MIX POTTING MIX

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Coconutty Coir

 For a couple of years, a block of coir has sat atop my bale of peat moss.
    Peat moss, the product of slow, anaerobic decomposition of organic materials, accumulates, at a snail’s pace, in bogs: an inch or so depth per thousand years. To mine peat, the bog must be first drained. Besides upsetting bogs’ unique ecological habitats, draining  the bogs aerates them, sending some of the carbon wafting into the air.Peat and coir
    But peat is good stuff for potting mixes. My mixes are made up of equal parts peat moss, soil, compost, and perlite, along with sprinklings of soybean meal (for nitrogen) and kelp (for insurance against lack of any trace elements). Peat’s contribution to the mix is a long-lasting source of organic matter that helps cling to moisture and to nutrients, important in the relative confines of a flower pot.
     Coir is marketed as a substitute for peat in potting mixes. A sustainable substitute, made from the fibre left around coconut husks after they’ve been cracked open to remove their meat.
    This spring it was time to put that block of coir to the test, with a head to head comparison to peat. (I’ve tried this comparison before, but more casually.) The block, after slurping up a large volume of warm water, was ready to mix with the same ingredients as I mixed with the peat moss.
 

Some potting soil components

Some potting soil components

   Both mixes went into their separately labelled , 5 gallon buckets. Each mix then was used to fill one-half of a few GrowEase Seed Starter Kits. Into one of the kits went lettuce seedlings, another got tomato seedlings, and a third got pepper seedlings. The 24 cells of each kit are automatically watered via a capillary mat that sits atop a water reservoir, providing very uniform moisture to all cells within a kit and from one kit to the next.

Peat, Coir Standoff

    Drum roll . . . and the winner is . . . well, as I recently wrote, some of this year’s seedlings grew very poorly, perhaps, I’ve hypothesized, due to the soil I used, or the compost, both of which vary some from batch to batch. The overcast, cool conditions in the greenhouse during critical growth periods also could be to blame.
    Differences in growth between coir and peat based mixes were not great, but tipped slightly in favor of the peat based mix. This, incidentally, jives with my previous, more casual observations. It also jives with more rigorously planned and executed, published research.

Coir Still in the Ring

    The results of all this testing don’t spell continued destruction of peat bogs. Coir might still be a viable alternative.
    Peat and coir are not the same material. I perhaps should not have used the same ratio for coir as I’ve long used for peat in my mix. There’s some evidence that coir, as it slowly decomposes in a potting mix, can suck up nitrogen at the expense of plants. If so, more soybean meal in my mix could solve that problem. Other nutrients, or lack thereof, could also come into play, as could anti-growth factors, such as phenolics, known to be present in coir.
    More playing around is needed with coir.

Peat and Coir Substitutes

    No need to put all our eggs in one coir basket. Other organic materials can and have fulfilled the niche of peat (and coir). And our culture has no lack of organic “waste” products. Composted bark has been used in commercial mixes for many years, as has sawdust. More exotic, around here, at least, would be rice hulls.
    Home-grown and readily available “organics” for a potting mixes would be compost and leaf mold, both of which I’ve used in rougher mixes, such as for temporarily repotting small trees.Mixing potting soil
    The point is that any of these organic materials, including coir, could make a good potting mix if ratios and amounts of other materials are adjusted accordingly.
    Gardening (and farming) should be, and could be, sustainable; even the potting mixes used to raise seedling or grow potted plants.

Now Perlite, Hmmmm

    The other major component of any potting mix is some aggregate, for providing good drainage. My mixes use perlite. Not sustainable. More on that another time.

APRIL SHOWERS BRING . . . NO!

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Don’t Go With the Gut

   “April showers bring May flowers.” Where? Not here. I had many years of gardening under my belt before I realized the falsity of that little ditty. Yes, it happens to be raining as I write these words at the end of April. But generally, April is dry, and todays’s rain amounted to a mere quarter-inch.
    For years, I would sow radishes, lettuce, arugula, and other early, cool season vegetables in April, and figure “April showers” would take care of watering needs. Which they did not. With frosts still likely around here, April was too early to get the drip irrigation going. So watering vegetable beds requires tedious lugging of hoses, making sure, as I pull on them, not to knock over plants or mess up carefully formed beds.
 Watering wand   Hand watering also required patience. A light sprinkling of the ground does nothing but wet the surface fraction of an inch. If you care to know, the amount of water needed to wet a soil about 6 inches deep is 3/4 of a gallon per square foot or, equivalently, a one-inch depth of water. And said water needs to be applied slowly enough to percolate into the ground rather than running off elsewhere.
    Fortunately, with cool temperatures and plant growth only just beginning, much of the moisture from previous months’ rain and snow still sits in the soil. The surface often looks dry while moisture is sufficient below. So all that’s needed is to keep the soil moist from the surface to a depth where the ground is still moist.

Measure

    Eyes or the gut are not reliable indicators of when to water. Sometimes I’ll just poke my finger into the ground to assess moisture level. But does it really feel wet, or does the soil feel cool because it’s April?
    All that’s needed are your hands for the more accurate “feel method” of soil moisture determination. For this method, you need to know your soil’s texture; that is, is the soil a sand, a loam, or a clay? Crumbling it, feeling its slickness, and attempting to form it into a ball or a ribbon gives some indication, depending on the texture, of moisture content (see http://www.ext.colostate.edu/sam/moisture.pdf for details).
    All sorts of high-tech soil moisture measuring devices are available: electrical resistance blocks, tensiometer, time domain reflectometer, neutron probe, and more, all beyond the wallet and accuracy required by of most gardeners.pH, moisture testor
    On the other hand, inexpensive soil moisture meters are readily available. What they lack in accuracy they make up for in convenience. Sliding the thin, metal rod into the ground gives a pretty good, qualitative measure of moisture anywhere from just below the surface to the length of the rod, which, depending on the device, is 8 to 12” inches long.
    Watering is an important key to success in gardening, and for $10 to $50, these relatively moisture meters are well worth the money. The more expensive, previously mentioned monitors can be left in the ground. The inexpensive meters must be removed and their probes cleaned after each measurement.

Indoor, April Showers Bring . . . Yes!

    Even if April showers do not bring May flowers, April — the month — does bring a few May flowers, but mostly flowers in June and beyond. That’s because April is the month when I sow many flowers for transplanting out into the garden after warm weather settles in. On the slate for this year are Lemon Gem marigold, sunflowers of all stripes, chamomile, moonflower, morning glory . . . (Where am I going to plant all these flowers? Spring’s got a hold on me.)

Tussler Was Correct After All

    The ditty “April showers bring May flowers” really does have some truth to it — if you’re in the UK, where the ditty originated. There, the northward moving jet stream picks up more and more moisture as it travels across the Atlantic Ocean; the result is rain by the time the winds reach the UK. (On this side of the “pond,” the jet stream, traveling across land, has picked up relatively little moisture.)
    So Thomas Tusser, who allegedly penned “Sweet April showers / Do spring May flowers” in the 16th century (in A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry), was not wrong, for Great Britain. Here, we have to water in April. But not too much.

RATIONALITY CHALLENGED

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New York Avocadoes!?!?

    I make no claim to be rational in my gardening — especially this time of year. This thought comes to mind as I look closely at two avocado plants sitting in a sunny window. “Nothing irrational about growing avocado plants in New York,” you might say. After all, the large seeds are fun and easy to sprout, and the resulting plant adds some tropical greenery indoors.
    My two plants were run-of-the-mill avocado houseplants until I took knife to them.
    Let’s backtrack . . . Among my regrets of not living 1,000 miles or so south of here is not being able to harvest my own citrus and avocados. (Also, no outdoor gardenia shrubs or southern magnolia trees here.) A few indoor citrus plants do call mi casa sus casa. But no avocados.Avocado grafts
    From seed, an avocado would take a long time before it bore its first fruit. And especially long under less-that-ideal northern conditions, including indoors in winter.
    And worse, when the plant does finally flower, it might not bear fruit. Avocados generally need cross-pollination because the pollen isn’t ripe at the same time that the female stigma is receptive. Avocado pollinators need to be fairly specific, so that one plant’s pollen is in synch with another plant’s stigmas.
    And even worse, after all that time and hoping for appropriate mates, fruits that do form might not taste good. They wouldn’t be selected clones, such as the delectable Haas or Mexicola, but seedlings. (Plant a seed from a good tasting apple and the resulting tree has only one in 10,000 chance of bearing a good-tasting fruit.)
    Which is why I took a knife to my two avocado seedlings, to graft them to known, good-tasting varieties that are pollination compatible. A friend in Florida overnighted me scions — pencil-thick stems, with leaves stripped — cut from his Marcus Pinkham and Lula avocado trees. One of my seedlings got a whip graft of Marcus Pinkham; the other got a side-veneer graft of Lulu.
    I coverWithed both grafts with plastic to maintain humidity, and every day peer at the scions hoping to see some swelling in preparation for growth.
    Rational gardening? No. After all, even if all goes as planned, how many avocados could I expect to harvest from two small trees? Still, it’s fun.

Warm. Plant.

    Outdoors, it’s the weather that toys with my rationality. A spate of warm days and great restraint is needed not to plant vegetables. I keep referring to my notes (and the chart I made in my book Weedless Gardening) that tell me when to plant what.
  Planting onions  With yesterday’s 75 degree temperatures, urges to plant were satisfied — for that day, at least — by my poking holes into the ground into which I dropped onion plants sown indoors on February 1st. Three-hundred of them in a 20 foot long by 36 inch wide bed. (This was later than the April 21st onion planting date specified in my book, but the weather was cold so I forgot to look at my book.)

Planting Break. Turn Compost.

    When I get tired of planting, I can always turn to turning my compost piles.
    Not that compost piles have to be turned. In contrast to other fermentations, such as bread-making and wine-making, compost always comes out right. Pile up any mix of organic (living or once-living) materials, and eventually you get compost.
    I turn my compost piles so that materials on the outside of the pile get to be on the inside of the pile, second time around. This makes for a more homogeneous finished product.Turning compost
    I turn my compost piles to better monitor their progress, so adjustments can be made, as needed, and to get some idea when they’ll be ready for use. Occasionally, a pile will have a dry region; it gets watered. Occasionally, a mass of material needs to be broken up to better expose it to moisture and microorganisms.
    I also turn my compost piles because it’s good exercise and it’s interesting. But, like I wrote, turning a compost pile is not a must.

OLD ENEMIES RETURN

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Damn Damping Off

    My first garden foe, which I haven’t seen for years, recently sneaked into the greenhouse. Damping-off sounds pretty bad but not as bad as its scientific names, probably Rhizoctonia or Pythium, which, along with a few other fungi, can cause damping off.
    My introduction to damping-off disease came before my first plants even made it out to my first adult garden. At the time, I was living in a relatively dark apartment, a converted motel room, and was eager to start seedlings. I sowed all sorts of seeds in peat pots, stood them in a little water, then crowded them together on all the shelf space that could be mustered.Damping off of cabbage
    Young sprouts never appeared in some of the pots. In others, seedling emerged, then toppled over, their “ankles” reduced to a withered string of rotted cells, unable to support the small plants physically or physiologically.
    Conditions created were perfect for any one of the damping-off culprits: overly wet soil, cool temperatures, low light, weak growth, stagnant air. How was I, a beginning gardener, to know? I soon learned to avoid the disease by, in addition to providing good light, providing sufficient fertility to promote strong growth that resists disease, paying careful attention to watering, and using a fan to keep air moving.
    My seeds now go into a potting mix containing sufficient perlite to help drain away excess water. Sterile potting mixes, such a those sold bagged, are presumably free of damping-off culprits. But sterile mixes also lack beneficial soil microorganisms so afford free rein to any culprits that make their way into a mix. My home made potting mix isn’t sterilized.
    A couple of other tricks also limit damping-off disease. Spreading a thin layer of dry material, such as perlite, vermiculite, sand, or kitty litter (calcined montmorillonite clay) on the surface of the potting mix keeps the stem area dry. And there is some evidence that chamomile tea (cooled) controls damping-disease if sprayed on plants and soil surface.
    I’m considering this most recent damping-off incident to be a fluke, so far affecting just a single cabbage plant in a whole flat of cabbages.

Second Garden, Second Foe

     That first garden, my first garden, was short-lived. Not because of any horticultural trauma, but because it was begun on August 1st and, before the following year’s gardening season got underway, I had moved. My new site, home to my second adult garden, was also home to my second garden foe, which has been lurking in the wings of every garden ever since then.
 

Quackgrass with runner

Quackgrass with runner

   That foe is and was quackgrass, also known as witchgrass, couchgrass, and, botanically, Elytrigia repens. It is small consolation that quackgrass isn’t only my problem; this native of Europe,  north Africa, and parts of Asia and the Arctic, is now a worldwide weed.
    Soon after turning over the soil to begin that second garden, quackgrass invaded. With vengeance. Long story short: I had read of the benefits of mulches in smothering weeds; in Wisconsin, where I lived, lakes were becoming clogged with water weeds, which municipalities harvested; I convinced a water weed crew to dump a truckload of water weeds on my front lawn; my quackgrass expired beneath a slurpy mulch of quackgrass laid atop the ground pitchfork by pitchfork.

Foe #2, Defeated (Sort Of)

    Quackgrass has always stalked the edges of my gardens, waiting for a chance to slink in. It spreads mostly by underground rhizomes, which are modified stems that creep just beneath the surface of the ground. Growing tips of quackgrass rhizomes are pointed and sharp enough to penetrate a potato. Given time, quackgrass develops an underground lacework of rhizomes.
    My current garden never had a quackgrass problem, mostly because I never tilled it or turned over the soil. Tilling or hand-digging it, as I did in my second garden, compounds quackgrass problems because each piece of rhizome can grow into a whole new plant.
    My current hotspot of quackgrass found a fortuitous opening, creeping in among a planting of coral bells beneath a very thorny rose bush along the edge of my vegetable garden. Quackgrass rhizomes must be removed or the quackgrass smothered, either difficult to do among the coral bells and the rose.
 Concrete garden edge   My plan is to sacrifice the coral bells and pull out every rhizome I can find. In soft soil this time of year, long pieces can be lifted with minimum breakage or soil disturbance. A mulch with a few layers of newspaper, topped with a wood chip mulch (part of weed management, as described in my book Weedless Gardening) will suffocate any overlooked rhizome pieces trying to sprout. In the absence of other plants among which the rhizomes could sprout, mulching alone can do in quackgrass, as it did in my second garden.
    Longer term, barriers around garden edges could prevent quackgrass rhizome entry. Barriers need to be deep or wide. A concrete strip, 6 inches wide and decoratively inlaid with handmade tiles, has been effective elsewhere along my garden edge.
    For now, I have to stop writing and get to work on the quackgrass. I have too, after all, because a wrote a book called Weedless Gardening!

OLIVE HARVEST IN FULL SWING HERE

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What To Do With This Year’s Harvest?

Olive harvest will begin — and end — here this week. Yes, it’s late. After all, the harvest in Italy was in full swing weeks ago, back in autumn. But this is the Hudson Valley, in New York. What do you expect?
    I’m talking about harvesting real olives, not Russian olives (Elaeagnus angustifolia) or autumn olive (E. umbellata), both of which grow extensively in a lot of places, including here. Too extensively, according to some people, which is why they’re listed as “invasives” and banned from being planted in some regions. (But their fruits are very tasty, their flowers are very fragrant, their leaves are very ornamental, and their roots enrich the soil with nitrogen from the air, all of which garnered them a chapter in my book Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.)Olive tree in a sunny window
    Present harvest here is of the true olive (Olea europaea), unrelated to the previously mentioned olives. Temperatures in the Hudson Valley, and beyond, would spell death to an olive tree, which is cold-hardy to about 14°F, so my tree is planted in a pot, just like my other Mediterranean-climate plants — fig, pomegranate, feijoa, black mulberry, bay laurel, kumquat, black mulberry, and Golden Nugget mandarin (tangerine). I can handle only so many potted, small trees, so it’s lucky that my olive doesn’t need a mate to bear fruit; it’s the self-fruitful variety Arbequina. The plant I got a few years ago from Raintree Nursery started bearing its first season!
    Unlike my fig, pomegranate, and mulberry, olive is evergreen, so it needs light year ‘round. Fig, and company, are in a dark corner of my cold basement, dormant. The olive is in a cool room basking in sunlight from a south-facing window.
    Two years ago, after an auspicious start, only one olive remained on the tree in late summer. I think my duck ate it.
    This past fall, the harvest has increased many-fold — to almost a dozen fruits. What with being knocked around when moved indoors and the change in environment, about half that number of fruits now hang from the branches.
    I like my olives fully ripe, black, so have let them hang as long as possible. Some are beginning to dry and shrivel, so it’s time to harvest. Fresh, the fruits are unpalatable, with a bitterness that comes from oleuropein. That bitterness is removed by curing and fermentation using lye, salt, and time. I’ve had naturally cured olives that use only the last ingredient, time, and that’s how I’m going to try mine.

For More Than Just Olive Fruits

    A few years ago, I almost got rid of my olive tree. After all, it wasn’t making a dent in my olive consumption. Then someone pointed out that the olive, for thousands of years, has been a symbol of peace. That alone should be enough reason to keep the tree, and it was.
    Also, the tree is pretty and long-lived — thousands of years, as documented by radiocarbon dating.

Secret Soil Recipe, Divulged (Again)

    In preparation for the upcoming gardening season, I brought pails of frozen potting soil, compost, and soil in from the garage/barn. Soon I’ll need to trim back roots and repot some of those Mediterranean-climate fruits, including my Arbequina olive. Not my Meiwa kumquat, though, some of whose green fruits are showing hints of yellow, foreshadowing ripening to begin over the next couple of months. Trimming back its roots would cause branches to let go of fruits.
    Potting soil will also be needed for the first seeds of the season, to be sown indoors in the next week or so.
 Mixing potting soil   I will now divulge my recipe for potting soil. The main ingredients are garden soil, compost, peat moss, and perlite. I thoroughly mix together equal volumes of these four ingredients, then add a cup of soybean or alfalfa meal (for extra nitrogen). If I’m feeling generous, I also throw in a half a cup or so of kelp meal (for micronutrients, although it’s probably superfluous with the panoply of nutrients from the compost). Perhaps also a half a cup of dolomitic limestone (for alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium, also probably superfluous with the buffering action and richness of the compost). Using wooden frames onto which I’ve stapled 1/2 inch hardware cloth, I sift together the mixture.
    Ten gallons of potting soil should carry me through winter until the compost piles and the soil have defrosted.

Olive Curing Update

Olives harvested and cured.

Olives harvested and cured.

   It’s now some days after I first wrote the above. Olives received no other treatment except being left to dry and wrinkle. Tasted them today —  delicious! (I’m going to plan for bigger harvests for the future.)

MULCH, SOMETIMES BETTER LATE THAN EARLY

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Cardoon Gets to Stay

    I haven’t yet given up on cardoon — growing it. But eating it? I just about give up. It’s like eating humongous stalks of stringy celery having just a hint of artichoke flavor.
    As an ornamental is how cardoon has made itself garden-worthy. Like most perennial plants, it grew only leaves this past season, its first season here. But what leaves they were! As I said, like “humongous stalks of celery.” Not much good for eating but nice to look at. The edges of the three-foot-high stalks were winged with undulating, pointed blades (each stalk is a leaf), and the whole plant is a very Mediterranean-looking olive-green.Cardoon in late fall
    If all goes well, next year should provide an even better show, when flowers also appear. Cardoon is in the thistle family. It’s as if you injected our common (Canadian) thistle with steroids. In addition to those giant leaves, the flower stalks rise to 6 feet and are then topped by fat, spiky, cerulean balls, each a couple of inches across.
    Cardoon not only looks Mediterranean; it is Mediterranean. As such, is not cold hardy this far north. Temperatures in the 20s do no harm to the top of the plant, but the top will die back when temperatures turn colder. The crown of the plant and the roots, shielded in the ground, tolerate even lower air temperatures. Eventually, though, our winter cold penetrates the ground to do them in.
    But not if I soften that cold affront. Once temperatures turn colder, and stay reliably so, I’m going to lop back the tops of the plants, then pile on a thick layer of mulch, from a couple of large bags of leaves I stockpiled back in November. The reason to hold off until the soil turns colder is because in still-warm soil, the crown would have pushed out new growth beneath the mulch. That new growth would have died from lack of sun, or rotted.
    Cardoon’s fleshy crown is especially prone to rotting, so I’ll lay a flat piece of plastic over the pile of mulch. That should shed rainwater while allowing some breathing room from the side.
    Perhaps next year I’ll get to enjoy the flowers. Perhaps the stalks will be worth eating.

I Put The “Straw” In (On) Strawberry

    Cardoon isn’t the only herbaceous perennial that needs protection from cold. Another is strawberry.
    The crown of a strawberry plant is, in essence, a stem that has been telescoped down. Instead of a few inches from leaf to leaf along the stem, only a fraction of an inch separates a leaf from its next higher or lower neighbor. So instead of elongating a foot or two every year, like most stems, a strawberry crown elongates only a fraction of an inch each year.
    Still, over time, that crown rises higher and higher up out of the ground, each year becoming more exposed to cold. Mulching prevents cold damage to strawberry in the same way as it does for cardoon. As with cardoon, the time to cover the plants is AFTER cold has penetrated the ground. When the soil has frozen about an inch deep is about the right time.
    Strawberry crowns are not particularly prone to rotting, so there’s no need to lay a water shedding cover over the mulch. Or to cut back the leaves; strawberry leaves aren’t fleshy and don’t rise high above the ground.

Doin’ Some Dustin’

    In addition to leafy mulches, already spread beneath other trees and shrubs, one other sign of creeping cold is the gray dust that has settled on parts of the meadow, beneath the pear trees, and around the currant bushes. There’s more to come, and it’s not snow. It’s ash, from the wood stove.
    Spreading wood ashWood ash is both a waste product and a resource, depending on how much you have and how much space you have to spread it. As a resource, it’s high in potassium, an essential nutrient for plants, and contains other essential elements. Wood ash decreases the acidity of soils which, around here, mostly increases naturally over time.
    But too much potassium can be a bad thing. As can too little acidity; slightly acid soil is what’s ideal for most plants.
    Since wood ash varies somewhat in its composition, it’s impossible to put a number on how much to spread. No more than 20 pounds per thousand square feet is reasonable, except on alkaline soils (pH greater than 7) or beneath acid-loving plants such as blueberry, azalea, and rhododendron, which should get none. I disperse it over the whole farmden — on the meadow and the lawn, beneath fruit and nut trees and bushes — to avoid concentrating it anywhere. I also save some to spread on icy walks and to sprinkle around plants if slugs become a problem.

OTHER APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLES

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“Grass-fed Vegetables”

    With gardening activities grinding almost to a halt, I can take a breath and reflect on the past season — one of the best seasons ever. Of course, I’ll “blame” the bountifulness mostly on the weather. Maybe I’m also becoming a better gardener. (Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Though an old man, I am a young gardener.”)
    I wrote a couple of weeks ago about soil management here on the farmden. It’s simple and possibly sustainable. For the vegetable gardens: no digging, permanent beds, and an inch depth of homemade compost annually slathered onto those beds. For trees and shrubs, mulches of compost, wood chips or leaves, supplemented, if necessary, with soybean or alfalfa meal for additional nitrogen.
    My September trip to Maine afforded me two other perspectives on soil management. The first came from a presentation by, and conversation with, Jim Kovaleski, who farms in northern Maine. His system is also simple and possibly sustainable. His farm has 5 acres of hayfield that feeds 1/2 acre of vegetables. “Grass-fed vegetables,” as he calls it. All he does is scythe the hayfield portions and pile the mowings onto the growing areas, in so doing suppressing weeds, locking moisture within the soil, and feeding the ground with the decomposing hay.

Me, scything my field

Me, scything my field

    The question is whether or not the mowed portions can naturally regenerate nutrients through dissolution of native minerals and nitrogen fixation by microbes to keep up with the removal of mowings. Possibly, some essential micronutrient might be missing from that particular piece of ground. To avoid that possibility here on my farmden, I feed my compost a diversity of organic materials, from old Levi’s to orange peels, from Florida oranges, to neighbor’s autumn leaves, and, just to make further sure, kelp.
    I didn’t get to visit Jim’s farm, but did hear first-hand testimonials praising the quality and yield of his vegetables.
    Come fall, Jim moves his show south, with repeat performances at his mini-farm in suburban Florida, there using yard waste compost and seaweed he harvests to build and maintain soil health, sustainably.

Chicken-fed(?) Vegetables

    I did get to visit Four Season Farm, the Maine farm of vegetable guru Elliot Coleman. His system is to grow vegetables for a season, then till the ground and sow grass and clover, graze chickens on that piece of land for a season before tilling it again to grow vegetables. The chickens’ diet is supplemented with bought grain.
Eliot Coleman with carrots and broccoli    The bought grain reduces the system’s “sustainability quotient.” On the other hand, as Elliot emphatically pointed out, he is also growing chickens!
    It would be interesting to measure all the inputs and outputs from my soil management, as well as those of Jim and Elliot. And also to quantify any trends in measures of soil health (nutrients, organic matter, soil tilth, etc.) and quality of vegetables.

A Fruitful Year, Literally!

    As I drove the highways and byways of Maine, I was astounded at the number of wild, roadside apple trees, and their fruits’ freedom from pests. First, why so many wild trees? Does everyone there munch on apples while driving, then toss the cores out their windows? Why are there so few wild trees here in the Hudson Valley, a major apple-growing region?
    And second, why so few pest blemishes on the fruits? In the Northeast — nay, the whole eastern part of the country — pests generally run rampant on apples. Then again, apples have done relatively well, pest- and otherwise this season here in the Hudson Valley also.

Maine's wild apples

Maine’s wild apples

    For that matter, it’s generally been an excellent season for all fruits. Even black walnuts, whose nuts haven’t filled out for the past few years (a legacy from hurricane Irene and tropical storm Lee?) bore abundant crops fat with nutmeats this year.
    I had only one failure this year, pawpaws, and it was the first crop failure in decades. Why the poor showing? Again, I’ll blame it on the weather. But what about the weather could be to blame?

SUSTAINABLE DIRT

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 Dirt is Free, Almost

   Sustainability is such a buzzword these days. Okay, I’ll join the crowd and say, “I’m growing fruits and vegetables sustainably.” But is this true. Can they really be grown sustainably, that is, in such a way to be able to continue forever?
    As any plant grows, it sucks nutrients from the soil. Harvest the plant and you take those nutrients off-site. Eventually, those nutrients need replenishment. That’s what fertilizer does, but spreading fertilizer — whether organic or chemical — is hardly sustainable. Organic fertilizers, such as soybean meal, need to be grown, harvested (taking nutrients off site), processed, bagged, and transported. Chemical fertilizers need to be mined and processed, or manufactured, and then also bagged and transported.
    About half the volume of most soils is mineral, the rest being air, water, and organic matter. The mineral portion derives from rocks that, with time, temperature changes, and the jostling and chemical action of plant roots, fungi, earthworms, and other soil microorganisms, are ground finer and finer. Plant nutrients once locked up in those rocks become soluble and available to plants. Over time, a soil naturally offers a pretty much unlimited supply of plant nutrients. That sounds sustainable . . .  but wait; three important caveats.
    First, it takes time to release those nutrients. Remove too much too fast and it’s like taking money out of the bank faster than you put it in.
    Second, one very important nutrient, nitrogen, does not come from rocks. It comes from the air, “fixed” by soil microorganisms, then incorporated into plants. As plants die, the nitrogen is incorporated into the organic fraction of the soil, from which it is slowly released into the ground for other plants to use — unless it washes away or becomes a gas again. Nitrogen is the most evanescent of plant nutrients.
    And third, a soil could be naturally lacking in one or more essential plant nutrients. If so, the deficiency needs to be corrected by bringing in and spreading what’s needed.

Hay, Time, & a Little Manure

    Okay, here’s my stab at sustainability: My vegetables get “fed” only compost, a one-inch depth laid on top of each bed each year. This much compost releases enough nitrogen, as well as other nutrients, to keep plants happy and healthy for a year.

The season's last hay gathering

The season’s last hay gathering

    But the sustainability meter must examine what goes into the compost. The bulk of my compost is made from hay harvested from my one acre hayfield. Here’s the rub: If I harvest the hay too frequently, I’m mining the soil, pulling out nutrients faster than they are naturally replenished. So I focus on different parts of the field in different years, giving previously harvested portions time to rejuvenate.
    Early morning forays into the field with my scythe provide enough hay for compost making during the growing season. Last week, I did what I do each fall, attaching the brush hog to my tractor and mowing the whole field. (Mostly, this prevents the field from morphing over time, first to a field of brambles, multiflora roses, and autumn olives, and then on to forest.) After brush hogging, I rake up a few clumps of hay here and there for the final “feeding” of the season’s compost piles.
    This end-of-season stuff is not very nutrient-rich, so what little I harvest takes little from the field in terms of nutrients. This cutting mostly supplies carbon compounds, which it got from via photosynthesis from carbon dioxide, to feed the compost microorganisms.
    Keeping an eye on the character of the hayfield should give me some idea of how it’s doing nutritionally. More grasses, more nutrients. Areas of goldenrod, yarrow, and other forbs get mowed, but not raked.
    My compost pile also gets fed horse manure that I haul in from a local stable. My use of manure is sustainable only in the sense that it’s someone else’s waste product. Other additions to my compost pile are kitchen scraps and spent garden plants (which recycles rather than adds nutrients), and old blue jeans and other biodegradable clothing. Using humanure (see The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins), if I had a composting toilet, would further close the nutrient cycle.
    Two final additions, sustainable except that they need to be transported here, are ground limestone and kelp. The limestone holds soil acidity near neutral, which, among other benefits, puts  nutrients in forms most accessible to plants. The kelp, replete with a spectrum of micronutrients, is for insurance, just in case my soil naturally lacks any essential plant (or human) nutrient.

And Now for the Cart’s Sustainability

Garden cart, all dressed up in aluminum

Garden cart, all dressed up in aluminum

    Hay is bulky stuff; same goes for manure. I move all that bulky stuff to my compost piles, then move the finished compost away from the piles. All this moving is done with the help of my “Vermont garden cart,” which has two heavy duty, bicycle-sized tires sitting just about midway across a sturdy plywood bed surrounded by three sturdy plywood walls. Although the cart can haul up to 400 pounds, shoveling out manure or compost scrapes away at the plywood base. That, along with jabs from the pitchfork as I pile in hay severely compromised the wood . . .  until this summer.
    A sheet of aluminum, a friend’s brake for making sharp bends in the sheet, and some screws, and I had the bottom of the cart, and a few inches up each side, protected from my shovel, pitchfork, and moisture. These carts should be sold already aluminized.
    The only problem is that aluminum is very unsustainable. Although abundant, enormous amounts of electricity are required to free it from the raw material, bauxite. On the plus side, aluminum is very long-lasting; I’ll never have to replace it in my carts.

CLEAN UP, THEN SHAVE

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 Out with the Old (Plants)

   Ostensibly, I’m clearing away old plant debris from the vegetable and flower gardens to spare next year’s garden a full onslaught of overwintering disease and insect pests, and so that, come spring, the soil is ready and waiting for seeds and transplants. I’ll admit it, though: I like the garden looking neat going into late autumn. As Charles Dudley Warner wrote in his book My Summer in the Garden (1889), “the closing scenes need not be funereal.”
    As of this writing, frost has not yet struck; as of your reading, it probably will have. Following that event, I will remove all dead plants. I’ll grasp the tops of smaller plants, such as marigolds and basil, give them a twist to sever the smaller roots, then lift and toss the plant into a waiting garden cart. If I tried to do that with old pepper, tomato, or okra plants, they would laugh at me. I lop off the bulk of their tops, then cut around the plant with a Hori-hori knife so that I can lift the remaining stem and main roots out of the ground.Beans cleared away; only poles still standing, for now
    In either case, my goal is to remove everything but the smaller roots. Left in place, they’ll rot to add organic matter to the soil, leaving behind channels to let air, water, and creatures move through the ground.
    Even now, before frost, cleanup is well under way. Tomatoes are spent; I cleaned them up yesterday. Beans are spent; I’ll clear them away today. Leaving bean roots in the soil is like sprinkling organic fertilizer from the free nitrogen they gathered from the air.
    Along with garden plants, weeds also get cleared away, again removing only top portions and the main roots. Small roots don’t have the energy to re-sprout.

In With the New (Compost)

    More than just looking neat, the cleaned up garden is — to my eye — ornamental. Think of the calm beauty of Zen gardens, some of them little more than boulders and raked gravel. Mine is wood chips (in paths) and raked soil.
 

Beds in fall: veggies, oat cover crops, compost

Beds in fall: veggies, oat cover crops, compost

   Well, not really raked soil. Bare soil looks ugly to me because I know it’s too exposed to rain and wind. So as soon as I’ve cleared a bed, I immediately put a blanket on it. Before the end of September, that blanket was oat seed topped with an inch of compost. Those beds are now lush strips of green. Post-September beds get blanketed with just an inch of compost. It’s roughness helps protect the surface, and next spring I can sow seeds or plug transplants right into it. That much compost is all the nourishment plants will need for the whole growing season next year.
    And then there are the beds still green with carrots, turnips, endive, lettuce, kale, and other cold-hardy plants. I’ll dig the root crops, for storage, at my leisure. The others, we will eat, also at our leisure.

Nothing Wasted

    All that stuff that I am clearing out of the garden is going right into the compost pile. Yes, everything! I’m occasionally asked if I put leaves and stems that are infected or infested with blight, aphids, or other pests into my compost pile. Yes! Everything goes into the pile.
    I contend that if you looked closely enough (perhaps needing a microscope) at almost any leaf, stem, fruit, or root, you’d probably find some evidence of a “bad guy” on it. No matter. The combination of time and temperature within any compost pile does them in.compost piles
    This time of year, piles build rapidly. By paying attention to water and air within the pile as well as the balance of high nitrogen materials (manures and lush greenery such as vegetable plants and young weeds) and high carbon materials (old, browning plants, wood chips, autumn leaves), I’m able to get my compost piles up to 160° F.
    Soon, cooler temperatures combined with less stuff to feed the pile makes for cooler composting. I let these piles “cook” longer, the longer time making up for lower temperatures.

Lookin’ Good and Ready for Spring

    Getting everything ready for winter is a leisurely process, inching along over the next few weeks. By then, tender vegetable plants and weeds will have been tucked into compost piles and beds will be blanketed in either compost, compost and growing oats, or late fall vegetables. Mr. Warner, mentioned in my opening paragraph, went on to say, “A garden should be got ready for winter as well as for summer . . . I like a man who shaves (next to one who doesn’t shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not for display, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Such a man will be likely to put is garden in complete order before the snow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene of melancholy ruin and decay.”
    I’m going to shave now.

BLUEBERRIES GALORE, COMPOST TEA REDUX

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On My Knees for  Blueberries

    For the last few years, my blueberries have had a problem. Perhaps yours also. Rather than grow upright, the stems arch downward, some so drastically that they actually rest on the ground.

Blueberries galore

Blueberries galore

    A few years ago, I pinned blame on the weather. Not that it was evident just how the weather could be responsible, but it’s always convenient, in gardening, to blame things on the weather. But this explanation is hardly convincing. Spring and summer weather have not been consistent enough over the years to be able point my finger at too much rain and/or not enough sunlight (the combination of which could lead to those bowing branches).
    How about pruning or fertilization? Too much of either could promote lush growth that couldn’t support itself. Except that my pruning has been consistent over many years. And Dr. Marvin Pritts, berry specialist at Cornell, confirmed that he and others saw the same problem, without definitive explanation, a couple of years ago.
    I like the green thumb explanation best: That is, that I’m such a good blueberry grower that the branches can hardly support the prodigious crops I’ve coaxed from them. So I’m not really complaining. Just curious. And having to get on my knees to harvest low hanging fruit.

Remember Fruit Flies?

    There is one fly in the green thumb ointment. A fly, literately. A tiny fruit fly called the spotted wing drosophila or, quicker to say, which is necessary for this fly that’s getting a lot of buzz lately, SWD. The fly attacks many small fruit, starting the season with honeysuckle berries, then moving on to raspberries, blackberries, and . . . blueberries.
    Most fruit flies lay their eggs in overripe, or at least ripe fruit. Not SWD. She lays her eggs in unripe fruit. The eggs are small and what hatches from them are small; their being “maggots” sort of takes the appeal from the berries.
    SWD is a new pest, so new ways of thwarting them are being tried. Covering the plants with fine netting very early in the season is effective but would be very bothersome, for my planting, at least. Various organic sprays are another possibility: Entrust, which is derived from a soil bacterium, is effective if used STRICTLY according to directions; horticultural oil might prove effective. Traps are also under test.
    One way to bypass the problem is to grow only earlier varieties of blueberries. SWD has not showed up here and at many other sites until early August. Plenty of varieties — Duke, Earliblue, Toro, and Blueray, for example — are finished before then.
    But I want fresh blueberries on into September. Harvesting blueberries (or raspberries or other berries) and whisking them into a refrigerator at 34 degrees for 72 hours will kill eggs and larvae. Freezing, the destiny of about half our harvest, also kills the eggs and any hatched larvae. A little egg and meat boosts the protein content of the berries.

I Backpedal, Sort Of

    It may be time for me to eat pie. Not blueberry pie, but humble pie. Regular readers of my words probably realize that I take a certain amount of pleasure in iconoclasm. And one recipient of my eye-rolling has been compost tea, something that many gardeners and farmers love to love even though there’s little theoretical or empirical support for its efficacy.
 

Compost tea, quick mix

Compost tea, quick mix

   “Little” but not “none.” A number of peer-reviewed articles describe benefits from using NON-AERATED compost tea to thwart root diseases. (The relatively recent interest in compost tea is for AERATED compost tea, often sprayed on leaves. Aerated compost tea, the brainchild and business of Dr. Elaine Ingham, is compost tea that’s bubbled with air for en extended period, often with molasses or other additions. Generally, experiments have not supported touted benefits of aerated compost tea.)
    For the past number of years, my pea crops have been failures, the plants yellowing and dying soon after harvest begins. Fusarium or some other root disease is the probable cause.
    In desperation, five times this spring, at about weekly intervals, I put a shovelful of compost into a 5 gallon bucket and filled the bucket with water. After one day of steeping, the tea was strained, put it into a watering can, and drenched on the soil beneath of my thirty foot, double rows of peas.
    Lo and behold: The peas look healthy and have been yielding good crops!

A healthy row of peas

A healthy row of peas

    I won’t say for sure it was the compost tea or what in the tea, if it was the tea, did the trick. But nothing else jumps out this year as the savior of my peas. For a more definitive tea endorsement, next year I should grow a row or two without the tea, and a row or two with the tea. I might try that, although it presents the possibility of my ending up with a row or two of unproductive vines.
    For now, I’ll just have humble pie. And tea.