I got Peas on my mind, but don't call me a Pea Head!

It's time to plant peas!  Finally!  

The first seeds that can go in the ground when it is still freezing off and on outside are peas.  Beets, carrots, and other root vegetables are usually hardy enough to take some frost when they are babies, as well. 

Peas are not only great for your belly, but also your garden.  They are legumes, which fix nitrogen in the soil.  Most vegetable plants can get most nutrients they need from the sun and soil, but nitrogen is one thing plants cannot get on their own.  Nitrogen is often the main ingredient in fertilizers for this reason.  Which is why peas are so great!  They fix nitrogen in their roots - you can actually see the round nitrogen nodules on legume roots!  They are nature's way of fertilizing your other plants without having to purchase chemicals.

Pea seeds germinate better when they are soaked overnight first.  Don't soak them longer than 24 hours or they will start to pop - in which case you can just eat pea sprouts in your next meal.  They will swell up with water, priming them for quick germination.

Peas do even better if they are planted with an inoculant.  Inoculants are bacteria that peas like.  They have a symbiotic relationship (like trees and mushrooms).  They provide each other nutrients that they can't make on their own.  However, if you do not have inoculant, it is not necessary to get the peas to grow - beneficial bacterias are often already in the soil.  If you've had trouble growing peas in the past, you may want to try inoculating your seeds before planting.

Plant lots of peas, beans, and other legumes this year in all your beds.  When they die, leave them there.  Especially the roots - don't remove the roots or you remove the nitrogen.  All the vegetable plants sharing that root space will love you for it!

Seed Library & Seed Saving

A book library in Colorado has adopted seeds into their collection!

Library members check out seeds during the planting season.  They use what they need, then after harvest let some of their strongest plants go to seed.  They collect the seed from the plant and return them to the library!  What a cool idea!  See the full story here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/02/170846948/how-to-save-a-public-library-make-it-a-seed-bank?sc=tw

Want to learn more about saving seeds?

Techniques for saving the seeds from a crop vary greatly.  Some plants are easy to keep seeds, other are more difficult.  Most common annuals are very easy to seed-save.  For example, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, dill, are very easy.  Plants flower, then produce seed heads.  Once they dry out, the seeds are ready for collecting and storing in a dry, temperature-controlled environment.

Other plants are more challenging.  Tomatoes require fermentation before the seeds are ready for saving. Pick your best-looking, most-delicious tomatoes.  Cut the fruit open, and put the guts into a bucket of water.  Let it sit for several days.  This fermentation process breaks the seeds apart from the membrane that holds them.  Bad seeds float to the top of the bucket, good seeds sink.  Skim everything out of the top of the bucket, and strain the remaining seeds from the bottom.  Rinse them several times.  Let the seeds dry, then store them in a dry, temperature-controlled environment.

To learn more about seed saving, check out this website: http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html 

Also, the book Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth is an excellent resource! It explains in detail how to cross-pollinate and seed-save most common annual vegetable plants.

It is possible to become self-sufficient in seeds - meaning, you don't ever have to buy seeds again.  Seed saving also promotes the healthiest plants for your environment.  Each year you save seed, the next year's crop will be even more adapted to your particular microclimate.  Eventually, you can come up with new varieties of vegetables that fit your property perfectly!

No Watering, No Bending!

Hugelkultur!
Its a German word that refers to a technique of raised-bed gardening that does not require watering or irrigation.  I made a hugelkultur in my back yard a few weekends ago, and I'm expecting good things!

Basically, a hugelkultur is a raised bed of piled rotting wood in the center, and dirt on top of that.  You mulch the bed to keep the weeds down, and plant into it. 

The benefits are:

• No irrigation.  Wood absorbs and holds water very well.  When you have wood underneath your vegetables, it will hold enough water in the soil you do not have to water your garden.  It may take a few months or even an entire growing season before the wood has absorbed enough water that you do not have to irrigate anymore.  The timing depends on many factors - weather, soil, air moisture, etc.
• No bending.  It is not necessary to make a hugelkulur bed raised high, but you can! Wood piled high and soil piled on top of that means less bending over to plant and harvest your veggies.  I made my bed 4 feet high!  However, it also had to be at least 5-6 feet wide at the base.  Hugelkultur beds can be great for people with back problems, folks utilizing wheelchairs, and Seniors.
• No fertilizing. Over time, the wood you bury decomposes.  This creates a slow carbon release into the soil.  As long as you add nitrogen to your hugelkultur bed, then the plants will have everything they need!  No more fertilizers have to be added.  Nitrogen is in "green" compost - kitchen scraps, grass clippings.  It is also in human and animal urine.  Men always get a kick out of this one - urinating directly on the vegetable bed.  Nitrogen is also released by dead vegetable plants - so if you just pull and leave last season's crop exactly where it was to let it decompose in the bed, you will be providing nitrogen to your next crop of food.

 

People construct hugelkulturs in many ways depending on their space, physical abilities, and materials available.  They can be tall, short, round, curved, rectangular, keyhole-shaped.  As long as you have decomposing wood inside the base of the bed, you should get the results explained above. 

For more details and pictures on how to construct a hugelkultur bed, see this website: http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

EASY No Dig Garden Prep

The EASIEST way to prepare a garden bed for planting into next Spring is to sheet mulch it now. 

                       
                                              

What is sheet mulching?  It is a technique used by gardeners to prepare garden beds without having to dig or till their soil first.  It involves smothering your grass, or whatever weeds you have, with cardboard or thick layers of newspaper, and then topping that off with compost or lawn clippings.  Over time, the cardboard breaks down into the soil, and the grass is effectively killed.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Figure out where you want your garden space to be in the Spring
2. Lay down cardboard or several layers of newspaper on top of the new garden space. It is important that you overlap your pieces so that no grass or any plant material is sticking up.  You are utilizing the cardboard/newspaper to smother light out from any unwanted plants - so make sure there is no green sticking through.
3. You usually need to weigh down the cardboard/newspaper.  Some people use stones or pieces of wood. Other folks water the cardboard/newspaper heavily to keep pieces from flying away.
4. Next you layer something nutritious for your plants on top of the cardboard.  This is usually compost, but it can be uncomposted kitchen scraps, grass clippings, or any other kind of green material that is capable of decomposing quickly.  I have a friend who works at a sprout farm and he used partially-rotted sprouts for his layer - turned out great.  The green matter or compost that you lay down will provide nutrition for the soil and for your plants in the Spring.  This layer needs to be at least 3-4 inches thick.
5. Next you layer something "brown" on top. You can use straw, hay, wood chips, or any dead, dry material as a top dressing.  The purpose of this layer is to protect the bottom layers.  The top layer of mulch will trap moisture, keep soil from drying out and blowing away, and keep new weed seeds from landing on your bed and germinating. This layer needs to be 5-6 inches thick.

That's it!  To sum up: its a smothering layer (cardboard/newspaper), a green nutritious layer (compost/kitchen scraps), and a brown protective layer (straw/wood mulch).  Some people put the green nutritious layer below the smothering layer.  Other folks add lots of amendments and soils in with the green nutritious layer.  There are many ways to do it, depending on your soil conditions and preferences.

You just leave your bed sit over the Winter.  When Spring arrives, your cardboard/newspaper layer and your green layer will be almost completely composted and ready for Spring plants.  You just plant directly into the top brown layer.
                                         

Here is a video of one lady sheet mulching in her yard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2K_uZnjRKk

Here is a video of Permaculture founder Bill Mollison sheet mulching to plant potatoes (the sound quality is bad):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pOF0kPAKfM

Giant Sweet Potato Harvest!

RTCO’s resident gardener Alec Sutliff has stumbled upon a method for growing giant sweet potatoes!  This is our harvest from RTCO’s garden – dug up yesterday.

 

 

 

Sweet Potatoes are heat lovers, and this summer we had a hot one!  Alec says loose soil, heat, and regular watering must be the key to growing these giant roots.  Near the beginning of Summer, Alec put loose bagged soil into a raised bed.  He started the sweet potato slips in his own basement.  He planted the slips in the raised bed, watered them about every three days all summer, and yesterday he pulled these monsters out of the ground.  Below is a picture of the raised bed they were dug out of.  As you can see, the box is raised higher than the rest of the bed – the bed is 6 inches from the ground, the sweet potato box is 18 inches from the ground.  Alec’s speculation on the unusual size of the potatoes is the extra foot of height allowed the soil to temperature in the box to raise and retain extra heat throughout the summer.  Loose hot soil results in large potatoes!

 

 

 

The sweet potatoes we see in the grocery store are usually grown in southern climates that have very hot growing seasons and sandy soils – such as North Carolina and Mississippi.  Many people mistake sweet potatoes for yams, but they are actually not in the same family as yams.  They are not even in the same family as potatoes.  Sweet potato plants are in the same family as morning glories (their flowers look like morning glory flowers).  They are grown all over the world, and they clearly do fine in Ohio’s hot summers.

Cool Weather Crops

What edible crops can you grow during the Fall and Winter seasons?  There are so many, and its still not too late to plant.

 

Root Vegetables: Radishes, Beets, Turnips, Carrots, Parsnips

All love the cool, wet weather of Fall.  You can plant these vegetables from seed now and let them get well-established before there are many hard freezes.  Root veggies will hold up during mild freezes.  You can cover them with straw or other mulch after they are established to protect them from hard freezes.  Some varieties even stand up to hard freezes all Winter long.  I love having root veggies in my garden because I can harvest them throughout the Winter when I want them - the ground soil will preserve them for you.  Also, all the root veggies listed above have edible leaves, as well, except Carrots.  They are delicious in salads and stir-fries.

  

Leafy Greens: Kale, Brussels Sprouts, Collards, Cabbage, Chard, Lettuces, Spinach, Chicories, Mache (aka Corn Salad)

Hardy greens usually stand up the best to hard Winters.  You can straw mulch these guys, as well, if you want to pick on them even during the coldest months.  Many varieties of Kale and Mache, especially, stay vibrant green when everything else around is dead and frozen.  Lettuces, Spinach, and other tender leaves are much less likely to withstand hard freezes, but they are fast growers in the Fall and you can eat on them up until multiple hard freezes kill them back.  Keep your vitamin intake up during the Winter by planting all these leafy greens now.

Scallions are a great Fall crop - they grow fast, love the cool Fall weather, and taste great in so many dishes.

  

Garlic is a crop that is harvest in the middle of Summer, but it is planting now.  If you want to grow delicious, strong flavored garlic, plant cloves now.  Many people even plant cloves they've bought from the grocery store.  Give them about 6 inches of space and plant them in a location that you can ignore between now and next July (when its time to harvest).  Many people mulch their garlic now to keep it from sprouting too much before hard Winter freezes kill the sprouts back.  Then in the Spring, they pull the mulch back and allow the garlic sprouts to pop up and grow tall. 

Eat All Winter - Build a Cold Frame!

Many people think when there is snow and ice all around, there are no green things to eat from the garden. Not true if you build a cold frame! Cold frames are like miniature greenhouses that keep cool weather vegetables alive throughout the winter. They can be as simple or as complicated as you want to build, and design possibilities are endless.

 

                                                  
Cold frames can be used to get an early start on Spring vegetables, or to extend Fall vegetables into the Winter. When temperatures drop very low, most crops stop growing. However, if you have Fall crops already established in a cold frame, then you can harvest off of them all Winter. They keep frost from settling on leafy greens and root vegetables. When temperatures start to warm up again, cold frames add a few degrees, allowing plants to start growing inside the frame when it is still too cold for growth outside the frame. 
Cold frame designs can be as simple as a sealed box with a removable glass or plastic top, and as complicated as a heated, hinged box that props open with a thermostat inside! They can be small, large, even in multiples segments. You can use scrap material you have laying around or found in the dumpster, or you can buy all new materials from the store if you like. Whatever you do, make sure your cold frame faces South - so your crops will get as much sunlight as possible.
     Whichever design you choose, the Tool Library has everything you need for tools - hammers, drills, levels, table saws, circular saws, we even have an air-pressured brad nailer!  Cold frames usually only take a couple hours to build, even the complicated designs.  Eat healthy this Winter!