The Garden Report

Friday, May 29, 2009

Our cement garden has been successful so far this season. It’s been so successful that my husband wants to get a kitchen scale to measure exactly how successful it’s been. The shaded garden box, as expected, isn’t doing as well as the others. The spinach bolted before it produced much, but the lettuce and broccoli rabe don’t seem to mind the shade. We’ve eaten lettuce, spinach, green beans and broccoli rabe, the strawberries are thriving, and the tomatoes, blackberries, and snap peas are flowering. The onions and carrots are growing well too.

I’ve learned a lot in our first six weeks of Square Foot Gardening.  In his book, Mel Bartholomew entices you to try his method by insisting there is little to no weeding if you use Mel’s Mix. That is not true. When I finish weeding one square and start the next a new weed pops up in the box I’ve just cleared. It’s true that they are easier to pull than weeds growing up from the ground, but the weeds are endless.

I have also learned that many of the weeds in my garden are vegetables growing from the compost. We dried the compost and sorted it through a screen before using, but clearly it wasn’t enough. I pulled out the broccoli rabe from one of the boxes yesterday and found several tomato plants growing between them. Upon closer inspection I realized that I’ve been pulling tomato plants from other parts of the garden for weeks. I’ve done the same with squash. There are squash plants growing everywhere. I don’t know if it’s summer or winter squash, but since I didn’t plant it intentionally it is a weed. I’ve let a few seedlings go just to see what happens, but I still pull out squash plants on a daily basis.

The garden pests are worse than ever this year. I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t as conscientious in years past, or if it’s because the boxes are lower to the ground than the containers we’ve used in the past, but the bugs are everywhere. Ants have decimated some of my green bean plants, green aphids are attacking rose bushes that have never been touched before, and tiny black winged aphids are trying to eat the green beans the ants haven’t yet destroyed. I didn’t even know aphids had wings. I am not looking forward to the squirrel, possum and raccoon onslaught that’s sure to come. Our back yard is like wild kingdom.

Dill, and a recipe

Monday, May 11, 2009

I am not a fan of mayonnaise potato salads. This year I’m growing dill so that I can make my favorite and really simple potato salad.

Yogurt & Dill Potato Salad

Handful of fresh dill, chopped fine
Cracked black pepper (a couple of full cranks)
Sea salt to taste (a little at first)
Freshly snipped chives
1 garlic clove, crushed (optional)
6 to 8 oz Greek-style yogurt (no less than 2% fat; how much depends on absorption by the potatoes)
1 pound small new potatoes

Mix everything together except potatoes. Boil the potatoes until tender (peeled or skins on, or remove skins after they’ve boiled and are cool enough to handle). Combine. Taste after a couple of hours in the fridge and adjust the salt and add more yogurt if necessary. Keeps well for a 2-3 days.

Get your tomato seeds!

Thursday, April 30, 2009

It may be a little too early to think about eating tomatoes, but it’s not too early to think about growing them.  Mother’s Day (May 5) is, generally speaking, the last frost date in the Philadelphia area and is almost always the day I plant tomatoes.  If you’re a tomato connoisseur, 2009 may be your lucky year: Campbell’s Soup Company is giving away Campbell’s Soup tomato seeds through June 21 at HelpGrowYourSoup.com - this is the first time these seeds will be available in the company’s 100 year history!

Campbell’s is partnering with the National Future Farmer’s of America office and Urban Farming Inc. to promote American agriculture, hoping to grow more than 1 billion tomatoes across the country.  The plan is to donate 22.5 million seeds, and the partnership will also result in several new community gardens across the country.  Locally, there will be an event on May 2 in Camden at the Woodland Community Garden -  that’s the corner of 9th Street and Sylvan Street.

More about the tomatoes:

The tomato seeds themselves also have a rich heritage. Campbell began growing tomatoes from its own seeds on New Jersey farms during in the 1930s. Those “Jersey” tomatoes were renowned for their rich taste and texture, so much so, that when truckloads were delivered to the Campbell facility in Camden, city residents followed and picked up fallen tomatoes from the streets.

Cement Garden

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

We’re giving our usually half-assed garden a chance this year.  With two big bins full of rich, black compost, we decided it was time. Instead of randomly throwing tomatoes in containers and hoping for the best we tracked down the ever-elusive vermiculite at Primex Garden Center in Glenside, mixed up the soil, and built the boxes for our first official Square Foot Garden. Square Foot Gardening in raised beds was a necessity for us. Our back yard is almost entirely cement and pavers. The few areas that haven’t been paved are already planted with shrubs and shade-loving plants as they’re mostly up against the house or on either side of the driveway.  We built three boxes and placed them in the spots where we hoped they’d get as much sun as possible.

I fear that one of the boxes is already doomed as there’s not enough direct sun, but as the season changes the sun’s path changes too, so I threw caution to the wind and planted some early season vegetable seeds in it anyway. I’m saving the second of the boxes for the summer crops- tomatoes, beans, squash, and whatever else strikes my fancy when the weather warms enough, and the third box is already planted with strawberries, peas, spinach, broccolini and lettuce.

My kitchen windowsill is crowded with seeds sprouting indoors. Two green bean plants are thriving, the cilantro is struggling, but may survive, and after rigging a plant light the basil seeds, after three long weeks of nothing, sprouted.

The strawberries are doing really well. It was the first time I’d ever bought bare root plants, and I had very little faith that they’d come back to life, but they are green and leafy. We built a little cage to protect them from wildlife. 

We don’t have a lot of direct sun anywhere in the yard. At 2pm the second box was completely shaded. It’s nice to live in a section of the city where there are tons of trees, but it does make it difficult for sun-loving plants to thrive. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Grow a tomato, save money

Saturday, April 18, 2009

With the weather taking a turn for the beautiful, many of us will be out in our gardens.  The economy being what it is, a lot more people are turning to vegetable gardening as a way to save money.  The Wall Street Journal recently took a look at whether growing your own food is as fiscally inexpensive as people seem to think.

The nonprofit National Gardening Association just produced a study—sponsored by ScottsMiracle-Gro Co.—that found the average family with a vegetable garden spends just $70 a year on it and grows an estimated $600 worth of vegetables.

George Ball, chairman and CEO of seed giant Burpee, can rattle off the savings for dozens of homegrown crops. Green beans will generate $75 worth of crops for each $1 you spend on seeds, Mr. Ball calculates. Even the lowly potato will generate $5 of spuds for each $1 you invest in seeds.

Does it all sound too good to be true? Depending on your situation, it may be. Neither Mr. Ball nor the National Garden Association study focus on how much you may have to sink into your garden before you can grow anything.

I’ve been keeping a garden for a lot of years, both here out in the burbs and when I lived in the city.  I can attest to the fact that it’s easy to spend a lot of money on gardening accoutrements: fencing, soil and soil amendments, shovels, seeds, stakes.  But if you plan to keep a garden long term, the cost of these items - as the article points out - can be amortized over the life of your garden.  It doesn’t mean start up costs are any less hard to swallow, of course.  That said, gardening doesn’t have to involve all the bells and whistles - walk out to your back yard, dig a hole, and plant a seed.

Speaking of gardening, here’s a cool idea out of San Francisco - an urban gardener registry.  It’s basically a social networking site for SF gardeners, but apparently there’s a feature that allows gardeners with an overabundance of produce can get in touch with other gardeners who want their extra produce.  If only I had the programming prowess to make something like that happen here in the Philadelphia area!!

Kensington’s Greensgrow in the Inquirer

Friday, April 17, 2009

Co-founder Mary Seton Corboy at Greensgrow Farm in Kensington. (April Saul / Inquirer)

Friends are used to me going on and on about Greensgrow Farm, in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, like I invented the place. I love it that much. You might, too, after you read today’s piece by Ginny Smith in the Inquirer.

To the Nursery

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Today was my first opportunity to get to Greensgrow in Kensington since it re-opened for the season. I intended to document it heavily, but man, was it raining during the 45 minutes I was there! You’ll have to trust me when I say that the place was hopping. There were tons of lettuces, kales, cruciferous vegetables, and hearty herbs (meaning no basil yet) to buy, plus all sorts of interesting small shrubs and trees (fruit-bearing and otherwise), succulents in many shapes for your hot spots, and grasses. And flowers—every hue of pansy under the sun, plus columbines, lobelia (in 3 shades of blue), phlox, stock (love the fragrance!), and exponentially more. And so many pretty containers, and I’ve always found their prices for those to be really good.

My take looks a bit small, and is, compared to purchases of last summer. But I’m waiting to see what comes up from the bareroots I planted last fall before I put too much more in the ground. That said, I bought 2 blue columbines to tide me over. Also: 2 dills, 2 pineapple sage (as much for the scarlet flowers as for “sage-ness”), and rosemary. And, a package of bird-netting to swaddle a few new plants so that they don’t become squirrel snacks. Not pictured: lemon thyme which I plopped next to the regular thyme out front already.

Garden awakening

Sunday, March 29, 2009

I still get as excited as I did when I was a kid at seeing all the little shoots and leaves and buds. First, the fruits:
The dwarf sour cherry I planted last spring will have a lot of flowers! I just have to keep somebody names Squirrel and another named Birdie away from the you-know-whats. Same goes with the raspberries.

Perennial herbs on the way back: the chives are going great guns, and there’s a tiny new thyme shoot (circled in pink)—I was about to give up.

And last, cutting lettuce seeds from Seed Savers Exchange are beginning to sprout!

Spring Sorrel

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

After my volunteer shift at the Fair Food on Saturday, I came home and took my first look at the garden.  There is definitely some clean up needed - mostly dried leaves and twigs from last season.  And, of course, compost needs to be dug in for soil amendment.  I was shocked and surprised, though, to see all the things growing already!  The garlic, planted last Autumn, is going crazy.  Most of it is already four inches tall!  The strawberries are nice and green.  There is even new baby growth on the collards I never pulled at the end of last season.  My herb plot is looking good: the sage and thyme overwintered nicely, and the chives and parsley are coming up again.  The rhubarb has some nice growth on it, too.

But of all the things popping up in the garden, the thing I was most excited to see is the sorrel!  Last year in April I talked about a few uses for sorrel, some of which I tried and some of which I haven’t.  Here are a few other ideas:

• Sorrel salad dressing
• Lemon Cupcakes and Bitters, Sorrel, and Toasted Meringue
• New Potatoes with Salami and Sorrel
• Sorrel Panna Cotta
• Roast chicken with sorrel

The Presidential Garden!

Friday, March 20, 2009

Although not local to us, still a pretty big deal worth celebrating here at Farm to Philly!

The Obamas are digging up the White House lawn for a big garden! Here’s a link to an article in the New York Times. More of the great backstory is here at the WHO farm site (“White” “House” “Organic”). As a teaser: “TheWhoFarmMobile is two school buses fused together with an organic edible garden on the roof. It was originally designed by Stefan Sagmeister and Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, built by Tom Kennedy, and named Topsy Turvy.  TheWhoFarm acquired the bus, ripped off the roof and planted an organic edible garden….”

Maybe the next stop for the WhoFarmMobile should be Harrisburg!

Organize Me

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Last year Eileen shared her method of garden planning, which was pretty detailed and fascinating.  My own methods of garden planning are not nearly that detailed (primarily because I don’t have time anymore).  For many years, I used Excel to map out my garden - I utilize the Square Foot Garden method of gardening, as does Eileen.  Last year I started to use Folia, an online organizers that allows you to track your seed stash, plantings, harvest dates, notes on…well, everything.  It’s sort of like Ravelry for gardening (if you’re a knitter, that analogy makes perfect sense).

Having not even looked at it since last Summer, I just checked in this morning to update my seed stash and plantings.  I was thrilled to see that some upgrades have been made and it’s gaining much wider usage.  And, of course, I get to live vicariously through gardeners in warmer climes who are harvesting stuff already!

You garden is calling

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

I have given up on trying to grow tomatoes.  It’s not that I have a black thumb…it’s that the squirrels win every year.  Last year the $%&#@ critters stole every last one of my large tomatoes, and I barely even managed to get any cherry tomatoes.  Catching them in the act was an exercise in rage and futility: I’d look out of my dining room window to see three squirrels chowing down, and then they’d look up and grin maliciously at me.  I swear, once one of them even waved at me.

My husband has not reached the breaking point yet.  A few weeks ago he enthusiastically set up the grow light operation for starting tomato and pepper seeds in our living room.  ‘Tis the season, and all that.

But while the tomatoes and peppers are merrily taking root in my livingroom, I think it’s important to remember that there are things that can be planted in the garden right now.  Philadelphia’s average last frost date is April 20 - just a month away!  This weekend it’s supposed to be 55-60 degrees with very little chance of rain…so make a plan: it’s time to dust off the garden!

So exactly what can be planted right now?  All the good cool weather crops: peas, onions, potatoes, turnips, cabbage, greens like kale and mustard and collards, lettuce, radishes, beets, carrots, shallots, spinach, bok choy, brussels sprouts, rutabaga, and parsley.  You can even plant broccoli if you’re setting it from plants.

As usual, I’m a little behind the eight ball this year in ordering my seeds (I may have to make a run up to Burpee this weekend to round out my seed collection) - most of what I have ordered are warmer weather seeds.  But I do have at least a few things to plant right now:

• Parisienne carrots - These are teeny tiny round carrots that are great for growing in heavy soil (which I have).  They are very sweet with a thin skin that does not need to be peeled.  Very popular in Europe, they should be ready to pick in about 65 days…so I will have carrots to brag about in May!  I ordered these from Baker Creek.
• Hakurei turnips - I discovered these a few years ago at the Fair Food Farmstand and knew I had to grow them.  As it turns out, they are ludicrously easy to grow, and even faster to mature than the little round carrots: 38 days!  So I will have awesome Japanese salad turnips by the end of April, which will be great.  The lesson I learned last year: succession planting is my friend.  I really like turnips, but I can’t eat them every day and there’s no really great way to preserve turnips.

I plan to plant some mustard, along with a very small amount of mesclun mix, yellow beets, spinach, and (of course) lacinato kale this weekend as well.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Worm Bins (But Were Afraid To Ask)

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Spring is rapidly approaching. And before you know it, it’ll be time to make the trek to the local nursery and pick out a new season’s worth of yummy vegetables and beautiful ornamentals. So what could be better than saving your money on fertilizer and potting soil and instead, use your own scraps! Keeping a worm bin is an easy, low maintenance way to turn kitchen scraps into high quality soil. And, for us city folks, it requires a fraction of the space that a compost pile does. In fact, you can (and probably should) keep your worm bin indoors.

The first thing you need to set up a bin is, well, a bin. Any plastic container with a lid and some space will do. My bin is much larger than what you need. This is because I like the ability to section off spots so I can “harvest” my worm castings. As you can see from the photos, you need to provide lots of air holes. When I first set mine up, I didn’t have enough and horror of horrors, there was a mass exodus of worms. Nothing can prepare you for the nightmare of walking in your basement and seeing the entire floor writhing with worms. (I’ll revisit the gross factor in a moment). Another good idea is to lift it off the ground a bit. I put mine on 2 pieces of scrap wood. If you have holes on the bottom (which you should), then castings will most likely fall out, so I also put a scrap piece of plywood underneath so I can catch the castings and put them right back in. I also laid a screen on the bottom of the bin as well, as extra protection so the worms can’t crawl out. Just pick up one of those expandable window screens at a hardware store.

Next, you need the bedding. You “feed” the worm bin with a combination of “green” (food) and “brown” (bedding) materials. The bedding materials are simply paper — egg cartons, cardboard, paper. Use all that direct mail trash! Just don’t use any glossy paper. To the best of my knowledge, most items are printed with soy inks these days. I haven’t had any troubles using all sorts of printed materials, from the free neighborhood weeklies to discarded inkjet printouts (just not the special coated papers!).

To prepare the bedding, rip the paper into strips, about 1-2 inches wide. You don’t have to be exact, what you’re trying to do is make sure that it doesn’t mat and bunch up when you add water (so keep any confetti shredded paper away). After it’s in strips, dump it in water and wring it out fairly well. Lay it in a layer on the bottom of the bin, about an 2 inches deep. Now you’re ready to add the worms.
There’s no trick to this. Just dump them in. That’s all there is to it. Some people say not to feed them right away, but I usually have such small amounts of garbage that it’s no biggie. I wouldn’t stockpile your garbage in anticipation of your worms. Use your garbage disposal until you have your bin and worms set up. Also, you can’t use just any old worm. You need to use red wrigglers.

To feed, you just dump it in. You can feed worms just about anything except meat, dairy and bread. Also, chop it up. And it’s nice if it’s been sitting for a bit, getting a little funky. It gets the process moving a bit faster. If you have the inclination (and your box is big enough) you can section the box off: only feed on one half. When you get a nice amount of castings, start to feed on the other half. The worms migrate over and you can “harvest” that original side, free of worms. Once you feed them, cover with another layer of paper strips. This is the most important part: it’s what keeps the smell down. No matter what other websites tell you, there will be a smell. However, it’s almost never the food: it’s the wet newspaper! By covering the scraps, you cover the food smell. When you want to feed again, just push the top layer of paper strips away, feed and then push the paper back over it. I notice that my bin gets dry quickly (especially in winter). So I keep a spray bottle near the bin and every week, I just spray it with water. You need to keep them moist, but not sopping wet.

Worms can be fed as much as you want to give them, as long as you start them slowly. I personally find it easier to feed once a week. They will multiply (or shrink) depending on the amount of food given.
Also, don’t be alarmed if you see other creepy crawers in there. They call it a worm bin, but it’s actually not just the worms doing the decomposing. It’s totally normal. However, there are some bad guys that can get in, especially if you use garden scraps as bedding. If you see slugs, get rid of them. Centipedes, same.

Now, for the gross factor. I am deathly afraid of slimy things. But I can’t believe that this hasn’t affected my work with the worms. I keep a set of old garden gloves next to the bin so I can move the paper away for a feeding. The first group of worms that I bought kept escaping. So those gloves came in handy for putting them back. However, this second batch (from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm: located right here in PA!) has been docile and perfect. I ordered both times from Uncle Jim’s. The first batch was the regular red wrigglers and the second was the Super Jumpers. Maybe that has something to do with their homebody nature. But no matter what, if you’ve provided them with adequate ventilation (meaning, lots of escape holes), then some WILL escape. So, despite the recent NY Times: New York Worm Composting (I swear that I’ve been keeping a bin before that article came out!) I wouldn’t keep a bin under your bed.

I can’t wait for the spring planting season. This will be the first year that I get to use my worms castings. I haven’t decided whether to plant directly in the castings or to go Macgyver and make a worm tea aeration system. Either way, I know that the scraps that I would normally put down the drain and the paper that I would send off to be recycled are now being put to good use. Cradle to cradle! And you know what: despite the creepy factor, I kinda have an attachment to those little critters. But I’ll stop short of calling them my babies…

Garden Planning

Monday, January 05, 2009

There’s no more local food than that you grow in your own backyard, and now’s the time to start planning - which is my favorite part. I love planning and organizing things, looking through seed catalogs, and of course in the planning stage every garden is perfect - no mysteriously dead or dying plants, no diseases, no pests, no weeds, and not a whole lot of work .

I’m going to give a brief description of my planning process for 2009.  While reading, please keep in mind three things: 1) I have a relatively decent sized yard, considering, so if you have an apartment or smaller garden don’t feel the need to be as crazily organized as I am, 2) I’m a fairly experienced gardener and am trying for a 4 season garden this year (see The 4 Season Harvest at your local library) so my succession planting is overkill for a less experienced or less obsessed gardner, 3) I like planning, so if this looks crazy to you, you’re probably perfectly normal.

Step 1 List the seeds (and perennial plants) from previous years. I don’t know about you but even the smallest seed packets are usually too large for my needs so I pop them in the freezer (in ziplock bags inside a larger ziplock to prevent condensation from forming on the seeds).  During this step I evaluate how the seeds did last year and decide if I really want to try again. This list includes plant type (ex. swiss chard), variety (ex. bright lights), days (i.e. how long it takes from planting to harvest), plant time (permissible dates/conditions to plant), and any other notes.

Step 2 Heaven! Browse all those seed catalogs that keep piling up and circle all the ones I want to plant.  Apply some common sense and narrow this down to things I really want to plant and have a hope of keeping alive.  Then I make a list with the same info as in Step 1, along with source (i.e. where I’m going to buy it), cost, and amount (ex. 1 lb for potatoes).

Step 3 I lay out a diagram of my garden space. I use graph paper and break down each area in to 1 square foot sections. This makes it easy to place the plants later. This picture is roughly laid out like my actual garden area, but with the space between beds scrunched, and the flower beds mostly eliminated. I mostly use the Square Foot Gardening method and I really recommend it.

Step 4 Next I sort my seed lists into several categories: transplants (ones I start indoors), early spring plants, early summer plants, mid summer plants, and late summer plants. Then the hard work starts - I try to fit two or three plants in to one garden plot.  I make a time line with start and mid-month sections, and mark the last and first frost dates.  Then I plot on the time line when the plants will be planted, transplanted, ready to harvest, and done harvesting. Then I fit complementary plants together. Note, if you’d like to try this keep in mind that most plants are harvest-able for a few weeks (except for say, head lettuce) so you don’t want to schedule to plant the second plant as soon as the first one is ready to harvest. I also do a little summary line that shows when that plot will be planted or fallow and note if it will need to be covered in the winter. Invariably, a few of the plants on the wish list don’t fit in to this planning step and are sadly crossed off the list. (This step is on the right side of the picture below.)

Step 5 Once I’ve scheduled all of the plots, I then place them in my garden diagram, and decide how many square feet to devote to each set of plants. On the left side of the above picture is a filled in version of my garden diagram - each letter corresponds to a plant group. Most of the items written in are perennials (or a few annual herbs). I also add little icons to say which spots need trellises, cages, or protection from the cold.

Step 6I order the seeds and plants that I need from the sources on my list.

Step 7Lastly, I create a schedule of what to do when in the garden.  I break this down (like the time line in step 4) in to roughly bi-weekly periods (i.e Feb 1 - Feb 15, Feb 16 - Feb 28). This gives me leeway for doing stuff in the garden when the weather and my life permits without feeling like I’m behind. Basically for this step I go through the time lines from step 4 and list everything that needs to be done for each time period. Here’s an example:

April 15 - April 30th
Plant Red Samurai Carrots and Arugula in A plots
Plant Mizuna and Mesclun in E plots
Then I just look a the diagram and know exactly where to plant stuff.

Of course, I had to put all that hand drawn stuff onto the computer and I repeat the process for my herb and flower beds - but I’m sure you get the idea.  I’m very excited for my garden this year - especially the fairy tale pumpkins - my favorite kind of winter squash.  Speaking of winter squash, ...

Catching up

Friday, January 02, 2009

Phillyist has posted their 2009 resolutions - eating locally grown produce and gardening has made the cut.  They’ll also be talking about how to join a CSA program.  I’m wondering who they’ll recommend.

There are a few CSA programs that I can think of that deliver within Philadelphia city limits (and probably a bunch more that I don’t know of or haven’t thought of)....

Landisdale Farm - Clark Park
Dancing Hen Farm - TBD
Emerson Farm - 6th & Lehigh
Greensgrow Farm - Kensington
Lancaster Farm Fresh - Reading Terminal & just about everywhere else in the city

And there are dozens more that have pick up and drop off locations in the burbs.  Just take a trip to Local Harvest, plug in your zip code, and you’ll find more than you know what to do with.

Finding a CSA join isn’t too difficult, but I’ve always wondered if there was an easy way to find community gardens in Philadelphia.  Years ago I used to live right down the street from a large garden, but aside from stalking the gardeners and asking for information I didn’t have a clue how to join.  The Philadelphia Lands Trust does have an online map of their community garden locations, although it doesn’t tell you how to become part of their gardens.  The site does contain valuable information, though - how to start your own community garden.  There is also a list of Philadelphia area garden associations at the at the American Community Gardening Association.  Rough Terrain is also a good online resource for community gardens. 

Still, none of them really talk about how to become a member of a particular garden.  I know from talking to people involved in community garden plots that there are sign ups and waiting lists and all sorts of things.  It would be a useful resource to have online - it’s where most people start their searches.