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Getting started with gardening

Apr 20th, 2014
by htwollin.
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I hear more and more from people who want to get into gardening, feel overwhelmed, don’t know where to start and so on.

For the ‘I want to garden’ part, I say, “Hurray!! Another convert!”
For the ‘overwhelmed, don’t know where to start part,’ I say, “Ok, pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea and let’s sit down and talk about this a little bit.”

I don’t really care about why you want to garden (I’m a ‘find a hole and fill it’ sort of gardener myself and earned my stripes entering weasley looking carrots and droopy lettuce in a junior garden club show run by the local Men’s garden club when I was in the sixth grade. Somewhere, someplace, that white ‘honorable mention’ ribbon is at the bottom of a box in memory). I don’t care if the only thing you ever grew is a houseplant on a windowsill..or if you never grew anything at all but want to now. I don’t care if your interest is a whole bed of sweet corn, a year’s worth of broccoli or a tomato plant in a pot.

What I do care about is that you ENJOY it. A very short story to illustrate: Once, many years ago, the DH got super ambitious and decided that we needed a MUCH larger garden. Like, huge. And he decided to rip up a spot on the hill next to the barn that was probably 1/4 acre.

With a pick and a shovel. Not even a lawn tractor with a tiller on it. By hand. And he spent his entire vacation with this, hour after hour…day after day. The amount of sweat he put into that was amazing. And by the end of it, we had row upon row of tomato plants and pepper plants and potatoes and carrots and onions, all nicely planted, with the seeds just waiting to come up. And he decided to do just one..more…bit…of..a..dig.

And we ended up at the doctor’s with the DH, me pregnant with child number two, the 2 year old (who was grumpy at the time because we had interrupted her nap), and a completely useless arm. He’d ripped several tendons with all the digging you see. He spend the rest of the summer in a brace on his arm.

So, there we were with garden as far as the eye could see. I could only keep up with a rather small amount of all of that, so rather sooner than later, the garden disappeared under a jungle of weeds, squashes running rampant and goodness knows what else. We did not garden again for a very long time after that. When we did, we analyzed what had gone so horribly wrong.

First, location. The damn thing was so far away from the house that even just going up there was a chore. When we had first started gardening, at a different house, the garden was about 10 steps from the back door. We had a lovely time after dinner most nights just going out and taking a look at what was going on, pulling the odd weed, harvesting the odd bean or tomato. On weekends, we would put in a bit more work in terms of weeding, hacking back the spaghetti squashes with a lawn mower, that sort of thing. But the lesson here is this: Locate where you are going to grow stuff to eat close to where you are going to be, whether it’s on the deck in a planter box, next to the back door, next to the driveway where you are going to see it, a LOT. That makes it convenient and it also puts it where critters are not necessarily going to be able to get to it without being close to you (which they really don’t like).

Next, size. What the DH did was a case of ‘eyes bigger than stomach’ issue which put the garden into the range of requiring a team of people with gas-powered equipment to keep in shape. With him out of action and only one of me, we were defeated before we even started. Lesson from this: Keep the size of the thing, especially if you are just getting started, in the range of something you can get your arms around. This might be a couple of pots with tomatoes on the deck, or a flower box with collard greens and lettuce next to the back door, or some herbs. Or planting Rainbow Chard in the flower patch next to the back door (the stems are almost ‘glow in the dark’ so they are pretty splashy with the flowers). If you want to start with one bed, then make it something like 3 feet wide by 10 feet long. You can get a lot of production out of a space that big and as long as you keep an eye on it and pull the occasional weed, you can keep it under control and harvest things as you see them ripen. But, for the love of all things gardening, do NOT start with something 30 feet by 30 feet – after a month, you won’t be able to find a thing, trust me.

Other gardening thoughts for beginners:
What do you want to grow? What do you already like to eat and eat a LOT of? When you first start, it is completely easy to have things get out of hand. Like tomatoes? Then start with one, maybe two plants and make them two different things – like a cherry tomato and a plum tomato for sauce. You’ll get more cherry tomatoes than you can possibly dream of ever having, and you’ll have enough plum tomatoes to make fresh tomato sauce (which is heaven) and to freeze for winter sauce making and eating (take them out a little bit before you make a salad so that they are defrosting and you will have something that will beat any tomato you can find in the store, trust me). Like peppers? Buy a six-pack of sweet pepper plants and plant those. Take my advice and don’t buy a six-pack of hot pepper plants – you will end up with more hot peppers than you can ever use. Do you eat a lot of Italian (or Greek or Spanish) food? Then get plants for basil, oregano, cilantro and grow those (either in pots on the deck or in the garden). You can never have too much in the way of fresh herbs and eating a fresh tomato from your garden with fresh basil and olive oil is (well, I’m going to start there so I don’t start to swoon). What you don’t want to do it this: Grow a lot of stuff that you don’t already eat. Get your gardening legs under you so that you feel confident about growing the stuff you DO like to eat and then branch out from there. What you don’t want to do is finish the garden season with the thought that you threw out a lot of stuff that you couldn’t get your family to eat.

Something else: Don’t think that you are somehow some sort of weeny if you don’t grow things like tomatoes, peppers and so on from seed under lights inside your house. There is absolutely nothing wrong (or weak or silly or evil) about going to your local home and garden center and buying your plants there. Find someone truly local (not the big box national chains) to buy your plants – they will be growing things that they know will grow and grow well for you in your climate. You’ll be able to get a tomato plant in a big pot for the deck, for example – it might even already have flowers on it (woohoo!!). Much more enjoyable for someone just starting out.

Make hay while the sun shines

Apr 14th, 2014
by htwollin.
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Getting good (i.e., not raining) weather in the early spring here at Chez Siberia is a rare enough occurrence that when we get it, and on a weekend to boot, it’s all hands out in the garden and get that work done.

Lots of work got done:
General cleanup in the vegetable garden. No, I did not get the plastic out on one of the beds; with any luck, I’ll get a chance for that this coming weekend.

Blueberry bushes got hauled out of their snug winter heeled-in spot and planted, along with compost, bone and a bit of blood meal, and wood chips. (more…)

Getting things started in the garden

Apr 6th, 2014
by htwollin.
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Well, spring really sneaked up on us here at Chez Siberia (and probably a lot of other places as well). One moment, we have six inches of snow with freezing temperatures and the next… 50 degrees and sunshine.

Nothing like that to wake up the ‘we’d better start the tomatoes’ feelings.

Now, all long-range weather forecasts are telling your old Aunty that this summer is going to be not very warm (of course, all things are relative) – they are calling for temperatures in July and August to be 5-10 degrees cooler than normal. Which means that I needed to choose tomatoes that have a note on them saying something like, ‘cold tolerant’ or ‘will set fruit even in cooler temperatures’, because tomatoes are one of those tricky beasts. Most of them require warm night-time temperatures to set fruit. If temperatures are going to be iffy, then this is the way I hedge my bets.

Starting tomato seeds is really pretty simple. You need all the usual things – seed starting mnix, something to put it in, some warmish water, the seeds and a source of bottom heat. I use a heating mat, but I also got a metal grill to put on top of it to hold the box above the wwarmth a little bit. If I put the box of soil right on the mat, the soil mix gets to a temperature of over 80 degrees. Yes, I want warm soil but that will cook the seedlings, so I hold it away. If I didn’t have a metal grill to raise the box, I’d put an old towel on top of the mat to do the same thing. I also am a keen re-user of those plastic boxes that you can get salad mix in at the grocery store. They are relatively sturdy and have a lid that snaps on tightly to hold in the warmth and the moisture for the early stages of growing the seedlings until I need to transplant them out into bigger pots.

Now, this really is something you can do on the window sill at home as long as you have a sunny window, though you do need to keep watch to turn the seedlings so that they don’t grow all in one direction. I have an unheated greenhouse (and right now the temperature in that is 36 degrees – once the sun comes around the corner of the house, it will go up nicely into the 70+ range), but between the warming mat and my covering up the box with a big clear plastic bag, the soil is warm enough to keep the seedlings going.

Something that I am doing new this year (and I realize this sounds a bit daft at this point in the game) is that I am not putting any sort of seed identification markers IN the box. I’ve actually ended up numerous times with mold and other issues inside the box with the wood tags that I’ve used, so I’m doing something different this year. The humble piece of masking tape on the outside of the box.
I figure I can just write on the tape and won’t have as many issues inside the box until it is time to transplant.

Speaking of temperatures (digression), this year’s long winter and very cold temperatures have set me way back. Usually I can get out, put clear plastic or glass over one of the beds and get the soil up to 50 degrees so that I can put in cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Chinese cabbages, beets, chard and lettuces. Not this year. I went out this week and took the soil temperature and it was still under 40 degrees F. Not warm enough for me to encourage it with a piece of glass or plastic, I’m afraid. I’ll try taking the temperature again today since we’re supposed to have a nice warm sunny day (again, all relative; it’s supposed to be 50 degrees F). Perhaps I’ll have better luck today.

In other areas of the garden, we’re starting to see the leaves from some of the many bulbs I planted in the fall. The crocuses are up, bless ’em, but nothing else so far. It will be very interesting to see how the bulb patch looks once it’s in full flower mode. The patch, frankly, is a supremely ugly spot under which is our new septic system. So, of course, in the digging, installing, and filling in, we lost all of the top soil (despite our begging the contractor to set it aside on a tarp that we oh-so-thoughtfully put out for him) and have nothing there but horrific weeds which we have been assiduously yanking out and replacing with hardy perennials, in the hope that they will beat the nasty guys back (I know, wishful thinking). In the fall, I planted several hundred bulbs of various sorts and we shall see if that gives us a little bit of pleasure in the next couple of months.

Hope your spring gardening is coming along! Anything new and exciting in your garden?

Last Minute Holiday Gift

Nov 30th, 2013
by htwollin.
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So, here is how the script goes: You get the call. Or someone at work invites you to come over or whatever and there you are with ‘Oh, Jeeze – I need a ‘take along gift’. Should I do the obvious and drop by the liquor store on the way or ?

Well, your old Aunty is here to tell you this: You know this is going to happen because it always happens. And you know that dealing with the whole ‘take along gift’ thing is always stressful, so why not get it out of the way right now. If you are not prepared with holiday cookies or the odd bottles of wine (and the concomitant holiday box with metallic embellishment), where else to look? Well, if you have one of the sorts of things pictured at the top of the page, you look there. (more…)

Fall Gardening: Evaluating how things went

Oct 26th, 2013
by htwollin.
4 comments

This week was, to certain extent, the ‘last hurrah’ for the garden here at Chez Siberia. We had several ‘killing frosts’ here – this is the sort of frost where basically it coats all the grass in whiteness and crunches when you walk on it. It also will literally melt everything that is not hardy to a certain extent — it explodes the water in the plant cells of plants such as tomatoes, peppers, squashes, non-hardy greens and so on. (more…)

Greenhouse goings – transplanting

Oct 20th, 2013
by htwollin.
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Once upon a time, back in June, I did a post on rooting succulents and I cut up and planted some orchid cacti cuttings that I’d gotten out west when the DH and I did a trip and visited an arboretum. Rooting Succulents And, at this point in the season, I always figure that I may as well transplant cuttings into something bigger and most hospitable before it really gets cold, so I rooted (heh) around the greenhouse to find these again (your Aunty is really quite negligent and we grow and root so many things out there that sometimes things get pushed to the side, out of the way, under something else and so on). Now, just looking at this photo at the top (and this is only one of the big cuttings I cut up and rooted), you can see that one of the cuttings did really really well and the other two look sort of ‘meh’. But, you never know with succulents. The other two big leaves that I cut up and planted actually looked much worse and when I dug them out of their little pots, they had all sorts of little roots on them, even there there was no top growth and the cuttings themselves looked pretty ‘peely-wally’ (as my deal old Mum used to say). But in this case, if you guessed that the other two cuttings did not root, you would be correct. Too much water? Not enough water at the right time? No way to tell. But I’ve got one rooted cutting out of it, which is a very good thing and when it gets bigger, I can root other parts of it. For the moment, to let them settle in, I have just put them into potting mix and will let them sit there for a day or two before I water them a little bit. Again, with succulents, too much water is actually worse than not enough.

On to the next bit of negligence:

One of the members of the plant kingdom that I really adore are ferns, which are, from a plant perspective, one of our connections with the ancient world of the dinosaurs since they have been around since literally that time and have not changed one iota since then. The major difference between ferns and gymnosperms (that is, plants that make actual seeds) is that they don’t make seeds per se – they develop structures on the undersides of their leaves which create spore structures underneath a membrane on the leaf called an indusium, which basically lifts up when the spores are fully developed and ripe. Then, through wind and rain action, the spores get out on the wind or fall to the ground, where a gametophyte forms and the sperm and eggs do their reproductive thing, forms a zygote and grows into what we think of a typical ‘fern’.

Earlier this summer, I found some fern fronds with brown sori (spore bodies) on the backs and just for the heck of it, I put one of the fronds on a piece of dry paper, waited a few days and gathered up the spores that had fallen on the paper. I then scattered them on top of some potting medium that I had in one of the many former salad mix containers that come with a lid and put it aside in a not very sunny spot in the greenhouse. When a green haze formed (and I can’t describe it in any other terms but that), I gave it a good spray with a spray bottle. This gives the sperms a medium to travel to the eggs so that they can get together.

Today, in rooting around, I found that salad container again and I dug it out and look what I found:
The surface was covered with structures that looked like this. How exciting!!! So I dug out a few to transplant into other little containers and I’ll give them a good spritz so that they can continue to develop into more ferns.

This really is not too difficult. And the structures are very interesting to look at.

If you want to grow ferns yourself, you can use fronds that you find in your own garden, or even fronds from flower arrangements. Also fern societies offer ‘spore exchanges’ and so on that you can participate in. Lots of fun. And you can see what’s going on close up.

Timely suggestions

Aug 11th, 2013
by htwollin.
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OK, folks, sometimes it is good to, as they say in the classical music biz, ‘recapitulate the theme’ before we go on to the ‘variations.’ In your Aunty’s case this weekend, it hit me (literally; the calendar fell off the fridge) that we are now half-way through August, which means many things to many families:
1. School will be starting soon and many of you will be head-first in those lists that get sent out from schools for what your child is expected to have with them when they go back (if they have not gone back already – some school districts have started I think).
2. Even though it is still warm (and still very warm) in many places (except for our readers in Australia and NZ who are moving into the spring), fall and winter are making their inevitable march.

So, as I seem to do every August, your dear Old Aunty is here today to remind you of a couple of things which may be useful in terms of the next 8 weeks or so (depending on where you live):

First, it is still warm, which means that we have a window of opportunity (as they say) to use substances such as caulk, paint, wood putty and so on, which require temperatures of at least 55 degrees F to cure.

Second, if you have been cudgeling yourselves over the head with doing something about making your home more energy efficient, now is a bloody good time to actually take steps to doing it. There is literally nothing worse than laying on your back in a crawl space in December putting in insulation (well, actually, there IS something worse and that is laying on your back on a filthy barn floor when it’s 0 degrees F. at 2 a.m. and trying to help a ewe have her lambs. But we don’t do that anymore, hey nonnie nonnie and a fiddle-dee-dee). Doing this in August, September or October is much less nasty.

If you’ve been thinking about getting into canning or freezing (even if you don’t have a garden yourself), now as as good a time as any to do this. First – the farmers markets are exploding with gorgeous produce and so-called ‘U pick” is humming out there with fruits and veggies. Check with your county Cooperative Extension to see if they are having any canning, freezing, jam making etc. sorts of classes.

Let’s say you do have a freezer – now is a very good time to check it out and bring all the older stuff (you DO label what you put in there with what it is and when you put it in, right?) to the top or the front (depending on what sort of freezer you have) so that you can use it up before winter starts.

If you have a garden or beds or planters of plants, you may look out and feel that all the flowers are looking just a tad peaked at this point. Deadhead the perennials and cut back the annuals and give everything a good dose of organic fertilizer like compost tea or fish emulsion in water. That should give them a good pick-me-up to carry them into the fall.

For those folks looking for some posts to help them along, here you go:
Saving Energy
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2012/01/07/saving-energy-basement-windows/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2011/09/03/its-that-time-of-the-year/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2010/08/12/55-keep-your-eyes-on-the-thermometer/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2009/10/08/to-do-list-caulk-now/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2011/12/17/give-the-gift-of-warm-feet-part-1/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2011/12/18/the-gift-of-warm-feet-part-2-fiberglass/

Freezing, Canning
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2010/08/22/overwhelmed-with-tomatoes/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2009/05/30/introduction-to-canning/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2009/05/28/be-prepared-introduction-to-anxiety-part-one/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2009/08/02/wmd-zucchini-time/
http://www.kitchencountereconomics.com/2009/06/01/the-exploding-pressure-canner-and-other-kitchen-myths/

Enjoy!

Stalking the Wild Spaghetti Squash

Aug 10th, 2013
by htwollin.
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Shhhhhhhh. We’ve now encountered the elusive spaghetti squash in her native habitat. If you look carefully, you can see her crouching here, under the large spiny leaves toward the back. (more…)

Sustainability: Having a Lawn and Saving the Environment, Too

Jul 20th, 2013
by htwollin.
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Your dear old Aunty has a very focused philosophy about yard and garden care: Do nothing. If you can’t do nothing, do as little as possible.

What does that mean at Chez Siberia?

Well, it means things like the following:
1) We mow the lawn as little as possible during the hot summer months, taking the position that ‘what is above the ground is what is below the ground’ – the more there is on top, the more roots there are below, which is really a good thing if you are having a hot dry summer.
2) We compost everything that is not meat and put it on the garden and dig it in in the spring.
3) We mulch everything we can – our township has a woodchip generation and composting facility where we can go and fill up as many garbage cans as we can – we mulch all the beds and paths to hold in moisture and keep down the weeds. All the weeds (except for wire grass and bind weed) get composted.
4) If it is really dry and hot, we run a hose from the sump in the front basement out to the garden and deep wet the soil in the morning. Using sprinklers on the garden is basically a waste of water. (more…)

Sustainable Gardening – Daylillies

Jul 6th, 2013
by htwollin.
4 comments

There’s gardening and then there’s “gardening” (the competitive sport, English-style, all-in, heavy on the inputs sort of gardening).

Your dear Aunty does the first sort because frankly I’m cheap. I’m lazy. And I don’t like plants which require a lot of coddling. I’ll give anything a shot once but if it can’t survive my particular brand of neglect (which is almost total) or Chez Siberia’s specific microclimate ( on the USDA map, our area is Zone 4-5; at Chez Siberia, it’s Zone 2 in a lot of spots), I let the poor thing take its final trip to the compost heap without any grief, trust me.

Which means that if I’m in the mood for roses, I check out University of Minnesota or Canadian breeders — anything else basically will turn up its toes and die.

On the other hand, I am also a huge fan of plants which have made the leap from local roadside, streambank and woodland and into the breeders hands. In general, things that are wild IN YOUR AREA, will, in the breeders hands, produce plants which you can put out in your garden with not a care in the world.

Exhibit A: Daylillies.

Daylillies (hemerocallis) are NOT a member of the lily family – they have been placed into the family (I know you are just thrilled to bits to know this) Xanthorrhoeaceae. They are native to China, India and Japan and are such an uncomplaining perennial, and so easy to hybridize that there are now something like 60,000 registered cultivars. They were brought here by early settlers from England and they made the leap from cottage and farm garden to the roadside and across the country. In various parts of the country, they are referred to as ‘railroad lilies’, ‘road lilies’ and ‘outhouse lilies'(I kid you not). As a plant, it is unfussy about soil (mine grow in our grey clay with nary of whimper), water or lack thereof, sun or shade. There are some that are even repeat bloomers. The only downside is that you can’t find any in pure white or pure blue. Which I don’t see as a real disadvantage since we have so much else to choose from in terms of colors, singles and doubles and so on.

But notice what I didn’t say:
They are not invasive. They form their clump (which might get 18″ across) and then… stop.
They don’t require deadheading – every flower has its day in the sun (so to speak) and then it dies to be replaced by another one. If you want to neaten things up a bit, that is great, but you don’t have to.
They are almost impervious to insect pests – no spraying required.
They don’t require any fancy fertilizers or foliar feeding. Zippo.

The only thing you’ll need to do, at the end of the season in the fall, is remove the dead flower stems and cut back the dead foliage. No big deal at all. And after the clumps reach mature sizes (which takes about 3 years), you can split them up – you get babies for no cost at all. Another great feature is that they can be transplanted at any time during the growing season – as long as you can get them into the ground with a month left before the ground freezes, you are good to go.

And that, my friends, is what I call — sustainable.

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