Dreams of Summer
- On January 18, 2013
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Perennials, Trees and Shrubs, Veggies
- 7
I know it’s just January and there is much, much more winter to go. But I’m feeling unusually gloomy about all the cold and gray/white everywhere. So rather than stew, I spent some time looking at photos of gardens I’ve visited over the last couple of years. Seeing all those plants and blue sky cheered me right up. And I hope it helps you, too, if you’ve got a bit of the winter blues.
So, come on, then. Let’s go on a garden tour!
Ah, spring is coming. Whew!
Bigger, Healthier, Stronger: Grafted Vegetables Are On the Way
Grafting. The term probably makes you think of roses, grapes, apples and nuts, which have long been grafted to improve disease resistance and productivity. But it won’t be long before grafting is also commonly associated with tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, watermelon and other vegetables that are highly susceptible to crop destroyers, such as bacterial wilt, nematodes and soil-borne diseases.
That’s because, over the last decade, researches experimenting with grafting at many U.S. universities have reported increasingly positive results with several types of vegetables. The three main benefits of grafting being: improved disease resistance, higher yields (and sometimes quality), and increased ability to adapt to harsh environmental conditions like temperature extremes, floods and drought.
While much of the research centers around the needs of commercial growers, new lines of grafted vegetables will be available to home gardeners, too. As an urban gardener with little space to grow edibles, I’m intrigued by the idea of trying grafted veggies, which might save me from the inevitable blight and pestilence my crops are likely to suffer since I can’t rotate them as often as I should. But before I plant, I want to understand more about how grafting works and, specifically, how it might affect the fruiting part of the plant. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
Read More»Grow the Good Life
I read a lot of gardening books, and though most have something to offer, many just cover the same old ground in one way or another. So I was happy to find a copy of Michele Owens’ book, Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Wealthy, and Wise, at the library recently. It was a rainy, cold weekend and I’d heard good things about the book, so I planned on curling up on the couch with it, and a couple of others I picked out. As it turned out, those other books just lay there unopened on the coffee table because I couldn’t put Owens’ book down until I finished it.
If you’re not familiar with Michele Owens’ garden writing for Organic Gardening and other magazines, you can get a good understanding of who she is and what she believes in by checking out her blog posts on Garden Rant, which she founded a few years back with a handful of similarly smart, funny and straight-talking garden writers. As a former political speech writer and author of several best-selling business books, Owens is keenly aware of the need to do her research before writing and throughout the book she cites the work of many horticulturists, ecologists, microbiologists and others. But all these facts do not a snoozy tome make because she is adept at interweaving studies, facts and figures with her own passionate commentary as an experienced gardener who loves plants, nature and growing vegetables.
Because she’s married to a journalist who covers climate change, Owens gets a dinnertime update on just how much stress our warming world is putting on agriculture all over the world. This understanding, coupled with a love of good, healthy food, drives her to motivate people, everyone, not just gardeners, to grow at least some food in their own backyards. Sure, that will help relieve some pressure on the world’s food supply, she writes. But growing things to eat is also just a joyful, uplifting thing to do; just ask anyone who has ever grown even one tomato plant in a pot on a balcony or back patio. There really is nothing like being able to walk outside and pick something you’ve grown yourself and pop it in your mouth, or serve it up for dinner.
Read More»Sharing Seeds Without Stealing
- On November 12, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Organic Gardening, Perennials, Seeds, Veggies
- 3
A few readers have emailed lately asking if I think it’s okay to just take a few seeds from plants in people’s gardens, or if I think they should ask first. It’s a good question, and one every gardener grapples with, I imagine. I admit that I have gathered a few seeds here and there from other people’s gardens. I didn’t go up into their yards or anything. But if a plant I liked was in a boulevard garden, or poking out of a fence or over a wall, I’d take a few seeds if it seemed like there were a lot to go around. I didn’t think much about this, probably because I wouldn’t mind if people took seeds from my gardens, at least not the ones that are accessible from the sidewalk.
But then the issue came up on our Master Gardener listserv, and I got those emails I mentioned from readers, and I realized that a lot of people consider taking seeds from other people’s plants a horrible thing to do. “It’s stealing,” one gardener wrote on our listserv. And many others agreed. Of course I see their point. And even though we stealers only take a few seeds, what if everyone who came along did that? What if the plant was special, maybe an heirloom grown by the gardener’s grandma and each year’s seeds were a precious treasure to be shared with family members?
I’ve thought about all of these things and decided that I won’t ever take seeds without asking again. But this doesn’t change the fact that I would be happy to share seeds from my own gardens, and I’m fine with people taking them without asking as long as you don’t venture into the yard and frighten our scared-of-everything dog, Lily. This whole thing has got me thinking about ways to share. I could put up a sign on the boulevard next season saying “Please feel free to take seeds from the boulevard gardens!” We live on a corner lot, so there are a lot of plants to choose from out there.
But I’m not sure how to let people know they’re welcome to seeds from plants inside the fence, too. We just need to know you’re coming so we can put Lily in the house. If you live around here, and you’re reading this, just email or call and we’ll tell you to come on over. For passersby, though, I obviously need a better system. I’m wondering if there’s a good a way to join up with other gardeners in the area to start a Little Free Seed Bank, modeled after the Little Free Library boxes that are popping up all over the place. If you haven’t seen these, homeowners, businesses, anyone who wants to, really, can give money to the program and get their own birdhouse-like box to stock with books that people can take and read for free. Take a book, leave a book, that’s the idea, and from what I can tell, it’s working beautifully.
Maybe there’s a way to do something like this with seeds, too. I threw this idea out to readers of my Everyday Gardener column in our local paper, The Southwest Journal, and several people emailed to say they’d be interested in working with me on trying to get a seed sharing plan off the ground next year. If you’re a local reader and you’re interested, too, please email and let me know. If you’re not local, but you like the idea and would like to know what we dream up, just email and I’ll keep in touch.
And, if you have a minute, I would also love to know what you think about sharing seeds in general. Would you be happy to share seeds from your garden with others? Would you want people to ask before they took seeds? Do you think it’s stealing to take a few seeds from people’s gardens without asking?
Understanding Harvest Time
- On October 08, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Container Gardening, Organic Gardening, Seeds, Veggies
- 3
It dipped down to 28°F here in Minnesota the other night, so the day before I scrambled to harvest the last of the Sun Gold tomatoes that we’ve enjoyed all summer. I’m telling you, now that I’ve discovered this tasty, hybrid cherry tomato I will definitely plant one every year. And one is all you need because the indeterminate vine grew to nearly 6 feet tall this summer and produced sweet little orange tomatoes from June through, well, two days ago. And if the frost hadn’t hit, it would have just kept right on going.
As someone who is still learning how to grow many types of vegetables, I know how tricky it can be to figure out the best time to harvest in the fall. I’ve learned that you can’t rely on the stated days to maturity because that number can be affected by things like temperature, precipitation and the health and fertility of your soil. Instead, I’m learning which vegetables can tolerate frosts and freezes, as well as how to read the clues plants offer us at harvest time.
Generally, tender vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, snap beans, summer squash and peppers need to be harvested before a frost, which can occur at temps between 32°F and 36°F. But other vegetables like lettuce, spinach chives, carrots and parsnips can tolerate a light frost. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts can tolerate quite a bit of frost, but they should be harvested before a hard freeze—24°F or below. I always associate winter squash and pumpkins with very cold temperatures, so I didn’t realize until recently that those actually need to be harvested before frost arrives because frost can damage their rinds and shorten their storage potential.
I’ve learned that Brussels sprouts actually taste better if you let them experience frost, and this is supposedly true of kale, too, though my own totally unscientific testing suggests otherwise. (It seemed the same.) Broccoli should be harvested while florets are still tight. Carrots can take a frost, and I met a farmer the other night who swears carrots taste better after a light frost. Anybody else think that? And I learned by accident, because I missed it in the garden, that Swiss chard weathers a frost just fine. (Which is kind of too bad because I’m honestly a bit tired of eating chard at this point.)
But getting back to tomatoes, I picked mine green and put them in a big bag to ripen. But had I left them on the vine through the frost, I’ve noticed that some experts say it’s just fine to can frosted tomatoes while others say it is unwise because the frost affects the fruits’ pH level, lowering the acidity needed to make them safe for canning. Who’s right here? I would love to hear your thoughts.
How To Carve A Turnip O’ Lantern
- On October 03, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Veggies, What In Tarnation?
- 0
Ever wonder why in the world we carve pumpkins for Halloween? I did, so I went looking for the story and here is the abbreviated version. We have European immigrants to thank for bringing Halloween to America. Back home, they carved scary faces into turnips, potatoes and gourds, which they lit with candles or just placed in windows and doorways to keep malevolent spirits at bay during “All Hallows Eve.”
The only trouble was, those vegetables were scarce when they arrived here in the mid 19th century, so those clever new Americans (and Canadians) carved the most plentiful, practical thing they could find: pumpkins. Clearly, we should all be glad for this change. But don’t you want to know what it’s like to try carving a turnip o’ lantern? I mean, turnips are frightening enough with their lumps and bumps and scratchy tufts of weird hairs. It can’t take too much carving to turn them into something downright hell-raising, right?
I’ve got to try it. And if you’d like to too, Makezine has a great how-to piece that takes you through every step. You’ll find that here. It was written by Diane Gilleland, the writer behind the fun CraftyPod blog and podcast in which she teaches people how to make all kinds of stuff.
Happy Halloween!