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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Garden Newsletter March 26, 2013


March 26, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly Garden Newsletter


These weekly garden notes are written by Kim Willis, unless another author is noted, and the opinions expressed in these notes are her opinions and do not represent any other individual, group or organizations opinions.

Hi Gardeners
I am chomping at the bit to get gardening but the weather is limiting what I can do.  I have dozens of things to get done maybe hundreds of things, and it seems like everything is going to have to be done at once.  I have been outside poking around a bit, measuring and planning, picking up trash, pruning but so many things are left to be done when the soil is not frozen.  Maybe we will start seeing some improvement at the end of the week.

Grape Hycinths
One of my garden mail orders has arrived already so now I have a peach tree, blackberry bush and a grape planted in 5 gallon buckets on my porch and I just received notification that another order has been shipped.  Now normally you would be able to plant these dormant things now but not this year. This is the coldest, latest spring in many years, according to my garden notes.

We had a huge spruce that had pretty much succumbed to the spruce “blight”,  that combination of fungal diseases that has destroyed so many spruces, cut down last week.  I asked them to leave all the wood chips and I now have a huge pile as high as me and 15 feet long or so right by my driveway.  I am going to use it to make paths but the frost needs to be out of the ground first.  Soft ground and mud make it hard to get a loaded cart around so it will probably also have to wait until the ground is dried up a bit too.  So one warm weekend in a month or so I will probably need to get everything done at once.

Inside I have an amaryllis getting ready to bloom; I hope it will make it for Easter.  A red Easter Lily, so to speak, I hope that isn’t an omen or anything.  It’s amazing how much it grows every day. Sunday evening I noticed the bud poking up from the bulb; today it’s about 8 inches high.   I have a beautiful lavender ivy geranium blooming in my kitchen window and I did have some pretty geraniums blooming on my porch, until the squirrel got back in there and ate all the tops off the plants.  I do hate those squirrels.  I have a rat trap out there but it never gets caught. 

I worked on covering some pots with cloth as I talked about last week.  I didn’t have the colorful fabric I really wanted, except for one silky floral piece.  It proved almost impossible to glue the fabric to its self at the seams.  The material really resisted the glue.  I found that stretchy sleeves and socks really made nice, easy pot covers.  Everyone has socks around without a mate; just slip them over a pot.  Socks fit around 4 inch and if real stretchy even 6 inch pots.  The sleeves of old sweaters, shirts etc.  will stretch over bigger pots and just need to be cut off at the right length, no glue needed.  If they need to be more colorful socks are easy to dye.  You can use some acrylic craft paint diluted in a little water, food coloring, plant based dyes, or regular fabric dye.  I am going to post pictures of some pots I covered on my blog soon.

Easy way to figure out how much you need.
Do you ever wonder how much mulch or planting soil or compost you need for a certain area?  I found this easy calculator on the Campbell Greenhouse site, it works great.  Go to this address http://campbellsgreenhouses.com/Bulk_Material_Calculator.php  to find out how much bulk product you need for a project.

Watch those weeds
At some point this spring the weeds will begin growing and we will all be pulling them.  But be careful what you do with weeds like ground ivy, hensbit, shepherds purse, common violet, and the various forms of bindweed.  If you toss these into a “cold” compost pile, they often survive, even if they are reduced to tiny pieces and will jump to life when spread on the garden with the compost.  Some aggressive spreading perennial garden plants like bishops weed, beebalm, common tawny daylily, comfrey, bamboo, even phlox will also survive the compost pile. Jerusalem Artichoke and potatoes also survive cold composting.  Cold composting is when you simply heap discarded plant material and make no effort to keep it composting at a “hot” level by turning and managing it as needed.

If you have plants that you do not want to see live again let them dry out in the sun until crisp before adding them to the compost pile.  Spread them thinly as some will survive at the bottom of a pile. You can put them in a black plastic bag also and set the bag in the sun to cook them for a few days.  Then add it to the compost pile.   (Yes husband there is a method in my madness for my throwing weeds all over the lawn, I’m drying them out.)

Gravel Gardening
When most people think of gravel gardening they think of gardening minimally, with sedums, cacti and other drought tolerant plants and a sort of zen-like simplicity.   Now however, there is an intriguing new take on gravel gardening, growing food and ornamental plants in gravel instead of soil.  It is said that deep layer of gravel laid on moist soil not only conserves moisture but as the rocks heat up they draw moisture from deep inside the earth through condensation and water the plants rooted in them. 

There has been limited studies on this but there is a book out that purports to explain the system in detail.  I declined to purchase the book for $20 but went to the website for this researcher and also read a few additional articles on the subject.  Here’s the website address http://tosoilless.com/  The author claims to have planted corn and beans in a gravel bed and without any additional water or fertilizer was able to harvest crops.  It is also claimed that with only minor amounts of water and fertilizer dozens of food crops and most ornamentals can be grown very successfully.

I do see some advantages to this method.  Soil borne diseases and diseases that are often splashed onto plants from spores laying on the soil such as some of the tomato fungal diseases could be greatly lessened or diminished. And as water becomes more expensive and harder to get, methods of gardening that “find” water or conserve it are welcome.

Spring violas
But I have some unanswered questions about this method.  Plants often have a symbiotic relationship with soil microbes, especially plants that are evolved to live in organic based soil. This relationship helps plants get the minerals and even the water they need.  Without organic matter and the attendant microbes and fungi, do they do well? If the gravel gets hot enough to produce condensation wouldn’t it be hot enough to harm the roots of plants?  And if food and ornamental plants can grow in the gravel weeds could too.  Usually we mulch gardens to prevent weeds.

People have used gravel beds outside to do a sort of outdoor hydroponic gardening, where fertilizers and water are flushed through a gravel bed many times a day.  This works well but is expensive and requires electricity for pumps in most cases.  There is really no savings in water or energy use.
I have decided I may try a small experiment this summer with a gravel garden.  Maybe some of you would like to try it also.  If you do please let me know your results.  It sure would be nice to develop a way to grow tomatoes without fighting the battle with the various fungal diseases that always develops.

Easter facts
The Christian celebration of Easter is this Sunday.  Easter wasn’t celebrated immediately following Christ’s crucifixion.  It took some decades before anything other than the traditional Passover celebration was followed.  On the old calendars the time around the spring solstice was devoted to celebrations of renewal and fertility.  When Easter became a Christian “feast day” or holy day it incorporated many pagan celebrations associated with the spring solstice into the rituals and customs.  The Pagan goddess of spring and renewal is called Oestar. (In Greek oistros means 'gadfly' or 'frenzy' and is associated with the same Goddess.) The Assyrians and Babylonians called her Ishtar which is pronounced like Easter and that is where the name Easter comes from.

The egg is one of the oldest symbols of renewal and new life and the rabbit is a symbol of fertility and both are still prominent Easter themes.  "Omne vivum ex ovo" is a Latin saying which means, "all life comes from an egg” and when you think about it, it’s absolutely correct. In early times people dyed eggs in pastel, spring colors and presented them to others as a gift during spring solstice.  In early Christianity eggs were often dyed red to symbolize Christ’s blood and given out.  Easter “baskets” were made to look like bird’s nests to hold the decorated eggs. 

The earliest foods associated with Easter were pretzels, dough twisted into the shape of a cross in a circle, and hot cross buns, a bread treat with a cross on top that monks made and distributed to the poor on Easter. Eggs were turned into candy confections, often elaborately carved for table decorations in the 1800’s and eventually chocolate eggs were being made for consumption.  Now candy is forever a staple of Easter celebrations, (maybe because it makes children go into “oistros”). 

In 2012 Americans spent 2.1 billion dollars on Easter candy, more than on any other holiday.  Chocolate is the favorite Easter candy, especially in the form of chocolate Easter bunnies. (A poll found that 76% of Americans prefer to eat a chocolate Easter bunny starting with the ears.)  But marshmallow “peeps” and jelly beans are also top favorites.  In 1953 it took 27 hours to make a marshmallow peep, now it takes just 6 minutes.  Jelly beans were first made by a Boston candy maker, William Schrafft, who cleverly sold his new product by urging people to send them to soldiers fighting in the Civil War.  They did not become associated with Easter until the 1930’s.



Have a Happy Easter everyone
Kim
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent 

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