One week later

It's been a week since I started the winter rye in my two established beds.  The weather was mainly dry so I had to augment mother nature.  I took a look at the beds on Wednesday and there was no signs of life.  I have to admit that I was a little concerned in that I really hadn't had the time to water the beds heavily.  Life does get busy at times and this week was no exception.  I watered them with a heavier soaking Wednesday and followed with a lighter soaking on Thursday.  There were still no signs of life on Thursday evening so I began to think that I would have to seed the beds again.  That is, until Friday night when I came home from work.
While there wasn't a huge amount of growth, when I was watering the garden I saw the beginnings some growth.  I watered the beds in the face of a severe thunderstorm warning Friday evening.  My wife thought I was a little odd in doing this even though there were very dark clouds rolling in from the west.  I watered enough to get the top of the beds wet.  It poured here Friday evening and I was again questioning my choice to water the beds.  I mean, did I over do it?
I went out to the garden this afternoon and the pictures below show what I discovered.

The picture to the left is the one week old seedlings in one of my established beds.  The one on the right is from the two week old seeding I did in my new bed.   It's hard to see the seeding's with a picture, but it won't be long before they look like the ones in the right picture.  They will get maybe two to three feet tall, all depending on the weather.  It tolerates lower temps so hopefully it will stay a little moderate for the upcoming month or so.  I will let mother nature take over at this time only watching the weather to maybe augment some watering.  This is how you grow your own green manure and limit the amounts weeds you will have in the spring.  Plus you don't have to worry about carbon leeching as the roots of the rye will fix the nitrogen in your soil over the winter.  It also reduces damage to your soil that occurs in winter such as erosion or pest infestations.
Well, that's all I have for today.  If you have a question, please feel free to leave a comment.  Until next time, Happy Gardening!

Sunday, busy Sunday

I woke up this Sunday morning with nothing really in mind.  Due to a change in my plans, I decided that since Joachin was a bust here in Baltimore, that it would be a great cool day to shut down both of my beds for winter.  That entailed harvesting the final tomatoes and peppers for the year in those beds.  After clearing out the plants, I then raked the beds and cleared out the few weeds that were in the beds.  Then I seeded in the winter rye.
As discussed in my prior post, using winter rye as a cover crop for winter is becoming more accepted by farmers and gardeners alike.  I have found it to be very useful and have seen an increase in the yields over the three years I have been doing this.  There are numerous advantages to doing this.
I follow the same routine every year.  I will detail that here.  Below are pictures showing the progression to get one of my beds ready for rye.

The picture on the left is the beginning condition of the bed.  On the right, it shows the result of pulling the plants and tilling with a tine rake to clear all the debris and weeds from the bed.  Once you get the bed to this condition, you can then seed in the rye seed.  I use a hand spreader as pictured below.

This helps to evenly spread the seeds to reduce the number of bare spaces in the beds.  The result should look like the picture below.

Once you spread the seed, I suggest you should lightly tamp the seed into the soil using a tine rake in order to make sure the seed is in contact with the soil.  It should look like the picture below.  Again, you would lightly tamp them in.  All you want is for the seed to be pressed into the soil.

                                                                                                                                                                    After this is completed, I go one step further.  I would encourage you to cover the seed with peat moss.  I do this for multiple reasons here.  We have a big bird population here which would mean they would easily find and eat enough seed to wipe out a fair portion of what I sowed.  Secondly, unlike other covers such as straw or a bird mesh, the peat moss does not need to be cleaned or taken off the seeds.  It becomes part of your soil.  Peat moss also keeps the soil moist between your watering.  Below are two pictures showing the peat moss as I progressed.
 

    

The picture to the left shows half of the bed being covered to give you the contrast between what it started out as and what it should look like after application.  The right picture shows the completed bed.  I make sure as many seeds as possible are covered so as not to attract the birds.  

Once you have all the seeds covered as best as possible, you will then lightly water the beds to wet the seeds.  After you have done this, you need, as in all seed applications, to insure that the beds do not dry out.  One hint I have is to watch the weather and if you can, plant the rye when there is an expected period of rain in the near future.  I have done this a few times and it seems that nature is much better at watering than I am.  I get my best results when I am able to time it in this fashion.

Well, that's about all I have for today.  I will update my rye planting as it develops.

Until then, happy gardening everyone.  

Monticelo - part two.

The above pictures represent what I would describe as the best of the day we spent at Monticello. Going clockwise, there is the screenshot of the official banner that was displayed on all the monitors in the various seminar tents, me beside the statue of Thomas Jefferson, the tent where the soil renaissance seminar was held, the various tents on the main grounds where the vendors were set up, a picture of the early morning fog hanging in the valley beside the Jefferson garden and me with Robert Hatch - the man who brought the garden back and who has written several books on Jefferson's revolutionary garden.


As I said in my earlier post, I am quite pleased that I am doing the best I can for my soil.  For, if your soil is good, it solves a lot of issues for your garden.   But more importantly, it was nice to be with people who shared a common interest and but had different perspectives.  Here I am, in the red shirt, sitting with the various people who were attending the soil renaissance seminar.  It was quite satisfying indeed.
I also attended a seminar on winter gardening during the day.  I have toyed with the idea of growing vegetables in winter to be able to extend the growing season.  And, as I listened to the back and forth about the various techniques and structures that could/should be used, I slowly came to realization that maybe this just wasn't what I wanted to be doing after all.
The discussion began about what plants could be grown over the winter.  That list was, to no surprise to me, very limited.  We first established that it was basically root crops and hardy plants like cabbage, kale, broccoli and a few others that could be successfully grown through winter.  They then explained the need for covering the plants with the spun fiber directly over the bed and then the need to build a support structure once the plants began to grow.  So far, not too bad.  But then, we began talking about bigger structures, blankets, and even greenhouse plastic and the need to build heavier duty structures of various types.  This is where I began to think that this was a lot of effort for what they termed as small output crops.  I mean, in all honesty, in my mind it would be much easier to buy my carrots from the grocery store than to put all this effort to get them fresh from my garden once I shoveled them out and uncovered them.  Exaggeration I know but not too far off the point.
So, this seminar was beneficial in that it confirmed what I learned from trial and error here and there over my time as a gardener.  I can understand a commercial or CSA grower doing this - it's their livelihood.  But for the backyard gardener, unless you are in the south and can avoid the structures, I don't see the payoff.
We spent the rest our time at Monticello wandering through the various exhibitors tents and the grounds.  As we were meandering around the Jefferson garden, I recognized Peter Hatch.  He has written several books regarding Jefferson and the revolutionary garden.  I own 'Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book" and will have to buy 'A rich Spot of Earth: Thomas Jefferson's Revolutionary Garden at Monticello'.  I introduced myself and asked him for a picture which he graciously approved.
All in all, the day was fun for me.  My wife, on the other hand, had her moments but was mostly there to spend time with me as we wandered the grounds.  I would recommend Monticello to any one who is fascinated with gardening and also, the history of our country.  There is much to see on a normal tour and it is very beautiful there.

         

Monticello and the Heritage Harvest Festival

My wife and I attended the Festival this past weekend.  We drove down Friday afternoon through the insane traffic that is Washington DC.  We were able to get in to beautiful Charlottesville Virginia, check in to our hotel and then go to the pedestrian mall in the downtown area.  We had been here before but this time was quite different.  It was the home opener for the Univ. of Virginia against Notre Dame.  Guess what color shirt I was wearing - that's right!  Bright green like I was from Notre Dame.  I laid low once I figured that out.
It was a mob scene although it did not seem intense.  I love this little mall as it is quite nice with the blend of eateries and it's quirky stores that populate the mall.  You can eat outside or inside the various restaurants.  There was a nice mix of the students youth from Virginia and the older folks - mostly alumni.  It has an ampitheater on the one end and we listened to the Skip Castro Band for awhile.  We left there just before the UVA pep rally was to start in order to avoid the crush of the people there.
We woke up on Saturday and made our way to Monticello.  When we arrived, it was lightly raining and the mountaintop was covered with clouds and fog.  I had signed up for a Soil Renaissance workshop and a class about winter gardening.  We made our way to the various vendors and perused and purchased a few items from them.  We took in a tomato tasting table from Seed Savers Exchange.  I must say, the chocolate cherry tomato's were delicious.  Only issue I had was that they did not have seed packs for many of the varieties being presented.  Come to find out, they were testing them so they may come available in the future.  I will have to keep an eye out for their catalog to see if any made the cut to packets.
Let me begin the description of what I(we) took in at the festival.  I will begin the same way I tell people to start a garden - with the soil.  Soil renaissance is a group of loosely held organizations that have as their primary goal the education of today's farmer about soil and how to sustain it.  It really was quite interesting to hear the various speakers - one from Soil renaissance, a local farmer, an extension representative from Va., the Monticello chief gardener and a professor from Va. Tech.  All had very interesting points of view and experiences.  While I was sitting listening to each speaker, I was ticking off what I do in my garden as each subject came up.  It was quite gratifying to know that my practices were in line with most of the speakers.  One place I did not mesh with one of the speakers was with the use of herbicides on their crops.  I completely understand that they have a livelihood to protect unlike me.  I garden for the joy of it and not for direct income.  There is a vast difference.
Interestingly, one of the organizations that Soil Renaissance does interact with is the Rodale institute in Kutztown Pa., not far from the Baltimore area. They are pioneers of the organic method and they date back to the early 1950's. According to the SR people, they participate regularly within the SR movement.  Rodale does classes and has tours during the year.  I will have to get up there to see the Institute.  I believe they have over 300 acres of test fields.  They are very cutting edge and I have been reading their website and picking up techniques and such for more than a few years.  If you get the chance and are in the area, it may well be worth the time to go there.
Well, that's all for now.  I will be writing more about this visit but there is so much to tell I feel it needs to be broken down over the next week or so.  I also have pictures which I will also share in the very near future.   If you have any question about this or any other topic, please feel free to leave a comment.  Until next time, Happy Gardening!
  

Harvest abounds

This past Sunday I went out to the garden to see what I had to harvest.  To my surprise, there was quite a lot of veggies to pick.  As seen below, I picked a very nice sized Watermelon (Celebrity), a bunch of Peppers, two cucumbers and, as has been the case all year, a ton of tomatoes.

The watermelon measured 16" long and weighed 15 lbs plus.  I took it over to our family's Labor day picnic.  It smelled great and tasted even better.  Nothing like a fresh watermelon that was picked 6 hours earlier.  I haven't had too much success with watermelons but this year I did get two very nice ones.  I will be repeating this planting next year.  Only thing I will do differently is I will start them sooner in the garden.  

Off topic here, but on Saturday, my wife and I took a trip out to Frederick Maryland to a place called Chartreuse & Co. They have about 4 barns and several houses filled by vendors with antiques and other items.  Each Spring and Fall they have big events where the barns, houses and the fields around them are filled with vendors selling their stuff.  When we arrived, we were a little shocked to find out just how popular this event is.  There were cars everywhere and there were even two buses.  There were cars from Pa.,Virginia and Maryland.  There was so much to see that it took us quite a while to get to all the sites.  I did buy several items that I intended on using in my gardening as seen below.  

No, I didn't buy the dog.  That is my buddy Barkley dutifully guarding my purchases.  I plan on using the bucket and funnel for my compost teas so I can filter it.  The box at the bottom is an old security lock box.  That is where I intend on storing my seeds this winter

Well, that's all for now.  Next weekend my wife and I are travelling to Monticello to take in some seminars they are having as a part of their Heritage Harvest Festival.  I visited it once before and it was very breathtaking.  This time though is to learn about the soil and how to do winter gardening.  I will tell you all about it next week once I catch my breath.  Until next time, happy gardening!