Archive for Gardening
Grow Your Own – Lurking Beneath The Foliage
by John Weckerle
Today's Harvest
Vegetable gardeners always wonder what’s going on while they’re on vacation. We had our good friend, Russ, watering while we were gone, and the beds came through with flying colors. Well, mostly one color – green – but we’re sure our readers get the picture. In fact, the foliage had developed to the point that several zucchini were hiding in Bed 3 well enough to grow to extra-large status (forearm length in two cases). Growing zucchini large is generally not recommended, as they taste better at about medium size. Bed 1 gave us another three green bell peppers this morning. Eggplants are still relatively small. There is also a mountain of kale and a good bit of chard in Bed 1, so we’ll definitely be eating our greens this week. Hmm… Zucchini, yellow squash, kale, bell peppers; some of this could be the beginning of another batch of wyngette soup.
As for Bed 2, tomatoes are still small and green, and it looks as if we’re losing one (but only one as far as we can see) to blossom end rot. We may yet get some out of the deal. Bed 2 is also home to the winter squash, and we can see an acorn squash and two spaghetti squashes hiding in there already. The parsley’s looking good, as are all the other herbs over in Bed 1.
Next year, we’re thinking of doing something different and creating Bed 4, which would be a more traditional double-dug raised bed. This would allow for a greater rooting depth for crops like tomatoes and eggplant.
Grow Your Own – Nothing Quiet On The Western Front
by John Weckerle
It’s been some time since we’ve posted anything on the topic of garnering one’s own food from a few small boxes west of the house, so this morning we have a few photos and some updates on the progress.
Bed 1 - Lettuce, kale, chard, green peppers, sage, oregano, and thyme
Grow Your Own – The Time Of The Season
by John Weckerle
Spring was a tough proposition here in Central New Mexico, with few good weekends for planting. Wind, cold, even snow in May made for difficult conditions for getting started. Last weekend was simply too windy for putting in new plants, but it was not too windy for a trip to Parker’s Farm Greenhouse in Edgewood (at the east end of Church Street), where we picked up some lettuce, straight neck yellow squash, zucchini, eggplants, green bell peppers, and various ornamentals (for the pots on the deck). These went in this week, along with the kale, chard, and three varieties of string beans we had already started. Still to be planted are tomatoes (Martian Giant), snow peas, and butternut squash. We think we’re giving the cruciferous (cabbage family) vegetables a break this year, based on previous years’ yields and some issues with aphids.
Bed 4 was, alas, not to be this year. Work pressures and other household efforts have taken up the time to prepare it, although there’s still a chance that we might pull something together in time for winter vegetables. We are considering a larger bed, combining aspects of our raised beds and traditional double-dug gardens, with the thought that some things – tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, for example – might benefit from a greater rooting depth than our current strategy provides.
Grow Your Own: The Fantastic Four – Rise Of The Silver Sprout
by John Weckerle
Salad On The Hoof: Got Romaine? All you need is a pot, soil, water, some seeds, and a sunny window.
This past winter was a time for some, well, interesting discourse on global climate change. “Skeptics” local and nationwide heaped criticism on the concept, often using the winter weather as a springboard to dive into the muddy waters. Well, winter’s over, and it’s time to start growing – although we’ll have a brief mention of the previous season’s severity before we’re through.
Sprouts – though not those referenced in the title; again, that’s for later – are up! Tomatoes, kale, and chard were up three weeks ago. We started with tomatoes and green bell peppers to get a head start on our short season, and spinach, kale and chard because of their wonderful cold tolerance. In fact, we started spinach very early. Unfortunately, a mouse got in during some remodeling, and decided to dine on our spinach sprouts. Spinach seeds planted later have just poked up above the soil surface. »» Grow Your Own: The Fantastic Four – Rise Of The Silver Sprout
Grow Your Own – A Grower’s Work Is Never Done
by John Weckerle
Indoor Herbs
Even with daytime temperatures well into the forties recently at New Mexico Central headquarters, it’s still far too early for outdoor gardening. So what is a frustrated, would-be gardener to do?
Garden inside, of course.
Indoors is a great place for a miniature herb garden. I’ve found it easy to grow some of my most often-used herbs – for example, basil, dill, and cilantro, shown here – using a couple of plastic window boxes and some plain old Miracle Gro potting soil. The box in the foreground contains the “next generation” – seeds started yesterday to help provide a more-or-less continuous supply of fresh, flavorful herbs. A couple of “select-a-size” paper towels are serving as mulch to keep the soil from drying out while the seeds are germinating.
Not shown here are the spinach, kale, and romaine lettuce recently started at the other end of the room. Leafy green plants do just fine in the standard stuff – but fruiting plants like tomatoes may not produce well or may produce small fruit with this soil, as it is higher in nitrogen and lower in phosphorus than tomatoes and similar crops seem to like. Last year, we tried using unamended Hyponex potting soil for indoor tomato growing, but found that it hardened more than we liked if allowed to dry. This year, we may try a blend – Hyponex to tone down the fertilizer in the Miracle Gro, which will provide organic matter to keep the soil from hardening too much.
Grow Your Own – All Quiet On The Squirrel Front – Sort Of…
by John Weckerle
We have finally begun harvesting zucchini and yellow squash, and it looks as if it will be a bountiful summer at least as far as that goes. There are more that are within a day or two and, depending on how fast they grow, we may be looking at calabacitas, zucchini parmigiana, or both – or something else entirely. Several small eggplants are in the early stages of development, and small tomatoes are everywhere. The empty sections of Bed 1 have been replanted with lettuce, spinach, string beans, and green onions (all from seed) and chard seeds have been added to the existing sections to bring us a continuing yield. While it may seem a little late to be planting seed, remember that we experimented pretty successfully with covering Bed 1 last year (see article). »» Grow Your Own – All Quiet On The Squirrel Front – Sort Of…
Grow Your Own – The Good, The Bad, And The Squirrels
by John Weckerle
Having returned from our extended soujourn(s) in the eastern U.S., we are now in a position to update our readers on the progress of our gardening efforts and experiments. We wish to thank our good friends Russ and Phyllis Hayes, who diligently cared for the vegetables and all our other plants while we were on the road. Thanks to their efforts, we should be dining on fresh veggies (well, we’ve alreay had some kale and a few cherry tomatoes…) within the next week or so.
Bed 1
Grow Your Own – Boxing Day (Part Deux)
by John Weckerle
In our last Grow Your Own article, we went through the basic construction of a box for raised bed gardening (again, with a nod to Mel Bartholemew’s The New Square Foot Gardening). After writing that article, we moved the bed into place, leveled it, and mixed some soil. This new bed contains approximately one large wheelbarrow (alas, the last) of the soil given to us by Roger Alink of Wildlife West Nature Park last year, one bag each of composted cotton burr and chicken compost, one 2 ft3 bale of sphagnum peat moss, the last of the harvest from our household/yard compost bin, and a dozen or so shovels full of sand. The result is a rich and friable soil that is similar to the mix in the other two beds. We then added the grid to the top, simply attaching three pieces of lath in each direction using sheetrock screws and providing a visual aid to help us fit our plants into their square-foot domains. With all that done, it was time to plant and create the new critter control system.
Grow Your Own – Boxing Day (Part 1)
by John Weckerle
Editor’s note: Our design is an adaptation of that shown in Mel Bartholemew’s The New Square Foot Gardening. This is an easy-to-read and informative book on raised bed gardening, and we highly recommend it. Our principal adaptation is the height of the box, which is twice that of Mr. Bartholemew’s design. He considers this unnecessary, but given our often dry and windy climate, we like the idea of a slightly greater rooting depth and more soil to retain moisture. This project took far less than an hour to build.
Unlike the British, Canadians, and other Commonwealth countries, we don’t celebrate Boxing Day on or about December 26; here at New Mexico Central headquarters, we celebrate it whenever we build a new box to plant vegetables in. Well, yesterday we celebrated Boxing Day, building our third 4 foot-square by one foot-high bed. Today, we’ll walk you through the process of building the box; in Part 2, we’ll discuss our next experiment in critter strategy. Of course, you can always come up with your own designs to keep the wildlife from sampling your bounty. »» Grow Your Own – Boxing Day (Part 1)
Grow Your Own – The Rise Of The Horicultural Sneaker
by John Weckerle
Today’s gardening adventure started relatively early – before the remains of yesterday’s impotent clouds had entirely cleared from the sky. The sounds of Rice Krispies rose in the surrounding woods. That’s right…Rice Krispies. I am one of those people lucky enough to have enough hearing left to actually hear the tentative tune-ups of recently emerged cicadas testing out their instruments before bursting into symphonic harmony, and the sound (as I hear it; nobody else here at NM-Central.com headquarters can) closely approximates that audibly entertaining breakfast cereal that we enjoyed so many years ago, and many still do today.
Today’s objective was to prepare and begin planting the north bed. Having learned my lesson last year, and having seen the benefits of temporary enclosures, the first step was to begin construction of a wind-protection setup that could be quickly converted to a full-blown mini-greenhouse should the temperature pull the sort of fast one it did last May. I set out to create something that would be easy to water and inspect – and ended up with a running shoe. »» Grow Your Own – The Rise Of The Horicultural Sneaker
Happy Birthday, New Mexico Central!
by John Weckerle
It hardly seems possible that, just a year ago today, NM-Central.com sprang into being. A lot has happened over the past year, and we thought it might be entertaining to take a stroll down memory lane, look over our early stories, and see what, if anything, has changed.
Our debut article – Will the Grinches steal Edgewood’s music festival? – discussed the Town of Edgewood’s decision to abruptly cut all its funding for the annual music festival at Wildlife West Nature Park. The pretext for this decision had to do with the Town’s position that funding the event represented a violation of the State anti-donation clause, an assertion that we disputed then and still dispute today. Because the funding was terminated after the Park had signed contracts with the performers, the Park had no choice but to produce the event under its own steam. The community came together and, with donations and other funds raised, the festival almost – but not quite – broke even. The financial strain from this situation, coupled with the subsequent economic downturn, have put the Park in a state of difficulty, and we again ask that people consider making donations at the Park’s web site. This year’s music festival, featuring nationally acclaimed folk performer John McCutcheon, promises to be a top-notch event, and tickets can be purchased in advance on the Park web site. »» Happy Birthday, New Mexico Central!
Grow Your Own – Happy Earth Day!
by John Weckerle
As a sort of celebration of earth day this morning, I took some time to spend with the plants, trees, shrubs, etc. Things are looking excellent! The Tartarian honeysuckle is about to burst into bloom, and the chokecherries are showing flower buds. The Nanking cherries are also putting out leaves, and the lilacs have already done so. All the strawberries – even those not protected from the rabbits – appear to have survived the winter and are flourishing. The butterfly bushes are looking good, as well. The “mini-greenhouse” experiment has shown great promise, and it looks as if I’ll be able to start putting vegetables into it within a week. We’ll start with cool weather vegetables there – kale, chard, lettuce, snow peas, etc. We’ll need to make another cover for the north bed, so that tomatoes, etc. – already flowering – can get settled in and ready to add zest to my salads and sandwiches.
As part of the celebration, I watered everything – including the approximately two dozen red hot poker “splits” I planted Sunday – with water from the rain harvesting system which, while not entirely full after the winter, still holds a good bit of water. The red hot pokers are great for the hummingbirds and, as a special Earth Day treat, I saw my first hummingbird of the season this morning, taking a bath in the fountain.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks, we’ll be building the third bed – and going through it step by step here in case any of our readers are interested. This is a surprisingly easy task, and well worth the effort. Happy Earth Day!
Grow Your Own – Go Ahead, Snow All You Want
by John Weckerle
We’ll take all the moisture we can get.
As Winter wraps her lovely white arms around us once again, we take some time to enjoy the indoor gardening as well as preparation for the upcoming transfer of plants to the southernmost of the two beds we installed last year.
It’s harvest time here, with plenty of lettuce available for salads and sandwiches. Two pots full of mixed lettuces should hold us for the time being, and the arugula is similarly ready for use. The hanging tomatoes have adapted well to their suspended existence, and both the hanging and traditional cherry tomatoes have flower buds. One of the kale plants is now in a larger pot, as well, although it’s just a bit early to start harvesting it. The cilantro is ready for a bigger pot, as well, and the basil – while small – now looks as if it will survive and grow nicely. Petunias, zinnias, and some of the impatiens have been removed from the starter trays, and we hope to see some real growth on these soon. »» Grow Your Own – Go Ahead, Snow All You Want
Grow Your Own – Alas, Poor Stringbean; I Knew Him, Horatio…
by John Weckerle
In a tragedy of not exactly Shakespearian proportions, we must finally accept the fate of the string beans we’ve been attempting to grow in the plant room. They appear to have succumbed to pests, or at least very nearly succumbed. This is too bad, as they had actually produced a few string beans. We believe the culprits to be fungus gnats and perhaps some odd-looking creature that appears occasionally on the undersides of the leaves – but only on the pea/bean contingent (the snow peas appear to have bounced back from this). This is not our first abortive attempt at indoor string bean cultivation; we had similar problems last year. While the fungus gnats don’t seem to damage anything else, string beans seem unusually susceptible. We’ll give it another shot soon. The lettuce is doing nicely, and has produced leaves for a few sandwiches already. »» Grow Your Own – Alas, Poor Stringbean; I Knew Him, Horatio…
Grow Your Own – Hang ‘Em High, Bury ‘Em Deep
by John Weckerle
As we restlessly await the beginning of growing season, we’ve decided to reinvestigate the prospect of upside-down tomatoes. Previous experiments were of mixed success. Most resulted in very tasty, but very small, fruit. We learned in the meantime that it is important NOT to use standard house plant food or potting soil fortified with house plant food. Our prior efforts involved both. This time, we’re trying an unfortified potting mix, which wasn’t that easy to find (after checking Lowes and Home Depot, we finally found one by Hyponex, an old favorite from many years ago, at the Edgewood Walmart). Houseplant formulations contain too much nitrogen and not enough phosphorous, which results in small fruit. We want big ones this time; last time, our cherry tomatoes were about twice the size of peas, and the beefsteaks were about twice the size of regular cherry tomatoes. »» Grow Your Own – Hang ‘Em High, Bury ‘Em Deep