Pay close attention to garden relationships

-By Jay Leshinsky, NE Trial Garden Manager

Jay's interest in gardening began during childhood while eating his way through the family berry patch and vegetable garden. He’s been gardening organically since starting his first garden in 1970 in Maryland, where he sold vegetables at a farmers’ market. For the past nine years he’s split his work time between doing seed trials and sales for Renee’s Garden and advising the students at the Middlebury College Organic Garden. Jay and his wife live in Middlebury, VT

Zinnias attract pollinators

My friend and mentor, Wendy Johnson, wrote in her book, “Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate”:
 "Every spot has a voice, a particular taste, a breath of wind unique to itself, a shadow, a presence. The best gardeners I know slow way down in order to receive the tidings of the land they are bound to work.”

The particular voice I’ve listened to for the past eight summers is that of the Middlebury College Organic Garden, where I have been teaching students how to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers organically. Because of my work at that spot I’ve listened to many voices and been connected to many wonderful people. In slowing down, looking and listening closer, I have come to a new and expanded relationship with the garden, and in particular, with the insects that visit.

Blue Borage

When I started my first garden 40 years ago, the insects I knew the best were those that damaged crops. From cucumber beetles to squash bugs, I identified and battled these competitors for my crops with organic pesticides, protective row covers and hand picking. Then a series of events came together to expand my relationship with the insect world. A student doing research on companion planting at the garden observed that a row of yellow crookneck summer squash interplanted with catnip out-produced a control group of the same variety grown without catnip by two to one! We didn’t know why, but we hoped we could recruit some students to do more research the following spring.

Bees love sunflowers

Later that summer for reasons unrelated to the companion planting experiment, I asked Middlebury College Professor Helen Young to bring two of her research interns to the garden to do counts of insects coming to different flowers. What they found was that catnip was a great attractor of honeybees as well as other pollinators. Could more pollinators coming to the squash/catnip row be responsible for better pollination and higher yield? Should we be paying more attention to our insect visitors?

That fall another serendipitous connection occurred. Some Middlebury College students and I attended a seed-saving conference in Brattleboro, where we met Frank Morton, a master plant breeder from Oregon who works with open-pollinated varieties of vegetables and herbs without using pesticides of any type. Instead, he searches for traits like disease resistance, productivity and good taste. A big part of his program to improve pollination and control of destructive insects in his seed crops is to plant what he calls “insectaries.” These are groupings of plants that provide food, pollen or shelter for beneficial insects (pollinators or insects that prey on other insects that eat our food crops).

Pollinators are both beneficial and beautiful

We decided to devote one section in each of our garden beds to an “insectary.” Based on the squash experiments we included catnip and added some of Frank’s recommendations like Korean mint (anise hyssop), arugula, chervil, fennel, cilantro, sunflowers and calendula. Many of these plants reseed freely in Vermont and will be back in the next season (take heed!). As a bonus we collected some of seed for cooking (like cilantro, the seed of which is the spice coriander). The following year we included some annuals: zinnias as pollinator attractors (and because they are great cutting flowers as well), alyssum, tithonia, nicotiana, nigella, borage and clary sage. We also planted perennials: yarrow, bee balm, echinops, centurea, catmint and thyme.

Cilantro is also great for cooking

So we are looking more closely at the insects that visit our garden. We are seeing that some plants (borage, Korean mint, nigella, gaillardia and Clary sage) attract a wide range of pollinators. Other plants seem to have favorites: Our honey bees are the major visitors to raspberries while our bumble bees dominate in the blueberries. We have observed spindled soldier bugs parasitizing the larvae of Colorado potato beetles.

The relationship of the insects to our flowers is so much more complex and rich than I ever imagined. Perhaps for me the tidings of the garden are seeing connection and wholeness where I once saw unrelated parts. It is something I try to take with me as I leave the garden each day.

For a list Renee's Garden varieties that attract pollinators and beneficial insects, click here

SeedGROW Project 2011

Nellie's project containers

Welcome to the second annual seedGROW blog project! Ten bloggers located across the US will all be growing three Renee’s Garden varieties from seed and writing about their experiences on their blogs, posting once a month. This year, I (Renee’s Garden marketing assistant and second-year gardener Nellie) will be growing right alongside the other seedGROW bloggers.


Renee picked 3 seed varieties for seedGROW this season:

Lettuce, Container, "Garden Babies"

Basil, Container, "Italian Cameo"

Marigold, "Summer Splash" 

Notes from Nellie: I sowed my project seeds in three separate big containers according to the packet directions on Saturday, 5/28. Our Trial Garden manager Lindsay recommended FoxFarm Ocean Forest potting soil for the containers, which is a blend of earthworm castings, bat guano, and fish and crab meal. Two 1.5 cubic ft. bags easily filled three large 18-inch containers. I’m expecting to see a few seedlings pop up by this Monday. The weather has been unusually cold and rainy in Santa Cruz, so I may need to be more patient.

I chose containers as my planting venue of choice because of some serious gopher problems. The containers circle a bed of greens, and the seedlings will be protected by strawberry baskets while they're small since my backyard seems to be full of hungry birds (I removed the baskets from the first container above so you could see a decent picture of this very nice potting soil).

If you have a garden blog and would like to participate this year or be considered for another project, please email me: nellie@reneesgarden.com. We did decide to keep it small this year to so we could pay extra attention to the participating blogs, but we don’t want to exclude any bloggers who are interested in joining. The seedGROW Trial Guide sheet is located here.

We’d also like to give special thank you to Mr. Brown Thumb for all his help. He will be rounding up all the bloggers’ posts each month and posting them here on the seedGROW website. I’d like to encourage everyone to check out the other seedGROW updates – we are excited to have some gardening writers on board!

See you next month,

Nellie

It All Starts With Dirt

Jay Leshinsky

by Jay Leshinsky- NE Trial Garden Manager

Getting Started:
From the time I was very young I've loved eating from the garden. I can remember sitting along side of my grandparent's raspberry patch on a hot summer day, eating my way from one end of the rows to the other and loving the taste of those slightly warm berries. However until I graduated from college I wasn't the least bit interested in working in a garden. Then my roommates and I rented a house, and we decided to start a vegetable garden so we could grow our own food. Only one of us had ever gardened before and he had been taught by his father to grow vegetables organically. So since that first garden, I've been an organic gardener, just because it suits me and has always made the most sense.

Planting a Seedling

Why Organic?
I started gardening organically because I didn't want to eat crops that were raised using synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. So originally, my main gardening technique was not to use synthetics. But the more I studied organic methods and talked with organic farmers, I learned it was not only what I didn't use that mattered, it was also what I did to care for the soil that mattered because I heard from those organic farmers was that I should feed the soil and the soil would feed the plants.


Building the Soil:
Both in my own home garden and at the Middlebury College Organic Garden that I manage and where we trial Renee's Garden varieties, I use different techniques for building soil that will feed my plants. In our cold winter climate, we begin our soil building cycle in the fall by making sure our soil is covered during the winter to protect it from erosion by wind and water. We do this by planting cover crops like oats or cover some areas with straw or leaves. By the time spring weather finally arrives here in New England and it's time to get the soil ready for planting, these mulches will have begun to really break down and the students and I will incorporate them into the soil.

Student volunteer spreading compost on the beds.  In the background is a cover crop of yellow sweet clover.

Other cover crops like clover, rye or winter wheat are planted in fall, go dormant in the winter and start regrowth in spring. After they get some new green growth, these living mulches can be turned into the soil to add lots of green organic matter. Fully or partially decayed organic matter helps feed earthworms as well as the microscopic soil life that work to turn organic matter into slow release food for plants.

Preparing soil for planting

I have found that this organic matter really improves the tilth and structure of the soil, helping break up tight clay soils and making sandy soil less porous. Plants can more easily establish vigorous root systems in these soils. It helps soils retain water and hold it for use by plants. You can work huge changes in your garden soil by using this "green manure" cover crop method. And if you can't turn your cover crop directly into the soil, you can cut it down, compost it and incorporated in the garden that way – that's what Lindsay does at the trial garden in Northern California.

Good Bugs:
Even with our soil building program, numerous pesky insects can affect our crops in our Vermont climate. We do some hand picking of potato bugs and Japanese beetles, but for most of our insect defenses we are constantly experimenting with different plantings of flowers and flowering herbs that attract beneficial insects to our garden. (I described some our flower and herb planting to attract beneficials in my blog post of September 21, 2010.)
So we feed the soil, the soil feeds the plants and our plants feed us.

Alyssum "Summer Romance"
attracts beneficial insects

 

Help Us Spread the Word to Raise Funds for Schools and Non-Profits

We support many community garden programs with donations of seed, but this season, I'm also really proud of the new way we've come up with to put hard cash in the hands of schools, nonprofits and community gardening groups. For some reason it took me a long time to figure out how to create this fundraising program, but now that it is in effect and successful, I can't understand why didn't think of it years ago! 

Here's how it works: Any nonprofit, school or charitable organization can simply contact us, providing short paragraph about their mission and goals and ask for a nonprofit fundraising code. We give them the code which they give to all their members and supporters – who then enter it at checkout when they buy seeds on our website. At the end of the season, we send each group a check for 25% of all the sales generated by users of their specific code.

It's simple and easy for both the organizations who want to raise cash without having to do too much, and for us to administer on the backend. I think the program is a definitely win-win – obviously, it helps generate our business for Renee's Garden, and just as importantly, it provides a way to get real cash in the hands of many groups who are struggling these days.

I'd like to request request that readers of this blog pass the word around – this is an easy program to promote! Because gardening from seed is such a wonderful activity for all ages; sustainable, meaningful, pleasurable and just plain fun, it's a great way to encourage people to get started in their gardens and effortlessly support their favorite charity at no cost to themselves. And, I freely admit that I am really looking forward to the pleasure I will get writing those checks to the various groups at the end of the seed year!

Thanks,
Renee
PS: If you think an organization or school you are involved with would like to participate, click here.
PPS: Here a sample of groups that have signed up to get codes already:
Penn State Master Gardeneers, Pittsburgh, PA
Harker School Bio-Gardening Club, San Jose, CA
Iowa Arboretum, Madrid, Iowa
Long Creek Herbs- Melinda Smith Kids Garden Project, Blue Eye, MO
Chenango County 4-H, Norwich, NY
American Horticultural Society, Alexandria, VA
Oregon Garden Foundation, Silverton, OR
Baton Rouge Unit of the Herb Society, Baton Rouge, LA

Instructions for a Gopher/Mole/Vole Proof Raised Bed

- by Linday Del Carlo, Renee's Garden Trial Garden Mgr.

1. Choose the site where you want your raised bed to be located. The site should have at lease 6 hours of sunlight. Measure the area where the bed will be and mark it with stakes. The bed can be as long as you want, but make sure not to make it too wide. The bed width shouldn’t be more than 4 feet. It should be just wide enough to reach into the middle without difficulty. You never want to have to step into the bed. The bed that we are making here is going to be 7 ft.x 4 ft.

2. Next, buy the materials for the bed. We are using:
-6x6 redwood/cedar/rot resistant lumber
-24 inch long x 5/8 inch wide steel stakes to hold the bed into place
- Galvanized steel 1/2 inch hardware cloth to line the bottom of the bed. You can buy hardware cloth in 3 ft. wide rolls. Do not use “chicken or gopher wire” – it will not work.
-Heavy duty staples to fasten the hardware cloth to the sides of the bed.
Tools needed: a shovel, drill, mallet, hammer, and wire cutters.

3.  Set the lumber on level ground matching up the corners to make the border of the bed.   Then drill the holes all the way through the lumber to set the steel stakes through into the ground.  The stakes will secure the lumber to the ground.  With the mallet, pound the stakes through the wood and into the ground until the top of the post is flush with the wood. 

4.  Now that the lumber is in place, remove soil to a depth of at least 18 inches so we can line the bed with galvanized hardware cloth.  The hardware cloth needs to be set deep enough to be able to dig in the bed without damaging it.  The hardware cloth will prevent critters from entering the bed and eating the plants.

5.  You will need to cut 2 lengths of hardware cloth so that they can be joined in the center to form one large sheet that will stretch from the bottom of the bed up to the sides.  The length of the hardware cloth needs to include enough for the length  and depth of the bed. Overlap the 2 pieces by a few inches in the center ,  then  sew the strips together to make a secure seam (use thin, flexible wire to do this and make a tight seam).  Then lay the hardware cloth into the bottom of the bed and form it to the bottom and sides.  

    Once the hardware cloth is in place, fasten it to the lumber with heavy duty staples every 3 inches.  This will prevent hardware cloth from moving and creating gaps for critters to enter. If the hardware cloth is  still too shallow to reach up the sides because your bed is deep, cut  extra strips that overlap at least several inches and "sew" up a seam with thin flexible wire so gophers can't slip between the pieces.

6. Now the hardware cloth is fastened, and the bed is ready to be refilled with the soil that had been previously taken out.   When refilling the bed with soil, also take this opportunity to amend it with compost at the same time.  

7. The new bed is ready to plant.  The lumber that we used is thick enough to last for many years without decomposing.  It is protected underneath with hardware cloth which will prevent gophers/moles/voles from getting in.  We have added compost to enrich the soil for the plants.  While it is true that an occasional invader will jump into the bed from outside, it is easy to trap them when inside, as they have no way to escape!

Early Birds Don't Always Get the Worm

January seems the perfect time to start thinking about gardening. After all, the holidays are over, and planning next spring's bounty is a great way to boost your spirits. Nothing can pick you up more than envisioning all the fabulous plants you will be growing and enjoying next season. By now the printed seed catalogs have arrived and the garden media is talking up the next garden season as well.

It's a perfect time to start putting together your seed order. For vegetable gardeners, it's really a good idea to start that process by thinking about what you really like to eat on an everyday basis for your main garden and consider a few new fun things to try out.

On the fun side, for example, if you've never grown edamame (edible soybean), hibiscus for herbal tea, Padron tapas peppers, Trombetta climbing summer squash or Wyatt’s Wonder super-giant pumpkins, this will be a good year to try them.

That said, I want to encourage everyone to wait before translating that planting urge into reality until the weather outdoors is truly ready. Traditionally, gardeners are often told to start tomatoes, peppers and eggplant seeds indoors “6 to 8 weeks before the last frost.” I do not think this is good advice. It just doesn't tell you much if you live where there is no hard frost, like Southern California. Even in much colder climates, it's hard to know when the last frost will be, given all the weather variability these last few years.

What I have found works much better is to think about when the night temperatures in your garden regularly reach the 50- 55°F (10-13°C) range and then count back 4-6 weeks from that to start these warm weather-loving seeds. In much of the country, that means you don't need to start warm season seeds indoors until mid-March. In the cold winter areas, the right time can be the middle of April.

In everywhere but the most tropical parts of the country, we start the seeds for long season heat-loving plants like tomatoes, eggplant and peppers early indoors to give them a needed head start because they take so long to mature. Then we transplant robust seedlings into the garden and they never look back.

But other large-seeded summer vegetables like corn, beans, squash, cucumbers and gourds are best sown directly in the garden once weather has warmed into the 50 to 55°F (10-13°C.). They will thrive best when they are sown directly in the soil because they have tender tap roots. Transplanting purchased or indoor grown seedlings for these plants into the garden inevitably shocks and sets them back. If you sow them directly from seed they will grow like little dynamos and surpass any transplants easily.

Likewise, fast-growing summer flowers like sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, marigolds also do much better if you sow them directly into the garden when the weather is warm and settled as described above. They will never be as vigorous or grow as quickly if you start them in pots or seed starting trays too early. I think it's a shame that so many retailers actually start offering warm season veggie plants like tomatoes when it still shivering cold outside. This trend seems to have gotten worse over the last few years. Resist the urge to buy these plants out of season and better yet, plan to start your own from seed at the right time. Your plants will reward you with great abundance and you'll have the real satisfaction and pleasure that comes from nurturing them from tiny seeds into full bearing plants. I never get tired of of this joy.

Renee’s Garden Holiday Party - A Wealth of Wreaths

The office staff of Renee’s Garden recently spent a cozy afternoon together making holiday wreaths at our 2010 holiday party. Our horticulturalist, Beth Benjamin, hosted us at Camp Joy Gardens in Boulder Creek, CA, where she is a founder and current board member. We enjoyed homemade soup in the kitchen, exchanged gifts and then spent the afternoon creating our wreaths from a multicolor array of dried flowers and herbs that Beth selected from the harvest at Camp Joy. It was a nice break for all of us and fun to see the creativity that each person brought to their wreath designs.

Before we sat down to lunch, Beth took us on a tour of the farm. Renee's Garden has a special connection to Camp Joy – they grow the seed for our delicious Camp Joy Cherry Tomatoes! As we toured the gardens it was easy to envision the bounty produced in the height of the harvest. Even in the middle of December there were crops of greens in the ground, persimmons hanging on the trees and honey being processed in the barn. The goats were happy to see us and gobbled up the Kohlrabi greens offered as treats.

Camp Joy is a non-profit organic farm that sustains itself thru a CSA and sales of its products to local stores and the community. They are particularly known for the beautiful dried flower wreaths made from flowers grown and dried throughout the summer. In existence for 40 years, Camp Joy has apprenticed many successful farmers and taught generations of kids about the wonders of gardening. Their website is http://www.campjoygardens.org/

The main farmhouse showcases the bounty of the garden and we all admired the craftsmanship of the wreaths displayed on the wall. It was a damp day outside, but inside the wood fired stove pumped out warmth all afternoon. At the end of the day we were all pleased with our handiwork and a fine holiday get together.

Sowing Renee's Scatter Gardens

- by Lindsay Del Carlo, Trial Garden Manager

Here in our trial garden in central California, the fall rains have begun. Our climate (UDSA zone 8) is mild and, although we have had hard frost, the ground does not freeze in the winter.  Many flowers that had gone to seed from last season have now started to germinate once again. This is a good indication that it is a great time to sow spring blooming flowers, as the acidity of the rain water helps the seeds to germinate. The plants will grow through the winter and burst into bloom in the spring. It is a great time to sow a canister of Renee’s Scatter Garden seeds.  NOTE: In cold winter climate areas, you can sow seeds in early spring as soon as the soil can be worked.

We have prepared our planting bed. The soil was first weeded and then turned with a digging fork. All of the big clumps were broken up, and the soil raked flat.

 

 Before opening the canister, shake it thoroughly to evenly mix the seeds with the rice hulls. Then open up the can, peel back the aluminum seal, and pour some of the mixture into your hand and start to scatter it.

Make sure to shake out the seed mixture thinly and evenly. Scatter the seeds giving them enough space so that they do not germinate in crowded clumps. This will only stunt the growth of the plants. The rice hulls are easy to see and a good indicator of how far apart the seed has been sown.

 

 



After scattering the seed mixture, use a rigid rake to work the seeds down into the soil to a depth of 1/4 inch. Then, water the seeds in thoroughly and evenly with a fine mist sprayer. Keep the seeds evenly moist while they are germinating.



Next spring, you will enjoy a lovely carpet of colorful flowers.

Annual Wildflowers

 


Endles Bouquet Cut Flowers

Pollinator Flowers

California Orange Poppies

 

Cover Crop Blend