Tips for Growing Food in Cold Climates
- On May 16, 2017
- By Meleah
- In Books, Fertilizer, Organic Gardening, Seeds, Soil, Uncategorized, Veggies
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I’ve been growing vegetables, fruit and herbs for years and I have to say, I learn something new every season. Just when I think I’ve mastered the art of growing beets, I get a crop of teeny tiny ones for reasons I don’t understand. Sometimes the potatoes I plant don’t produce well, and then there are the years when the carrots just don’t grow or the squash just dies on the vine.
While I feel pretty confident in my ability to grow non-edible plants, I still struggle to turn out consistently usable food crops. I’m probably doing all sorts of things wrong, but I’d also like to blame some of the problem on our weather. It’s not easy to grow edibles in cold climates. So when I was asked to review John Whitman’s new book Fresh from the Garden: An Organic Guide to Growing Vegetables, Berries, and Herbs in Cold Climates, I jumped at the chance.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press earlier this year, Whitman’s book offers more than 500 pages of color photos and helpful, practical information, starting with easy-to-understand organic gardening basics and expanding into specifics on how to grow, harvest and store a wide range of edibles. Unlike some gardening books where you can tell the writer has never touched a trowel, Fresh from the Garden offers know-how and advice that reflects Whitman’s 50-plus years of gardening experience. He is also the author of several other books that I use and trust, including three in the cold climate gardening series: Growing Perennials in Cold Climates, Growing Shrubs and Small Trees in Cold Climates and Growing Roses in Cold Climates.
Credit: John Whitman
One of the things I like most about Whitman’s approach is the way he just says what he thinks, citing his own experience rather than repeating things that are commonly said like—you MUST get a soil test before planting. “I consider its value questionable for most home gardeners but worth the cost for mini-farmers,” he writes, explaining that he’s never done a soil test in 60 years of gardening. I’ve gone back and forth about soil tests over the years and concluded that most gardeners I know, including master gardeners, don’t test their soil’s nutrient and pH levels regularly if at all. That said, soil tests are useful if you’re having problems growing something or you want to grow something with specific needs, like blueberries, which require more acidic soil. Soil tests are also necessary, he writes, and I would agree, if heavy metal contamination, particularly lead, could be a an issue where you are planting.
Read More»Free Seeds and Help for the Bees
- On March 30, 2017
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Natives, Organic Gardening, Perennials, Uncategorized
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It’s nearly spring and that means my Little Free Seed Library will soon be up and running. As many of you know, I reserve the top shelf of our Little Free Library for seed sharing in the spring and fall. I will be stocking the library in mid-March with seeds from my garden, as well as several different types of seeds that people donated late in the fall. The library is located on the boulevard on the corner of 45th Street and Washburn Ave. S. in Linden Hills.
There are small, coin-sized envelopes available for those who want to take seeds, as well as pencils to write down what you’ve packaged up. Seeds that are available for the taking are either in their original packets or large envelopes that are labeled with the plants’ names. Please take what you want from those packets and large envelopes and leave the rest for others.
If you have seeds to share—and we can always use more—please bring them in their original packets or envelopes that are labeled so people can clearly see what’s available. And thank you very much to all who have helped make this seed-sharing library a success for the last several years. People stop by all the time during the summer to tell me that the sunflowers or tomatoes or cosmos in their yard came from the seed library. Sometimes they even get out their phones to show me photos of what they’re growing. It’s a joyful thing to be part of and all of us are making it possible. Way to go, us!
Help for the Bees
As you probably know, news about the health of bees continues to get worse. Just last December the rusty-patched bumblebee was declared endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service because their numbers have declined so much in the past 20 years. Other bumblebee species are also declining, as are populations of other types of bees.
Gardeners are in a unique position to help bees of all types. If you’d like some bee-friendly plant ideas, have a look at the University of Minnesota bee lab’s publication, Plants for Minnesota Bees. Plants on the list vary widely and are workable for home landscapes of many different types.
Don’t feel like buying new plants? No problem. If your lawn is chemical free, you can help pollinators by leaving some of your lawn weeds for them to feast on. White clover is everywhere is most people’s lawns, and it often blooms from mid-spring through the fall. Flowers on this not-that-bad-looking weed, which is recognizable for its three-leaved shape, are white and bees love them because they are wide enough to land on comfortably. White clover doesn’t need to be tall to bloom, so if you set your mower to 3 inches, your lawn will look reasonably neat and you’ll still leave plenty of nectar and pollen for your bee friends.
White Clover—iStock
Dandelions are also a bee favorite. So while these weeds are less easy on the eyes, consider leaving a few in some area of your lawn. Those yellow flowers provide bees with nectar and pollen that they need to survive.
Again, though, be sure that areas you leave for bees are not treated with chemicals that will harm or kill them. No matter what your lawn service tells you, none of the chemicals used to treat grass are safe for pollinators—or other living things, for that matter. But that’s a separate column. For now, let’s set our sights on helping the bees. They need us now more than ever.
Keep Tomato Plants Healthy and Happy
At this point in the season, tomatoes are either doing great or tipping toward disaster. So in addition to offering some growing tips to help make tomatoes happy and healthy, I’ll explain some of the common things that can go wrong.
Probably the most important thing you need when growing tomatoes is sunlight—8 hours or more is best, but 6 will allow plants to produce a fair amount of fruit. If you don’t have a spot that gets even 6 hours of sun and someone is home a lot during the day, consider buying a few round, rolling plant stands. I got mine (which look like metal Frisbees on wheels) at Ikea, but most garden centers sell them now, too. Put your tomatoes in large pots, set them on the rolling plant stands and move them into the sun as it moves throughout the day.
Soil is key to tomato success too. They thrive in healthy soil, so it’s a good idea to work some compost and composted manure into the area before planting. If you’re planting in pots, just add those things into your potting mix. Halfway through the season, scratch a little more compost into the top of the soil around plants, but don’t add more manure. Too much nitrogen (N) will give you lots of leaves and little fruit. You want a fertilizer with more potassium (K) than nitrogen in it. Phosphorous (P) can also be on the low side, usually, since compost supplies a good amount of that. Product labels always show the N-P-K ratio like this: 10-10-10 or 5-2-1. You want something more like: 1-0-4 or 1-1-3. Seaweed (powdered or liquid kelp) is a great choice and is usually 1-0-4.
Tomatoes like water, but not too much. Water plants deeply but not so often, or so much, that you end up with soggy soil. That can lead to disease problems and, later in the season, to tomatoes that don’t taste like much because all that water got channeled into the plant’s fruit. If you’re growing tomatoes in pots, stop watering when you see water running out of the bottom of the pot. Watering consistently, every few days in hot weather—more often if plants are growing in pots—will also help prevent the dreaded blossom end rot. You know you have this common problem when your tomatoes have black spots on their bottoms. Consistent watering allows the fruits to get the calcium they need from the soil to develop properly.
Did you bury the stem at planting time? If not, do that next year by gently plucking off the plant’s branches below the top flush of leaves. Depending on the size of your transplant, you’re usually burying 2 to 6 inches of stem, and that’s a good thing because new roots will sprout all along that stem and help your tomatoes be strong and healthy.
Pruning tomatoes doesn’t need to be as complicated as it is often described. Tomatoes are classified by growth habit: determinate tomatoes—also called bush tomatoes—are bred to be more compact, usually about 4 feet tall while indeterminate varieties—also known as climbing or vining types—can grow to 6 feet tall or more. Determinate tomatoes don’t need much pruning beyond removing all of the suckers below the first flower cluster. Indeterminate tomatoes benefit from some pruning, but you don’t need to grow crazy. Basically, if you pinch out suckers and pare plants down to around stems, you’ll get bigger fruit and less sprawling growth. If you let plants be more unruly than that, you’ll get more fruit but you’ll have to deal with a more tangled mess of vines. Either way if fine, so don’t sweat it a whole bunch.
Are the leaves on your tomato plants curling up in hot weather? Don’t worry, that’s probably not a disease. It’s just how some tomato varieties react to the heat. This type of leaf roll usually starts on lower leaves and works its way up. It doesn’t look great, but it shouldn’t affect fruit development. Watering regularly and mulching the ground beneath your tomatoes can help keep this problem at bay.
A Bit of Good News For Us and the Planet
Well gardener friends, at this dark time when we are up to our eyeballs in bad news about pretty much everything and politicians are compounding our worries by behaving like raised-by-wolves toddlers, let me offer a spot of sunshine. In case you haven’t heard, two positive things have happened for the planet—or at least our local slice of it—in recent weeks.
Good thing number 1: At long last, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture has confirmed that neonicotinoids, a commonly used group of pesticides, are highly toxic to honeybees—even when they are used in accordance with the law. How is this good news? You ask. Well, despite mounting evidence, the suggestion that neonics are likely one of many things contributing to the decline of honeybees remains heatedly disputed.
Honeybees need our help. Credit: iStock
Now, investigators from the state Department of Agriculture have found that in fact the hives of two beekeepers were decimated by toxic dust that drifted from the cornfield of a neighbor. The seeds the neighbor planted had been coated with clothianidin, a neonicotinoid that is routinely used to coat agriculturally grown corn and soybeans in the United States. The insecticide protects the seeds from insects in the soil. It also protects the plants themselves because all parts contain the toxin, making the whole corn or soybean plant poisonous.
According to a Star Tribune story on March 20, Bayer CropScience, the maker of neonic pesticides, has acknowledged that toxic drift from cornfields planted with treated seeds can be harmful to bees and other pollinators. However, they say the problem is rare. Beekeepers and bee researchers beg to differ, countering that drift is a common and ongoing issue.
Credit: iStock
Both beekeepers will be compensated for the loss of their hives under a 2014 law that enables beekeepers to collect damages even though, technically, no law was broken because seed treating is not currently considered a pesticide application. What? Anyway, yes there is much to be done on this issue, but the Department of Agriculture’s action makes Minnesota the first state to declare, as a finding of fact, that neonics are harmful to bees.
Fellow gardeners, the seeds available to us are not coated with neonics, but we can continue to do out part to help bees and the Earth by saying NO to plants that are sprayed and/or soil-drenched with the neonicotinoid pesticides. Ask before you buy. Together we can make a change.
Good Thing Number 2
On March 16, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) voted to stop using glyphosate (the active ingredient in the weed killer, Roundup) in neighborhood parks. Activists have been calling on the park board to ban chemical use in Minneapolis parks for several months. (See the Southwest Journal story I wrote on the issue in October for more information.) Little progress has been made so far. But during a park board meeting on the 16th, more than 40 people showed up to voice their opposition to the use of pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals in public parks. Many others called and emailed.
Pesticide-free parks, yeah!
This public outpouring of concern about the health effects of glyphosate and other chemicals, in addition to a recent update board members received on when and where staff use chemicals, seems to have sparked the move to stop using Roundup. But eliminating the use of one chemical in neighborhood parks is a long way from the shift to chemical-free, organic park management that activists would like to see.
In the absence of glyphosate, which has been increasingly linked to health and environmental problems, the board is free to continue using many other pesticides and herbicides that could potentially cause harm. The vote also allows them to continue using Roundup in regional parks at Lake Calhoun and Minnehaha Falls, as well as on ball fields and golf courses.
Based on what has been said about the issue, only commissioner Brad Bourn is openly in favor of moving to an organic approach to managing Minneapolis parks. Commissioner John Erwin strongly supports reducing the use of chemicals. The rest of the board—all of them elected by the public—don’t seem to see chemical-free parks in our future. Do you? If so, now is the time to email the commissioners, particularly Scott Vreeland, who has repeatedly said this is an issue that only activists care about. From what I hear from neighbors and readers who frequent our parks with their children and dogs, I am certain he is mistaken.
Growing Edibles In the Shade
Want to grow vegetables and herbs even though you don’t have full sun? No problem. You just need to choose edibles that don’t depend on six hours or more of baking sunlight to thrive. So, yes, tomatoes are out, as are peppers, squash and eggplant, because plants grown for their fruit really do need a minimum of six hours of good sun per day.
Lettuce will grow well, even in partial shade. Photo: Rhonda Hayes
But that still leaves a wide variety of edibles to choose from as long as you’ve got more than deep shape to work with—not much will grow under a maple tree’s canopy. But plants grown for their roots and flowers will produce with as little as three to six hours of full sun or consistent dappled sun. Beets, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, turnips and radishes, for example, can be successfully grown with four to six hours of sun. And though they produce fruit, I get a pretty good crop of cucumbers in 5 hours of sun.
Leafy veggies like kale, spinach, leaf lettuce, arugula, mustard greens and Swiss chard can get by with only two to four hours of sun—though they will grow more lush in sunnier locales. If you have a garden that offers both sun and shade, one of the advantages of knowing what can take less sun is the ability to increase your harvest by tucking these plants in along shaded borders that are often though of as wasted space.
Got four hours of good sunlight? Plant some Swiss chard.
Sure, there’s a lot to be said for the power of sun, but there are some benefits to growing vegetables in part shade. Crops like broccoli and cauliflower won’t bolt as quickly as they would in full sun, tender lettuces will last longer and you won’t have to water constantly, which is always a plus. That said, though, it is important to monitor moisture levels in shade gardens carefully because these sites are often located beneath big trees or shrubs, as well as the overhang of the house or garage. So even when it does rain, the water may not reach your garden, and much of what does fall will likely be taken up by the root systems of greedy trees and shrubs.
Read More»Great Gardening Books
If I were able to retire tomorrow, one of the first things I would do is read more. I already read a lot: I love books. But I could read a lot more if I didn’t work so, fingers crossed that we win the lottery sometime soon so I can get to the stacks and stacks of books taking up space all over our house.
One of the things I did manage to do recently was catch up on the books I’ve received to review. Here are some of my favorites. First, though, you’ll notice these books are not the latest, hot-off-the-press sort of thing. I read as I’m able and review some of what I like. If I don’t like something, I take my grandma’s advice to “not say anything if I can’t say anything nice.” I figure, just because I don’t like a book doesn’t mean you won’t. Why be a spoiler?
Beautifully Sustainable: Freeing Yourself to Enjoy Your Landscape (Be-Mondo Publishing, 2013), by Douglas Owens-Pike. I met Douglas several years ago when he invited me on a mini tour of some of the Minneapolis gardens his landscape design firm, EnergyScapes, had created in recent years. All of them were lovely and different from most “designed” gardens in the sense that were very natural, consisting mostly of native plants and arranged as if Mother Nature had done it herself. True to his company’s name, the landscapes were all created with resource conservation in mind.
Beautifully Sustainable (which can be purchased here: http://energyscapes.com/book/) is Douglas’ attempt to help gardeners at all levels make their landscapes more sustainable, and his smart, clearly explained ideas and tips are very useful. But I also appreciate how on a more subtle level, his book helps readers think more like a designer when visualizing outdoor areas: What sort of space would I really enjoy? What features matter to me most? What view do I want to see from my living room?
All of these questions seem easy, and they are. But most of us don’t think of them until the patio is poured or the pergola is built in what turns out to be the totally wrong place. “Take time to imagine,” he wisely suggests, before explaining how to create a map of your landscape long before you buy the first plant. Other chapters cover things like how to build healthy soil, create a rain garden, get rid of weeds without chemicals and how to maintain a landscape once its planted. In other words, there’s something for everyone in this helpful, enjoyable book.
For those who want to learn more about growing edibles in our climate, take a look at Emily Tepe’s The Edible Landscape: Creating a Beautiful and Bountiful Garden with Vegetables, Fruits and Flowers (Voyageur, 2013). Emily was doing fruit research at the University of Minnesota when she created an edible demonstration garden and fell in love with growing food.
There are lots of things to love about Emily’s book, but in particular I appreciate the way she accompanies her advice to incorporate edibles into gardens with colorful illustrations that show exactly how that can be accomplished beautifully. While the book is a general primer on growing edibles, the appendix includes an extensive list of edible plants specifically for northern gardeners. I found several varieties there that I’m going to try this year.
Gardeners who want to help support pollinators and other beneficial insects should check out Minnesota landscape designer Heather Holm’s fantastic book, Pollinators of Native Plants (Pollination Press, 2014). While the text sometimes made me reach for my botanical dictionary and refer to the glossary in the back of the book, Heather really did a great job of conveying complex subject matter in a relatable way. Don’t want to learn about the actual process of pollination? Skip to the descriptions of the many different creatures that visit flowering plants. Read up on bees and how they live and work together. Or jump right to the bulk of the book where native plants are described in detail along with the insects that are partial to them. The photos alone are outstanding.
But the information Heather offers about natives for three distinct habitats: prairies, woodland edges and wetland edges, can be used by all gardeners who want to attract pollinators. And isn’t that all of us at this critical time?
