Gardening

Up here in the North Country, Good Friday is the traditional date that we plant potatoes. Although I can’t see it happening this year with 18 inches of snow on the ground, frozen ground (Not the same, sometimes snow keeps the frost from entering the soil.), and just an occasional 40 degree day.

But potatoes are a mainstay in my garden.

We aren’t Irish, but it seems that potatoes enter a meal almost daily at our house—mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, baked potatoes, boiled potatoes, au gratin potatoes, potato soup, potatoes and creamed peas, you get the picture. POTATOES!

Potatoes are comparatively easy to grow and keep well. The only thing I don’t like about potatoes is digging them!

Experimenting with the Cage Method

Last year I tried the cage method with potatoes. Create a wire ring (I used 2×4 wire I had laying around.) about 2 feet across, plant your potatoes in a ring around the outside with the eye facing out and fill with light soil and compost, even straw or hay will work.

Layer upon layer, I got about 3 feet high. Wow, did I have potato foliage, but not too many potatoes. However, in all honesty, I think I let them get too dry at times. This method leaves a lot of area for moisture to evaporate from the soil. So was the lack of success me or the method?

What would I do differently? I think this year (As I have the cage already.) I might invest in a length of 6 inch PVC pipe and a cap. Drill holes up and down it, insert into the center of the ring and keep it filled with water.

Experimenting with the Bin Method

I also experimented with the “bin” method. Use an indeterminate potato (Russet flower all season long hence indeterminate.) and keep covering the plant as it grows leaving 6-8 inches of the top out of the soil. Worked okay in a bucket, not so good in a wire cage. Again, I think it was moisture given the drought year.

Growing Potatoes in Buckets

However, cutting the bottom out of a five gallon bucket and planting the potato in there and covering it seems to work! I only did a couple last year, but this year I plan to do more. What worked for me last year was 2-6 gallon buckets. I cut the bottom off with a circular saw, then cut the bucket in half—loved the two with the handles! Set on turned ground, put seed potato in eye up and cover with 8 to 10 inches of light soil. Tip over in the fall and gather your golden nuggets!

I have a new area of the garden that I am turning this year. I’m thinkin’ that what I am goin’ do is trench the potato row, put the buckets in side by side and use the trenched dirt to fill them. That should conserve on water if it is another dry year and save my back from both turning and bringing in coverage soil. But we’ll see!

When my parents retired and moved to New Hampshire back in 1970, my Mom became an avid, if education-averse, gardener, all of the short summer, trying, mostly in vain, to grow vegetables in terrible, rocky NH soil.

My Dad, on the other hand, spent most of the summer at the extended family’s fishing cottage, about 30 miles away. On trips to the tiny town dump, he discovered that the area he was instructed to dump his buckets of catfish guts was the same place that the town’s 2 diners had to drop off their raw kitchen waste. The large mound of “unintentional compost” was literally overgrown with tomato, potato, pepper, zucchini and onion plants, free for the picking.

Most of the time, he made himself some very good, free veggie side dishes during the week, and never mentioned it, just to keep the peace :)

Fill Empty and Unused Space with Food

If you are at all into gardening, you have probably heard something about the “Guerilla Gardening” movement. It is primarily an urban/suburban phenomenon, where folks transform ugly, abandoned patches of ground into vegetable or wildflower mini-gardens, using only some terra cotta clay from a hobby store, an old cheese grater, some dried compost or earthworm castings, or other organic fertilizer.

Generally, they use a little water and some native wildflower seeds to make “seedballs/seedbombs/seed grenades”, and pitching them over fences and such into unused pieces of land, based on the pioneering agricultural work of the Japanese farmer/philosopher, Masanobu Fukuoka.

The grenades start to fall apart after the first rainstorm, and “plant themselves”.

There are better descriptions of building your own seedballs than I could write at Seedball.

 

Why stop with wildflowers?  Consider some open-pollinated vegetable and herb seeds in the same usage.  Why stop with your own land?  Take a walk or a drive around “the neighborhood” and find some non-obvious open spots, to plant yourself some self-seeding backup crops?  Toss some “grenades” and make yourself a map, in case you want or need to go harvest your backup crop.  It’s a heck of a lot of fun to go back and look at your handiwork, as well :)

This could be especially-valuable if you are stuck in a suburban area.  A well-tended ‘monoculture row’ backyard garden might become a target for raiding by hungry neighbors, but some ‘random’ plants in an undeveloped area are not likely to attract much attention. Not that I have a low opinion of most people’s knowledge, but your average urban/suburban individual wouldn’t know a radish or bell pepper plant from poison oak, and probably wouldn’t even think to look, because it wasn’t on something close to a grocery store shelf.

How To Make Organic Seed Bombs of Herbs and Vegetables

I’m by no means an expert, but I suggest a mix of some of the following seeds:

1. Perennial White Clover (tossed with the appropriate bacterial inoculant) Will make your plot look more “untended” and will fix nitrogen from the air into the soil for years – plant your own fertilizer.
2. Radishes – the first vegetable that comes up in the Spring, and if you let it go to seed, it generates an unbelievable bulk of green compostable material.
3. A few different leaf lettuces – tasty, nutritious, and since it’s not a head of iceberg, easily ignored by other hungry humans– could be some random weed.
4. Onions – you can eat the sprouts, let them go to seed and bulb, and they will overwinter well. Chives are not a bad idea, either.
5. Your favorite herbs – basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, etc. – the thyme and oregano will spread and maybe become “invasive” – if you’re eating it, not really a problem.
6. (Some) squash seed – not many, be careful. They’ll shade out other plants, and a 50 lb. Zucchini in September may not be the tastiest thing you ever ate, but it sure beats eating nothing.
7. (Very few) tomatoes and bell peppers. Pick “ugly” heirloom varieties. Perfect-looking bright red fruit could attract unwanted attention.

Get open-pollinated, non-hybrid, non-GMO seed.  You want “plant once, harvest forever” plants. I recommend Nichols Garden Nursery – http://www.nicholsgardennursery.com –  I have no stake in this company, just have been a happy customer for over 30 years. A VERY strict no-GMO policy, and all hybrids are clearly marked.

For more information about Fukuoka-san, and his farming methods, start here.

I know that his book “The One Straw Revolution” had a great effect on my views on the natural/spiritual aspects of growing my own food, even if no longer that applicable to growing my own in a suburban townhouse.

I bought this little garden shed off of Craigslist a couple of years ago for $50. Surprisingly it has never tipped over in any of the storms even though I did not secure it in any way. It has withstood below zero weather, mountains of snow, and has proved itself handy in the garden. But I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of how to organize it.

I expanded the garden and needed to move the shed which I did. I keep a bench in the garden just to sit on and contemplate things and that is when I figured out how to reorganize this little shed to be much more functional than just holding a few hoes and shovels. Here is the overview…

We all have garden pots laying around. I grabbed the ones that were very well made, and screwed them onto the walls.

How fantastic! I now have storage for my garden gloves, seed packets, balls of twine and rope, plant markers and even several I haven’t filled yet, with room to add more!

So then I added some screws to hang stuff on. I’m using the star headed decking screws as they are weather resistant and I love the star heads – less likely to strip out.

So then I screwed four of the very large garden pots to the floor in the back of the shed. I had a couple of strips of that composite decking left over and cut them to fit in the corners to keep my hoes and shovels in place. You could use wood if that is what you have around.

The middle buckets are handy to hold rolls of anything, fertilizer, whatever. The bonus was that my post driver fit between them. So then I drilled several holes to hold scissors, wire cutters, knifes, etc. I did these with paddle bits. Very handy.

A couple of hooks came with the shed and some tools just lend themselves to this type of hanging.

I have found a few more of those pieces of composite board laying around, so one of these days I think I will add a few horizontally to make some enclosed shelves for tools like the tape measure, etc.

When I was done, I even had space for my little kneeler/sitter seat. Once I had gathered my tools, it took less than one hour to totally reorganized this shed into a much more functional area.

Another big advantage? If I decide that I want to clean it all I have to do is take out the tools, etc. and hose it down! All the pots will drain automatically.

Gardening is work and good tools can make all the difference. I’ve spent a lot of money on garden tools through the years between rummage sales and buying new. Sometimes you think you have exactly what you need and you get it home and work with it, and well, it just doesn’t perform as expected.

Tools are also very personal to the individual. Your height, weight, strength and how you garden. I thought I would share some of my favorite tools and why they are my favorites.

First off, I love flower gardening with perennials. I have a lot of shade so I have a lot of hostas and hostas have wicked root systems. I also love daylillies and they too have some really tough root systems. I have several raised bed gardens for veggies, several square foot gardens, and have gone back to row gardening for certain crops. And a small greenhouse (although I wish I had the space to have this one). I do not have a rototiller or power cultivator – I do everything by hand.

I wish I would have bought this hose sprayer end a long time ago and am considering buying a couple of more when they come on sale. It is a shower wand. It turns on and off with a lever – yeah when you have arthritis! It sprays a gentle shower that doesn’t wash your seeds out, or your young plants, and yet soaks them to perfection. It reaches 4′ and has a rubberish grip so your hands don’t get cold either. I love it!

This little hand weeder is a surgical instrument in the garden. I actually have two of them. That dandelion or thistle in the middle of your strawberry patch or asparagus can be removed easily and quickly without hurting any of the plants you want to keep. The V in the middle lifts the tap root on plants easily.

Besides weeding it does a wonderful job of lifting individual strawberry plants (often in the aisles in the spring), small raspberry plants for transplanting, individual flowers or small groups for transplanting and will even work to plus in plants in an already established bed.

Another advantage is that it will act as a “mini-cultivator” in a square foot garden. Drag it between your mini rows and it pulls out the little weed seedlings quickly and easily. Extends your reach too.

For row gardening, there is nothing like the standard arrow head hoe.  Chop, hill the potatoes, drag sideways across young weed seedlings, get in narrow spaces. I have a half dozen hoes, but this is my favorite.

Second favorite hoe is the stirrup hoe. You can drag it through the rows and it just slices off the young weed seedlings. Work it back and forth and you can almost dig a hole. Perfect for row gardens with open spaces.

Absolute favorite shovel in all the world! Went to a garden sale of daylillies and hostas and the guy was using this shovel to split and dig huge hostas! Yes it is pricey at $40 for a shovel, but well worth it!

Stainless steel one piece construction I believe. Can’t break it! I have broken a lot of shovels, even the expensive ones that say they won’t break. This one doesn’t break! It has a narrow, tapering blade with a SHARP end – perfect for cutting tough root systems. And I LOVE the cushioning on the handle.