Plant Genetics Will Save Us-- or Not!

 

The garden catalogs are arriving. With each catalog is the mandatory "new" or "improved" varieties of seeds, plants, and ornamentals for our gardens. I would be happy if some of the hype were as true for the home gardener as these promises have been for agribusiness.

You only need to check corn yield statistics over the last 50 years to marvel at the wonder of plant genetics. Similar stories from statistics are our there for most of the major grain crops of the world, along with potatoes and alfalfa. The trend lines versus the actual statistics are probably the effect of severe extremes in the weather patterns in any given year.

But gardening, like politics and economics, tends to be local.

View of a Garden: Garden Walk 2013

Pagoda dogwood 'Golden Shadows', the other pictures can be seen by clicking on the "Read More"

On Saturday, 240 new sets of eyes saw my garden, most for the very first time.  This after Wednesday's Master Gardeners walk through of around 50 people.  These (pictured) are the plants and things I was asked most about.

In general, I was surprised at the level of discernment among this group of garden walkers.  Many of them were gardeners themselves, although vegetable or fruit gardeners, so these items, although not the most interesting and not the coolest things in my yard garnered a lot of attention.  But overall, lot of them asked if mine was a "real" garden?

I thought this was the very best question I was asked, although the first time I was asked it, I was a bit perplexed.  I stopped a moment and digressed a bit.  I told them the whole garden walk process starts almost a year in advance (just in case they didn't know).  As it was, there are always things that a gardener plans to do and stuff that we should be doing that doesn't get done.  The idea that my garden would be on the walk pushed me to finally deal with some of those issues.

I went on to explain how the long border had originally been created ten years ago, with newspaper, and wood chips, and leaves raked and collected from the library lawn a block away, as I had NO trees at the time.  I told them when I came to this lot I wanted to garden as organically as possible.  I told them how I lugged those leaves home and mowed them into the beds for a couple years.  How I composted everything organic I could find.  And how I still battle the terrible quack grass that is my lawn and how it runs from lawn to beds. And, how I had made the decision not to use Round-up because I have my own well and the garden sits on top of my drinking water, how I could probably dig my next well with a spoon, I'm so close to that water table.

I talked about how I don't use lawn chemicals, and the Village Maintenance Person dumps wood chips for me and how they are incorporated into the shrub and alley border, how I compost in place, everything but quack grass, weeds with seed heads, and really big sticks.   I talked about how when I dig a wider bed or a new area or remove sod I find the equivalent of beach sand, great drainage, but...

I talked about how I felt clean crisp bed lines is what draws a border into one cohesive "all."  and yet how the early long border has a couple ton of rock dragged in from my father's local dairy farm and how dragging it back would be too onerous, but how do you deal with it?

I talked about how I had redone the rock border 3 times in ten years.  First to weed it and raise the rock up as it sinks over time.  Second, to again raise it up and make an attempt to prohibit the quack grass entry into my long border.   I had put down REALLY heavy landscape fabric only to have the quack use it as a rooting mat and weaving itself into an un-weed-able, impenetrable barrier.

And how last fall I had dug everything up in a 20 foot section at a time and threw it on two tarps and laid down the rock yet again and replanted the long border.  And finally I had come across what I now think is "The Solution": a six inch deadzone between the rock and the lawn.   Finally, a clean bedline!

I was asked if I fertilize?  This year I did.  The last two years, I did not.  I did not fertilize my lawn.  I mostly fertilized roses and clematis.  I didn't fertilize my veggies.  Some years I mulch with compost; some years with wood chips.  The year I exclusively used wood chips I added chemical nitrogen.  I used to fertilize with cow manure, until there seemed to be too much of a thistle problem at my dads.

My worst weed?  Quack grass, clover, and turkey foot.  I seldom see creeping Charlie-- when I do it is all hands on deck. I don't tolerate violets and I am still eradicating the last of the lady bells, code name "campanula horribilis".


Do I spray?  No fungicides, I use 1:1 2 % milk to water and spray it every 3-5 days.  Yes, fungal stuff has been terrible this year, but my ninebark had that fungal disease that tends to kill ninebarks here and it appears nearly clean of it at this point.  Vigilance and good tool sanitation is key.

I explained the village's composting/chipping program, and the "too mulch of a good thing problem".  I told how I trim my shrubs and throw the trimmings and raked pine needles under shrubs in the long border.  I told how the duff under the iconic white pine is so fluffy, I can dig planting holes with my fingers because I never remove much there, just add mini pine bark nuggets each May.


And I talked about starting my own seedlings, cuttings and overwintering most of the annuals they see.

These were more the types of questions I had hoped to have.

I have been sweating the ornamentation aspects.  I overheard several comments on how I nailed it with my signature green apple paint and ultra-modern "green" squiggle.

Bountiful Garden, Yours in Exchange for a Freezer

The family garden is fulfilling its promise. My brother with his growing family (three boys three and under) and myself and Handsome Son (college-bound), and nominally my parents will all eat from its bounty. My brother has been diligent in his role of chief waterer, an important job this year, to which he has really stepped up.

I'm the grower, and I have been notably successful with everything this year except germination in the garden of spinach (but we will be having a fall crop, rest assured!).

Even with eating fresh from the garden everyday, and my canning and drying and putting up different oils, a lot of our bounty will be frozen. I have hunted recipes for edamame and amaranth. We have a juicer for the grapes. We are already out of freezer space. Time to get a second freezer.

So my brother and I have decided as the family garden is actually visible from a major highway (car count of at least 10,000 car a day, probably a LOT more) with an exit right THERE, that we should sell our bounty, picking it literally in front of our customers' eyes. We take that money and buy whatever sort of freezer we can afford. Future income a better water supply (rather than hoses from the house) and a green house (drool).

My brother, very pie-in-the-sky, decided instead of words we should paint pictures, a picture being worth a thousand words. Pictures with the crunch of a fresh cucumber, the snap of a bean, the juiciness of a tomato...

My brother is a fair artist. An oil he did of his wife hangs in her dressing room. You can see the love with which he captured her expression and you can easily see it is my sister-in-law, but...

So, "Yo!"

"You painting these pictures?" I query.

"No,...I'm just a hack... you are. You have more time."

Ugh. Thusly decided, I was given the job of painting the sign(s). Turns out we need lots of these 10" x 3' sign blanks painted with sweet corn, cukes, peppers, beans, you get the idea.

I wish I had pictures of the others. As my sister-in-law says, "they are so dang cute!"

Maybe I'll take some pictures of the others, I don't know. I spent some time working for a muralist. They are sorta cute, without faces you understand, and easily conveying at 65+ MPH that "we got some good organic tomatoes over here!"

Maybe in a different life I might have made a living doing art or writing, but do you know anyone who really makes a living from their art or words these days?

Faithful Companion, Cinnamon, gets aromatherapy from Handsome Son's athletic shoes and flip flops. She says a few minutes and all the creative impulses pass.

Fused glass buttons, pendants and a dragonfly plate I made in a fused glass class I recently took from the artist of Blessings Glassworks.

Some jewelry I made. You can probably tell I'm self-taught!

A wire-wrapped bead collection that will go into an as yet,unfinished bracelet. Someday the creative impulse will certainly pass!

So if you see the juicy tomato or crunchy cucumber sign, stop and say hi!

Wonderful Ideas and Take Aways from the Vegetable and Fruit Gardens at the Chicago Botanical Gardens

The Chicago Botanical Gardens are obviously testing the best way to stake tomatoes. This plot is demonstrating three different methods: no stake, square caging (I think using pea fence) and tying to staked wires. The varieties in this plot are all heirloom varieties.


This 6" by 6" slant cut and routered cedar posting with eye hooks and wires is an elegant trellising system for growing grapes. We have not yet put up the trellising for the 'Reliance' grapes in the family berry and fruits area. I might have to copy this idea.


Cabbages grown in beautifully compost enriched soils at the CBG. My cabbage look almost this good. We are two weeks behind the CBG veggie plot, but our soil looks no where near this nice.



The family garden has been difficult this year simply because of the weather and mechanical difficulties with the Mantis tiller. We are seeing lots of greens from the garden so far. We have allowed the 'Honeoye' strawberries to put out the fruit, although we probably should have picked off the flower buds as they formed. The picking of strawberries into tiny buckets has been too much fun for my two-year old twin nephews. They already have the eat two pick one method down pat!


Three Sisters planting method: hilled corn interplanted with beans and squash. This is an idea I am also using in the family garden. The legume I chose was edible soybeans, edamame. I soaked them for a half an hour. I have since read this is a no-no. The germination was not was I had hoped. Hopefully we will have enough to get a taste and decide whether we would like to perfect our growing methods.

I loved these plots. Obviously, the gardeners who work and volunteer here do, too. Their tender care shows.

Gardening and Community

Community gardening plots by Goodwill in Outagamie County


A raised bed stringed off in the "square-foot garden" style

One of the gardens featured on the Outagamie Master Gardeners Garden Walk was a garden at the Goodwill Industries Menasha . The purpose of their garden as stated on the linked site is :

"Community Garden Partnership provides opportunities for diverse groups
to share their experiences and knowledge with other gardeners
at a variety of community locations while also promoting such
things as self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship, creation
of healthy civic space, and donations to food banks."

When I visited the Community Garden the docent from the Master Gardeners organization quoted that phrase for me pretty much verbatim. He intended to be my guide through the garden. I really didn't need a guide to help me keep my feet off the tomatillos and didn't want to get into my own back story, so I told him my son and I would be fine on our own.

It was probably rude. My son told me I was and probably hurt his feelings. He probably had had very few visitors all day and wanted to do his part to contribute. We did sit down at the picnic table when we were done and chat up him and his fellow docent, because then, I did have some questions.

The garden is roped off into 10' x 10' squares. In the small space the entire plot envelopes, the soil type changes radically on a sharp diagonal line from a sandy loam to clay. It is in the shadow of a major highway and lots of developed and black-topped areas. I would assume some topsoil may have been hauled in for lawn at some point accounting for this major demarcation.

To further cut down on growing space there are tiny foot paths around the raised beds in any gardener's plot. It appears one Gardener took his entire plot and planted 10' rows of sweet potatoes. Then, in an act of gardening outside the lines, planted hills of corn just outside his stringed partition.

The plot with the biggest tomatoes, and best looking everything else was using commercial synthetic fertilizers and had recently dusted his cucumbers (or more likely zucchini) with Sevin (which is not an organic pesticide, and while it is decidedly a chemical that can get the job done, is not a favorite of mine).

There were no cabbage, no greens (other than what appeared to be a self-seeded Asian mustard from a previous year's community garden), no potatoes, no chard, no beets, no other Asian veggies, no peas, no carrots, no radishes, and no herbs.

There was corn, planted outside the lines and corn planted in the square-foot garden.

There were tomatoes, although they either looked pretty rough and so tiny that with our weather time for fruiting will be doubtful; or looked like ones bought potted and ready to bloom and planted last week.

There were beans. There was one gardener who erected hooped wire fencing over his beds for some sort of vertical gardening.

There were lots of weeds and little well-worked soil. There were few labels other than "yellow beans" or "tomato".

In other words, the gardens provided little information and looked a bit rough.

In addition to providing food for gardeners and food pantries, the gardens are supposed to be a way to share knowledge from newbies from experienced gardeners and tips on different methods from peer to peer.

I didn't see a lot of anything I would want to try.

The raised beds weren't really "raised". More, they were just sort of "boxed". The purpose of a raised bed is to provide a fluffy, improved soil bed and/or bring up the level of a bed to allow less enabled gardeners better access and ergonomic position while gardening. It seems the beds there missed all that.

I also had the obvious misconception that the gardens would be touting environmentally sustainable practices. There was no composting being done or being used. There was no community compost pile.

When I spoke to the docents, they told me that when the community garden idea was put together the organizers felt they could not put any limitations on organic versus synthetic. I totally get that, but I was hoping minimally for some sustainable methods.

Another aspect that bothered me, in regards to the teaching aspect was lack of identification of varietal types. Personally, I feel this is the biggest challenge to gardeners. In zone 4, I feel we are often just lumped in with the greater Midwest which is predominantly zone 5-7 and sent transplants that do well in the region versus our local area.

When I expressed my concern over the loss of varietal information for plants that will reliably do well here, the elder docent (who was a Master Gardener) replied, "Generally, regardless how well any particular vegetable does a gardener will get enough produce overall to make the garden worthwhile."

This response floored me. If early settlers to Wisconsin in any area had zero germination for their 'Jubilee' sweetcorn, as I did this year, they couldn't run out to the seed store and reliable buy more seed the next year. If their potato crop developed late blight, there was starvation.

This is a little like the "Let them eat cake attitude" which has gotten politicians the world over in hot water or worse. It is a bit like the attitude prevalent after Katrina. "They" were warned, why didn't "they" leave. It was the poorer people with no big SUVs, credit cards, and more importantly cash nor "place to leave to" that stayed behind in New Orleans. Policy makers not of that socio-economic group didn't understand why "they" would stay.

Fortunately, I can run out the next spring and buy some other sweet corn seed, but if I wanted to eat local and had planted only 'Jubilee', I wouldn't be eating sweetcorn this year. By the way, although it is not a crop yet, I did get great germination from sweetcorn 'Early Sunglow, even with our cold, wet spring.

I will go back and check out this community garden sometime late July, and other community gardens in the Fox Valley because gardening is a learning and growing experience.

What to do in the garden, today, March 28?

Nothing.

Still over a foot of snow covers anything that remotely looks like a garden here in the Central Sands region of Wisconsin, zone 4. My Dad says we are 20 degrees below average temperature. He's a farmer. He should know; he's been growing things a tad longer than I have.

So today, my garden activities center around my seedlings in my growing racks in my extra space in my loft. I thought I would include some pictures of this growing rack, dimensions, and building tips.








Although I do quite a bit of hammering, sawing, nailing, etc.; I am far from a pro. I have built a deck ("cobble"might be a good word there), built a couple fences, and remodeled more than one or two bathrooms, and have developed some skills. I am far from a finish/trim carpenter, but this light rack was easy to build.

It measures about 20" deep, about 5 feet high, and 44" wide. I built it using (4) 2" x 2 x 8' pieces. I cut 36" off each of the 8' pieces and then cut the 36" pieces in half again. Having those (8) 18" piece is key to getting the right dimensions as I use 4 standard 10" by 20" flats without drain holes to keep everything nice and dry.

As this light rack holds four trays across (the width part), I purchased (4) 1" by 4" board and cut each in half. If I was doing it over I would go with 6 though. With six, each shelf would have three of these as tray supports.

I assembled this rack with screws, pre-drilling my holes and "L-brackets". These L-brackets on the corners with the 18" pieces top and bottom and two equi-distant spaces between form the sides of my rack. The brackets are key. Pre-drilling is important. Don't skip that step, and it helps to have a helper to hold things together during assembly.

I had the screws in my cast-offs bucket. I purchased the wood and brackets (8 in all, one at each corner.) I think the rack itself cost me just about $20.

I had a couple shop lights to start. I hang these with chain. I prefer to use 2 per shelf. If you use one only put 2 trays on the shelf and put them parallel with the width. The chains are important to keep the lights within 4" of the growing seedlings. I use regular florescent light bulbs with about 3,500 lumens. I don't use special light bulbs. The lumen thing is important, though. The higher the lumen the better. I think the minimum you should attempt to grow with is 3,200. A couple years back I bought a light meter and it really helped me nail down the issues I had with whether there was enough light or not.



I plug all my lights into a circuit panel things with a switch so I can flip one switch to turn a whole rack on or off. That plugs into a GFI-wired outlet. This space is planned to eventually be a bathroom, so the GFI-circuit makes sense for now, watering plants and using lights are not a good combo; and in the future for the bathroom. I have tripped the circuit more than once with dripping water.

The second plug in the outlet is where I plug in my one heat mat. This allows me to use the heat mat even at night to encourage those seed to sprout, rather than plug it into the light panel and turn it off. I also use two screws to attach/stabilize it to the wall.

My son, who was then probably 14 and had never built anything before, helped hold pieces of this together when I built it a couple years back. Yesterday, he and I were out shopping for a couple of new bulbs for the rack. We walked by a really fancy, metal, pre-made rack priced at a couple hundred dollars, and he commented, "Wow, Mom! Ours is really nice, and it holds twice as many trays as this one and only cost us a few bucks!"

Yes. I thought. Yes, it did.

Transplants and Berries

One of the ideas in the garden this year is to develop perennial berry patches. My brother is actually going to build raised bed enclosures for blueberries, blackberries, and hazelnuts. The east side of the enclosures I figure will be an excellent place to grow spring peas and then later tie up the tomatoes and some Asian yard-long pole beans.

My brother is also going to build a number of raised beds. The raised beds are going to grow the salad bowl veggies and herbs. These beds are going to be the source of the very intensive garden and hopefully the only spots we will be intensively weeding as well.

My plan is to plant into thin black landscaping fabric tomatoes, zuchinni, squash, melons,and peppers. The garden is going to be laid out so that it can be cultivated with a tractor for the crops of which we will be growing significant amounts of potatoes, corn, cukes, carrots, and parsnips.

The perennial part of the garden is clustered on one side. There will be a Mount Royal plum, rhubarb, June-bearing and ever-bearing strawberry beds, July-bearing and fall-bearing raspberries, blackberies, hazelnuts, Northland and Blueray blueberries, Frontenac and Reliance grapes. I have a Lapin cherry, Honeycrisp apple, and Moorpark apricot in my own yard. My brother has a very old apple orchard he has been attempting to renovate. This is why I will not be spending a lot of time on the orchard part of our "Food Security Plan".

In the herb bed we will have chives, garlic chives, parsley, thyme, oregano, tarragon. I really like dill and the seed and vegetable producing Florence fennel. I already have chives to be moved into the garden, I have Italian flat-leaved parsley and Florence fennel starts growing in my grow light set up.

Transplants! I have Cayenne peppers and sweet red Carmen peppers. Tomatoes: Olpalka, Sweet 100, Super Beefsteak, Roma, Siberian, and Bloody Butcher. I really like Chocolate Cherry tomatoes and as they are an heirloom, I save seed each year. This year, I have not yet found my seed from last year, so I am a little worried I am not going to get those started this year.

I have spinach. I figure I could start them in the garden, but I can start haarvesting earlier if I have some starts. I also have the pointed Wakefield cabbage, Swiss Chard Primo Rossa. I will direct sow the Bright Lights variety. Also I have kale, savoy-type cabbages, Calabrese broccoli, and golden tomatillos.

Order Among Chaos

Living in Wisconsin amid all the heated debate and protests over budgets and union issues, it is easy to see the world as possibly spinning out of control. Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, all seem distant. Their woes, though, seem capable of directly influencing lives here on a very local level. When I see the price of gas at the pump spike 16 cents in two days, I have to wonder where this is all going.

The answer is control what you can. So, plant a garden, or plant several!

Planting a garden to ensure a source of those perennial fruits and berries that might become expensively dear in the coming months and years just seems to make good sense. Good gardens all start with a plan. Start first with your goals for your garden. Make a list of those foods you really enjoy. Get real and include only those that grow well in your zone. Consider those that grow well for you and could make up a large part of your diet. Consider how many people you intend to feed.

Good gardens also include a plan. There are excellent planning tools available at www.Jungseed.com.

I already have included several perennial edibles into my yard landscaping. I have a Honeycrisp apple, a Moorpark apricot, a Seckl pear, blackberry canes, rhubarb, and blueberries. I have chives growing everywhere, and a number of other herbs including lavender as well. I bedded our two types of garlic last fall. I picked 20 quarts of strawberries off a 5' x 8' bed growing around my grape fencing which yielded approximately 20 pounds of grapes last fall.

This year, I am starting a co-op garden with my brother and sister-in-law. I think we all have the same goals. We want to control our food sources, what goes on those foods during the growing cycle, and possibly save some money in the process. We are dividing out the work and cost depending on what each of us can bring to the project. Having the knowledge and two 5-foot tall light racks, which I built myself, I am starting the seed for our transplants. They are supplying the garden space, because I have a tiny yard. My brother, being the "chain-saw carpenter" will, with my son's assistance, build some raised beds and enclosed garden areas to defend our labors from critters.

I have already planted seeds for many of our cool season transplants. They are up and growing. We are big on tomatoes, so they are next to be planted.

Seeing those tiny plant babies has given me a sense of some sort of control over some of the bigger issues facing our world. It starts on a very local level.

Plant a seed.

It's THAT Time of Year AGAIN!

Well, this time of year I can literally see the pendulum swinging back and forth. It seems each swing brings an extra three minutes or so of daylight to central Wisconsin. That's big...almost an extra half hour of sunlight every week! I can't help but pick-up seed catalogues and make a stop at Jung's in Stevens Point "just because I'm going by..."

Last year, my vegetable garden planting had its ups and downs. A lot of people were again cursed by late blight. I think late blight might actually be spreading across the area not only on the wind, but on the very transplants gardeners bring into their own gardens. I am encouraging everyone to attempt to grow their own tomato transplants and be extra vigilant of disposing any infected foliage.

Tomatoes

This year I have decided on four different tomatoe varieties: Olpalka, an heirloom paste tomato; Chocolate Cherry tomatoes, another heirloom; Superior, a super early tomato; and Supersteak. Last year, I grew a Mountain hybrid. I like the Mountain breeding: very uniform tomatoes and good resistance to blights and other diseases, but a bit on the small side, and about 7-10 later than a lot of people start picking tomatoes. With the sometimes short season, I'm not getting the number of tomatoes I'd like.

I do a lot of sauces and salsas. I need a lot of tomatoes!

I have a small yard, so I can't plant more, I need them to ripen all at once and early!

I also grew some Legend and Rutgers a neighbor gave me. They were beautiful plants and grew well. I did see some disease and I did get some decent tomatoes, but just not the number of smooth shouldered, nice beauties I wanted.

Peppers

The peppers transplants I purchased grew well. Serrano did well. I tried Serrano rather than a typical jalapeno last year. Serrano is fine for someone who wants a bit of the hot pepper kick, but can't take the heat. The Hungarian Banana peppers did well, too, as did the Cayenne peppers. The Cayenne peppers were not quite as prolific as I would have liked. The bell peppers I grew, I think it was Arthur, did not pump out the nice sized peppers I desired.

The real pepper winner in this area, were some peppers a neighbor gave me. They were a corno di toro pepper, which has to have been either Planet Hybrid or Carmen. They were given to me fully red and ripe. They were some of the sweetest red peppers I have has, no hint of hot. They were picked out of some commercially grown peppers grown by her family; they sell the green, but no one wants the red, thinking they are not sweet, but hot. Their lost was my gain. I cut and froze strips, I dried some, and canned the rest as a sweet red pepper spread.

This year I am going to start seed for the pepper Carmen. Hopefully, I can duplicate her family's commercial effort in my own garden. I am looking for some prolific cayennes like Andy (but it was sold out where I tried to get some). I like to use the cayenne in gherkins and other pickled vegetables.

Favorite Seed Companies

I'm going to plug my favorite two catalogues and online seed sources here, Jung's and Johnny's Select Seed. ( www.jungseed.com and www.johnnyseed.com )Jung's has this incredible, free, online garden planner and is a local Wisconsin company. The planner is easy to use.

Johnny's is an employee-owned company and has a great online catalogue (I like the page turning sound effects!) Pages load very quickly, considering my connection speed. Johnny's also lets you pick out your wish list, so you don't have to decide and purchase everything in one online session.

Other vegetables that were winners for me in 2010

My favorite potoato is Yukon Gold. It really is as buttery as they say. The tubers were all very uniform and well-worth growing for a special treat. I live in the middle of potato-growing country so potatoes are generally cheap for the commercially grown varieties, so checking out some of the red ones to eat fresh, fingerlings, or Yukon Golds is really the only efficient way to go.

Cucumbers had a pretty wet August. I grew Alibi, which were tasty and sweet and filled my canning needs. The Straight 8 was a nice slicer for fresh salads. I didn't get the late season yield because of over-watering right before a major rainy period.

Flat leaved parsley was a winner. I didn't care for basil "'Dani', not enough basil taste for me, although the lemony flavor was nice on the early leaves.

The long day length onions I grew did not do it for me. I am going to try and grow my own sets for leeks, onions, and scallions this year. I'll try to remember to post how that turns out.