Garden Preparation « The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

April 17, 2019

No garden space? Try a community garden

Filed under: Garden Preparation,Related topics — Tags: community garden, rent garden space — bob @ 5:04 pm

Just because you are living in an apartment or in a house with no suitable gardening space, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re out of luck.

All around Michigan groups, work to provide community gardening space for folks who couldn’t otherwise garden due to a lack of space.

There’s a wide spread on the amenities community gardens provide. The most rustic community gardens provide nothing more than a sunny place to garden. At those you’ll have to do your own tilling in the spring. Also, you’ll have to haul your own water from home. Water is critical especially during the first couple of weeks until young plants become established. After that, mulches applied around the plants will drastically reduce the amount of water required compared to bare soil.

The next tier of gardens will have water on site with one or more hose bibs from which to draw water. Sometimes hoses are allowed, sometimes not. But at the very least you won’t have haul jugs of water from home.

Some community gardens loan out tools for the gardeners to use if they don’t have their own. That usually happens in the more permanent gardens where tool sheds or other storage facilities are located right on site.

A community garden plot.

Permanent raised beds are available at some garden sites. Their configuration can be anything from slightly raised beds to growing tables raised to table top height.

The rarest of community gardens are those that provide all the previously mentioned amenities plus garden irrigation. These will often have a garden expert or manager who monitors the irrigation system and is around to help gardeners with problems and to answer questions. Some even provide people to help to those who need it.

Costs ranges from free or a token amount to hundreds of dollars per season in the most desired location. Often organizations use garden fee income to improve the garden or help fund other work. In lieu of a fee, you may be asked to contribute a number of work hours helping around the garden.

If you do decide to join a community garden, be a good member. Always be mindful of the rules. For example: don’t trudge through other people’s garden; never pick produce from other plots unless given permission, even if it appears to be in danger of becoming over-ripe; park in designated areas; keep the garden a peaceful place, don’t act out personal problems at the garden such as shouting arguments. The best policy is try to be a good neighbor.

It’s fairly easy to find garden space these days. Start by contacting city recreation departments, schools, colleges, churches and other civic organizations. Private land owners or farmers may rent out plots as well.

This time of the year, just before planting season kicks off, organizations make a big push to get people to sign up. That means sign-up for garden space is going full speed ahead so don’t wait too long because space often runs out fast in some of the more popular gardens. Before committing to a garden plot, it might be a good idea to visit first so there are no surprises.

Bob

Comments (0)

December 20, 2018

Protecting my bonsai from bitterly cold winter temperatures

There’s some talk among weather prognosticators about a speed bump developing in the polar vortex this winter. Some are saying very cold, below normal temperatures are just over the horizon and heading our way. If you haven’t already done so, now’s the time to finish up prepping your garden for winter.

I’ve done all I can for my gardens making sure they are all set for the cold weather . The last item I had on my outdoor things-to-do list was winterizing my bonsai trees. Usually I have them all tucked in around the first week of December but this year it’s been so mild that I left them out until this week.

Every year I change the way I winterize them but there are a couple of important things I always make sure happens. First, the roots and tops are protected from the extreme cold and fluctuations in temperature. I do that by digging an over-sized hole in a protected area big enough to bury my pots.

The second thing is to make sure melt water doesn’t settle in to the pots. Re-freezing of water in the pots can cause them to break due to the expansion that occurs when water freezes. So, I tip the pots on their sides keeping the water out.

Placing them on their sides also allows part of the top branches to be in the hole. The surrounding soil helps moderate the temperatures that they are exposed to.

This year I dug my hole in a well-drained area near a group of white pine trees. The trees will slow down brisk winter winds lessening the chance of desiccation.

After placing the trees in the hole I covered them with a layer of white pine needles. That will help insulate them and make it easier to clean off the soil when I take them out in the spring. Then I took the soil that was left from digging the hole and covered the needle covered plants. I also banked up the soil on the pot end of the hole giving additional protection to the roots.

Here the plants are in the hole and partially covered.

Finally, I hauled in tree leaves and covered the entire area including the plants. A small amount of branches are still peeking up through the leaves. Later, when the Christmas tree comes down I’ll cut off boughs from it and lay them over the mound. The boughs will help catch snow allowing it to drift over the spot and provide even more insulation.

I know this sounds like a lot of work for a few plants but my bonsai are valuable to me. I’ve been caring for one tree for seventeen years so I sure don’t want to lose it now.

Bob

Comments (0)

November 13, 2018

What side are you on this fall?

Filed under: Flowers,Garden Preparation — Tags: fall garden, Fall garden clean up, garden debris — bob @ 9:40 am

While much of the country is focused on the mid-term elections, two opposing camps of gardeners are lining up this fall. Each side has compelling reasons why they are right and the other side is wrong. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.

One side is more, you might say, traditional in their approach to preparing perennial beds for winter. Those gardeners remove all of this year’s dead plant material from the garden and dispose of it by composting or other means. They claim that removing dead material now, in the fall, creates a clean slate for new growth in the spring. Tender new growth will less likely be damaged than if you try to remove last year’s growth when the plant is actively growing in the spring.

Some gardeners prefer to clear the debris from their garden in the fall.

The other group says, “We care about birds”. They leave all of their plant growth untouched in the fall. All of that tangled up mass of plant stems provides valuable cover for wild song birds that over-winter. This group feels they have a responsibility to the wider ecological community when gardening. Many perennials produce seeds each fall. Leaving those old flower stalks up, they say, provides an addition food source for birds.

Some gardeners prefer to leave garden debris alone until spring.

Leaving the garden alone in the fall has some other, less tangible benefits. All of that debris tends to collect and hold snow in place providing a natural insulating blanket. The protective snow cover can reduce the chance of freeze damage or frost heaving in some years. Not only that, the stalks provide an attractive visual element to the winter landscape as well, claims the leave-it-be group.

Gardeners on the other side counter those arguments claiming by the time they start clearing their gardens, the birds have already eaten virtually all of the seeds. Their small plot of flowers would not provide any really usable cover for birds either, they say. And who wants to look at a messy garden area all winter anyway? Not only that, spring is busy enough without having to do all the work you should have done last fall.

So every fall die-hard gardeners endlessly debate the merits of their position. I’m not really sure how often one breaks ranks and joins the other side, probably not very often.

Bob

Comments (0)

June 15, 2017

Allow plenty of room for tomatoes to grow

Filed under: Garden Preparation,Vegetables — Tags: distance, tomato planting — bob @ 6:10 am

“You planted your tomatoes too close together.” Have you heard that from visitors to your garden? Not leaving enough space between tomato plants is one of the most common gardening mistakes. The good news is that it’s probably not too late to move them if you do it right away.

It’s so easy to look at those small tomato plants and forget how big they will get during the summer. Even after all these years of gardening I still have to resist the urge to plant them too close together.

Large commercial farmers who grow tomatoes for canning plant their tomatoes very close together. We often see them in double rows about 18 inches apart with the plants very close together in the row. The double rows are then spaced around four feet apart. Planting them like that allows farmers to get the maximum production from their land. Special varieties have been developed to allow them to be planted so densely. Those varieties also account for the difference in taste between tomato products. It’s why one brand of ketchup tastes different from another.

Home garden varieties won’t grow and produce well if grown too close together. Older heirloom varieties will take up much more space than more modern varieties. They’ll keep growing all season long and can get pretty big by the time the first tomato is ready to be picked. That type of growth is referred to as being indeterminate. I plant those varieties about four apart in cages and up to six feet apart if I let them sprawl over the ground without any support.

These tomato plants look like they are far apart but eventually they will together.

Plant breeders have developed tomato plants that will stop growing once they reach a certain size for their variety. Those are referred to as determinate, we used to call them “bush tomatoes”. Determinate types of tomatoes can be planted closer together, around three feet apart in cages.

Good air circulation reduces disease problems and adequate sunlight allows the fruit to grow and develop. I remember hearing a saying many years ago that went something like: “Plenty of air and light, grows tomatoes right”. Giving your tomatoes enough room to grow will provided them with the air and sunlight they need to thrive.

Bob

Comments (0)

March 27, 2017

Vegetable garden row direction

Filed under: Garden Preparation,Planting — Tags: east and west, garden rows, north and south, plant rows, row direction — bob @ 1:59 pm

Even though the soil out in the garden is still very cold, we can still plant our garden — on paper that is.

There are several advantages to planning your garden on paper or on an app, before setting it out in the ground. The most obvious is you can get a good idea of how much planting material you need such as transplants, seeds or bulbs. And it is handy for calculating how many pounds of soil amendments you may need to add to the soil.

I was once one of those gardeners who never planned ahead very much. When it came to planting, I just picked out my favorite seeds and planted until it either looked like enough or I ran out of material to plant. I also didn’t pay much attention to which way the garden was facing. Most of the time I had plenty of square footage to use and I could afford some inefficiency. That, however, is not the way to get the most out of a space.

Not long ago, I had a discussion with a friend of mine about which direction garden rows should run.

Sometimes there’s no choice because of the shape of the garden. A long, narrow garden spot may mean the rows have to follow the long axis of the plot. In the past, I’ve had gardens that had an irregular shape so the rows ran in more than one direction because that was the most efficient use of that particular space.

What if you have a square or nearly square garden with one of the sides facing south, should the rows run north and south or east and west?

Imagine the position of the sun in the sky during the growing season. It appears to us to travel across the sky from east to west. As it moves through the sky, the angle of the rays of sunlight changes in relation to the stationary garden plants.

In an east to west configuration, much more sunlight will strike the south side of the plants than on any other side. In other words, the south side will receive more solar energy while the north side is shaded most of the day.

Rows planted north to south will receive sunlight more evenly. In the morning, the east side of the row receives sunlight. The plant is bathed in sunlight all day as the sun moves until late afternoon when the west side gets sunlight. So the plant receives sunlight on three sides instead of just one.

The cross-hatched areas represent rows of garden plants. The arrow heads represent rays of sunlight. Note how just the south side of the plants in the east to west rows receive sunlight. Sunlight penetrates deep into the rows that run north and south and contacts more of the surface area.

Not all gardens are situated facing a cardinal direction in an open area. Take for example a southeastern facing garden that is shaded from the afternoon sun. It should have its rows running northeast and southwest to receive the fullest amount of sunlight. Since the garden would get no direct sunlight in the afternoon, it would be a good idea to try to capture as much of that solar energy as possible.

We have a couple of months before our main outdoors planting happens. So now is a great time to sketch out a diagram of of your garden that, in addition to the size and shape, includes direction, and potential sunlight.

Bob

Comments (0)

Older Posts »