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Good Garden Soil

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Small farm with red clay soil in north Georgia produces a lot of good food.

Several gardening books I’ve read include the note that good garden soil is a sandy loam, rich in organic matter. My yard’s soil is naturally a massive gob of red clay — like in the nearby photo — not at all what is recommended.

Red clay is actually not all bad. It holds nutrients much better than sandy soil, so it doesn’t need as much fertilizer. It also holds water — sometimes too well! — which means it is slow to dry out. When it does get dry, it becomes brick-hard and tough to dig.

Plants benefit from the nutrient-holding and water-holding capacity of clay soil. The problem is that the clay compacts and does not allow roots to move easily through the soil, and it doesn’t have good air spaces (which roots need).

Not every yard in this area has such dense red clay as mine. When we first moved here (in 1990), and for years afterward, an older gentleman in Kennesaw grew roses, lots and lots of roses, out near the road on Cherokee Street.

I stopped to talk with him once, when I saw him out tending his roses. He said that a friend brought him a truckload of oak leaves to use for mulch each year, but that his yard had naturally good soil. That comment stunned me into speechlessness for a moment — my experience was so different!

Most people I talk to around here have soil like mine. This may be why so many new gardeners use raised beds filled with soil mixes that don’t include clay.

My gardens, though, are not in raised beds. They are in the ground, in that red clay. I add amendments like compost (from my yard) and soil conditioner (from a garden center) to increase the organic matter and microbial activity. The amendments make the clay soil a more welcoming place for the roots of my crops.

How to create good garden soil from red clay

Tumbling type compost bin

A recommendation from Cooperative Extension’s “Ask an Expert” page for improving clay soil, is below. The picture of the compost bin nearby, though, is a clue about at least one important amendment.

Here is the Extension Expert’s recommendation:

  • Choose an organic soil amendment like composted yard waste, rotten leaves, or well-rotted manure (make sure any composted manure does not contain residual herbicides!). Material that is well-rotted will not smell unpleasant; it will smell like the earth.
  • Spread a 3 to 4 inch layer of your chosen amendment on top of the clay soil; work it down into the soil about 6 to 8 inches.
  • After the compost has been worked into the soil, you can spread an inch or two layer of sand on top and gently spade it in.
  • Before planting in spring, lay on another 2-3 inch layer of compost and work it into the soil, about 6 to 8 inches down (the depth of a shovel blade).

Walter Reeves, The Georgia Gardener, has an updated article on Soil – Bed Preparation that suggests bagged soil conditioner as an alternate for compost. His article also suggests adding Permatil to the mix, to keep the clay soil looser, as the composts and soil conditioner decompose and disappear.

Permatil is expanded shale, and it creates air spaces in the soil. I have added a similar product to part of my upper garden, an area I don’t re-amend as often as the veggie area because it has some perennials (permanent plants).

If you can’t find Permatil but are interested in trying something similar, look for Espoma’s Soil Perfecter, bits of kiln-fired “ceramic mineral” that works in a similar way to open up air spaces in the soil.

Nutrients and pH?

The Extension recommendation above does not address soil pH (acid level) or fertility/nutrients. The Expert who answered the question may have assumed that everyone will know to send a soil sample to their state’s soil lab (Georgia’s is at UGA, in Athens) through their local Cooperative Extension office.

If you are not sending a soil sample to your state’s soil lab, consider buying a pH test kit (see my article on Soil pH and Garden Success for more information). For fertility, if you don’t have a soil lab recommendation for fertilizer, choose an organic-approved garden fertilizer and follow the package directions. To learn more about nutrient sources for your garden, check out my articles on Potassium Sources for an Organic Garden and on Fish Emulsion Fertilizers.

Dig soil when ground is not soggy

You will know your clay soil is dry enough for digging when you can squeeze a handful of it and it breaks up into bits. You should not be able to roll it into the kind of snake-shapes that can be coiled to make pottery bowls.

Clay soil needs to be not-soggy at digging time, partly so you can get the clay to let go of your shovel and partly so it won’t reform into giant, brick-like clods when the lumps finally dry. Digging in wet clay soil also causes it to compact, making it lose the air spaces that are vital to healthy plant roots.

Winter is a great time to work on improving garden soil or to create new planting beds. Here in the South, we have some pleasantly cool afternoons mixed in with the cold ones, which means we have good opportunities for working outdoors.

Right now, though, the ground is squishy under my feet when I walk in the yard. I just need to wait for the rain to stop and the ground to get drier.

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Why Did My Radishes Split?

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There are two main reasons for my salad radishes to split apart. Both reasons, though, are related to my not paying enough attention to the crop.

Some background — I planted the first salad radishes, several kinds, in late September, but more seeds have gone into the ground since then. Until now, all the radishes have been whole, unsplit, but a few have been a bit spongy, which means some radishes definitely stayed in the ground too long.

Salad radishes harvested in late December from my Georgia garden.

Of the five radishes in the nearby picture, only one has split, but the split is huge. The texture and flavor of this radish, the fourth from the left, was fine, but the little veggie was hard to clean. Dirt really stuck tight to that white, inner part of the root.

Reason 1: Radishes left in the ground too long

One reason salad radishes split is that they have been left in the ground too long. University of Illinois Extension says this about harvesting radishes:

Pull radishes when they are of usable size (usually starting when roots are less than 1 inch in diameter) and relatively young. Radishes remain in edible condition for only a short time before they become pithy (spongy) and hot. 

Radish, by University of Illinois Extension

Reason 2: Uneven watering

University of Illinois Extension adds this note: “A flush of moisture after a period of relative dryness also may cause mature roots to burst and split. Try to avoid uneven moisture availability.”

I haven’t done any watering this fall/winter. I haven’t needed to, because rain keeps falling and the soil never dries out. In the past week or so, though, the sky has dumped even more enormous quantities of water on north Georgia.

Radishes from my garden harvested on the 17th, just a week before that last batch, were not split. A couple of radishes harvested on the 26th were split. I am thinking that the massive rainfall contributed as much as age to the splitting.

How to have radishes that don’t split

Salad radishes from my north Georgia garden.

You can probably guess the logical solution to the split-radish problem: harvest early and put your garden in a less rainy location. That first part of the solution is reasonable, but it can be impossible to move your garden to a less-rainy location.

It is possible, though, to block some of that rainfall with a row cover. A non-woven row cover will let some rainfall through, but not all of it. If I had been thinking more about my radishes, I would have set up a cover for them, to prevent the excessive rainfall from soaking their planting bed.

My experience

My spring-planted radishes grow faster than my fall-planted radishes. In fall and winter, I think I have oodles of time to harvest those little roots. They stay crisp and sweet much longer in fall than in spring! However, the amount of time they can stay in the ground, even in fall/winter — and still be delicious — is limited.

There is one variety that hasn’t split, in any year, in my garden: ‘French Breakfast’. Maybe its longer, narrower shape protects it from splitting. This variety is a little spicier than some of the round types, but ‘French Breakfast’ is great on an open-face butter sandwich.

Note: If this post is interesting or helpful in anyway, please “like” or “share” it. Thank you!

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How to protect plants from deer

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Deer love pansies. If I plant any pansies in my garden, deer find them, eat them all, then move on to check out the rest of the garden. Planting pansies is just asking for trouble. However, there are ways to protect plants from deer; if I really NEEDED to have pansies in the yard I could.

Methods of protecting plants from deer include fencing and other barriers, switching to less-tasty plants for at least the outer zones of the garden, and applying products that have flavors and/or odors that deer don’t like.

Fencing needs to be tall to keep out deer

A University of Vermont article by Dr. Leonard Perry explains that deer are very good jumpers. If you are planning a fence to keep out deer, it should be taller than eight feet high. Ten-feet high would be good. Many kinds of materials can be used. One of the lower-cost options is a polypropylene plastic netting, but the only one I’ve seen that is a full 10-feet high is this one by Tenax. Most others are shorter, around 7 feet high.

Alternative fences, including electric fences that might not be appropriate for home gardens, are described in the North Carolina Wildlife article Fencing to Exclude Deer.

A less expensive, non-electric version of deer fencing is described on the blog of Seed Savers Exchange. This version relies on a very different strategy than all the others I’ve seen. Instead of making sure the deer know where it is, by adding flags or other visible cues, it relies on invisibility to confound the deer into not knowing whether the fence is too high to hop over.

Essentially, it calls for 30 lb. monofilament fishing line, which is strong enough to not break easily but fine enough that deer can’t see it well. The line is strung between tall fence posts, at intervals of about 12-18 inches.

This is what the author says:

Once your fencing is done and a deer comes around in the daytime or the middle of the night, it cannot see the clear 30-lb. test line. When they brush up against it, they can feel it and know the something is there, yet they can’t see it. The deer have no idea how high they need to jump to get over the obstacle they have just walked into and they will stay away from the area.

An Inexpensive but effective Deer Fence, by Pat Haberman, SSE member, March 15, 2016

The local Plant-A-Row-for-the-Hungry (PAR) garden is in the middle of a large fenced area. The fence is tall (8 feet, I think) and has kept out the deer. One day last week, though, deer found a gap in the fence. Luckily, Ed, who owns the property, found and repaired the gap quickly. Damage to the garden could have been worse. The incident provided a reminder that we gardeners need to check the fence more often.

Other barriers to protect crops from deer

Wire fencing on PVC frame, built to fit the garden exactly, protects crops from deer.
At a local church garden, cages made with wire fencing and PVC supports protect each bed.

A local church has built PVC frames to fit its garden beds. The low frames are covered with wire fencing, even across the top of each frame. Deer cannot reach through the wire to eat the plants.

The individual covers for each bed may be inconvenient to store when not in use, but they work, and they are less inexpensive than an entire fence.

Tulle fabric, a very find kind of netting, over a PVC frame protects plants from deer and other wildlife.

In some home gardens, tulle or other row-cover fabric supported by a frame is enough to protect plants from deer. The trick is to cover the plants before the deer find them.

Deer prefer some crops over others

When deer broke through the PAR fence and snacked their way across our garden, there was an obvious pattern to the snacking.

The deer definitely preferred spinach family plants (beets, Swiss chard) over cabbage family plants. Carrots were, apparently, another favored food of deer.

  • Carrot tops seem to be a favorite food of deer.
    Deer ate the green tops of the carrots.
  • Beet greens and Swiss chard seem to be a favorite food of deer.
    Deer ate the tops of all the beets and the Swiss chard plants.

The good news is that the edible roots of beets and carrots were undamaged. We were able to harvest some of each to take to the pantry.

Deer did not eat any of the kale, lettuces, collard greens, daikon radishes, and broccoli. Anyone having trouble with deer browsing in the garden might want to keep these less-favored crops in mind as crops to try next season.

For ornamental plants, University of Georgia Extension offers a list of plants that deer like less well than others. The list is in this publication: Deer Tolerant Ornamental Plants.

Use less-tasty plants to protect deer favorites

The Clemson Extension article Protecting your plants from deer suggests that homeowners try planting in Zones. Author James Hodges describes the method this way:

The zoning method consists of three areas within a landscape. Close to the outside of your property where deer have quick access, use seldom damaged plants. Moving to the middle of the property, you can include some favorites that are rated occasionally damaged. Near the house, plant deer most damaged plants that are your favorites and use repellants starting at planting and regularly during the season to discourage deer damage.

Protecting your plants from deer, by James Hodges, Clemson University Extension, Feb. 18, 2016

You can use UGA’s list of deer-tolerant ornamental plants to use the zoning method in your yard, to help keep deer away from your crops.

Do deer repellents work?

Some deer repellents work better than others. NCSU’s article on Management strategies to minimize deer damage in the landscape tells that human hair and rotting eggs have not been effective at keeping deer away.

The article does include a recipe for a pepper spray that sort-of works:

Pepper Spray:  A formulation of 1 to 2 tablespoons of Tabasco sauce in 1 gallon of water sprayed on plants has been shown to have limited effectiveness. Be sure to test a leaf with the spray prior to spraying the plant.

Management strategies to minimize deer damage in the landscape, by Dr. Lucy Bradley, NCSU Horticulture Specialist, 2016.

Use of mothballs is discouraged (in NC, the tactic is illegal), but soap is on the list of things that work to keep deer away. One bar of fragrant soap (brand not specified) protects one square yard of garden, which is not a huge space. Gardeners relying on soap as a repellent may need to invest in a large carton of bars.

For purchased repellents, Alabama Extension offers a comparison of products — by active ingredients, cost, which plants can be treated with each product, frequency of re-application for best effectiveness, and more. The comparison is in the publication An overview and cost analysis of deer repellents for homeowners and landowners.

The publication explains that some repellents work by having a bitter taste, and others work by having an awful smell or appearance. Repellents need to be applied before deer find the plants and learn that the plants are good to eat. Each product has its own schedule for re-applying it. For best effectiveness, follow the instructions on your product.

One of my gardening friends uses the repellent product Plantskydd , which is organic-approved, to keep deer from demolishing her crops. She lives in a neighborhood that has numerous resident deer, but it is unlikely that the HOA would approve the kind of fence needed to keep them out of her garden.

Without the Plantskydd, her gardening would be much more limited, and her harvests of some crops would be non-existent. If you are in a similar neighborhood-situation, repellents may be your best option for protecting plants from deer.

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Soil pH and Garden Success

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When a garden hasn’t been doing well, one of the first conditions to check is the soil’s pH, its acid-alkaline balance. The pH scale goes from 0 to 14;  7 is the neutral pH, measurements below 7 are acidic, and measurements above 7 are alkaline.

For reference, distilled salad vinegar has a pH in the range of 2 to 2.5 (acidic), and cold-process soap has a pH in the range of 9 to 10 (alkaline).

Soil pH influences how well plants can take in nutrients from the soil, so getting a garden’s soil into the best pH range for your plants will help them be healthier and more productive.

What is less well-known is that correcting a pH that is either too high or too low takes time. Testing soil pH should be done now, or soon, for gardens that have not done well in the past year.

What pH is good for gardens?

Blueberries will be ripe beginning in mid-to-late June.
Blueberry plants prefer a soil pH near 5.

Most garden veggies need a soil pH of between 6 and 7. Where I live, northwest of Atlanta, the natural soil pH is lower than that range — it is naturally acidic. With that acidity in mind, many people here routinely add lime to their lawns and gardens without checking the soil pH first, and end up with a soil pH that is too high.

When I worked at the local Extension office and managed the soil samples that went to the soil lab at University of Georgia (UGA), it was not unusual to see some samples with soil pH around 5, but others with pH higher than 8. Those higher pH soil samples were from lawns and gardens that had been limed pretty much every year.

Once, a friend who decided to plant blueberries in the space where she had originally kept a vegetable garden sent a soil sample in to the lab at UGA. The lab found that the pH of her soil was 7. This pH level was not a surprise because she had been spreading ashes from her fireplace on the garden. Wood ashes are a good source of potassium, but they raise the soil pH.

For many veggies, a soil pH of 7 is fine, but the blueberries she hoped to plant in that space prefer a pH closer to 5. That soil needed some work before it would make a good home for blueberries. 

How can I find the pH of my garden soil?

Example of easy to use soil pH test kit for home gardeners.
Example of easy to use soil pH test kit for home gardeners.

The most reliable method of finding your garden’s soil pH is to send a soil sample to your state’s soil lab. Call your local county Cooperative Extension office to find out how to take a representative soil sample, how to package it, and the lab fee for this service.

Another option is to purchase a pH test kit at a local garden center. One I have used (pictured nearby) includes a container with color chart for comparison, capsules of pH-indicator-powder to add to the container, and instructions.

The basic instructions for this kit, and others:

  1. put a tiny bit of garden soil into the container
  2. add the indicator powder
  3. add water up to a line near the top
  4. put the lid back on the container, then
  5. mix the parts together by shaking the container until color develops.

You find the pH by comparing the color of your sample to the chart on the front of the container.

Soil sample in pH test kit with water and indicator powder, to read the soil pH.
Sample in pH test kit shows pH of soil in my upper flower bed to be about 6.5.

How to lower a too-high soil pH

The UGA soil lab sent information to my friend about how much aluminum sulfate (the cheapest option) to add in order to bring the pH down to a better level for blueberries. If you know that the pH of your garden soil is too high, but don’t have a lab-recommendation for how to lower it, the amount of elemental sulfur (my preferred option) needed can also be found in a table by Clemson University Extension, in its Changing the pH of your soil publication.

For a soil pH that is only slightly high (about 0.5 higher than the desired level for your plants), one of my county’s former Extension agents used to recommend mixing sphagnum peat into the soil as a quick fix. Iowa State University Extension suggests other amendments that can lower a too-high pH, including “elemental sulfur, aluminum sulfate, iron sulfate, acidifying nitrogen, and organic mulches.”

There is a note, too, that a very high pH (over 8) is hard to bring down. When the local Plant-a-Row-for-the-Hungry garden (one of my volunteer groups/projects) was at a location that had a high-pH soil, we added the recommended amount of sulfur several years in a row before the pH started to come down.

How to raise a too-low soil pH

The Iowa State University publication How to change your soil’s pH includes a table showing how much ground limestone will be needed to raise soil pH. If you have hydrated lime handy, and think it might be a “quicker fix” for a too-low pH, please don’t try it. The risk of raising the pH too high with this product, by accident, is large. Lowering the pH after over-liming is difficult and can take a long time. Use ground limestone instead of quick lime or hydrated lime.

It takes more lime to raise pH in a clay soil than in a sandy soil. In general, according to the table in the Iowa State publication, for 100 square feet of clay-soil garden, it takes 5 to 6 pounds of limestone mixed into the top six inches of soil to raise the pH by 0.5.

When is the best time to adjust the soil pH?

For my friend’s blueberries, the UGA lab report recommended that the bushes shouldn’t be planted until 6 months after applying the sulfur. If she added the sulfur in October, that means blueberry-planting should — for best effect —  wait until April. That is pushing the boundary for good planting time for woody plants like blueberries; as spring progresses and the weather warms, newly planted bushes are less likely to do well. They need time in the soil for their root systems to become established before being stressed by the heat of a Georgia summer.

What this means is that soil testing should be done now, if it hasn’t already been done, so adjustments to pH can be made soon enough to benefit plants that will be planted in spring. 

Broccoli, a cool-season crop, does best when soil pH is 6.5 to 7.

What soil pH is best for my plants?

An article by Lewis Hill, published in Robert Rodale’s The Best Gardening Ideas I Know (1983) includes a list of some garden plants and the pH ranges they prefer. I’ve pulled some of the food plants from his list to post here:

  • pH 4 to 5: blueberry
  • pH 5 to 5.75: blackberry, grape, parsnip, plum, potato, pumpkin
  • pH 5.75 to 6.5: bean, citrus fruits, cowpeas, currants, gooseberry, oats, pepper, rutabaga, rye, squash, strawberry, tomato, turnip
  • pH 6.5 to 7: apple, beet, broccoli, buckwheat, butternut, chicory, chives, cucumber, eggplant, endive, kale, leek, muskmelon, onion, pea, peach, radish, raspberry, rhubarb, spinach, watermelon, wheat
  • pH 7 to 7.5: alfalfa, asparagus, barley, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, nasturtium, parsley

This list may help other gardeners in planning what to plant where, but it is comforting to remember that plants will still grow and produce in soil that is slightly outside their preferred pH range.

This is lucky, since most of us grow many of these plants mixed all together in our gardens. However, for peak production, planting in soil that is actually the preferred pH for each crop works best.

Succession planting with preferred pH for each crop in mind

When I plant Irish-type potatoes in the spring, I will have added some sphagnum peat to their soil to bring the pH down a bit, but not all the way down to 5. Knowing the pH preferences of other crops helps me know what to plant after the potatoes in that space. For example, cabbages in that space would likely be a total bust, because their pH preference is so much higher (7 to 7.5!).

After  potatoes are harvested, a better option than cabbages would be to let a nearby vining crop, like melons, sprawl across that space. Another option would be to plant a crop there that prefers a lower pH range, like beans or cowpeas that thrive at pH 5.75-6.5.

 

(If this information seems helpful or interesting, please remember to “like” or “share” it. Thank you!)

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Snails in the Garden

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We are in December, with below freezing temperatures at night, but there are still a few snails in the garden. Their continued presence among the greens (chicory, kale, lettuce, rocket) tells about the long season of rain leading up to winter here in north Georgia.

Snail on a chicory leaf, early December in Georgia.

I haven’t seen any serious damage to my plants, so I am not concerned about the snails. To be honest, I am amazed by their persistence in the cold.

If there were very many snails, and a lot of damage to crops, I would set out some organic-approved iron-phosphate bait. The one I have used most recently is called Sluggo, but there are many similar baits, with the same active ingredient, that work.

When I have used the iron-phosphate bait, it was actually for roly-polies, many years ago. For some reason their population had boomed, and roly-polies roiled every square inch of ground in the garden. These critters usually eat decaying organic matter, but there were so many of them that they started eating seedlings in the garden. That was a problem, but the Sluggo iron-phosphate bait for slugs and snails works on roly-polies, too.

It took a couple of years of persistent use of the bait to beat back the roly-polies, but my garden hasn’t been invaded like that again.

The Royal Horticulture Society (RHS), in the UK, where slugs and snails commonly invade gardens and farms and cause a lot of damage, has been studying methods of slug and snail control. Earlier this fall, the BBC reported on an RHS study of home-methods, using things like crushed egg shells, sharp sand, and copper strips to keep the pests away from garden crops.

The study found that none of those things really work, which is sad news for those of us who like to “DIY” as much of our gardening as possible. They had not yet tested beer-traps (beer in shallow saucers, set around the garden, to lure and then drown slugs and snails), so there may be one method left for us to use, other than placing boards in the garden for the pests to hide under, then turning the boards over to pick off the critters by hand to drown or otherwise dispatch.

In another RHS study, effectiveness of iron-phosphate baits and another organic control, nematodes that target slugs and snails, was compared to conventional (chemical) control options. The organic methods did almost as well as the chemicals. Based on my roly-poly experience, I would have guessed this outcome, but it is nice to have that guess confirmed.

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Gardens Can Provide Convenient Substitutions for Missing Ingredients

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Food growing in the yard might not count as “convenience food,” but it can be mighty convenient. Sometimes, when I am putting supper together and missing an ingredient, a decent substitute is out in my organic garden.

Most recently, the needed ingredient was cooked spinach. Some years, I have plenty of spinach in the garden, but the local wild bunnies demolished this year’s spinach patch. The good news is that greens are probably the easiest veggie to substitute from the garden.

Chicory as a substitute for spinach in cooking

I have a little patch of kale, which would work as a spinach-substitute if there were more of it. You may remember, though, my patch of chicory, defended from the bunnies by a blockade of sticks. The blockade, after I added a lot more sticks, did work, and the ‘Magdeburg’ chicory, selected for its roots used in making chicory coffee, grew.

Chicory in the garden that has been nibbled by the wild yard bunnies.

Chicory to the left shows the bunny-damaged chicory patch before I beefed-up the stick blockade. 

Because I have not yet dug up any of the roots to make chicory coffee, there are plenty of large leaves on the plants.

I harvested about a third of the leaves from the patch, to use as a spinach substitute, in my recent vegetable lasagna.

'Magdeburg' chicory, nearing the time of harvest.

Picture to the right shows the successfully-defended chicory patch, with taller sticks still visible, poking up around the plants.

Some of the roots are finally large enough that I will dig them up in the next few weeks to make my coffee. This is a benefit of living in the South: the ground will not be frozen anytime soon. Digging up roots is still possible.

'Italiko rosso' chicory has beautiful red leaf veins, making it beautiful in addition to being tasty.

I will say, though, that the leaves of the ‘Magdeburg’ chicory, chosen for its roots, are not as tasty as the leaves of some other chicories I have grown in the past, like the ‘Italiko rosso’ in the picture to the left. 

The problem with the ‘Magdeburg’ chicory leaves is an intensified bitterness. I had to boil and drain the ‘Magdeburg’ leaves a couple of times to get to an acceptably-low level of bitterness. ‘Italiko rosso’ is mildly bitter, but I have never had to do the boil-then-drain  thing with that variety.

Convenient herb tea from the yard

Another convenient plant in the garden right now is oregano. In a few weeks, the oregano patch will lose a lot of its leaves, but — here in early December — it still looks great. The patch is thick with fresh, fragrant leaves.

Oregano can be used to make herbal tea, tasting pretty much like oregano.

We use our fresh herbs pretty frequently in cooking. I hadn’t thought, though, about using oregano to make an herbal tea until I read about it last week.

Since I like to use crops-in-the-yard as fully as possible, oregano tea seemed like a thing to try.

An old (2017) article on Livestrong.com tells about some potential benefits of oregano, especially oregano oil, but is very careful to not make a lot of overblown health claims for the tea. I appreciate the cautious approach!

I made tea using fresh oregano leaves on two separate days last week. The first day, I added honey and lemon, and the tea was good enough that I made another cup the next day. The second time, though, I drank it “straight”, without any additions. Let me just say that the first version, with honey and lemon, was MUCH better than the second. 

If anyone is curious — oregano tea tastes pretty much like oregano. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but finding it out in person made me laugh.

I am having oregano tea again today, with local honey and a squeeze of a lemon-like fruit that was grown by my friend Eddie.

Which “convenient foods” are you using from your garden this month?

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Gifts for Gardeners in Winter

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Gardeners will be spending less time in their gardens over the next couple of months. Colder weather means slower-growing weeds and slower-growing crops, so there is less work to do. For many of us, though, our thinking-about-gardens is still on full-speed.

Indoor projects can help use up some of that gardening-energy. If your gardener could use a wintertime project, here are some garden-related gift ideas to consider:

Stepping Stone Kit: I went to a big garden expo in August, and one booth showed kits for garden stepping stones. The projects were super-cute! This is a fun joint project for an adult plus child.

Flower Press and Idea Book: There aren’t many flowers in our gardens now to place in a plant press, but crafty gardeners who love flowers can get ready for flower-season (most of the year, here in the South) by reading an inspirational book (below). Information about the flower press — shown at left — on Amazon.com indicates that it is for kids, but my flower press, that I use as an adult, looks similar (different picture on the front).

My copy of Penny Black’s Book of Cards and Collages , along with my own flower press, has helped me make many beautiful cards over the years, mostly in the slower, wintertime season. This book, or a different one of your choosing, might inspire your favorite gardener, too.

Looking for a more practical gift? Try a very nice food dehydrator, to preserve your gardener’s harvest, paired with a book of recipes for the resulting dehydrated foods, so the preserved harvest is used to its fullest.

My Excaliber dehydrator, which I love, is the smaller, 5-tray version, but I should have bought the 9-tray version (shown to the right of this text).

The Ultimate Healthy Dehydrator Cookbook isn’t a primer on how to dehydrate your garden produce — a booklet with those instructions comes with the Excaliber dehydrator. Instead, this book explains how to use those dehydrated foods in every-day recipes.

Something that might be less practical, but that I thought was very funny and yet also useful when I saw it at that big garden expo, is a set of Outdoor Yard Drinkholder stakes. Setting your cup/thermos in one of these, near where you are working in the garden, would keep it high enough off the ground that dirt and debris is less likely to fly into your beverage.

The stakes would also reduce the risk of spills (how many times have I accidentally knocked over my water/tea/coffee while weeding?). I can imagine placing these strategically around the yard in the morning, so there will always be one near where I am working.

The linked set is multicolored, but the stakes also come in what may be considered a more tasteful color combo of white and black.

Fall Garden Planning book explains how to choose crops, create a schedule, and prepare the garden for fall planting.

Of course, there is also my very own book about planning the fall vegetable garden, Fall Garden Planning, which would be an Excellent gift for any gardener in the Southeastern U.S. (but my view is probably biased…).

If none of these ideas seems right for your gardener, you might check out the gift idea lists of some of my gardening friends:

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Ichi Ki Kei Jiro – Asian Persimmon

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I planted our Ichi Ki Kei Jiro persimmon tree back in 2008. In its third year, it produced a few fruits that dropped before ripening. In the fourth year, the tree produced fruits that stayed on the tree and ripened there for us to harvest. The little tree has produced mature fruit every year since then. 

How to Eat Ichi Ki Kei Jiro Fruits

The flavor of Ichi Ki Kei Jiro persimmons is similar in flavor to that of American persimmons, a less-strong version of that flavor, but the fruit is larger. Even better, unlike American persimmons, Ichi Ki Kei Jiro fruits totally lack that persimmon-astringency, even when the fruits are hard. 

After decades of eating American persimmons, sometimes too soon, so that I got that “Sahara Desert” feeling in my mouth, it took a few years to trust that my Asian persimmons would not have that astringency.

The first year we harvested the large, orange fruits from our Ichi Ki Kei Jiro tree, I did eat a few that were still firm, like apples, because everything I had read about this persimmon variety said that I should. The flavor was good, and the fruits were sweet. However, the fruits continued to ripen indoors, and waiting for the fruit to get mushy-soft turned out to be the best plan.

When the fruits are mushy-soft, the flavor is more pronounced, and the sweetness is just right. To eat Ichi Ki Kei Jiro fresh, we wash the soft fruits and then cut them either in half or in quarters and scoop the pulpy innards out with a spoon. This makes an excellent dessert, without any additions or alterations.

How to eat an Ichi Ki Kei Jiro Persimmon
How to eat an Ichi Ki Kei Jiro persimmon

Fruit-preparation is made even easier by the lack of seeds in most fruits from our tree. Every now and then, I will cut into a fruit that contains a few seeds, but that is rare.

In years when we have a super-abundance of these persimmons, I scoop out pulp from some of the fruits into freezer bags, to use in making persimmon bread (and other foods) in later months.

Our tree does seem to alternate bumper-crop years with lower-harvest years. The fruits taste great in both cases, but in lower-harvest years we have less.

Last year we had a huge crop, enough to put several quarts of pulp into the freezer and to share bags of fruit with neighbors and friends. This is a lower harvest year. We’ve shared some fruit with friends, but there might not be much persimmon bread this year.

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro: About the Trees

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro is self-fertile, which means that one tree is enough. It doesn’t need to be planted with a companion-tree to set fruit. For smaller yards, this can be an important feature!

This variety is also one of the smaller Asian persimmon trees; Ichi Ki Kei Jiro is supposed to reach a height of about 8-10 feet. Ours is a little taller. It might be as much as 12 feet tall, but my experience is that plants in the South almost always grow taller than expected. 

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro fruits attached to the tree.
Ichi Ki Kei Jiro fruits on my tree.

Asian persimmons generally are not as cold-hardy as our native, American persimmons. The website for the plant provider Edible Landscaping (where I bought my tree — but this is not a sponsored post!) shows a hardiness range of zones 6-8 for many of the Asian persimmons it offers. My yard is in hardiness zone 7b.

UGA Extension, in its Home Garden Persimmons publication, offers a more conservative guide to cold-hardiness, suggesting that  Asian persimmons might not be reliably hardy anywhere north of Macon. I live a couple-hours drive north of Macon, and my tree has survived for 10 years, but other gardeners this far north may have a different experience.

I have read that the lifespan of this tree is about 10 years, which is its current age in my yard. It will be interesting to see how the tree does in the coming year!

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro: Planting and Care

As for most fruiting trees, the site selected for the tree should have plenty of sun.

Our Ichi Ki Kei Jiro is a grafted tree; the Asian persimmon top is grafted onto the roots of an American persimmon. The American persimmon rootstock increases the hardiness of the Asian persimmon, especially its tolerance for drought and for excess water. Here in the Southeastern U.S., we get both of those conditions. Most importantly, though, the tree should not be planted in a spot that stays wet. 

The best soil for an Ichi Ki Kei Jiro, like for most other plants, is a soil that we don’t have — a “fertile, sandy loam” that is well-drained, a kind of soil that is almost mythological for those of us in the Southeast.

Soil in my yard is pretty much all red clay. It stays wet for a very long time after a stretch of rainy weather, and then changes over to a brick-like hardness in drier weather.

When I planted my tree, my biggest concern was the risk of soggy soil that could encourage root rots and crown rots. I have lost other trees to soggy soils. To minimize the risk, I planted my Ichi Ki Kei Jiro on a little rise that prevents water from gathering/standing near the trunk/crown of the tree. This strategy seems to have worked.

North Carolina State University notes that the soil pH for persimmons should be in the 6-6.5 range. NCSU also offers this planting advice:

Care must be taken when transplanting a persimmon tree because of its fragile root system. In general, trees should be planted at the same depth (or no more than 1 inch below) they grew in the nursery. The root system must never be subjected to freezing or drying conditions. To ensure good root growth after planting, water the trees immediately after setting them out and on a weekly basis thereafter if they receive no rainfall.

North Carolina State University, Growing Oriental Persimmons in North Carolina

If your soil is mostly clay, like mine, planting at the same depth or higher, and on a little rise, would probably be better than planting even a smidge below the depth of the plant in the nursery.

I have read that overdoing the fertilizer can result in fruit drop. With our clay soils, I tend to under-fertilize, because I know that clay soil can hold onto the nutrients in fertilizers (of all kinds — organic and conventional) for a long time.

Pruning an Ichi Ki Kei Jiro Persimmon Tree

The roots of grafted persimmon trees tend to send up “suckers” — little saplings of American persimmons — that need to be pruned away at ground-level. 

Most of my readers are organic gardeners, but not all are, so this is for all those who sometimes do their weeding with chemicals: Do Not Spray these suckers with herbicides to get rid of them. They are still connected to the Asian persimmon through the root system. Herbicides like RoundUp used on the suckers will travel through the connected root system to your cherished Asian persimmon tree. This could kill the tree. Just so you know…

I prune the top part of my little tree in late winter, usually in early March, but the pruning is minimal. This is not like the pruning required to maintain a healthy apple or peach tree.

I remove low branches that get in the way of mowing and branches that are growing back toward the center of the tree. I look for branches that criss-cross each other and rub together (the rubbing could create a wound in the branch), and prune away one of the two branches. I look for places where several branches grow in a cluster from the same node and prune to reduce the number to just 2 or 3, rather than 4 or 5.

The branches I see on my tree now, in late November, are not where the fruit will form next year. Fruits form on new wood that grows in Spring; the little bit of pruning in March can stimulate growth of that new wood.

Harvesting Ichi Ki Kei Jiro Fruits

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro fruits after harvest. You can see a bit of twig is still attached to each one.
Ichi Ki Kei Jiro fruits after harvest. You can see a bit of twig is still attached to each one.

Ichi Ki Kei Jiro trees hold tightly to their fruits. Just pulling to remove the fruit, even fruit that is dark orange and beginning to soften, isn’t always sufficient. To avoid damaging the tree, use pruners to clip right through the twigs or slender branches holding the fruits. 

Those fruiting twigs will not produce fruit next year, but they may be a source of new wood for next year’s fruit. When you cut through a twig to harvest fruit, try to cut just beyond an outward-facing bud, to help guide new growth in Spring.

Report on Other Asian Persimmon Trees Nearby

Unknown variety of Asian persimmon growing about a mile and a half from my yard.
Unknown variety of Asian persimmon growing about a mile and a half from my yard.

Tree 1: One of my friends has a different Asian persimmon tree — I don’t know which variety — that he planted five years ago. His tree still has not produced mature fruit.

Tree 2: When Joe and I walked a different route through the neighborhood yesterday, to get a cup of coffee at a new coffee shop in town (two miles away), we passed a yard that had a very small Asian persimmon tree with fruit. This must be its first year for fruit, because there were just five fruits on the tree, and the tree couldn’t have been more than five or six feet tall. I don’t know which variety of persimmon this tree is, but the fruits are more elongated (cone-shaped) than fruits on my Ichi Ki Kei Jiro.

I hope this information is helpful to gardeners considering which fruits to plant in a Southern yard. If it is, please remember to “like” or “share” the post!

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New Page About Wildflowers in Tuscany

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I am working on a page for this website that is a little off-topic. It is about wildflowers in Tuscany. The new page is partly for the couple-of-hundred Cobb County Master Gardeners who love Italy, especially Tuscany, and most-especially Montepulciano, where we have stayed. The page is also partly to provide an easy way for me to help people who are curious about the flowers they see next summer, when we go back to Italy for Joe’s job one more time.

View from the roadside on one of my walks in Tuscany - wildflowers, vineyards, and olive groves.
View from one of my walks in Tuscany.

One of my favorite activities of the past couple of summers has been walking through the countryside around Montepulciano, passing vineyards and olive groves, to see the local plants/flowers and their associated insects. Plants growing within the hilltop towns, which are nearly completely paved and have very little exposed soil, have also been a source of amazement. 

While in Italy, I studied the ways container plants in front of buildings can tell about a building’s purpose. I paid attention to the mix of flowers along roadsides and in meadows, and considered how to recreate similar-looking mixes in the rainy, humid Southeastern U.S. I watched the pollinators, and saw a lack of diversity in the butterflies, but also an abundance of flower-flies and solitary bees. 

Flowers of clematis vine, with a solitary- bee.

The biggest surprise has been how many plants  I can identify on-sight, without even thinking hard, because I have seen them here in the U.S. Dandelion is an easy one, but elderberry grows all over Tuscany, too. It turns out that many common weeds here in the U.S. are not native here. They are classified as being “introduced,” and they came from the Mediterranean region of the world.

An abundantly fruiting elderberry, near Montepulciano, Tuscany.

This is not all bad news for the U.S., since many of these weeds either are edible or they have medicinal properties. They are useful plants.

I saw many dandelions in Tuscany.

You can see some of them now, on the new — but incomplete — Tuscany Wildflowers page of this website. I will continue to update the page over the next few months, so check back occasionally to see the new content.

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Winter Harvests at Plant a Row for the Hungry

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The local Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR) gardeners plan to cut back on their whole-group meetings through much of the winter. That doesn’t mean the gardeners won’t still be providing garden-fresh produce to a local food pantry, but it does mean that they are using the reduced workload of the winter garden to take a break.

Instead of meeting as a whole group every week (the usual schedule), PAR gardeners are signing up in pairs to harvest and deliver greens and root-crops. If the garden seems to need more attention, larger-group workdays can be scheduled, but those will be less frequent. There is no need for watering or continuous weeding, and no more heavy work like spreading mulch, until spring comes back around. 

Fall crops at Plant a Row for the Hungry Garden, well-grown and ready for harvest.
Fall crops at Plant a Row for the Hungry Garden, well-grown and ready for harvest.

Last week’s workday was the last major workday for the season. While some gardeners harvested, weighed, and bagged greens for delivery, others pulled the last of the peppers and eggplants. A freeze was tentatively forecast for the weekend, with a bigger chance of freezing early this week. An early-week freeze looks less likely as the target-dates get closer, but it was good to move those plants out of the garden while there was a small crowd of gardeners to complete the task.

Even better, there was a basket-load of peppers to deliver to the food pantry, in addition to the greens.

Kale and garlic share a bed at the Plant a Row for the Hungry garden. Kale can be harvested all winter. Garlic will be harvested in summer.
Kale and garlic share a bed at the Plant a Row for the Hungry garden. Kale can be harvested all winter. Garlic will be harvested in summer.

In the next week or so, the irrigation system will be turned off.  Turning the system off and draining it for the winter will protect the equipment from freeze damage. This is a more complicated task (than pulling up old crops, for example) to prepare the garden for cold weather, but it is important for the success of next spring’s garden.

Trio of gardeners harvesting lettuces and kale from the first planting bed.
Trio of gardeners harvesting lettuces and kale from the first planting bed.

Gardeners who are new to fall/winter gardening in the South may be unsure about how much to harvest each week from the garden. It may help to know the guidelines the PAR gardeners discussed, to guide their harvest of winter crops:

Closer view of one 'Red Russian' kale plant that has plenty of big leaves ready for harvest.
Closer view of one ‘Red Russian’ kale plant that has plenty of big leaves ready for harvest.
  1. For leafy greens, harvest lowest/outer/larger leaves.
  2. Harvest no more than 1/3 of the mass of any leafy greens plant each week.
  3. Wait for warm-enough temperatures (above 32 degrees F, with no frost on the leaves) to harvest any/all of the crops/
  4. For root crops (beets, daikon radishes, etc), pull the entire plant at harvest, including the leaves. Those are good food, too.
  5. For the broccoli, some leaves can be harvested before the actual head of broccoli is ready to harvest — leaves of broccoli plants taste pretty much like broccoli; harvest sparingly, though, so plants have enough energy to make a good-sized head of broccoli.

Hope that other gardens are doing as well as the PAR garden!

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