Golden Gate Gardener

Carrots Are Worth the Challenge

I grew carrots again this year. They are a bit of a challenge because it is best to sow them directly in the garden and they are slow to start. The seedlings will not appear for at least two weeks, and if the weather is cold, they may take longer. The seeds are small, so you will plant them not too deeply, maybe 1/4 inch below the surface, or at most 1/2 inch. Because soil dries from the surface first, you will need to keep the moisture topped off until the seedlings are well up. You can't just walk away and return to water every few days and expect to see seedlings in a week. For carrots you need to remember to water lightly (briefly) every day or two for weeks. And weed every couple of days too, since the weeds will grow much faster than the carrots and compete with them.

These carrot seedlings are about a month and a half old. There are a few weeds, but there would have been many more had I not been weeding a lot.

Once they are up, carrot seedlings start out tiny and grow slowly. The roots probably reach a little deeper into the soil than the shoots do into the air, but they are still shallow, so you still have to pay attention to the frequency of your light watering to be sure that the roots are able to get water. 

You want thick roots, so you don't want carrots to grow too close together. Try to sow the seed a half inch to an inch apart. Then, when the plants are well up, thin any that are growing too close together--cheek and jowl, that is. (The joke is that if you sow them too far apart, only some seeds will germinate leaving you with not enough carrots, whereas if you sow the seed close together, they will all come up.) You can thin out the smallest plants, or you can wait and take out the bigger ones when they are big enough to offer a bite to eat. (The first plan will get you mature carrots faster.) 

When the carrots are grown, the leaves are a foot and a half tall and the plants will seem so sturdy that you will wonder that they could ever have been so small. Carrots take about 3 months to mature, so you can make the guess that they will be ready then. Brush away the surface soil and look at the top of the carrot to judge its size. In general, a wide top to the root will mean a mature carrot.

 

But there will always be a bit of guesswork in estimating carrot size, and some will always get bigger than others.

(Our instinct says to stick the smaller ones back in the ground where maybe they will grow bigger, but this won't work. Although a carrot root is fat and sturdy, it was, before you pulled it, attached to many tiny roots that extended widely and deeply. Of course they all broke off when you pulled the carrot,  and it is unlikely to grow more fast enough to help  it grow much, so you may as well eat it.)

This image of carrot roots is from the book Roots Demystified  by Robert Kourick. He obtained it from Root Development of Vegetable Crops, by John Weaver and William Brumer. The squares in the grid equal 1 square foot.

When you pull out a carrot, it is a kindness to the remaining carrots to push soil gently against them, if they were exposed by the hole you made.  This helps the remaining carrots retain moisture. 

For many years, I grew carrots in a backyard bed that emerged from the shade of the house only in early April. I sowed the seed in mid-February, so the seed germinated, and the very young seedlings grew, in the shade. Then, when the house shadow got shorter, they were in sunlight, and they grew faster. They were ready to harvest by mid-June. But then, two years ago, tunneling rats ate my crop. All of it. (I think they missed one carrot in the back corner of the bed.) They are tunneling rats, Norway rats, or, least politely, but probably most accurately, sewer rats. I caught 7 of them in traps that summer--a gruesome but needed effort--but I knew that I could only guarantee a carrot harvest by excluding the rats.

Last spring, I had that bed lined with hardware cloth (which isn't cloth, really but tough wire mesh). Now rats can't get in. But I had plans to transplant some other crops into that bed, so I didn't grow carrots there last spring.

Later in the summer, I had our apple tree removed--sad, but necessary, as it had root rot. (I grafted it onto new rootstock. More on this later.) Then I had a second bed, the one the tree had shaded. lined against rats too. I sowed carrot seed there in early August. I hoped carrots would mature before that bed went into shade in mid-November. They did! I know that carrots that go into shade before they are mature do not develop well. If they are nearly mature, the lower part of the roots will stay narrow and will be a paler color than the tops. But the ones I grew were fat and orange right to the tips.

This is what happened the year I planted carrots too late and they went into shade before they had a chance to fill out. 

The carrots I grew this year were shorter varieties, which just happened to be the kind I found locally to buy. (In general, grow shorter varieties if you are growing them in pots or in clay or very rocky soil.) I have sandy loam, so I probably could have grown longer carrots if I had bought them. I have rocks in my soil though, and these will stunt or split carrots, so I dig around under where I plan to plant the seeds and take out rocks I find there as a precaution. As I expected the bed to go into shade at about the time the carrots matured, it is probably just as well they were short--less chance of long, pale tips.

Next February, I will be back to my older practice of sowing seeds in the bed that is in shade then. I am looking forward to a bountiful carrot crop next summer.

P.S. Nurseries have been selling carrot plants recently. These will probably grow, but I doubt that they will form good roots. I haven't tried to grow them yet. I will report when I do.. I think your best bet is to learn to grow them from seed  sown directly in your garden.

New Zealand Spinach Lasagne Recipe

Last night we had a party at which we served, among other things, a spinach lasagne made with New Zealand Spinach. People enjoyed it, as have we and those with whom we shared it, when I have made it before. I thought I had put the recipe on this blog, but it looks like I did not. So I will try to do so now, though the only pictures I have so far are of New Zealand spinach. I usually make a half recipe, which makes enough for 4-6 servings, but you can make a full one easily. Just double everything (use two jars of tomato-based pasta sauce) and use a big baking pan. One egg will still work in the ricotta mix whether doubled or not. You may have to cook a full recipe up to 10 minutes longer.

Here is a photo of New Zealand spinach for those to whom it is unfamiliar:

The plant grows wild just above the beach in San Francisco, teaching us two important facts about it: 1. That it is able to grow in areas with a cold, windy, often foggy, and dry summer.  and 2. That it is a rampant grower, weedy, in fact.  

Happily, this plant can also tolerate heat, so it can be grown inland as well. and it is a much more succulent, bigger-leaved plant when it is grown in richer soil and with regular water.

The plants seems to consist of single long leafy stems, though when you take off a tip, to eat it, new shoots will form along the original stem, especially if it is growing horizontally or vertically, and stems will often climb upward, reaching through a trellis or over another plant, or over other NZ spinach plants, then hang downward at their tips. It blooms as it grows, with small yellowish flowers, and forms, first soft, green, immature then, deep brown, mature, hard seeds in leaf joints farther back on the stems. (These fall as soon as they are ripe, and reveal where they fell with new seedlings. You can basically cut off and discard some of the stems if they get in the way and pull extra seedlings and let the plant have space you don't need.)

To harvest the plant, I break off leafy stem tips, 3 -4 inches long. above the place where seeds begin to harden. (It is fine to have immature, green seeds on the tips you pinch off.) There will be up to about a half-dozen leaves on your harvested tips. You will need 30 or 35 of these tips to make a half-recipe of lasagne, twice as many to make a full recipe. 

To make  a half recipe of NZ spinach lasagne:

Set the oven at 400 degrees F. 

You will need:

A Tablespoon of olive oil or a little no-stick spray oil

Lasagne noodles (hard no-boil are fine, though you may need to parboil some of them so you can cut them.) You will need 6-8 noodles for a half recipe, depending on the shape of your casserole.

A jar or can of tomato pasta sauce, 2-3 cups (read the label so you can avoid ones with high fructose corn syrup in them.)

About 1 1/2 cups of steamed New Zealand spinach--wash it and cut each tip into about 3 pieces. It steams fast--in 5-10 minutes. Cool it before you use it in the recipe.

A pound (or a bit less if the container you find is a bit smaller) of low-fat ricotta cheese

An egg--or, if you have an egg substitute product with the cholesterol removed, use 2 Tablespoons of that

3/4 to 1 cup of coarsely shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

1 cup and a little more Parmesan cheese

One fourth to one half teaspoon of ground nutmeg. 

Directions:

1. In a big bowl, mix the ricotta with the egg, most of the mozzarella, and most of the parmesan, and the NZ Spinach, leaving a bit of mozzarella and parmesan for putting on top.

      2. Grease a baking dish.  The one I use is about 8 x 10" (inside measure) and about 3"inches            deep. It is important that it be deep, because you are going to put several layers in it. 

      3. Add a bit of pasta sauce to the bottom of the dish and spread it in a thin layer. Put a layer of lasagne noodles on top. My pan uses almost 2 noodles per layer (1 full noodle, with a half-noodle wide strip beside it, and a shorter strip of half-wide noodle at the end. (To cut the noodles, if they are the uncooked, no-boil kind, soften them for about 2 minutes in lightly boiling water, lift them out with tongs, put them on a cutting board and cut them with a knife or kitchen scissors. Put them in the boiling water one at a time to avoid noodles sticking together.) 

      4. Now that you have set the number of noodles you will need for each layer, make 3 layers as follows. noodles, a thin layer of pasta sauce, 1/3 of the ricotta/spinach mixture, 1/3 of the mozzarella,  a thin layer of pasta sauce. On the top, sprinkle a little shredded mozzarella and a little Parmesan. (Be especialy careful to not use too much ricotta filling or tomato sauce at a time so you have enough of them.)

Bake about 35 minutes. You want it to be bubbling, with the cheese on top melted and browning a little. 

You can refrigerate the lasagne, if covered well, for 3 days, or you can wrap it tightly and freeze it for a couple of weeks, then thaw it and heat it through. 

 

Growing Good Food in Bad Air

It is Thursday, October 1^st and the air in SF is filled with smoke again today, as it has been, off and on, for weeks. While I am glad not to be in the path of a fire, the smoke pollution is disturbing. Most of news coverage of the pollution concerns its effect on human physical health, which is, of course important. Air pollution causes lung inflammation and reduces our lung capacity. It is particularly dangerous for older people and children. Now, as the coronavirus is on all of our minds, and some of us try to go out less to reduce the chance of infection, the smoke is more disturbing than ever because it reduces our chance for outdoor exercise. For more on human health effects, see Washington Post on air pollution harm to health

While we need cloth masks now, due to the coronavirus emergency, I have learned these do not protect against air pollution. The only protection is an N95 mask or an N95 respirator mask, which most of us do not own.

Gardeners have special concerns. First, we are hesitant to garden in this bad air. I wanted to check apples for ripeness and harvest some that are ripe today, but may not do it as I look out the window and use online sources to confirm what my eyes tell me. Last month I was two days late in watering my community garden. (Fortunately, I didn’t lose any crops, but some of my lettuce was starting to droop.)

I have also had two questions concerning the plants I am growing. The first is what air pollution is doing to them, the second is whether they are safe for me to eat. The answer to the first question is that the effects of air pollution are not good—more on this in a minute. The answer to the second question is one of the only bright spots in my research: pollution does not affect healthfulness of a crop. If the food you harvest has ash or grime on it, wash it off. For good measure you can agitate it in a tablespoon of vinegar in 6 cups of water, then rinse it in plain water. (White vinegar is fine—no need for anything fancy.) You can’t wash off other smog, but plants damaged by it are perfectly safe to eat.

White ash on tomato leaf in late September of 2020. I washed it off to let more light in. (Tomato leaves, which are not edible, are hairy, so they trap more ash than smooth leaves would, or than the smooth-surfaced tomato fruit.)

Back to the effect on plants. Days of smoky air and falling ash will result in a coating on upper plant surfaces. The main effect of this is reduced photosynthesis, since less sunlight can reach the chloroplasts. This will reduce growth of the plant. After a bout of smoky air, it’s a good idea to hose down your garden plants to knock the stuff off of them.

Worse for plants is the more common components of smog, such as oxides of nitrogen or lower atmospheric ozone. (Unlike the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, ozone near the earth surface is harmful.) These and other polluting gases can enter the chambers in leaves where the plant carries out photosynthesis and interfere with the chemical process. Ozone is particularly harmful. At best, pollution damage will slow the growth of plants. They will make fewer leaves, and will have a smaller root system. This means our food crops won’t produce as much food or as produce it as fast as they would in clean air. At worst, susceptible plants will show symptoms, starting with tiny dead spots on leaves and progressing to dying older leaves. Susceptibility varies among crops and varieties of specific crops. Peas and beans and leafy crops are generally most susceptible, and one study found summer crops more affected than cool-season crops.

            (Please note that we are here thinking about pollution of the air, not the soil. If you are worried about soil pollution, you should have it tested for lead and cadmium, and follow the lab’s instructions for what you can grow in it. Also, don’t grow food in a garden that is immediately adjacent to a busy road, especially where vehicles often brake.)

When it comes to air pollution, there is another concern that we should be aware of. When air pollution prevents a plant from photosynthesizing, either by blocking sunlight or interfering with the chemistry of the process, it will reduce the amount of CO₂ that plant is removing from the air. This means that pollution-challenged plants are making our excess atmospheric CO₂ problem just that much worse. It means that air pollution creates a negative feedback loop, making global climate change happen just that much faster.

Happily, we can safely eat and enjoy any food we succeed in growing in our gardens in polluted air, and are probably not so dependent on our garden that the little bit less production is a problem, but remember agricultural production is also threatened. Our understanding, as gardeners, of what increased air pollution means, not only for humans, but for plants, gives us an early distant warning, and more reason to act, and encourage others to act, to reduce the pollution of our air.

Where and when is air pollution a problem?

Large urban areas across the earth have bad, sometimes chronically very bad air, but it is also a problem in many places we think of as “pristine.” So, for example, Denver has a problem, but so does Rocky Mountain National Park.

One of the worst pollutants is lower atmospheric ozone (O₃). It forms when oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) interact in sunlight. The warmer the day, the more ozone forms, so it tends to be worst in afternoons and later in the summer season (just when we are counting on harvesting summer crops).

Where do the components of air pollution come from:

--Well, obviously from fires. And one of the scariest results of recent fires has been the understanding that when modern structures burn, not only is it a horrid loss to the owner, but some of what is released into the air is toxic compounds from the many synthetic materials we use today in building, furniture, and other objects in our homes.

--The biggest other sources are electricity generation (if the plant doing the generating is coal or petroleum-fueled) and gasoline-fueled transportation.

--Agriculture and industrial processes add some to the mix. One study, in Colorado, found that plants making fabrics added significant pollution, because it used petroleum as a fuel and because polyester is a petroleum product.

--Volitile organic compounds (VOCs) come from products like paint or paint thinner, asphalt, oil and gasoline.

What can we do to reduce air pollution:

--Drive less, keep your car well-tuned, keep tires inflated properly, and buy automobiles that burn less gasoline—fuel efficient, hybrid, electric.

--Avoid idling car motors unnecessarily.

--Avoid using other gas-operated motors as much as possible—for example by using an electric lawn mower.

--Avoid using products that add VOCs to the air. Check paint cans and labels of other suspect products for an indication that they are VOC-free.

--Avoid toping off of gasoline tanks when filling them at a gas station. (When you smell gas, it is going into the atmosphere.)

--Do yardwork that might add to pollution in the evening, so pollutants can dissipate before the warm part of the following day.

--Try to reduce the amount of petroleum-source materials you use in your life, for example plastic, polyester in clothing, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Eliminate their use if you can, reduce, reuse, and recycle if you do use them.

--Spread the word about what causes air pollution and encourage others to reduce their contributions to it.

Here are two links you can use to learn more:

To check air quality: purpleair.com. Zoom in on specific locations using their world map.

To learn about ozone gardens that assess damage to plants, watch a video on ozone pollution and a lecture by a researcher who studies ozone damage:  Ozone Gardens and Ozone Pollution

Redworm Compost in the time of Covid

Faced with continued store closures and shortages, and anxiety about going shopping, some people have been growing a sourdough starter in their kitchen. As a gardener, in the same spirit, I decided to start up a new redworm compost bin. I’m glad I did so, since the redworms are happily eating away at a portion of our household’s food scraps, though the process has also been a reminder of the patience required to depend on nature to do its work rather than being a consumer who can drive out and buy what you need after somebody else provided the patience. I will tell you how to create and tend your own bin to make worm casting compost, though you will have to provide the patience.

            To start the bin, you will need: ½ to 1 pound of redworms (a special kind of earthworm, of the species Eisenia fetida), a container, a handful of soil, some bedding, water, and food scraps. The worms will eat the bedding along with the scraps, producing a batch of compost every 2-3 months. The redworm compost can be added to your soil or to potting mix where you plan to grow vegetables or flowers. It’s a good soil amendment and a high-quality fertilizer.

A worm bin can be kept indoors, with a drip pan beneath to catch extra liquid (which is also good fertilizer), or it can be put outdoors in a shady spot. If winter temperatures drop below 40, move the bin to a shed or garage, but in milder parts of the Bay Area it can stay outside all winter.

Start by learning if you have a friend with a worm compost bin who will share some worms with you when they next renew their bin. Redworms are also available from several online sources, which may also sell them as red wrigglers or composting worms, at a cost of $25-50 for a pound. (These are not, by the way, regular garden earthworms, but a smaller species that thrives in a compost bin, but would die out in garden soil.)

            As a container, one can purchase complicated, several-tiered bins, but all you really need is a shallow (10 to 16-inch deep) box with a lid and a few drainage holes in the bottom. Because I was committed to using, as much as possible, what I already had, I repurposed a large plastic storage bin by drilling a few holes (only ¼ inch, so rodents can’t enter). If you have the wood and tools, you can make a wooden bin. One common plan requires a single 4 x 8 foot panel of ½ inch plywood, as shown on this information sheet from Washington State University: http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/wormbins.htm. Or you can make a smaller one from a half sheet of plywood using this plan from the Alameda county StopWaste web site: http://www.stopwaste.org/at-home/home-gardening/all-about-compost/backyard-composting/build-or-buy-a-compost-bin/two-person. In either case, a prop stick is handy to keep the box open while you work in it. A wooden box keeps best if you can paint it inside and out with food grade mineral oil, but this step can be skipped or postponed.

            Next, add bedding. Good options include newspapers or brown cardboard torn or cut into strips, dry leaves, hardwood sawdust, or straw (but not glossy paper). Fill the bin about ¾ full of bedding, then moisten it to wet but not dripping, using a spray bottle or sprinkling can and fluffing it to moisten throughout. Mix in a handful of soil, which the worms use in their gullets.

            Tuck the worms under the bedding surface and add just a few kitchen scraps. Eventually the worms can process about a pound of scraps a week for each square foot of surface area, but they can only eat a little for the first few weeks, so don’t overfeed them. They can eat vegetable and fruit trimmings and peels, crushed eggshells, tea bags (minus the staple), coffee grounds, and small amounts of rice or torn up bread. Avoid oily foods, meats, or dairy products. Cover the bedding surface with a piece of plastic sheeting to keep in moisture and reduce the chance of fruit fly infestations. Remoisten lightly if the top of the bedding is dry—check especially in warm weather.

            When you see the process is near completion, move the contents to one half of the box and add fresh, moist bedding to the other half. Put new kitchen scraps only in the fresh bedding. Most of the redworms will migrate to it in a few weeks, and then you can harvest the finished compost. (If you put little piles of it in bright light, any remaining redworms will hide in the centers of the piles, where you can find them and move them to the fresh bedding.)

Grow Mesclun for Delectable Mixed Greens

Often the crops you can grow in a garden turn the price calculations of the grocery shopper or the restaurant customer on their heads. Mesclun is one such case. The mixes of baby greens that are used to make a pricy salad or elegant stir-fries are fast and easy to grow.

Use scissors or flower shears to cut sections of mesclun greens an inch or so above the ground. Let cut sections regrow before you cut it again. 

            Mesclun, a word from the old Provençal language, literally means mixture. It hails from the days when gardeners of Southern France and Italy did not always separate out seeds of leafy vegetables and plant them in rows, but sometimes sowed mixed seeds of different kinds of greens closely together, then cut sections of the resulting plants when they were still very small and threw them into a bowl to make a salad of the baby greens.

            Related terms are used in the marketing of mixed greens. Supermarkets sell “spring mix.” Restaurants serve “field greens.” There is no set list of component greens for these mixes, though some may be marketed as if there were.

            As a gardener, you will find seed packets of mixed lettuces, or of lettuce and greens with a more robust flavor, or only of the stronger-flavored greens. They may be labeled “mesclun,” or something else. I found one that is called “Quick Stirfry Blend,” consisting of various mustards and kales. Choose the seed mixture you like, depending on your preference for mild or robust flavor, and whether you want to serve them raw, in a salad, or cooked, in a stir-fry. (Be aware though, that plants that usually have strong flavors, such as chard or red mustard, will be fairly mild when they are eaten this young.)

            What all of these mixes have in common is that they are meant to be scatter-sown so that plants will come up close together, probably too close to grow into large plants, and then cut a half inch to an inch from the ground when they are 3 to 7 inches tall. You should be able to cut the plants and let them regrow several times. The ideal mix will include greens that grow at a similar rate, so you can have all of the varieties in the mix each time you cut.

            When seed marketers choose plants for these mixes, they usually include at least one red-leaved kind, for visual interest, and leaves with different shades of green, different shapes, and degrees of curliness. Some popular components are mizuna, a spiky-leaved mild mustard; tatsoi, an Asian mustard with thick white stems and small dark green leaves; arugula; and frisée, an endive with curly green leaves.

One plant that is not to be found in seed mixes for mesclun is radicchio, a red-leaved chicory. If it is in a grocery store’s “spring mix,” it was added separately, since the plant only forms the wonderful deep-red, white-veined leaves when it has made a mature head. Young radicchio leaves are green. So if you like this “green,” you will have to grow some separately.

You may, of course add to your salad the leaves of any other crop you have on hand. If it is winter, you may have some of the round leaves of wild miner’s (or Indian) lettuce, or the small, tender shoots of wild chickweed. Or you may want to combine a robustly-flavored mix with some mild lettuce you have purchased or have grown separately. Mix the ingredients you will enjoy seeing and eating together.

The best way to grow mesclun or other seed mixes to cut and use as baby greens, is in a container, in potting mix. This makes sure you are not growing any weeds along with your greens. While wild dandelion leaves and other wild plants were a part of some traditional mescluns, you will not want to cut something you shouldn’t eat.

I suggest that you make a 1 1/2 x 1 1/2-foot wooden box, 6-8 inches deep (with a few drainage holes drilled, and couple of 1 x 1-inch runners on the bottom to further help drainage). Sow the first seeds in all of the container space in about February, and resow as long as the weather is cool. (For coastal gardeners, this may mean from February well into fall. Inland gardeners will find summers too hot, but can catch a crop again in cooler fall weather.) Cut sections as needed, letting plants regrow as you cut another section. If you have two such boxes, you can have two different mixes and/or can stagger planting times for a more continuous supply.

How to "Know Your Onions"

 

Old farmers would say of a farmer they admired: “He knows his onions.”

Old farmers are few and far between these days, as is any urban gardener who knows his/her/their onions. In addition to the basic knowledge needed, producing globe onions (also called bulb onions) in California Bay Area gardens is complicated by our many microclimates. But with a little planning, we can harvest the big, sweet and pungent globe onions that we see in grocery stores.

Before you start, there are two factors to understand: The first is why you shouldn’t plant too early. Onions should be planted in fall or winter. But if by December, the stem of an onion plant is thicker than a pencil, the plant is likely to flower in the spring, and thus form no bulb. (In fact, it won’t form much that is edible, and then will produce seed and die. Not what you had in mind!)

The second factor is that onion plants start to form bulbs in response to the day’s length. At our latitude, even the longest day, June 21, is not long enough to stimulate a long-day variety to form bulbs, so avoid planting them. Short-day varieties start forming bulbs as early as the third week of January. Chances are the plants will be so small when they get the “bulbing signal” that the resulting bulb will be rather small.

So what are we to do? The key is to look for varieties labeled “intermediate day” or “day neutral” (such as 'Candy' or 'Red Candy Apple'). Then plant seed as early as you can (more on this below) without letting any seedlings grow to have stems thicker than a pencil in your garden in our coldest months, which are December and January. Not every seed source tells the day length adaptation of their onion varieties. If you are not sure, ask the supplier.

In the previous paragraph, I wrote “as early as you can.” That sounds vague, but it is determined by your microclimate and you can learn it quickly by trial and error. If you are inland, the colder winters will slow the growth of onion seedlings, so you may be able to start seeds in the fall and have them still be so small by December that they will form bulbs in the spring rather than bloom. Try September. Near the coast, with a milder winter, the seedlings might grow bigger, so the safest idea is to wait and plant seed at the start of February.

Alternatively, in any microclimate, you can plant out onion sets or transplants. Onion sets are little bulbs that have been forced into dormancy and then are sold in packages at the nursery. (If you buy them in advance, store them at room temperature to avoid providing the cold that would stimulate any that are already thicker than a pencil to bloom.)

You can grow your own transplants, starting seeds a couple of months before you plant them in your garden. If you grow them indoors on a windowsill, they will not get the winter chill they would get outdoors, so when you plant them out, in February, even if they have pencil-thick stems, they should form bulbs instead of blooming.

You can also buy bundles of bare-root seedlings from a nursery (local or mail order) to plant at the right time.

Green onions (scallions) are the same species as globe onions. You can pull any young onion plants to eat as green onions before they form bulbs. Some gardeners sort the sets, then plant the smaller ones to make globe onions and use the larger ones — which might be big enough to cause them to bloom — to grow green onions. (If you know which you plan to harvest as green onions, plant them a bit deeper, for a longer white base.)

While correct variety choice and planting time will take you far toward success, make sure the soil is fertile, keep weeds down (the narrow onion plant has little defense against shading by weeds), water regularly until the bulb is formed and lower stem begins to flatten, then stop watering to reduce the chance of decay.

When the stems near the ground allow it, bend the plants over; this will help the plants go dormant, so the onions will last longer in post-harvest storage. When the stem and leaves are all brown, dig the bulbs and keep them in a cool, dry place.

May you “know your onions,” and may they be big, juicy and delicious!

Daffodil Aftercare

    Daffodils thrill us with cheery yellow, white, or bicolor flowers in February, or even January. They often do naturalize in our region, coming back to bloom again year after year.

            If they are growing in pots they are unlikely to bloom the following year, and are probably best discarded after you enjoy the flowers. If the daffodils are growing, instead,  in your garden, you have a good chance of getting them to naturalize.

Your first post-bloom task is to remove any stems that bore flowers. This keeps the plant from wasting energy on them, especially should the spent flowers form seeds.

Your second task is to care for the post-bloom leaves. They need water and unshaded light until they start to die back, but not fertilizer. (Add fertilizer as you plant the bulbs in fall and work a little into the soil in future autumns.)

Do not tie daffodil leaves in knots. I don’t know how this common practice began, but it limits the plants’ ability to photosynthesize, so they can’t make good bulbs to bloom the following spring.

Finally, keep the soil where daffodils are planted relatively dry in summer. Daffodil ancestors are from summer-dry Mediterranean regions. The bulbs may decay in wet summer soil.

Gardeners experience two problems in following this advice. They are: 1. unsightly leaves after bloom and 2. Finding a place where daffodils will not be too wet in the summer.

If these problems seem insurmountable, you could treat the bulbs as annuals. Just dig them out, as you would non-naturalizing tulip plants, discard them, and buy new ones in fall.

To hide the leaves as they decline, you can use companion plants. Good choices include many small flowering annual plants, including nigella, viola, sweet alyssum, or, my favorite, the pink and lavender-flowered Virginia stock (Malcolmia maritima). Taller plants, such as California poppy or nasturtium, must be managed so they don’t over-shade the daffodils.

While daffodils can take some summer water, don’t try  to naturalize them in a bed you will be watering amply in summer. Make sure nearby plants are somewhat drought-tolerant, and if you use drip irrigation, make sure you don’t have an emitter right next to a daffodil. You can put daffodil bulbs among other summer-dry plants, such as succulents, for a fresh and attractive combination.

I took this photo in the wonderful garden of Harland Hand, in on a west-facing hillside in El Cerrito, some years ago, when he was alive and tending his own garden. It changed the way I understood daffodils. They are well adapted to a climate with wet winters and dry summers. So are the Babiana bulbs blooming in the lower right. The succulents in this small bit of garden are adapted to low moisture in general, but can tolerate our winter rain if the soil is well-drained. 

Tools to Spare Your Wrists--Garden Ergonomics

Two Tools to Spare Your Wrists

 

            The neutral, natural position for your wrist is unbent, as it is when your hands are hanging at your sides. When you bend your hand forward, you are “flexing” your wrist. Hand bent backward, your wrist is “extended.” Holding your wrists in one of these not-neutral positions for extended periods can cause repetitive strain injuries. People vary in how much bent-wrist work they can tolerate. Gardening is one activity that can be stressful for your wrists.

            Here are two hand tools that let you keep your wrist in a neutral position while you garden. They’re a good idea whether you are trying to prevent damage or cope with an existing problem. And they are very comfortable to use.

The first is the cobrahead weeder and cultivator. This “made in U.S.A.” tool consists of a single curved prong with a flattened, pointed end that you use to reach behind a weed and extract it, or to cultivate small areas of soil. The designer calls it a “steel fingernail.” The steel of the blade is forged and tempered, then coated with an organic polymer to prevent rust. The handle is made of reprocessed polypropylene and flax. 

This is the mini-cobrahead, showing its use in removing a weed in tight quarters.

The cobrahead is 13 inches from handle tip to top of curve. I’ve owned one for some years, and find it very useful. The company’s newest product, the mini-cobrahead, which is 8.75 inches long, is lighter, has a nice feel in the hand, and provides more control. It is also easier to use if you are working in a tight space. You can purchase cobrahead tools at cobrahdead.com, or by calling 866-962-6272. Locally, cobrahead hand tools are carried in San Francisco and Oakland by most Cole Hardware stores.

The second wrist-saving tool is the Radius Ergonomic Trowel. It has a deeply curved handle that, to one familiar with other trowels, looks quite extreme. But when you pick it up, and hold it as if to dig, you see that your wrist is neutral, and feel the comfort this offers when using the tool. The handle, which is polypropylene, a soft nonlatex rubber substitute, is comfortable to hold, and the trowel is easy to control. This tool is made of strong, lightweight, nonrusting aluminum.

Radius makes several other hand digging tools with the same curved handle, including a narrower trowel with inches marked off to show you how deep you are digging—handy should you be, for example, planting bulbs at certain depths. Radius tools can be purchased at radiusgarden.com, or by calling 734-222-8044.

Note that when you hold the Radius Trowel you have a straight wrist.

Tools that prevent any part of your body from being in stressful positions that can cause injury, or which are more comfortable for someone who is already injured, or who has arthritis, are called “ergonomic.” Both of these featured tools are also easier on arthritic hands by having wide, easy-to-grasp handles. There are also hand pruning tools that have ergonomic designs. They have features such as easy-grip handles or ones that rotate as you close the blades to make a cut.

In addition to selecting ergonomic garden tools, look at how you use your hands all day and night. Try to choose ergonomic tools in general, or position the tools you use—keyboards, kitchen tools, sports tools, bicycle handlebars—so that your wrists stay neutral. If you must do tasks with bent wrists, take frequent breaks. Even the position of your wrists at night, bent or straight, can make a difference.

Some Soil Basics--Soil, Potting Mix, Amendment, Compost

What is soil? What is potting mix? What is Compost? When to use each and why.

Soil contains 5 ingredients: Mineral particles, water, air, living creatures, and dead organic matter. What plants need to get from soil is: minerals (from dead organic matter and sometimes from the mineral particles), water, oxygen (because every living cell respires, using the air’s oxygen and releasing its carbon dioxide), and sometimes symbiotic relationships with living creatures (such as mycorrhizae—which rarely need to be purchased).

The mineral particles in soil range from tiny clay particles to the larger sand particles, with the in-between-sized silt particles. The best for plant growth is a mix of the three, with more sand than the other two, such as sandy loam, though other mineral particle proportions can be improved by adding organic matter.

The nutrients plants need to get from organic matter are largely nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, which are released from dead organic matter as it is digested by soil creatures, including soil-dwelling bacteria earthworms, fungi, and actinomycetes. Plants don’t need the complex molecules of organic substances, just the simple elements.

In nature, organic matter enters soil when plants or animals die or when animals urinate or leave manure. Most organic matter falls on the surface, then earthworms and other creatures carry it underground. Burrowing animals also produce some organic matter when they die or defecate underground, though animal burrows are also relatively near to the surface. Nutrients from this organic matter seep deeper with rainfall or artificial watering and are also left behind in deeper soil when plant roots die there. In nature, plants expect a gradient between the amount of nutrients from organic matter and the amount of oxygen, from greater amounts at the surface to lower amounts in deep soil. (There are fewer living creatures in deep soil, simply because there is less oxygen, so if organic matter is down there, nothing will digest it to provide plants with nutrients.)

Organic matter helps the soil hold onto more water longer and still have air spaces. All organic matter provides some nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and trace minerals. Not all organic matter is rich in nitrogen, which is the nutrient most likely to be low in local soils. For growing vegetables, we want to add more nitrogen than, say a for a shade tree or an ornamental shrub, because we want vegetables to grow big and grow fast. Some organic materials are so low in nitrogen that soil creatures will not be able to digest them unless they also use some nitrogen from other materials in the soil, such as nitrogen fertilizers we have added. Low-nitrogen organic materials include sawdust and shredded bark. These are high in complex plant carbohydrates, such as cellulose or lignin, for which we use the shorthand “carbon.” Others are high in nitrogen. If an organic material does contain plenty of nitrogen, we consider the organic matter to be fertilizer, however we need to be careful not to use too much of high nitrogen materials, since they can burn plant roots.  

When we consider organic matter for adding to soil, we speak of the carbon/nitrogen or C/N ratio. Ideally we want to dig in some organic matter that is about 30/1. This will improve the water and air capacities of the soil as well as providing nutrients. The C/N ratio of sawdust or shredded bark is in the range of 200/1 to 700/1. That of garden wastes is 25/1 to 80/1, depending on whether it is fresh and green or dry and fibrous. That of kitchen scraps is about 17/1 and fresh animal manure is also quite nitrogen-rich. A good way to balance these widely varying materials is to compost them—mix them up and let them rot together for a while. Ideally, we’d mix materials to aim for a finished C/N ratio of 30/1. (We call mixtures of aged organic matter compost no matter what the end C/N ratio might be, but what went into it will determine how high the nitrogen content of the finished product can be. When a compost is made of only garden waste, which is modest in nitrogen content, you probably will need to dig another source of nitrogen into your soil as well.)

If you want to increase the organic matter in your soil, buy materials that are labeled “amendment” or “compost” and dig a layer into the soil surface along with any fertilizer you might be using. (You can also spread organic materials on the soil surface as a mulch. For vegetables you want to use s small-particled mulch, or something that will decay relatively fast, not big bark chunks that must be raked aside before you can replant.)

Potting mix, container mix, landscape mixes and similar products are often labeled “soil,” which they are not. They most often get their bulk from sawdust or shredded bark, that low-nitrogen stuff. (And plants don’t really need that much organic matter of any type. Three percent is usually plenty.) Potting mixes may also contain mineral particles that are inert or nearly so as far as the plants are concerned, such as perlite, pumice, or even pea gravel. They may contain small amounts of aged manure or worm castings, which is a good thing, but which does not make them adequate to use as garden soil. They are typically sterilized, so as purchased they do not contain any living creatures. This is fine if you are growing houseplants, but not ideal for garden soil. They may also contain chemical fertilizers or even pesticides—read the label carefully.

If you need to fill an empty garden bed or raise the soil level in your plot significantly, the best idea is to raise it using plain soil, such as sandy loam, then dig some compost and, if you like, other organic fertilizer, into the top 6-8 inches of the soil. (or you could stop adding soil at 8 inches from the top, dig a couple of inches of compost in, then add 8 more inches and dig in twice as much compost as you just did.) This imitates nature, in that the bed will have more organic material and higher fertility near the surface, less deeper in the soil. . (If you are making a Dearborn garden bed much deeper than it was, or just adding soil to raise its level in the bed, it would be best to take out the old soil, which someone has been amending and fertilizing for years, add the fresh sandy loam, and then put the old soil back on top, and then dig in some amendment and fertilizer.)

Potting mix or container mix are best used in a container 2 feet or less deep, the kind with one or a couple of holes for drainage. They are great for this use, water-retentive and providing good drainage. However, after a while, container mixes collapse. This is when the wise gardener will repot the plant in fresh mix. Potting or container mix are not designed for beds with bottoms open to the soil, or for any use that is over 2 feet deep. When a potting mix is used in a deep raised bed, a problem will ensue in a year or two when the stuff collapses.  The plant roots will then lack air, and the bed will need lots of fertilizer to supplement the carbon-rich wood products that remain. The gardener may spend a lot of money adding more potting mix and fertilizer, or dig it out and start all over with fresh potting mix or, better idea, soil. There are so many names of products sold in bags now that it becomes confusing, but if you stick with potting mix for containers two feet or less deep, and, for garden beds open to the soil beneath them, use soil with organic matter (well-made compost, soil amendment, maybe some extra fertilizer) dug into the top 6-8 inches, you can't go wrong.

I explored the web site of Lyngsø Garden Products (in the SF Bay Area) which is where we have obtained the turkey manure-based compost for the past couple of years. They sell sandy loam, and have a very nice explanation of what it is and what it’s for. They also sell many other “soil” products. I noted that some of them were a lot cheaper than sandy loam—probably because they contain so much sawdust or shredded bark. They also sell Organic Diestel Structured Compost, the turkey-manure-based compost. It’s very pricy, and worth it I think. Lyngsø sells by the bag or will deliver as little as a cubic yard of material for a flat fee of $85. They are in San Carlos. 

Now let us consider for a minute how volume of these materials is calculated. Soil, amendment, compost, etc. are sold by the cubic foot or cubic yard. Bags of soil, compost, etc. for outdoor use contain 1 or 2 cubic feet. Any more and you could not lift them. There are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard (3’ x 3’ x 3’).

A bed that is 8 x 8 feet and 2 feet deep requires, as an example, 128 cubic feet, or about 4.74 cubic yards of soil to fill, or a bit less to give yourself headroom and room for some amendment, say about 4.25 cubic yards.

A final tip: When adding a material different from what is below it, it is always wise to add a layer a few inches thick first, and mix it with the layer below it, then add the rest. This avoids having an abrupt transition, which water may not readily pass through.

At Lyngsøgarden.com:

Sandy Loam is $62.00 a cubic yard, $3.50 /sk (sk, for some reason, means cubic foot bag)

Organic Diestel Structured Compost is $145.00 a cubic yard, $6.50 /sk

Note that the information about filling garden beds with soil, not potting mix is also explained in the soils chapter of my book Golden Gate Gardening,

Garden Tip

Got Pests? Try Botanical Oils

            Into every beautiful and productive garden a little nasty pest activity may fall. Aphids may infest the kale, powdery mildew coat the leaves of zucchini, black spot mar the rose leaves, or little white flies flutter while their nymphs are sucking the sap from a shrub.

            In the early days of modern pesticides, incredibly toxic chemicals were sold to home gardeners to manage pests. These days, the products we use are more likely to kill pests without threatening our health as well. A good example is oil-based pesticide.

            Petroleum oil in water, with a sticker-spreader to keep it from settling out of solution, was long used to spray woody plants in winter. It was called “dormant oil.” If you sprayed it when leaves or flowers were present, it burned them. Because of this, other, often less environmentally friendly, chemicals were used in the summer.

            However at some point, researchers learned that it was sulfur impurities in the petroleum oils that made it toxic to leaves. So they refined the sulfur out and sold the new products as “superior” or “summer” oils. You could safely spray them on leaves and flowers all summer, as long as the temperature was below 90 degrees F when you sprayed.

            Oil kills by clogging the breathing pores of insects or actually exploding the spores and other cells of fungus. And as research continued, It was found that many kinds of botanical oils will also do the job. Products based on oil of canola, soy, linseed, sesame, even jojoba (a desert plant) began to appear (read the active ingredients list). Some of these sprays include aromatic oils, such as thyme and peppermint, which might offer some repellant action.

            I encourage you to try these products, based on renewable, even edible, oil sources, in your garden. I have permanently stopped an aphid infection of kale with a single, thorough spray of a botanical oil product. However it is usually necessary to respray every week or two to continue the protection. Also, to control diseases, oils are most effective as a preventative or at the very first signs. If you spray early, you can kill spores on plant surfaces, but once a fungus grows deep inside the plant, where sprays can’t reach, it is often too late. Follow directions on labels and watch your plants.

            Another oil product that kills insects and some disease spores is Neem oil. It also is toxic for insects to eat and kind of disgusting to them, so reduces feeding and even egglaying. However, the ingredient, azadirachtin, is a growth retardant for bees, so I prefer to try other oils first, or save neem oil for pests not listed on labels of botanical oil products. Azadirachtin breaks down in sunlight in 100 hours. Follow directions on label, including about interval between spraying food crops and eating them.

           

A New Protector Against Burrowing Animals

This spring I found that a burrowing animal was eating plants, roots and tops, in my small front garden. I know it was not a mole, because moles don't eat plants, just insects and earthworms. Could have been a gopher, but by the amount it ate in a night, I thought maybe something smaller, maybe a RAT! (The rats that burrow are called sewer rats; the ones that don't, roof rats. Rats have burrowed in my backyard before so this seemed a good guess.)

Whatever it was, my Chinese forget-me-nots, the ones I grew lovingly from seed and transplanted into the garden, were disappearing night by night. Then whatever it was started in on the primroses I just bought and set out, and the large 'Moonglow' yellow yarrow was losing branches, then roots. Then it ate most of the tops off of two x kellereri yarrows!  These were divisions of my original plant-which is one of my favorites. Something had to happen.

I dug out all of the yarrow, both 'Moonglow' and  Kellereri, and what was left of the primroses and put them all in pots on the back porch. Then I cleared away and found the place the varmint had blocked up the opening of its burrow. I dug it out, exposing the hole. The varmint had replugged it the next morning. I repeated. It repeated. I repeated. After many repeats, over several days, I decided I had to escalate. I have heard that water down the burrow can discourage a burrowing pest, but doubted it in a large garden, but in my 10 x 12 foot front garden, maybe it would work. I wanted to tell the varmint that this was not a good place for a home, before it ate everything left there. At this point about a quarter of the tiny space was a wreck. My husband was beginning to ask whether maybe I should be looking for a trap. I said hold on, let's see if this works.

So, the next day, I dug the plug out again, got the hose, attached a jet nozzle, and put it down the hole. Turned on the water. Most of it stayed in the hole. But the next say, the plug was back.

Over the course of a week or so, I dug out the burrow plug 8 or 10 times, used the hose 3 times. And then the varmint stopped replugging the hole. 

During the battle, I decided to replant a couple of plants in gopher baskets. And here is where my problem led to a discovery that will be useful to other gardeners. When I went over to San Francisco's Flowercraft nursery, they offered me a new kind of basket, made of a soft stainless steel wire mesh. So this is what I have used, and have written about it in my May 8th, 2016 SF Chronicle column.They are called Grow Master Baskets. To learn more about them and see who sells them, see westernplantingsolutions.com or call 530-751-3366.

These baskets are less expensive than the old kind, easier to handle, and come in many sizes.  The company suggests fitting a basket over the rootball like a glove, but I have used baskets that are a bit larger than present rootballs, spreading the baskets in a wider planting hole, and putting some soil in them, then setting the plants in the soil.That way the plant has room to grow more roots and still be protected.

'Moonglow' yarrow plant in a Grow Master anti-gopher basket

When I first used the basket, the varmint was still active. Because I had used a somewhat larger basket than the rootball, there was enough of it to roll up over the plant and secure with some plant-tie that I ran through some of the openings in the mesh. This protected the top of the plant as well as the roots while it got re-established, and while I figured out what to do next.

But now I have uncovered all of the protected plants. The 'Moonglow' yarrow is about to bloom. The x kellereri yarrows are still recovering in pots, but they shall return. And one Chinese forget-me-not survived to bloom beautifully!