Beginning of another year

Here's hoping that you had a wonderful New Years and this year is your most productive one yet.  As we inch into the new gardening season, one has to take stock of where you are in order to guide your efforts to an even more glorious harvest.  For me, this year, that means many things.
First off, I have decided to forego my ususal routine of growing most of my own vegetables from seed.  I have decided to purchase most of my plants from two or three growers in my immediate area.  My reasoning for growing my own plants was that the growers were not offering the plant selections I liked to grow.  There was a paucity of heirloom plants available and an overabundance of the usual hybrid varieties.  For me, there is nothing like the taste of the heirlooms.
After visiting the various plant sellers throughout last year, I noticed that between three of the them, I could find almost all of the varieties I wanted.  And, to make it all the better, they were at very affordable prices.  It appears that the growers have finally caught up to me and other gardeners in regards to the superiority of taste of the heirlooms.
I still do need to take stock of my seed inventory which I will complete this week.  An indirect result of the aforementioned decision to curtailing my growing efforts will be a much smaller seed stock and, of course, less purchasing.  I just need to be sure I have the seeds for the various plants that can be started directly in the garden.
All of this will allow me the luxury, if you will, to concentrate more efforts in building my soils to peak richness.  Last fall I planted winter rye in all three of my beds to overwinter them.  I have written several times last year about the benefits of this which I firmly believe in.  The beds are in great shape given the weather we have had recenlty.  Two weeks ago we had wind chills in the negative 10 degree range and have just entered another colder than normal period this week.  It's supposed to right itself by this coming Friday.
Here are the beds as of last week.  I think they look great and the rye is actually holding up much better than I would have anticipated.

               

I will be waiting until probably late February to cut the rye down to the soil level.  Then I will wait for the cuttings to rot for about a week or two.  Once rotted, I will work them into the soil with either a fork or a light roto-tilling.  The object is not to distrub the roots or the sub soils.  This serves many purposes.  The cuttings will act as an immediate green manure, the roots as nutrients for the plants over the growing season as they break down and the light rototilling will not introduce imbedded weed seeds to the sun and warmth required for them to grow.
After I do this, I will need to add a mix of composted horse manure and compost in order to build the necessary fertility and structure in the soil.  One has to be careful to be sure that the manure does not have wood chips or shavings in it as those are detrimental to vegetable growth.  People sometimes use cow manure but that is courting disaster with pathogens if it is not composted correctly.  My choice is to use the safer horse manure.  I will be researching various local suppliers of this as I like to stay as local as possible.
I also have a new 8X6 greenhouse to place in my gardens.  Not quite sure where but my guess is at the end of my beds at the southernmost end.  This will, by proxy, be a reason to reset my beds.  I am thinking of getting rid of my blocks and do a more intensive planting scheme.  I am still playing with various alternatives so I havent really come to any hard choice although I will need to do so in a short time.
Well, that's all the news in the gardens at this time.  Just begining to piece it all together one step at a time.  So, until next time, Happy Gardening to everyone!       

Winter Rye seedings.

A true sign that summer is gone is when I begin actually seeding my beds with Winter Rye.  I have been doing this for about 4 years now since I read an article about it on the Rodale Institutes' web site.  October is about the furthest you can push the summer growing season in my area.  In fact, it seems like this year that summer is going to close out early.  Temperatures are leveling off and we have started to see nighttime lows that are beginning to get into the upper 50's.  I don't doubt that we will have a period of Indian summer still to come but, in the final analysis, most of my plants have given their last production at this time. 
I have cleared out all my lettuces, beans and cucumber plants recently.  This week, weather and work permitting, I am going to thin out my non-producing tomatoes and pepper plants.  By the end of next week, all the plants will be removed and thrown in the composters along with my last bag of last years leaves.  Yes, I still had some left.  These will continue to compost through the winter albeit at a slower rate than during the peak summer season.  Once they are all removed, I will seed all the areas with the rye I bought this past weekend from Meyers' Seeds here in Baltimore.
The Rye should continue to grow up until the first hard frost we get.  My experience is that even with a hard frost, they will continue to grow but at a much slower rate.  And, when the weather turns in the spring, they come back to life and begin to grow at their earlier rates.  This gives you excellent green manure when you cut the grass down in the early spring.  You just cut it like grass and let it rot in place.  I will get into more detail on this next year when the time comes.
The goal right now is to get as thick and lush of a seeding in of the rye as possible.  It may take a couple of seedings but if your seed is new, it may take only one time.  I have the other two gardens I help with to seed in for the winter also.  So, it's going to get a bit busy in the next couple weeks but it's all good.    
After these beds are seeded in, I will start to concentrate on growing plants inside my two structures that I have.  I will write about those at length in my next post.  So, for now, that's all there is to report.  Until then, Happy organic gardening everyone!      

Regenerative organic certifications?

Just read about this method for farmers to take organic to a new level.  While 90% of this involves farms, there is a section on soil (aka Dirt!!) health which is of interest to me.  And it should be to you too.  Seems the fine folks at The Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA have taken sustainable and organic certification to a new level.  I know that this certainly doesn't apply to my backyard gardens, but I always try to keep a finger on the pulse of what this group is researching.  R. I. Rodale was a pioneer back in the 40's for organic practices.  Talk about cutting edge and being way before your time. Check out their site - it is chock full of information that even a small gardener like myself can use.  I intend on watching what happens with this new certification and how their soil section can benefit my growing practices. 
Until next time, happy organic gardening everyone!

To begin again.

To begin again is part and parcel of the life of a gardener or farmer.  Many people think that the cycle of gardening starts in the Spring when all is fresh and the world is becoming new again.  I believed that for a long time too.  But as you become more experienced, you begin to realize that it may actually be in the fall that the garden begins again.
For me, fall is the time when you take inventory of what worked in your garden and more importantly what didn't.  You need to assess all aspects of the pervious season to see where your crops failed and why.  Why is a very hard question for any gardener to ask.  It goes to the very core of what went awry. 
For the last week or so, I have begun to clear out my various plants very deliberately.  There was one huge failure in the garden this year and that was cucumbers.  Usually a very easy plant to grow, I had 8 plants from which I picked zero cucumbers.  Talk about frustrated.  I logged about 6 cucumbers that the pesky squirrels in my neighborhood stole.  I know this because I found them strewn about mine and my neighbors yard.  But still, in a routine year, I should have had far more than just 6 cukes.  So, there is something else that occurred.
I do believe that I may have had them too close to several other plants which may have resulted in lower production.  Too much intensive planting may have wiped out the nutrients and water to a point the cukes just didn't get enough of either.  I will have to research this a little more in relation to the beans and lettuce I planted near them.  I may have been a little over ambitious. 
One issue I was keenly aware of this year is the lack of bees in the garden area.  There just didn't seem to be much activity.  I am going to take a couple of steps to try to fix the problem.  First, I am going to fit in an area of pollinator plants that will draw and support bee populations.  Hopefully that will at least get them to visit my yard.  Secondly, I am going to investigate starting a Mason bee colony around my garden.  I tried that a couple of years ago with no success but this time, I am going to double the effort.  Mason bees are very docile and rarely sting people.  They are usually just interested in pollinating. 
There was another issue that I alluded to earlier.  I was doing the intensive plantings because I was overly ambitious with the numbers of tomatoes and peppers I grew.  That, along with adding sauce tomatoes to the mix, made for tight quarters in the garden.  Plants generally do not like to be compacted.  The soil can be depleted to a point that the plants deplete the nutrients they need and there is less air circulation.  All of which contribute to poor plant quality.  So, next year, the number of peppers and tomatoes will be reduced measurably in order to give myself room to space things out appropriately.  I should see better quality and quantities in all respects.
So, if you're not already working your garden this fall, you still have plenty of time.  I am currently adding heaps of Leafgro brand soil conditioner.  It's a US Compost council organic certified blend of leaves and other ingredients.  I am giving all my beds about an inch for the winter and then I add winter rye for a green cover crop.  The rye traps nutrients into their roots and holds it there until the spring. 
Well, that's about all I have at this time.  Hopefully you found a few nuggets to help you in your endeavors in the garden.  Until next time, Happy Productive Gardening everyone!
   

Where the garden's are today (Part 2)

As I have commented before, I have two gardens other than my own where I am assisting the homeowners with their endeavors.  The one I am going to speak about today is a garden that a coworker and his wife have.  There have been a few attempts to garden by them but, like most of us, they lead very busy lives.
So, my coworker built fences to keep his five dogs out of the beds.  Once that was done, we tilled the area where they had previous gardens and another area where no gardening was ever attempted.  I kept their expectations low on the new area givne the state of the ground.  I told them we would appoach that area as a developmental area this year.  Here is a picture of the area where they had a garden for a couple of years.

And here is the new gardening area.

                                             

In the exsisting area, we planted tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.  I used the fence (which I cannot take any credit for) as supports for the cukes as seen below.  They will find the fence and then begin to climb it.  That should make for a nice green wall for the garden.

.Here are two pictures of the garden bed as it looked on this past Thursday.

I'll take more pictures when I go over this week to put down fish emulsion fertilizer on all the plants. The plants are beginning to react to the hot weather we have been having and seem to be growing at a pretty good pace.  
What we ran into with the new area is a lot of rocks and general debris that was buried.  Seems there was a garage in this area and the owners grandfather would either leave some stuff on the ground or buried it in place.  Rocks abound but that is part of the territory when opening up new plots.  Still not really sure what is under the surface but the overall soil health is poor at best.  I was planting a watermelon plant and ran into a string of red bricks.  So far, we have found about 10 but I know there are many more in this area given it lines up with the area of the garage.  I'll eventuall pull more of them as they are in great shape and very old.  Can't find this quality of brick anymore.
I've planted 4 paste tomatoes and a set of beans all of which are growing.  I also planted watermelon and a squash plant.  But, it seems, a rabbit had them for a quick snack.  Along with these, I planted canteloupes along the fence to again use the fence as supports as seen below.  This is a little older picture than the others.  I'll be updating these in the next week or so.

It's been quite interesting to take a yard that has never been gardened and see the work involved all over again.  After a few years, the garden can kind of fall into a yearly routine.  Part of the issue is that I am also maintaining my garden, this one and another garden along with working a full time job. I can see the potential of doing this type of stuff full time but realize it will have to wait until I retire. In the meantime, I have enough to keep me busy.
What is rewarding to me is to speak to these people and realize that they are interested in growing their own vegetables the organic way like I do.  It's extemely rewarding to pick a quart bag of buttercrunch lettuce, a fresh cucumber and a skad of beans like I did this morning and know exactly what was used to grow them besides the tremendous freshness component.  And they are looking to me and my expertise to guide them to this type of experience.  I just don't understand how one would not have a garden but then again, that's just me. The other gardener I am working with is a long time gardener who had begun to give up on gardening this year given his age.  I have spoken with him and helped him get his garden started this year. Now we are discussing what we we are going to do at the end of the season to make the soil better and the no-till approach that I have recently adopted.  He didn't want to give up the gardening, he just wanted to give up the work involved.  Organic, after all, is actually less work than the old style row gardening practices of the past.
Well, that's all for now.  I need to kick back and relax the rest of this day.  It's a beautiful, hot afternoon to just breathe.  Until next time, Happy Gardening everyone!