June 30, 2009 – Blue Ice and Fall Colors

One of my favorite plants is the Blue Star. This perennial wildflower is native to southeastern North America, but is as gorgeous, if not more so, than many cultivated garden plants. While there are many different species of Blue Star, the cultivar ‘Blue Ice’ is a new favorite among home gardeners, and is hardy in zones 4-9 …

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Cook Your Weeds and Pests

Weeds sticking up from paving stones, ants becoming a pest. Reach for the sprays? Try boiling water instead! To kill weeds, pour boiling water on them. Younger weeds will visibly begin to wilt, curl and die almost immediately, while older, hardy weeds will need a few applications. Careful, though, it’ll harm or kill all plants in the area, so it’s not recommended on lawns.

Ants are nature’s vacuum cleaners, foraging for weed seeds and ground insects, and should best be left alone. However, if they do become a pest, entering your house singing “Heigh Ho,” try this – pour 2 to 3 gallons of boiling water directly on the nests. While that won’t eradicate the colony, it’ll destroy up to 60% of the colony, bringing it back down to a manageable level. (Unless you have fire ants – pour away!)

Plan ahead for fall color

Your yard and garden can look just as great in the fall as it does during the spring and summer, if you plan ahead and plant accordingly. For the super stars of your fall color garden spectacular to show up, you need a nice background. In beautiful, mountainous regions with spectacular fall color (think Vermont), evergreen trees scattered throughout the mountainside provide a bit of backdrop and “punch,” against which the bright reds of the sugar maples and clear yellows of the birches pop. Holly trees, pines, spruce trees, arborvitae and junipers make good backdrops for fall color from other large trees. Tea olives, yews, ivy, periwinkle, and other, smaller evergreen shrubs and perennials provide a background for other perennials and shrubs with fall color…

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Watering Your Garden – Proper Techniques

Many gardeners don’t think about how they water – they just go out, turn the hose on the sprinkler, and forget about it. Either that, or they use a watering can and give a gentle sip every morning. However, there are proper techniques that will not only keep your garden healthier, it’ll teach them to grow stronger roots, disease will be less prevalent and, most importantly, you’ll save money by wasting less water…

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Steps to turning a weed-infested lot into a successful organic garden

Maggie, a reader of this newsletter, recently acquired a small lot, and wishes to turn it into an organic garden. Trouble is, it’s been sprouting weeds for years (including hard-to-kill crabgrass), and the soil quality is very poor. What’s the best steps to take to turn this lot into a thriving garden, without using chemicals?

There’s a variety of methods, of course, but this is what I would do:

1. Solarization – buy thick black plastic or rubber to cover the lot. (Pond liners work best, but are expensive.) This will bake the soil surface, killing all surface weeds. It won’t kill the seeds, but we’ll deal with that later.

   Alternatively, mow down the area and apply about six to ten layers of newspaper, then add lots of mulch on top (grass and leaf clippings, twigs, hay, etc.) Mulching is a much longer process, likely the whole summer and into next spring, but it’s cheaper, and you’ll begin to add organic matter

2. In a few weeks (if using black plastic) or next spring (if mulching), get a soil test done through your local county extension. You need to find out what nutrients are lacking in the soil
3. Aerate the area, to let oxygen into the ground
4. Add and till into the soil lots of compost or soil mixed with compost (about 4 inches, more if you are planning a vegetable plot) – compost will break up tough, old soil, or bind sandy soil, creating better texture. Compost will also introduce good bacteria and microbes into the soil that were killed through solarization or simply left due to poor soil conditions over the years
5. Add your amendments based on the soil test (calcium, nitrogen, etc), and begin planting your organic garden – but don’t plant seeds yet! Also, look to add plants native to your area. Because they are “made” for your area, they will better be able to withstand climate conditions, your soil type and pH, and if they are succulent flowers, they will provide nectar for local birds, bees and butterflies.
6. In the spring, when the temperature reaches about 55 degrees, apply corn gluten meal to the entire area. This product not only puts nitrogen into the soil, it prevents any seeds from germinating. This should help control the crabgrass and other annual weeds, though it’ll take about 4 applications (1 per year) to completely eradicate them all – seeds that are deeper in the soil that don’t germinate aren’t affected, so the following year, if they are closer to the surface, they will sprout
7. After six weeks (when the corn gluten meal has completely dissolved), plant any new seeds. More mature plants aren’t affected by corn gluten meal, so feel free to plant any time. Hardy perennials with long taproots could survive step one, so you’ll have to either hand-pull them or encourage your new plants to out-compete them by trimming weed foliage back
8. Every spring and fall, apply more compost to build the soil up. Every spring, add more corn gluten meal.

This is definitely a multi-year process, and weeds, pests and other temporary setbacks will happen, but Mother Nature works slowly but steadily. If this empty lot was to be abandoned for many years, the weeds would eventually be replaced by brush and shrubs (depending on where you live) and eventually a forest. Be patient, work the garden every year, and you’ll be well rewarded!

Who else has ideas? Email me at chris@goorganicgardening.com

Chris

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Your Organic Gardening Questions

Question: What is an organic remedy for powdery mildew?

Jasmine

Answer: Powdery mildew affects a wide range of plants. In the book “The Gardener’s Guide to Plant Diseases,” author Barbara Pleasant recommends a few different approaches. If you are growing vegetable types that are particularly susceptible to powdery mildew, you will want to try to find resistant varieties or cultivars. The letters PM or PM Resistant on a plant tag indicate some resistance to this fungus.

If you do need to treat your plants for fungus, you can spray with a dilute compost tea, or a solution of 1 teaspoon of baking soda per one quart of water. Add a drop of soap to help make the spray “sticky.” You also have the option of living with Powdery Mildew. Lilacs, Hollyhocks and other plants will bloom beautifully, and then have powdery mildew problems. They are all plant-specific, so an infection on your roses won’t spread to your lilacs. This is also why it’s good to practice vegetable crop rotation – a mildew infecting your tomatoes one year won’t infect the lettuce you plant in the same spot next year.

For preventative care, carefully remove infected leaves and dispose in the garbage (not your compost!) Clean your garden tools with a solution of water and bleach, or boiling water. Powdery mildew overwinters in the soil, and thrives on young shoots and damp areas. Keep your plants and soil well ventilated, and don’t water from above.

Katie

Question: What are the “3 sister crops” referred to in Native American planting, and why those?

Leanne

Answer: Native Americans planted what are commonly called “three sisters gardens.” These were gardens of corn, beans and squash. Planting the three together allows a gardener or farmer to take advantage of the synergy of growing the three compatible plants together.

Corn uses a lot of nitrogen, and beans fix nitrogen into a form that the corn can take up. Beans can also grow up the corn for support. The squash will cover the space on the ground between the beans and corn, suppressing weeds. You get more out of the space by growing the three together, and you have to do less work.

Chris

Question: Potential problems with my corn and beans?

I have what I think is some kind of beetle on my corn, which I picked off. Also, there’s some sort of webbing on my corn, and my beans are looking thin and stringy, though growing well. Any suggestions?

Leanne

Answer:

Part of becoming a great organic gardener is learning how to watch and wait. Conventional gardening and agriculture involves much preemptive treatment, which may or may not turn out to be necessary. While the issues with both the corn and the beans could turn out to be true problems, they might also be nothing serious. It is still quite early in the growing season.

String beans take longer than most people think to mature. They are most likely growing just fine, and can be harvested at any time during their development, if you will be eating them “green.” The critter nibbling at the corn could cause some damage. If you are concerned about the specific pest, the best thing to do is to catch one and take it, and one of the ears of corn, to your local extension agency so that they can identify it. You always want to correctly identify the pest problem before you do anything to treat it. You might have spotted one rogue beetle finding himself or herself some lunch. Or, your extension agent might inform you that there is a pest outbreak in your area. Gather more information about the problem before treating it.

Katie

Happy 4th of July and Canada Day!