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Gardeners Rely on Each Other

26 May, 2020 by amygwh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gardening websites to visit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Gardening for the Pandemic

8 May, 2020 by amygwh

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

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

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

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

Sprouts and microgreens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edibles in Containers

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

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

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

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

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

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

How important is it to grow vegetables right now?

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

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

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

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

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

How much can we grow?

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

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

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

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

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

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Protect Seedlings with Paper Collars

24 April, 2020 by amygwh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The actual seeds

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

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

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

Planting and care of the seeds

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

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

Critters

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

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

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

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

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

Paper collars when there are no cups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How Much Does it Cost to Start a Garden?

2 April, 2020 by amygwh

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

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

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

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

Boundaries of the Garden

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

Boards

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

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

Alternate materials

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

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

However, raised beds are not required.

An in-ground garden

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

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

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

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

Raised beds pros and cons

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

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

Raised bed advantages:

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

Raised bed disadvantages

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

The Soil

Filling a raised bed garden

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

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

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

Choosing the soil product for filling raised beds

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

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

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

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

Amending an in-ground garden

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

Tumbling type compost bin — Backyard compost tumbler.

For some soils, more compost is even better.

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

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

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

Fertilizers

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plants and Seeds

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

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

Crops to buy as plants

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

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

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

Crops to buy as seeds

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

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

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

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

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

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

Extras

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

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

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

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

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

Best wishes for great gardening!

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Greens that Survive Freezing Weather

4 February, 2020 by amygwh

In the first couple of very hard freezes of this fall/winter garden season, I covered my garden with spun row covers to protect the crops from the cold. However, in the most recent freeze, about a week and half back, when temperatures dropped to the low-to-mid-20s three nights in a row, I left the garden uncovered. The plan was to confirm which garden greens were most winter-hardy.

Shallow basket containing three kinds just-harvested greens, set behind a few red radishes with green leaves still attached, all set on a table. — Veggies harvested in advance of the freeze.

The afternoon before the first of those three very cold nights, I harvested a basketful of greens (and some root veggies), in case the whole garden turned into a mushy brown mess. At least I would have those pre-harvested greens to enjoy!

Why does cold-hardiness matter now, in mid-winter?

Seed catalogs are piling up in my house. If you, like me, are contemplating the coming gardening year, having information about cold-hardiness might be helpful as you choose crops for next fall.

Garden plant protection provided by spun row cover over supports that hold the cover away from the plants. — Makeshift supports hold cover over plants.

During a freeze, all of the greens in the garden will look wilted. This is normal. As the temperatures climb back above freezing, the hardiest greens perk back up and look completely unaffected. For gardeners who are short on time or energy in the winter months, keeping a garden full of very hardy greens can be a real benefit.

Some gardeners are happy to provide protection for their less cold-hardy crops and can easily manage the spun row covers and structures to support those covers. Other gardeners may not be able to cover their crops ahead of each freeze, either because they travel or have other time-restrictions, or maybe because of a more limited budget.

Regardless, the more information we have as we plan the next round of crops, the more likely it is that we can make the best choices for our gardens.

My greens crops, after exposure to the hard freeze

After the most recent series of very cold nights, all of my unprotected garden greens are still alive, but some came through better than others. I took pictures, so you can see for yourself which crops did best through the freezing weather.

Cold damage shows in a couple of ways. Mushy brown areas are the most easy to spot, but thinner, silvered places are also evidence of cold damage.

The frisée, ‘Full Heart’ escarole, and ‘Perpetual spinach’ Swiss chard show the most cold damage of all the greens included here. The heading types — radicchios and the Sugarloaf, show a little cold damage on the outer leaves, but the leaves inside the heads seem to be unaffected.

Some greens show no damage at all. These include the spinach, kale, cilantro, and parsley. The best news is that even the most damaged greens look as though they will survive to resume growing.

If your garden greens look like heck

If the unprotected greens in your garden are the kind that suffered from cold damage in that last round of cold weather, you have a couple of options.

The small green leaves, purple stems, and tightly closed flower buds of chickweed growing in winter. — Chickweed

One option is to trim away the “bad leaves” to reduce the odds of a fungus taking hold and rotting away entire plants. Then, when new leaves grow in the stretches of warmer weather that we get here in the Southeastern US, you will be able to resume harvesting leaves for use in the kitchen.

Another option, that can be put into practice along with the first option, is to bring in some wild greens to supplement your garden greens.

Right now, chickweed and dandelion greens are at their peak in my lawn and garden. If you can identify those with confidence, and you know that the plants are growing in uncontaminated soil (not by a busy road or in a “treated” lawn), they are good wild greens to try, either added to salads, mixed with other cooked greens, or wilted before adding to a pizza.

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Growing Sugarloaf (Pan di Zucchero) Chicory

22 January, 2020 by amygwh

One of the chicories that I planted in late summer for a fall crop is Sugarloaf chicory. If you aren’t familiar with this vegetable, it is a leafy crop in the same family as lettuces and sunflowers. Sugarloaf makes a tall head, similar to a Romaine lettuce. The inner, packed-together leaves are yellowish in color as a result of not being exposed to sunlight. The outer leaves that fold loosely around the head are darker green. All the leaves are good to eat.

Chicories in the garden -- a red radicchio in front and a taller green sugarloaf in back. — See a Sugarloaf growing behind red radicchio.

You may have seen seeds for this variety of chicory under another name. In Italy, it is called Pan di Zucchero. In France it is called Pain de Sucre. Some seed companies sell seeds for this type of chicory using these other names.

Sugarloaf chicory in the kitchen

The “sugar” part of the name does not mean that Sugarloaf is missing the bitterness that comes with all the other chicories. It does mean, though, that there is a little sweetness along with the bitterness.

I’ve used the leaves from this year’s plants in salads and as cooked greens, and both versions have been good. This may be because I harvested the chicory in winter. Cooler weather keeps the inherent bitterness of most chicories to a minimum.

One great feature of the Sugarloaf chicory is that it can stand up to cooking without turning slimy like spinach. If texture is one of your main objections to most cooked greens, this is one to try.

Growing Sugarloaf chicory

I grew this chicory as a spring crop one year, many years ago, and it didn’t make the tightly packed head that it is supposed to. This year, as a fall-grown crop, it did. Not heading-up didn’t stop me from using and enjoying the plants those years ago, but harvesting the classic tight heads from my own garden feels like a big win.

Long head of sugarloaf chicory lying on a countertop. — Long, narrow head of Sugarloaf chicory

Sugarloaf is a long-time-to-maturity crops. It needs close to three months of perfect weather. “Perfect” would, I think, involve no days over about 85 degrees F, and none below 32 degrees F. Since that kind of perfect does not exist in the Southeastern US, where I live and garden, my Sugarloaf chicories have taken four months to mature into those lovely heads of greens.

Head of sugarloaf chicory sliced through crosswise shows the tightly packed leaves in the center — Cross section of sugarloaf chicory shows tightly packed leaves in the core

If you plan to try a spring crop of Sugarloaf, it will be best to start them indoors, in plugs or flats, in the next few weeks. They can be transplanted out to the garden after hardening off (exposure to the great outdoors, an increasing number of hours each day) for a week or so.

The garden soil should have a pH in the 6-7 range, be well-amended with compost, and given an extra boost from a nitrogen-rich fertilizer (try one of the fish fertilizers, or alfalfa).

Soil should be kept moist, but not soggy. Too much water can encourage leaf rots at the base of the plant. If we have another super-soaker of a spring, plants in raised beds may be a bit drier than those in in-ground gardens.

Just like for radicchio, harvest Sugarloaf when the heads feel firm. If plants are left too long in the garden after that point, they may start to elongate, which means they are bolting, which means they are sending up a flowering stalk.

When a plant bolts, it quits putting its effort into new tasty leaves, and switches it all into the flowering stalk. If flowers are the goal, well that’s all ok. If you wanted to eat the lovely leafy part, bolting is not a good thing.

Also growing for harvest in January

Chicories, including radicchios and other chicories (frisée, escaroles), aren’t the only crops still coming to the kitchen from my garden. Also in the garden — still — are more carrots, radishes, lettuces, cilantro, and beets.

None of these are growing in long rows or huge blocks, or in massive quantities, but there is a little bit of everything. I pulled another bunch of carrots yesterday, and it was like finding a rainbow underground.

Bunch of garden carrots in shades of red, orange, and purple, with green leaves still attached. — Fresh garden carrots.

I also have another shallow planter full of arugula coming along. This crop is to use as a “cut and come again” addition to winter salads, sandwiches, and pizza.

Arugula seedlings as a dense planting growing in shallow pot. — Arugula seedlings will provide snippets of flavor to our meals in another week or so.

What is growing in your garden?

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Goals for the Garden

8 January, 2020 by amygwh

Every garden benefits from a gardener who has a plan, or a goal for the garden. Examples of garden goals include these:

lowering the grocery bill
getting the family (or yourself) to eat more veggies
gaining access to new and wonderful flavors
being able to enjoy foods that are not commercially available
feeling connected to the past through growing heirloom crops
learning about a different culture through its food traditions
boosting resilience or sustainability of your family or neighborhood
adding another physical activity to the day, for improved fitness
cutting trips to the grocery store, as part of an effort to reduce car usage

Use your goals — it is ok to have more than one — as a guide when choosing crops for this year’s garden. Whether your aim is to cut the grocery bill or to learn about foods from another part of the world, keeping the goals at the top of your mind as the seeds are selected will increase the odds of success and your enjoyment of the garden.

Were my 2019 garden goals met?

My goals for the summer garden in 2019 were tempered by the knowledge that, once again, Joe and I would be traveling for several weeks in summer. The long weeks of travel meant that I needed to limit the summer crops to those that would survive the weeks of neglect in hot weather.

I adjusted my goals for the summer garden to focus on basils, partly to learn which would survive basil downy mildew the longest and partly to learn some of the many flavors that basil brings. Happily, we also brought in plenty of tomatoes and peppers, lots of roselle (a tea plant), pole beans, and other crops. In my mind, the summer garden was a success.

For the fall, I wanted to learn more about chicory-family crops, and the garden is still full of these plants. My experimentation with chicories is ongoing. The good news is that the plants have all done well, and I’ve learned how to use some new kinds of chicories in our meals. Also, I REALLY like the flavors and textures of these greens, which is the best news of all. I am counting the fall garden as a success.

Always, there are bits that don’t do as well as I would like, even when most of the garden is totally on target. These little failures don’t stop me from calling the season as a whole a grand success. The Red Rubin basil, for example, was not nearly as robust as the Thai basil, but there was enough for me to compare flavors and general hardiness of the plants.

Also, the spinach seeds did not have a high germination rate. I ended up with only a few of these plants. No way will there be enough for any big helpings of cooked spinach. Luckily, I don’t really like cooked spinach, but leaves from these plants add variety to our winter salads. In my glass-half-full world, that counts as success.

Some of my past garden goals

My goals are different every year, and every season. When we were younger and our budget was tighter, a major goal was saving money on groceries. In other years, I’ve used the garden to try completely new foods, and to experience a wider range of flavors for foods I thought I knew well. I’m sure I am not the only gardener to be blown away on discovering the variation in flavors brought by the many kinds of tomatoes!

Of course, every year a goal is to keep learning more about gardening, and another is to take plenty of time to enjoy being outside. These are easy goals to meet.

For this year, though, my garden goals need to take into account our larger goal of moving farther south, sometime in summer.

Garden goals for 2020

This spring, my exploration of the chicories will continue. I still have an abundance of seeds for these crops, and if all grow as well as last spring’s radicchio I will be able to bring these into the kitchen for several more months. Of course, the spring garden will not be ONLY chicories, but these are what are on my mind.

Red and green leaves of radicchio plants — Last year’s spring-grown radicchio plants (right), a few weeks before they headed up.

For the summer, because of our intention to move, the food-crops will be limited. The goal is to find and grow more ornamental edibles, since the garden is in the front yard. This means more edible flowers, herbs with tidy growth habits (like Thai basil), and smaller versions of some food crops (like peppers).

For the fall, we hope to be in a new yard, learning how to garden in our new place. That is why I wrote/designed the Garden Planner and Notebook. I am going to use the planner and notebook to help me learn faster. The book has spaces for taking notes about soil preparation, about the weather, about the local climate (zone 9a!), chilling hours requirements for fruit trees, the seeds I plant and when they are planted, success (or not) of the crops, and more. I am looking forward to the adventure!

Daffodils (not edible) already
coming up on 29 Dec.

In the meantime, though, I still have the adventure of gardening here, northwest of Atlanta, for a little while longer.

What are goals for your garden this year?

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How to Keep Garden Records

13 December, 2019 by amygwh

Most gardeners, I think, are aware that they should be keeping records of what goes on in the garden each year, but not all gardeners are equally skilled at organizing the information. Personally, I do keep records of many garden activities, but each year’s notes have not always been gathered up in one place.

Excerpt from a garden journal with notes from two planting dates in January, 1995. Ink on light blue paper. — Garden notes on a notebook page from 1995.

Why keep garden records?

Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia says this:

Keeping garden records will improve the quality of your gardening experience as the seasons go by. You and your garden are unique, so personal records are important. You’ll discover what works and what doesn’t, weeding out mistakes and making better decisions.
Garden record keeping, from Agriculture Extended Learning, Dalhousie University.

My experience is that the records I keep do for me exactly what Dalhousie University says. I learn from the failures, and I repeat what works. Over time, there are fewer failures and more successes.

What should gardeners write down?

The kinds of information that are truly helpful include these:

Soil test results and all the things done to improve the soil, from compost additions to cover crops to fertilizers
Exactly which vegetable varieties were planted, when they were planted, how many of each, and whether they did well in the garden
Weather notes, especially about any weather events that might have affected the garden, and including frost dates
Harvest notes — when each crop was ready for harvest, and whether your harvest matched the catalog description for the crop
Garden layout, including where each crop was placed and how much square footage was given to each
Planting calendar that shows when each crop was planted, plus the timing of other garden-related events (such as fertilizer applications, compost additions, arrival of pests)
Notes about pests and diseases, and their effect on specific crops
Notes about crop rotation

Hand-drawn map of a vegetable garden with notes about what is planted in each part of the garden. — Map of this year’s fall crops.

The above list is not all-inclusive, but the observations a gardener makes about those topics form a base from which good decisions can be made.

The trick is remembering, as the year rolls on, to get most of that activity recorded.

What kind of journal works best?

The notes below are about my own experience. It would be weird if every gardener was exactly like me in terms of best-record-keeping-method, so feel welcome to disagree with my opinion!

Blank books filled with lined pages

Many garden journals that I have been given are lovely — hard-cover books filled with lined pages, separated into chapters by month, sprinkled about with inspirational quotes and drawings of beautiful flowers.

I love looking at these and am often actually inspired by the quotes. However, I have not had good success using these journals for record-keeping. The main difficulty has been keeping the information organized in any way that is different from the month-by-month design of the books.

Other roadblocks include laziness (the lined pages seem to be asking for full sentences) and not-wanting-to-ruin such lovely books with my less-than-lovely handwriting.

It is likely, though, that these beautiful blank books are exactly what some gardeners want and need. We are all different!

A record-keeping mish-mash

Mish-mash may be the best way to describe my garden record-keeping style for the past few decades.

Some of my own garden information is recorded on websites/blogs, where I’ve been writing for ten years. Some garden notes are in various types of lined journals such as spiral notebooks, some are on loose pages gathered up in three-ring binders, and some are saved as plant tags that are stored in envelopes.

It is not too hard to imagine that other gardeners have a similar mish-mash of records, possibly stored in shoeboxes.

Garden Planner and Notebook

I have put together a new book that will make it easier for me to keep the most useful information all together in one place for each gardening year. Even though I designed the book for my own use, I’ve added guiding text so other gardeners can use it, too.

The book is titled Garden Planner and Notebook, a Vegetable Garden Guide and Journal.

One reason for creating the planner is that, sometime late next summer or early fall, I will be moving. There will be much to learn about the new yard, with its unfamiliar soil, weeds, insects, and history.

The new garden planner and notebook is full of the reminders, prompts, tables, and other spaces for recording specific information that will help flatten my learning curve in gardening in the new space.

The book includes tables for recording some kinds of information, for example about specific crops, and pages of lines for writing down other kinds of information, such as weather notes, food notes, and the story of the garden.

When I say “story”, I mean writing about the funny comments visitors make about my garden (“Black popcorn! It looks rotted.”) or about finding a black widow spider in the rock wall or reaching into a bag of compost and getting a handful of snake.

I wanted to have all of that together in one book for each year. However, this year, I will use two books. One will be for my spring and early summer garden here in north Georgia, and one will be for the garden that I will start in our new yard, which will be further south.

If you decide to try using the Garden Planner and Notebook, please let me know what you think about its usefulness. You can leave a comment here on this website or on Amazon.com, where the book is available for purchase.

Regardless of the format you use for record-keeping, if you haven’t kept good notes in the past, try it this coming year. You may be amazed at how much you learn about gardening, just by writing down your observations and reviewing them at the end of each season.

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Early December Garden

6 December, 2019 by amygwh

My garden is still full of crops that were planted in late summer, and we have been enjoying them bit by bit. The most abundant plant group in my fall/winter garden this year is the chicory group; these crops include escarole, frisée (an endive), and radicchio.

Other crops still coming in, bit by bit, are the carrots, radishes, lettuce, parsley, and winter onions (harvested as slender, green onions). I am still waiting for a beet to be large enough to bring in. The beet patch contains a few that are getting close.

The “bit by bit” style of harvest is partly because the crops are all heirlooms, which means they weren’t bred for uniform speed of growth. They all were chosen for flavor, not uniformity, which means my garden has a kind of wild look. We are really, though, enjoying the good food.

Tips of broad green leaves, growing upright and packed together in a bed of escarole and radicchio. — Looking across the tops of the escaroles and radicchios.

In the garden

Crops in the garden right now are growing well in our recent cool weather. When we had those few much-colder days, back in mid-November, down into the low twenties fahrenheit, I covered most of my garden to keep the plants a little warmer.

The wire supports that I set into the garden to support the spun row covers through those cold days are still in place. When the next hard freeze comes, I am ready.

Until then, my only work in the garden — besides harvesting good food — is pulling out a bit of chickweed and henbit, two common winter weeds that I snack on as I pull them and also bring inside to share with my pet rabbits.

These are some of the crops in my garden today:

Leaves from the trees are filtering down through the plants, and the plan is for those leaves to remain in the garden. All those old leaves will add a little insulation for the plants and soil in the next hard freeze.

Why so many chicories?

Chicories are my current major crop-group for a couple of reasons.

One is that, when I have been in Italy, eating at restaurants, one commonly served side dish has been cooked greens. At first, I thought these were all spinach, but a lot of the time they were actually chicory/escarole (I found out by asking).

In addition, the little local grocery store in Montepulciano, where we stayed, sells several kinds of radicchios and escaroles all summer long. Growing so many kinds of chicories keeps memories of some great meals in my mind, and it also brings an Italian flavor to more of our meals at home.

Another reason for growing chicories is that they are not very bothered by pests and diseases. At least, so far they have been trouble-free.

Growing chicories in fall versus in spring

I have grown some kinds of chicories before now, but those were planted as spring crops, not as fall/winter crops. The different results of growing in these different seasons has been interesting.

One main difference that I have seen is that the heading-types, like the red radicchio Palla rossa, are slower to form those tight, central heads when grown as a fall crop.

However, the fall-grown plants are larger than I’ve seen in my spring-grown crops.

Other goings-on

I obviously have not been keeping up a weekly writing schedule on my website these past couple of months.

One reason is that we have had many visitors this fall — two sisters-in-law, then a brother, then another sister-in-law, then my youngest son and his partner. Being able to spend time with so many family members has been glorious! In a little more than a week, our oldest son will visit from Colorado, which will also be glorious. Then, our only guests for awhile will be pets of friends who are traveling for the winter holiday.

Front cover of a book, with the title "Garden planner and notebook" on a background of green leaves.

The other main reason for the lack of writing on this website is that I was writing something else — a new book!

More about the Garden Planner and Notebook next week.

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Getting the Garden Ready for a Hard Freeze

11 November, 2019 by amygwh

The first hard freeze in my area is expected to arrive tomorrow evening (Tuesday, Nov. 12). Over the next 24 hours, most gardeners in the path of the cold front will need to harvest the last of the summer vegetables and be ready to cover any crops that might not be ready for temperatures in the low 20s.

The last summer vegetables

View straight down into flat boxes containing red and green tomatoes in a single layer, an inch or two apart from each other. — Last tomatoes for the year.

I have harvested the last of the summer veggies in my garden — all the peppers, even the tiny ones, and the remaining tomatoes.

The tiniest peppers were chopped and sautéed along with some full-sized peppers and are in the crockpot as part of tonight’s chili.

The tomatoes will be used in salads as they ripen, since fresh tomatoes in winter can be hard to come by. Even harvested green and left to ripen slowly in the company of their pinker brethren, these home garden tomatoes will beat the flavor of most supermarket tomatoes.

Large basket containing round orange fruits of the Asian persimmon tree Ichi Ki Kei Jiro. — Small pile of Asian persimmons.

I harvested anise hyssop for my pet rabbits, Moonpie and Charlie Copper, who love that particular herb. It has regrown considerably since the last time I cut off all the dead flowers, so the bunnies have a large-enough supply of leaves to last a few days. Anise hyssop, like basil, will not survive a freeze.

The Ichi Ki kei Jiro persimmons are also ready to come in, mostly, and I brought in a basket-full this afternoon. The tree is providing enough fruits this year that I’ve already shared with one neighbor (Hi, Anthony!) and will be able to share with a few more.

If you have these or other summer vegetables still in the garden, and the cold front is headed your way, consider harvesting them all before the temperatures drop below freezing. Summer vegetables that freeze on the plants will not be good to eat after they thaw.

Crops to protect from a hard freeze

Many of the cool season crops will survive the upcoming freeze in good condition and continue to grow when the weather warms up again. However, to be safe, I will cover the tenderest of the fall crops. These include lettuces, the remaining salad radishes, and the Swiss chard.

I will also cover the escaroles and radicchios, because they are mostly new varieties for me. Their cold-hardiness is unknown.

View from above of closely spaced leafy greens in the garden. — Escaroles will be covered to protect them from extreme cold.

The good news is that I have located covers to place over the more tender crops. These include some actual, horticultural, spun row-cover and an old flannel sheet. Avoid using plastic if you can. If plastic is all you have on hand, make sure it is held above the plants and does not touch them anywhere.

The covers I use can keep the temperature of the garden underneath them a couple or three degrees higher than the outside air. This small increase can be enough to safeguard the crops.

Even the covered greens may look wilted and weird as a result of the cold weather. The key here is not to panic. Wait until warm weather returns before you make rash decisions like pulling up all the plants. Many of the cool-season greens “bounce back” to a more healthy appearance after freezing, then resume growing as the weather warms.

Crops that I won’t protect

Side view of fern-like leaves of carrots as they grow in the garden; in the background, beet leaves, with their red stems, show where the beets are growing. — Carrot patch, with beets in back.

The root vegetables will survive the cold with little trouble, especially since the soil here in north Georgia is still fairly warm.

Another crop to leave in place is the saffron. In my yard, this crop is growing in four different patches in the yard and garden, with each patch sending up its flowers at different times.

I’ve already harvested some of the saffron, but one day when I went out to harvest more, honeybees were visiting the flowers and I decided not to disturb the bees.

Purple flowers, each with six petals, three yellow pistols and red stamens, growing near rocks in a green lawn. — For the spice saffron, harvest the red parts to bring inside and dry before using.

One purple saffron flower in the lawn with two honeybees -- one inside and one on the outside of a petal. — Honeybees visiting a saffron flower, a source of nectar in late October and early November.

Something else to bring inside

Shallow terra cotta planter with densely planted small salad greens -- arugula.

I have already brought the arugula inside. This is one of the salad greens I’ve been growing in a shallow container on the back deck over the last few months. Other greens have included a “basic salad mix” for microgreens and a dense planting of cilantro.

An article about growing these other greens is on the Soil3 blog. I wrote it last summer, for gardeners working in very small gardens and as a way to grow a few more kinds of greens in summer, but the method works as an indoor garden in winter, too. I have a second container of arugula at an earlier stage of growth, that we can harvest from when this first container stops producing greens.

The containers of greens will stay by a south-facing window, and the window will provide enough light for two or three harvests of greens before the plants are worn out.

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Blog

Gardening websites to visit

Sprouts and microgreens

Edibles in Containers

How important is it to grow vegetables right now?

How much can we grow?

The actual seeds

Planting and care of the seeds

Critters

Paper collars when there are no cups

Boundaries of the Garden

Boards

Alternate materials

An in-ground garden

Raised beds pros and cons

The Soil

Filling a raised bed garden

Choosing the soil product for filling raised beds

Amending an in-ground garden

Fertilizers

Plants and Seeds

Crops to buy as plants

Crops to buy as seeds

Extras

Why does cold-hardiness matter now, in mid-winter?

My greens crops, after exposure to the hard freeze

If your garden greens look like heck

Sugarloaf chicory in the kitchen

Growing Sugarloaf chicory

Also growing for harvest in January

Were my 2019 garden goals met?

Some of my past garden goals

Garden goals for 2020

Why keep garden records?

What should gardeners write down?

What kind of journal works best?

Blank books filled with lined pages

A record-keeping mish-mash

Garden Planner and Notebook

In the garden

Why so many chicories?

Growing chicories in fall versus in spring

Other goings-on

The last summer vegetables

Crops to protect from a hard freeze

Crops that I won’t protect

Something else to bring inside

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