Gardener to Farmer

Growing Cherries

I spent the better part of the weekend harvesting two kinds of cherries (click for gorgeous cherries in springtime pictures), raspberries and the last of the rhubarb. And of the three fruits, the cherries were the most difficult. Sure, it's all fun and games when you can reach them standing flat footed, but if you have a regular sized cherry tree, then you have 15-20 feet to contend with...and I have two of them. So far, my organic pest and disease control methods have been shear avoidance...and I would not have been surprised to see my harvest blighted by a variety of problems. Happily, very few were to be seen.

Now, let me be clear, I did not plant these trees, I inherited them. If I had planted them, I would have chosen the dwarf variety...cute and short, that's how I like them. And though I am nearly 6 feet tall, I am no match for the height and spread of a traditional cherry tree.

 

I am not exactly certain of the varieties represented, though I think one is Rainier. The other is the sweetest, darkest red cherry...much larger than a bing. Together, they were truly a dynamic duo. I'll bet I ate a half a pound of them while I was cherry picking.

I addition to contorting myself and hopping around like a madwoman, I used a ladder. But, that really had limited use as the cherries were spread far and wide, not in nice little clumps. In a flash of insight, I realized my Groundhog rake would be perfect for snagging the cherries down from the branches. I grabbed it up and started waving it about...and though it took a bit of time to hone my skill, it was a fantastic implement. The long handle paired with the spacing of the tines brought down a whole second level of fruit. The top of the trees, I left for the crows.

Once inside, I washed and dried half of the cherries. Half of the batch went onto trays and into the freezer. The other half were pitted and placed on trays, ready for the dehydrator. Over all, both storage methods seem to be successful. The dried cherries will be great for baking, cereals and snacks. The frozen will be awesome in pies.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I saved some of the cherries for fresh use. Thinking about making cherry ice cream today. Check tomorrow's post on Portland Foodie for the recipe!

Dirty Ladies Gardening Group

There are some days when I am completely surprised at the end result of my activities and yesterday was one of those days...I was checking out some of the gardening groups I belong to on Facebook when I discovered one of them had an odd message beside the title. The "Dirty Ladies' Gardening Group" had a small link below the title that said, "This group doesn't have an administrator. Become the administrator of this group!"
 
Now, those of you who know me, know that I could hardly have passed up a direct command like that. "Who, me? You want me to be the admin. of these 2,500 women talking about all things gardening? Um, ok!" And so, I adopted the Dirty Ladies' Gardening Group.

For those of you who have already started sending me comments about spending less time on the computer and more time in the garden (I agree), let me start by saying the Ladies are an established group that function quite well without a lot of admin action. I suspect my primary job will be to keep the spammers and misguided adult content seekers from taking over. As an aside, I have already had 4 new friend requests from guys looking to "connect"...

What I like about this group is that it covers a broad range of gardening topics...everything from ornamentals to edibles, trees and shrubs to flower borders. There's also a lot of great conversation going on among members...and it doesn't hurt my feelings to have a place to go and celebrate my female side. Listen, they don't call her Mother Nature for nothing...

Stop by and check out the group, see what you think...you may find that you are a Dirty Lady in waiting!

Obama has a Victory Garden? We Had it First!!

Well, I meant to get to this post a week ago...but things just got out of hand this week. And now that Michelle Obama has announced her spectacular vegetable garden, I feel as though I have to rise to the challenge.  Let's start with a quick update of what's happening (or happened) in the outside garden.

Here you see a picture of my neighbor Liz, working away, while I stand by taking pictures of everything. This is usually how I work...:)

Anyway, we spent the day weeding the front 4 beds, plus a bed on the other side of the garden and sowed peas, lettuce, carrots, red mustard, chard and beets. I couldn't believe how much we got accomplished in just a few hours...it really is amazing how an extra pair of hands helps!

The tree behind her is an old apple that apparently has a type of borer attacking it. This nasty little bug eats a ring around the branch, eventually killing it. So, Liz's husband is going to remove it with a chainsaw...I plan on being there to take pictures. :)

In our spring clean up, we decided to test two rakes sent to me by Radius. The green one is the Garden Shark and the orange is the Groundhog. (Note Liz is still working and I am still taking pictures.)

The Garden Shark rake is for spreading mulch and de-thatching lawns and the Groundhog rake is for leaves, branches, and other garden debris. **

So here's the scoop on these two lovelies. Let me start by saying I have always hated traditional rakes...I have to stoop over and work too hard to get a minimal amount accomplished. These rakes have an extra long handle and are ergonomically designed to work for you, not the other way 'round. Both Liz and I agreed that these two rakes are by far our favorites.

I am big on finding tools for the garden that are more friendly to my body. Conserving energy and effort means I can stay in the garden longer...which is exactly what we did. We worked ourselves tired (four hours later) but felt completely satisfied...and much like expectant mothers, we have gone outside every day since to check on our babies...no sprouting yet.

And not to be outdone by the Obama's, Liz and I are sharing our own Organic Vegetable Garden Plans.
This is a complete list of all that we have planted (in the greenhouse and outside) with various growing information. You can also see what varieties and seed producers we are using. And somewhere, Liz has used her fancy software to layout our garden, indicating what is planted where...I will get that posted soon.

Hope you are enjoying your spring (yea!) garden as much as we are!

**both of these rakes are available now in our OpenSky Store!

How to Grow Potatoes in a Garbage Bag

Lots of folks struggle with figuring out how to grow potatoes. They often plant them in the ground, then treat them like a root crop. The problem is that potatoes don't grow down, they grow up!

Potatoes will certainly grow a small crop underground, but in order to get the most bang for your buck, you add compost and/or straw to the base of the plant as it matures. Every time you add a layer of material, the potato stem will send out roots and make more potatoes...all the way up until harvest.

The challenge is in containing these ever-growing hills of potatoes...I am thinking of growing potatoes in trash bags this year. Here's how it works: start with a bit of compost and hay and the sack flat to the ground (don't forget to poke holes for drainage). Add potatoes, then add more hay and compost to cover. As the potatoes start to grow, add more hay and compost, gradually increasing the size of the bag. When the plant dies, you will have a whole lot of potatoes layered throughout the mix.

I must also confess that I love the scent of potatoes. Some varieties have the most beautiful scent...and it is wonderful to walk into the veggie garden and have such an enticing smell!

I know some people use old tires in a similar way. Are you using any creative or space-saving ways to grow potatoes?

Yardsharing and Seed Starting with my Neighbor Liz

I have updated some of my social networking sites with the news that this year, my neighbor Liz and I will be creating a mini-community garden between our two yards. I have a large organic vegetable garden area, mini-orchard, raspberries, blueberries and grapes. Oh, and I have a greenhouse and about 8,000 tools.

Liz is new to gardening. She wants to learn all about it from the ground up...pun intended. She is a big veggie eater and loves the idea of growing her own food. And, she is probably 10+ years younger than I am...which means she isn't nearly as sore and creaky as I am after a day in the garden.

We met last Saturday to review our inventory of seeds. She had some from the previous year, I had tons. **Note, you can and should use seeds from the previous year. Some will have a lower germination rate, so just seed them a bit more heavily than you would seeds from this year. We sorted them out and created categories: what to plant outside now, what to start in the greenhouse now, what to plant outside after last freeze date, what to start in the greenhouse next month and one bag of veggies we could plant all summer.

Yesterday, we met in the greenhouse to start seeds. We started a lot...mostly peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, broccoflower, broccoli rabe and eggplant...I am creating a Googledoc with the information and will share a link when it is finished. This spreadsheet will help us keep track of germination rates, successes/failures, performance in our climate...and will help us in planning next year's garden.

We discovered we needed a few more kinds of tomatoes. I suggested that Liz take a look at some of my favorite companies: FedCo Seeds, Seeds of Change, Seed Savers, Peaceful Valley, Baker Creek Seeds, and Pinetree Seeds. These are only a handful of the 40-50 catalogs that barrage my house each winter. And for fun, I suggested she check out the Murray Mc Murray Hatchery catalog. We aren't ready for chickens yet, but they are so adorable!

One of the things we discussed is what medium to use when starting seeds. I had several things to try this year. One is my standard mix of compost and perlite in peat pots. The other is a peat soilless starting pellet that is made by Jiffy, which I got at last year's Garden Writer's Association symposium.  Here's a picture of the peat pellets...mine were in big trays with 72 plugs.

We will meet later in the week to finish sewing seeds in the greenhouse and maybe get a chance to sew some outside if the rain stops.

To Till or Not To Till, That is the Question

Tilling has become a bit of a controversial point between some groups of gardeners. There is a “no-till” movement that is battling against the double-digging and rototilling folks. This is based on a concern that disturbing the soil in this way results in damage to soil structure, killing of beneficial microbes and scaring the bee-jeezus out of earthworms. The tillers say that it loosens and aerates the soil, helps speed the decomposition process and generally hastens the process by which nature turns the soil herself.

I started a conversation on this topic in my Facebook and MySpace Grow Your Own Food Groups. The responses were so great that I wanted to share them with my blog readership. Check this out:

FaceBook Grow Your Own Food Group:

Audrey Spindle  wrote on February 15, 2009

Wow, great topic! I have been a confirmed no-till gardener for eight years. I've done "lasagne" gardening and "weed-free" gardening (two variations on the same theme) and been very pleased with both methods. My thought is that a gardener should be concerned about the soil first and the plant second. Both methods are labor intensive on the front end, but seem to produce great yields and save labor (weeding!) in the long run.

Having said THAT, we are putting in a gianormous garden (over 2K square feet) for market this year, breaking (literally) new ground that has been home to freakish amounts of bermuda grass for lo these many years and we will be plowing, discing and tilling it ALL in hopes of killing said evil grass without the use of either Round-up or any other toxin. My fervent hope is that we will only have to do this one or two seasons and then peacefully return to no-till happiness. 

Deborah Aldridge wrote on February 15, 2009

I just hate digging. I'm working on lasagna beds all over my yard, since I have access to free manure and compost. I just need a truck.

Tim Justice (Amarillo, TX) wrote on February 15, 2009

I'm a no-tiller for a few reasons: 1. I'm a cheapskate and a conservationist and see no point in runing a 2 cycle engine when it's not necessary. 2. It allows me to "work the dirt" and get a feel for the condition of rht dirt when I use a spade. 3. It keeps me from growing my garden space too quickly. If you till too large an area and only plant 1/4 of it, you've disturbed the natural plant life that could have been there in the meantime. We use planks (a suggestion from Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening") to keep from walking over the turned over area.

Tony Hitsman (Ottawa, ON) wroteon February 16, 2009

I can't imagine planting my large veggie garden without tilling it first, especially after our harsh winters which compacts and makes the soil very hard and difficult to dig for planting. Tilling greatly loosens up the soil and makes it easier to work with.

MySpace Grow Your Own Food Group:

turtle :perennial polyculture is the way to go. most other systems end up with soil loss, compaction, and erosion. there is less top soil on the planet today that there has been in millennia, if not all of history. tilling not only kills the ecology of the soil and causes erosion, but also causes mineralization of the organic component of the soil, meaning there is an immense off gassing of CO2 into the atmosphere.

joyce
Posted: Feb 15, 2009
but if the soil is hard as a rock at the beginning of the garden, shouldn’t we till it just once or twice to help get things going?

redneck
Posted: Feb 16, 2009
I was wonering the same thing... If yo till it just once or twice with compost, does this not help rather than hurt? Especially around here where we have HARD dirt that is not exactly the most fertile around.

What do you think? Should we till our gardens? I have to say, I am on the fence about the whole issue. On a small scale, I am not convinced that tilling is harmful...whether or not it is on vast acres of land, I am not so sure.

Organic Gardening on the Web

I was laying awake at 4 am this morning thinking about all of the ways I could collect and synthesize organic gardening data from around the web (doesn't everybody?). And it occurred to me that I had two handy social media tools at my disposal. I am going to give you a bit of information about what each of them are so that you can take on the task of learning more about them, if you want to...if you don't, I will give you the links to what I have created so you can bask in the collective wisdom.

First, I created a Yahoo Pipes "Garden Mashup". Right now, I only have a few RSS feeds of some of my favorite gardening blogs and a twitter search for the word "gardening". I have a web search set up for "organic gardening" but that just returns too many advertisements and I want this to be a real benefit to those who read it. You can subscribe to the feed via RSS or igoogle...or you can download a widget and place it on your blog. This widget will constantly update with organic gardening happenings from the web. Since it was 4 am, I was a little fuzzy trying to remember all of the gardening greats, so here's who made it to the first edition: Away to Garden, Shed Style, Idaho Gardener, Gardener to Farmer (of course), BumbleBee blog the Write Gardener and Garden Punks.

If you would like to add this widget to your site and you aren't on the list, just let me know and I will go in and add you...it is a snap!

Next, I built out my Gardener to Farmer profile on Chi.mp. Chi.mp is an amazing site that let's you build out your profiles according to your interests...ie, no Facebook design restrictions. Check out my newly pimped profile and you will see what I mean. I have collected all of the sites where I chatter about gardening, plus included the garden mashup feed...so there is a lot of good information there. I know that at least one of my gardening friends is building a Chi.mp profile...and I have a few invitations left. Let me know if you would like one...and if you are already on line, please add me as a friend!

Alright, you gardeners, get out there and check out these new social media resources...and let me know how it goes...
 

Organic Soil Amendments

As we edge toward spring, it is a good time to think about organic soil amendments. It takes a bit of time to really build the quality and structure of your soil, but it is one of the foundational elements of gardening.

 If you don't have healthy, well-draining soil, your poor plants will not have the nutrients they need to produce great veggies and fruit. In addition to the type and amount of nutrients, the soil texture and pH balance will affect the plants' ability to absorb available nutrition.

Creating a balance between sand, clay and organic matter is the first step. If your soil is too sandy, water and nutrients will drain through immediately, leaving your poor plant dying of thirst and starvation. On the other hand, if you have too much clay in your soil, water will drain very slowly, drowning the plant.

The great news is the the remedy for both of these problems is compost. Adding compost improves soil structure, adds macro and micro nutrients and boosts microbial activity. And, compost is readily available by the bag or truckload if you don't have your own compost pile.

To determine the pH and nutrient level of your soil, you can take a sample to your local county extension for testing. But,I have to be honest, I am a lazy gardener and just can't get motivated to collect it and send it in. I just make sure that my soil is well amended and use organic fertilizers...can't say that I have ever had a problem.

I also like to add micorrhizal fungi to the soil. These little guys help boost the ability of the root system to absorb nutrients. If you turn your soil, particularly with a tiller, it can negatively impact micorrhizal colonization. Adding a bit in the spring will help ensure healthy plants and higher yields.

What do you do to amend your soil? Would love to hear your tips!

Increase Your Wealth by Growing Your Own Food

I almost passed out when I read that today in an article entitled, "How Real People Grow Their Wealth" on CNBC, a commenter suggested that growing your own food would build wealth. The article was a collection of reader suggestions for ways to save money and build their bank accounts.

Here's the quote:

1. Grow your own food
I have a plot in our local community garden that I share with two of my friends.

It is a fun, inexpensive hobby for us -- plus it keeps us active and teaches our children important life skills.

We keep our 20- by 30-foot parcel planted year-round, and it provides our three families with fresh, organic produce.
-- Anonymous

Now, it is certainly not news to me that growing your own can save money, which in turn, can leave more for other needs. But what I think is amazing is that this article is on CNBC! That's just plain crazy...

It almost feels like a fog is lifting...yes people, growing your own produce isn't that hard and can save you money! We knew that at one time, and somehow, it was lost to the McDonald's years. I am so excited it is "in" again!

Organic Vegetable Gardens: What to Grow?

One of the biggest challenges in veggie gardening is trying to decide what to grow. There are so many factors to consider. Recently, I received a question from a reader about what grows well in Orlando, FL. Seems one of her main challenges is hateful bugs, particularly aphids. Sound familiar?

When I am planning my vegetable garden, I take into consideration several factors.

• Zone (or average temperatures)
• Sun condition needed
• Variety best suited to my region
• Ease of growing
• Soil condition needed 
• Pests and disease problems in my area
• My general patience with care versus my level of desire to grow

Each of these variables affects the likely success of the plant. And, what might be challenging here (read: winter squash and tomatoes) won't be in warmer climates. Not that those challenges will stop me from growing tomatoes, but that I will keep in mind they will require extra care...and extra care = extra time and energy.

Understanding your local pest and disease problems is great to do BEFORE you chose your plants. There are some plant varieties that have resistance to certain diseases. And, if I know that slugs are a big problem (which they are), I start the lettuce out with organic slug control methods. I don't wait to see a problem, because with slugs, prevention is way better than trying to save the lettuce patch. Sometimes there are things I choose not to grow because I just don't want to deal with the battle.

When you plant something in its ideal conditions, it will be a happy plant. If you plant it with too little light, water, etc, you will spend the rest of your time trying to care for it. Don't turn a low maintenance plant into a pain in the rear!

Each year, I am an enthusiastic over-orderer of seeds...and I start out the season with fervor and excitement. Sometime around August I am hot and irritated, but by September, I am happy to be in the garden again. When you plant your vegetable garden this year, try to set realistic goals for your achievements. In the long run, it will make the process much more enjoyable!