April 23, 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
What a week of weather!
We have had to run the sump pump in our small Michigan basement twice a
day since last Thursday’s storms. The
high water table is allowing it to seep in. If you live on a dirt road you know how much
fun they are after the heavy rains. And
I am not looking forward to the storms and rain predicted for today or the
snow, yes snow, predicted for tomorrow.
When will spring get here to stay?
The temperatures are supposed to be back into decent range by the
weekend.
So far this year we have had twice the normal amount of
rainfall for April. And last year we had
less than a half inch of rain for the entire month. According to farm reports the ground water is
fully recharged- in other words the drought is over for now. But the farmers can’t get into the fields
because the ground is too wet. The grass
is growing rapidly and I am afraid we won’t be able to mow it at the right time
because there are parts of the yard that are too wet to even walk on.
I do have a few daffodils in bloom. All the maples are blooming and shedding
their red flowers. The pussy willows are
blooming around my pond. I have heard
the spring peepers on nice days and the bull frogs on my pond are thunking
away. I snuck a quick trip to the pond
this morning after barn chores and I saw dozens of robins around the pond. Some were viciously fighting on the ground on
the far bank over territory I presume, and a little rabbit was nonchalantly eating
in their midst.
I have not seen the orioles, swallows or hummingbirds yet
but I went ahead and hung the hummingbird feeder and put out some grape jelly
and an orange for the orioles. I figure
any early flying bees could use the energy boost if the birds don’t use it. I haven’t seen any bees yet, but I have seen
a snake, courtesy of one my cats. He was
injured but I put him in a sunny spot in a secluded area and he was gone the
next time I looked.
Yesterday was a beautiful spring day and I was able to get
much work done on my new veggie garden and on cleaning up one of my flower
beds. I am lucky that the new site for
the veggie garden is high and well drained, sandy loam. I don’t know if we will be able to fill all
the new beds with soil or compost this year, that’s a lot of space to fill, but
we will use the boxes anyway and fill them little by little. We need to get the huge pile of wood chips
spread on the path before the grass is totally killed beneath the pile.
To till or not to
till
It’s the season when many people are itching to get out the
rototiller. I owned a rototiller once, a
long time ago, before I found out how they damaged soil health. The only time a rototiller is necessary in a
garden is for maybe the first time the area is used for a garden, especially if
the soil is compacted or if you need to mix a lot of organic material into it
to make it useable. You can even skip
the rototiller the first time if you have the forethought to smother the turf
and weeds from a piece of ground the season before you want to garden on it.
Good soil is a living thing, full of thousands of tiny
living creatures from bacteria to worms.
All of these creatures have important roles in creating good soil. They all have their own “comfort zones” in
the soil, some at the top, some at the middle and some deep in the soil where
they perform at peak efficiency. Every
time you rototill the soil you disturb these amazing critters, throwing them
out of their best levels of efficiency and even killing them.
Rototilling also brings weed seeds to the surface where they
can germinate. The seeds of some weeds
can lay in the soil for years until a rototiller or spade moves them close to
the surface for light and warmth to germinate.
Weed problems are often worse when you rototill every year.
Rototilling destroys soil structure. Good soil is actually small clumps of
minerals, organic matter, and water bound together by a bacterial “glue”. Tilling the soil so that these clumps are
broken apart makes your soil much less suitable for plant growth. While you don’t want rocks or huge clumps of
soil in a garden bed, you also do not want soil the texture of flour. To take the cooking analogy further, your
soil should look like crushed Oreo cookies, not flour.
Finally tilling tends to compact the soil just beyond the
depth of the tiller tines. If your tiller
blades reach 8” into the soil it’s probably compacted at 9”. So how do you get deep, rich, loose
soil? By making dedicated beds and paths
in your garden and never walking on the beds.
You can make these raised beds or not as long as they are well
defined. You pull weeds or use a hoe to
remove them and use mulch and you add lots of organic matter each year. Each year in the spring simply remove any sprouting
weeds, add some well-rotted compost to the beds and plant.
Using rock powders in
the garden
If you have ever gardened in pure compost, or other pure
organic material, you may have wondered why your plants didn’t grow as well as
you thought they would. That’s because
good soil also contains minerals, or crushed rock. Plants need minerals to grow properly. You can add minerals with fertilizer and we
know that with the right balance of minerals plants can even be grown in
water.
If you have highly organic soil that’s a good thing, but you
may want to consider adding some “rock powders” to increase the mineral content
of the soil and make your garden soil even greater. Everyone is aware of one rock powder,
limestone, but that’s a mineral you want to add only after a soil test because
it can make your soil so alkaline that plants won’t grow properly. If your soil is too acidic, below 6 on the pH
scale, you may be advised to add some lime.
Other rock powders are available that can be added to soil
in reasonable amounts, about 40 pounds to a 1,000 square feet, and will be
beneficial to most soils, especially clay soils that tend to pack. Here are some rock soils you may want to
consider. Greensand is just that, a sand
like material that is green in color. It’s
mined from sea and lake sediments and the green color comes from the many
minerals it contains. It’s usually high
in iron, magnesium and potassium. Crushed granite and crushed lava stone are
also high in minerals and they add pore spaces to soil that tends to pack,
making it hold air and water in a better structure for plant roots.
Mushroom magic
Did you know that mushrooms have the ability to convert the
suns energy to a type of Vitamin D that is similar to the Vitamin D our skin
can make when exposed to sunlight? Vitamin
D is not only important for strong bones but it regulates the immune system and
acts more like a hormone in the body than other vitamins. There is much research going on that suggests
Vitamin D is extremely important to good health and that modern people do not
get enough of it.
There are many forms of Vitamin D and types of Vitamin D
supplements and some of these are better for us than others. Researchers from
Boston University School of Medicine found that eating mushrooms or mushroom
powder capsules was as effective as taking commercial supplements for raising
the level of Vitamin D in the blood. You
can find fresh mushrooms in most stores and there are many ways to add them to
meals. If you are adventuresome you can
grow or wild harvest mushrooms too. Just
be careful in the wild harvesting as there are some mushrooms that contain
deadly poisons as well as Vitamin D.
Grow small fruit for
health
The good news about small fruits effect on your health-
especially strawberries, blueberries and grapes, just keeps on growing. These fruits are easy for home gardeners to
grow and when you grow them yourself you get them at the freshest and you know
whether or not they were treated with pesticides. A study by investigator E. Mitchell Seymour,
Ph.D., of the University of Michigan Health System published early this year
found that three servings of grapes each week helped reduce metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a combination of high
blood pressure, high blood glucose, waist body fat and impaired liver and
kidney function. It’s a major problem in
the US and other developed countries.
A new study recently published in Annals of Neurology, a
journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society,
found that eating strawberries and blueberries could reduce and delay mental
decline in the elderly. And researchers
reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, that women
who ate at least 3 servings of strawberries or blueberries a week reduce their
risk of a heart attack by 33%.
I planted two new grape vines and a whole new bed of
strawberries and I hope to reap some health benefits from the fruit. I also planted some saskatoons, a bush with
fruit similar in properties and taste to blueberries. It hasn’t been studied for health benefits
but the fruit has similar anti-oxidants and flavonoids as blueberries and the
health benefits should be similar.
Saskatoons are a bit easier for home gardeners who don’t have naturally
acidic soil to grow. If you don’t have
some small fruit in your garden consider adding it. Strawberries, blueberries and saskatoons are
easy to freeze for winter use and they can also be dried for storage. If you have extra grapes you can turn them
into grape juice and can it or turn them into wine.
April is Invasive
Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month
Gardeners love to bring back plants and seeds when traveling
but think before you do. You can’t go
through customs legally without declaring any plant material you are carrying. If you go to somewhere like Canada and buy a
plant in a garden shop they can sometimes provide you with what is known as a
sanitary certificate to show customs. Otherwise your purchase will probably be
confiscated. It really isn’t being kind
to the rest of us gardeners if you hide plants and manage to sneak them through
customs either. That’s how many foreign
plant diseases and pests get their start in the US. If you have questions about what you can
bring into the country go to www.aphis.usda.gov/travel
However many plant diseases and pests are carried from place
to place in the US and what is not a problem in one area of the country can
become one in another. Be very careful
bringing home plants from far flung areas.
It might just be a piece of rose you dug from grandma’s old farm but the
soil or the rose itself could hide an invasive pest. It is sometimes better to wash off the soil
gently from the roots and repot the plant in commercial potting soil and a
clean pot before transporting it home. And
giving it a close inspection for insect pests and a shot of garden insecticide
is also a good idea.
A spot of good news along the invasive pest route is that
New Jersey was able to announce in March that after an 11 year battle with the
Asian Long Horned Beetle, a wood pest that acts much like the Emerald Ash Borer
on a wider range of trees, that the state is now clear of the pest. The Asian Long Horned Beetle has also been
successfully eradicated from Illinois. Maybe one day we will see ash trees thriving again
in Michigan. But we have never had the
Asian Long Horned Beetle and there are still places in the US that have it so
once again, watch what you carry back with you.
Your tax dollars at
work-gardening
I support gardening but this is a little much for US tax
payers to spare in hard times. The US
State Department approved a $700,000 budget March 11, 2013, for gardening at
the US embassy in Brussels, Belgium.
Actually the money will be spent at Truman Hall, the residence of the US
ambassador to Belgium. Truman Hall is on
28 acres of land with several gardens.
The money was requested for lawn mowing, weeding, trimming and the
planting of violas, tulips and begonias.
Another $500,000 of gardening budget was approved for the US
Embassy in Jakarta (the capital of Indonesia).
Other embassies to receive garden funding were in; Santiago, Chile;
Maseru, Lesotho; and Bangkok, Thailand. Flowers
= Peace?
Stay dry and
think spring
Kim Willis
Garden as though you will live forever. William Kent
More Information
How to Grow Crocus
New article by Kim
Willis
The cheerful
crocus is one of the first flowers we see in our gardens each spring, sometimes
blooming through a late snow. The knowing gardener plants crocus where they get
an early start, near a building or among rocks for early spring warmth. They
are best planted where they can be easily seen as the flowers are small and
close to the earth. Hardy and easy to grow, crocus will multiply each year if
they are happy in their spot. While most garden crocus bloom in the spring
there are crocus that are fall blooming, most notably the saffron crocus,
Crocus sativus, whose stamens are worth their weight in gold.
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