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GGIA Trade Show Notes for Organic Gardeners

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The trade show at this year’s WinterGreen conference of the Georgia Green Industry Association (GGIA) provided a look at some new (and not so new) products and plants for organic gardeners. The event was held last week, in Duluth, GA.

Most vendors at the trade show specialized in ornamental (non-edible) plants, machinery for large operations, products for commercial nurseries, and chemical-companies, but I located some local/sustainable/organic-related vendors, to share with you.

Recycled plastic nursery pots

East Jordan Plastics, in Michigan, displayed planting trays, growing pots, and some larger containers made from recycled plastics. Many gardeners are concerned about the excessive use of plastics in gardening. It is good to know of a plant-product company that is working to cut back on plastic waste, by re-using containers and recycling other plastics to create new containers.

RootMaker pots

Image from the RootMaker catalog showing difference in root growth between sprout in regular pot versus sprout in RootMaker pot.
Image from RootMaker catalog.

RootMaker trays and pots for growing plants are the result of research in container design, with the goal of more robust root systems. The trays and containers that I examined seemed very sturdy — like they would last for years — and the informational literature was very compelling. The pots and trays have an unusual pattern of protrusions and holes inside, and those, according to the information, guide root growth into more-branched root systems.

I will be trying a RootMaker tray this year. The representative at the Trade Show did give me a couple of fabric liners, for use when growing plants in cinderblocks, so I cannot say that I am 100% unbiased. I will have to buy the tray, though.

Rice hulls for mulch

Until this trade show, I had not heard of using rice hulls as mulch in containers or as a substitute for perlite in planting mixes.

PBH brought samples of parboiled rice hulls, so people could see the actual product and understand how it can be used. The rice hulls are approved for use in organic systems. I did not bring home a little baggie of rice hulls, but I could have. There were plenty on the table. I did bring home the informational literature, to learn more.

Rice hulls pictured on the cover of an article titled "Rice Hulls 101".

PBH Nature’s Media Amendment is from Riceland Foods. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. It makes sense that the rice industry would want to find a good use for this bi-product of rice production. Looks like they were successful.

Pope’s CBD oil

This isn’t organic and it isn’t about growing, but I did learn that Tennessee grows industrial hemp. The CBD oil was displayed in what was otherwise an all-succulent-plants booth, for Pope’s Plant Farm. CBD oil seems to be a popular product these days. If anyone was looking for a local (-ish) source of CBD oil, Pope’s Plant Farm is one place to try.

Display for Pope's Plant Farm at the 2019 GGIA Wintergreen Conference.

The little succulent plants in the Pope’s booth were very cute. If I were more of an indoor gardener, I would probably grow some. My oldest son in Colorado does grow little succulent plants, so I pay more attention to them than I used to.

Bottom’s Nursery for fruit trees and other plants

Its plants are not organically grown, but after they are planted, most of the varieties at Bottoms Nursery will not need intensive programs of chemical sprays. All the varieties I saw in the catalog are relatively easy-care fruits that would do well when switched to organic management after planting, even in the South. Some are varieties that would do well in small space gardens.

Front cover of the 2019 catalog for Bottoms Nursery, which is in Concord, GA.

The fruit trees at the back of the booth are what attracted my attention. The first tagged tree I noticed was a Kieffer pear, which I know to be both hardy and a producer of good-tasting fruit.

I wasn’t the only person drawn to the booth of Bottoms Nursery. Another vendor was there, discussing trees and other plants to order, to sell in his General Supply store.

General Supply, Inc, in Blairseville, GA

General Supply is the kind of “everything” store that makes some gardeners go into raptures. This is the store mentioned above that will be selling plants from Bottoms Nursery, but it is also a source of tools, pet supplies, small farm supplies, and a million more interesting things.

Hand tools display in General Supply booth at GGIA 2019 Wintergreen Conference.

Of course, hand-tools are pretty appealing for gardeners working in small space gardens. We don’t need a large assortment of full-sized equipment for our little plots, but good tools make the work easier.

I was especially interested in the Truper brand tools (long-reach 15″ length, ash wood handles, sturdy forged “business ends”), but a full line of Corona tools — which are long-lasting and easy to use — was also on display.

The guy at the booth (so sorry that I did not record his name!) and I discussed the ergonomic benefit of tools that have the “business end” at a right-angle to the handle, when he showed me another tool designed for easier use.

Two Corona brand pruners, showing a difference in angle of the cutting edges.

The pruner on the right, in the nearby image of two Corona-brand pruners, has a different angle for the cutting edges. Do you see the difference? According to the guy in the booth, the angled pruner on the right would be easier to use on some branches, because it allows your arm and wrist to stay aligned, rather than to bend.

I haven’t tried it, so I don’t whether that really works, but I would be interested to try. When late-winter pruning time comes around (soon!), it would be good to avoid aggravating old injuries.

Gardeners heading toward the Blairesville area might want to put this store on their list of places-to-visit.

What else happens at the GGIA WinterGreen conference?

In addition to the trade show, the event provides continuing education opportunities for commercial lawn and garden folks. I did attend a workshop about Beneficial Insects, but that story is for another post.

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Seeds for the Small Space Garden, part 2

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When choosing vegetable varieties for a small space garden, identifying varieties that will live, in your garden’s soil and local climate, to produce good food, is essential. You can read Part 1, the previous post, to learn one way to find reliable crop varieties to grow. This post, Part 2, offers another, less formal way.

Simple project that identified reliable heirloom varieties for my area

A couple of years ago, a friend — Electa — and I discovered that, between us, we had

Baker Creek's 2017 Whole Seed Catalog includes many hundreds of heirloom seed varieties.

grown more than 300 vegetable varieties, in Georgia, listed in Baker Creek’s 2017 Whole Seed Catalog. This wasn’t a truly random discovery. We were going through the vegetable section of the catalog together, page by page, noting which varieties we had grown and how those varieties did in our gardens, as part of another project.

How does this help you? We created a list, with some notes, of all the Baker Creek varieties either Electa or I had grown (or tried to grow). If your garden is in the Southeastern U.S., planting zone 7b or 8, then plants that did well for us may be ones you want to try.

If you live in a very different climate/soil zone, you might want to try creating a similar list with gardening friends near you.

A short version of the list is included below (keep reading, it’s down there). 

Notes on the White Tomatoes page indicate that two did well in Electa's garden.

Heirloom varieties may be desirable, but disease resistance is unknown

Many organic gardeners are drawn to heirloom varieties of vegetable crops. These varieties have been saved by individuals and families, because of flavor (usually) or because they freeze well, or are good for canning or for drying, or because they are an essential ingredient in a beloved recipe. Heirloom varieties provide the base for a lot of good food. However, there is a downside to heirloom varieties.

Varieties that were developed in university research programs usually have been tested for disease resistance. Heirloom varieties haven’t.

To find out which varieties will grow and produce well, gardeners either have to rely on trial-and-error in their own gardens, or they need to talk with other local gardeners to find out which varieties have done well in gardens nearby. 

Heirloom vegetable varieties in our list

As you probably know, Baker Creek specializes in heirloom and open-pollinated varieties. These do not come with lab-verified disease resistance, but some of the varieties offered in the 2017 Whole Seed Catalog have done great for us, here in the humid Southeastern U.S., where plant diseases can destroy a garden. Other varieties died within weeks, before much — if any — food could be harvested.

Not all of the varieties Electa and I have grown are appropriate for small space gardens. Most winter squashes and pumpkins, for example, are vining plants that can grow 20-30 feet, smothering the nearby lawn and the rest of the garden if care is not taken to re-direct the growing vine-tips back into their own space. Some okra varieties grow to be 8-or-more feet tall.

A short version of the list that Electa and I created, after going through the catalog and marking all the varieties we had tried, is below. 

Our heirloom varieties report for North Georgia

We had more to say about some crops than others. This is our experience with the listed cucumber varieties we had tried:

Notes about which cucumber varieties do best in our Georgia gardens, including notes on flavor.

If you want to see the full list, all 13 pages, you can download Electa and Amy’s list of vegetable varieties from the 2017 Baker Creek Whole Seed catalog, with notes about productivity (including scientific terms like “recommended”, “iffy”, and “no”) and about flavor, with regard to how they did in our gardens.

Our favorites from the list, for most vegetables, are included below:

  • BEANS – Rattlesnake Pole, Mountaineer Half Runner, Jackson Wonder bush lima
  • BEETS – Bull’s Blood (but harvest early), Detroit Dark Red
  • BROCCOLI – Goliath, Waltham
  • CABBAGE – Golden Acre
  • CAULIFLOWER – Purple of Sicily
  • CARROTS – Oxheart, Danvers 126 Half Long, Little Finger, Nantes Scarlet, Parisienne
  • CORN – Glass Gem (because it is so beautiful), Dakota Black Popcorn
  • COWPEAS – Purple Hull Pinkeye, Pigott Family (needs a trellis)
  • CUCUMBER – Beit Alpha, Marketmore 76, Straight Eight
  • EGGPLANT – Aswad, Casper (especially for container growing), Black Beauty (gets seedy, so harvest early), Ukrainian Beauty, Rosa Bianca
  • ENDIVE AND ESCAROLE – Batavian Full Heart, De Louviers
  • SOLANUM BERRIES – Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherries (same family as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, which can make crop rotation difficult)
  • ORIENTAL GREENS AND CABBAGE – Tatsoi (unusual flavor, but grew well)
  • SALAD GREENS – Corn Salad-Dutch and Corn Salad-Mache (both need cool weather to do well, and harvests are tiny – but tasty)
  • KALE AND COLLARDS – all are fine, Tronchuda gets huge (hilariously so)
  • LEEK – Giant Musselburgh (start in spring and allow a full year until harvest)
  • LETTUCE – Bronze Beauty, Buttercrunch, Henderson’s Black Seeded Simpson, Merveille des Quatre Saisons (Marvel of Four Seasons), Mignonette Bronze, Oak Leaf
  • MELON – Schoon’s Hardshell
  • OKRA – Louisiana 16″ Long Pod
  • ONION – all bulb-type onions must be Short Day type for Southern gardens
  • PARSNIP – Hollow Crown
  • GARDEN PEAS – Lincoln, Little Marvel, Wando
  • SNOW AND SNAP PEAS – all are fine
  • HOT PEPPERS – Leytschauer Paprika, Lightning Mix
  • SWEET PEPPERS – Banana, Chocolate Beauty, Lilac Bell, Quadrato d’Asti Giallo, Sheepnose Pimento
  • RADICCHIO & CHICORY – Italika Rosso Dandelion
  • RADISH – Chinese Red Meat, German Giant, Long Scarlet, Purple Plum
  • RUTABAGAS – American Purple Top
  • SPINACH – Bloomsdale Longstanding
  • SUMMER SQUASH – Yellow Crookneck, Zucchini Rampicante (vigorous, very long vines, productive)
  • SQUASH AND PUMPKINS – Big Max, Candy Roaster, Long Island Cheese, Seminole, Sucrine du Berry (all of these varieties grow to be crazy long vines)
  • SWISS CHARD – Perpetual Spinach
  • TOMATOES – Kellogg Breakfast (good flavor, but not a big producer), Arkansas Traveler, Black Krim, Rutgers, Great White, Yellow Pear
  • WATERMELON – Ali Baba, Crimson Sweet, Golden Honey, Sugar Baby

These are not the only varieties we grow

Collectively, Electa and I have more than 60 years of gardening experience in Georgia (we have both gardened in other states, too), so the “more than 300 varieties” should not have been a surprise. What really made us laugh was when we noticed that some of our favorites were missing from Baker Creek’s very large catalog, and we realized how many more than just 300 varieties we have tried.

Here is an example: when we finished the radish pages, Electa asked “Where are the Daikons?” She loves Daikon radishes, but there weren’t any in the 2017 catalog. My own favorite pole beans, ‘Blue Marbut’, I have seen only at Sand Hill Preservation Center, which is also the only source for ‘Straight Nine’ cucumbers.

The “more than 300 varieties” listed in Baker Creeks 2017 Whole Seed Catalog that we have grown were not all purchased through Baker Creek, but the names were the same, so we have counted them as being the same for this list.

Which heirloom varieties are in your tried-and-true list?

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Ordering Seeds for the Small Space Garden

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This is a favorite time of year for many gardeners. We pull together our seed catalogs, the notes we made about our gardens during the past year, and our dreams, and we start making lists.

Then, most of us order too many seeds. If you are in this group, know that you have plenty of company.

Some Seed Companies to Try

Items needed in determining what seeds to order for the coming garden: catalogs, leftover seeds, and planning notes
Seeds left from last year, a couple of seed catalogs, an order form, and notes about which seeds to buy for this year.

One seed company that I plan to order from this year has an online catalog only — not a print catalog. That company is Sand Hill Preservation Center. Strictly Medicinal Seeds and Nichols Garden Nursery have not yet sent out print catalogs, but they will arrive, eventually.

I also plan to order a Park Seed exclusive variety (Park’s Whopper tomato) from that seed company, and I have already sent in an order to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Gardeners in the Southeastern U.S. might also look at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, that specializes in seeds for the mid-Atlantic states. Most of their seeds will do well across the whole Southeast.

A friend is looking for more container-sized varieties of veggies to grow, and I have suggested that she look at Renee’s Garden Seeds. That company seems to have a lot of miniature-sized crop varieties.

Consider plant size at maturity, disease resistance, heat tolerance

Most of the cool-season veggies that will go into the early spring garden are smaller plants — lettuces, beets, carrots, and spinach, for example. For those, size at maturity is less of an issue, and they will mostly do well even in the Southern U.S.

It would be good, though, to check the days-to-maturity. If a cool-season veggie variety matures in 100 days, the poor plants will end up trying to mature in May or June, when it is no longer cool here. Look for cool-season varieties that mature in much less time, more like 50-70 days, to give them a fighting chance in our short spring.

If you have a small space garden in the Southern U.S., and you are hoping for summer veggies, then you have a double problem. Many of the summertime veggie plants are large. The smaller garden needs right-sized plants that produce well AND that can stand up to all the heat/humidity/diseases that the summer will bring.

When you are looking at mini-sized versions of normally-large veggie-plants, look for information about hardiness and disease resistance. If the description says that the plant stands up well to the harsh conditions of England, you might want to look for another variety. The kind of harsh that is in England is cool/cloudy/wet, not the hot/humid/wet of the Southern U.S.

For the truly determined, it can be possible, with planning, to grow a normally large plant in a smaller space. If you decide to grow gourds, for example, you might “trellis” them up over the top of a shed to keep them from sprawling across the yard.

Switching to a smaller variety – an example from my garden

My garden used to be larger. It has been made smaller in the past few years due to a life change within my family. Change come to all gardens and all gardeners, and change isn’t all bad, but I have had to make adjustments in my gardening. Here is one change that I made this year:

In my order from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, I included a smaller cowpea than I have grown in the past. My most favorite cowpea on the planet (so far, of the dozen or so I have tried) is Pigott Family Heirloom Cowpea. However, that isn’t really a small space garden plant. The vines reach more that six feet.

The cowpea I chose from Baker Creek — Old Timer or Purple Hull Speckled — is indeed speckled in the photo, like Pigott Family is speckled, so I am hoping that it has similar flavor.

Saving Money When Ordering Seeds

Seeds can get expensive. Choosing reliable varieties reduces the odds of a total garden failure, and a waste of seeds, even when the weather gets weird.

Choose reliable varieties

For new gardeners, choosing reliable varieties can mean checking with your local Cooperative Extension office to get a good list. In Georgia, the list comes from UGA, and it is full of vegetable varieties that have done well in test gardens across the whole state. You can find Georgia’s list of reliable vegetable varieties at this link.

The planting dates included on that list are for middle-Georgia (Macon-ish), so those dates have to be adjusted if you live north or south of Macon. However, the varieties, some of which are heirloom varieties, are “tried and true”.

New gardeners may also want to check out my information on planting seeds in the garden, to improve the odds that the planted seeds will grow.

(For more about choosing heirloom varieties, see the next post – Seeds for the Small Space Garden Part 2.)

Pool seed orders with a friend, splitting shipping costs

One of my friends and I often place our seed orders together. Then, we split the shipping fee, so each of us only pays half the shipping cost.

When I send in a Baker Creek order, for example, her seeds go onto my order. This year, Baker Creek is sending out seeds without a shipping fee for the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. We pooled our order anyway, even though it won’t save us money. We like Baker Creek, and asking them to send out one pile of seeds instead of two might reduce their costs by a tiny bit.

Also, this sharing by pooling our orders and splitting shipping fees (for other seed companies), is a long-standing tradition for us. Over the years, dividing shipping fees has saved us both a little. A similar practice might keep your costs down, too, and it is good to spend time discussing seeds and plants with other gardeners. The conversation is a bonus!

I did get some advice about this practice, though, from Louis in Customer Care at Baker Creek. He said that when seed orders are pooled, the person who placed the order will get a seed catalog the following year, but the other person will need to remember to request a catalog. Just keep that in mind.

Share a seed packet with a gardening friend

When we both have wanted to grow the same variety, my gardening friend and I have shared seeds from one packet. Only one of us ends up with the information on the original packet, but that has not been a problem. We know how to write the important parts (kind of veggie, variety name, source, year) on little envelopes.

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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.

Recommended repellents

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. It works in her yard. 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.

Brie Arthur, author of Foodscape Revolution, relies on a different repellent, one that incorporates botanical oils, by I Must Garden. She says that is her favorite brand of repellent — it makes other formulations for other animal-pests. However, I have not found any confirmation that the product is OMRI-approved, so it may not be strictly organic.

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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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