. Since I want my beets to grow about four inches apart, I poke the holes about four inches apart, drop a seed into each hole, push the top closed, press down on the whole area to firm the soil, then lightly water.

If your garden is larger, and the mere thought of crouching in the cold, damp garden to poke a hundred or so planting holes makes you miserable, you might consider borrowing or buying a seeder. When my garden was larger than it is now, my Earthway Garden Seeder made speedy work of putting seeds into the ground at the right spacing and depth.

Transplanting cool-season crops in February

When I told someone last week that I already had transplanted lettuce and radicchio seedlings into the garden, I was asked, “but what if they die in a hard freeze?”

My response: “I have more seeds.”

Raddichio and lettuce transplanted into the winter garden

Actually, most winters, setting in little plants this early would be riskier. So far, though, we have not had a drop down below 20 degrees F. The ground in shadier parts of the yard is cold, but the soil in the space I prepared for these seedlings was only cool.

In addition, I took the precaution of setting up one of those little folding fences around the area and wrapped the fence with plastic, to make it easier to cover the space if very cold weather arrived.

Both of these crops are cold-hardy, and last week was warm. The plants had a solid six days in warm weather to settle in. They will be fine.

The last consideration for these plants is nutrients. Leafy green vegetables are most delicious when they grow quickly, which means they will benefit from some extra fertilizer. This patch (and the rocket and the spinach) will be getting some additional nitrogen in the form of a fish fertilizer, to encourage that speedier growth.