Category Archives: Planning

Divide and Germinate: Space Planning in the Garden

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Garden ViewI just calculated that we have 1,038 square feet under cultivation in the Dirt to Dinner garden, give or take the odd shaped growing bed here or there. Now, how do I divide that up to see how much of what we have room to grow this year? And how much seed do I start to grow that many square feet of a crop?

Thank goodness at least one engineer was here ahead of me to help figure this stuff out. Maybe if I think this thru I will finally understand how to use all the Master Charts in How to Grow More Vegetables.

Peas are the favorite Spring crop around here. And you can actually get a fair amount of snap or snow peas from a square foot of growing space since you can pick them over several months, or as long as the cool weather holds, which is more likely to be the determining factor for us most years. ‘Sugar Daddy‘ was the top snap pea producer in our 2009 Pea Trials, so let’s start there. Sugar Daddy peas need 7-10 days for germination and another 60 days to flower and mature the first pods. If they go in Feb 1st, that makes ten weeks later we’ll have out first peas, around April 12th. In an average year, whatever that is, Zone 9b would have six more weeks of favorable pea weather to enjoy before we could expect the daytime highs to get too high for pea pollen to do it’s thing.

Peas under cageSo, how many peas do we want to eat over that six weeks? Sugar Daddy peas are really best eaten straight off the vine, but a light steaming and some butter work too. I don’t intend to can or freeze them, so we only need to calculate what we actually want to eat fresh. My notes from 2009 look like we grazed over at least four square feet of pea vines to get a family ‘serving’ for a day. In good weather, three or four days later, there were enough new peas to pick those same plants again. So, each four square feet of snap peas could give us two ‘servings’ a week. If we’d like twice that I better put in eight square feet of snap peas, maybe ten to allow for slug damage would be safer. Add to that a couple square feet of snow peas and another four square feet of Alderman shelling peas and we’re up to sixteen square feet of peas.

Easy, right? Mark that on my handy spreadsheet garden plan. Now, just 1,022 square feet to go.

January Gardening

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Arugula plantPlease try not to hate me. It might be hard when you hear it was over 70 degrees Saturday and I had to spend the bulk of the day in the garden. I couldn’t stay inside. I know it’s January. I know weather like this can’t last even in California. But it was still wonderful.

I found this giant volunteer arugula growing contentedly on the edge of last year’s bean patch. I may have munched a few of those leaves after the picture was taken, but it clearly has plenty, and it’s not even close to going to seed. Several of the pampered arugula starts in the raised bed nearby are already sending up fuzzy flower stems. I was planning to let five or ten of them go to seed for saving, but maybe I should wait on this one instead.

French Green Lentil SproutsAnother wonderful surprise was seeing how well the lentils have sprouted. In our family, my mother-in-law is a legendary cook. If you want to get the kids to try something new, all you have to do is tell them, “Grandma Susan made it,” and they head to the table salivating. Our youngest is especially partial to Grandma’s lentil soup, which is made with the small ‘French Green‘ lentils that look like little grey rocks. When I saw these available through Bountiful Gardens, I had to try growing some. And the sprouts look healthy so far. French Green lentils are supposed to like cool weather, unlike the Asian varieties that are a lot prettier, if you ask me. But what really matters is how they taste in that soup!

Rat-tailed radish sproutsWe’ve also got some Rat-Tailed Radishes and two small sections of Golden Beets coming up nicely–for once! Germination for Golden Beets here has been a fraction of what we get for the red beets we grow. And I honestly don’t know why. Maybe the red beets do better in warmer weather and the golden ones need cooler temperatures to germinate well? I’ll keep experimenting because I love golden beets and this is the first time I have gotten them started well. Hopefully, I’m on a roll. The patch has already been through it’s first careful thinning. I thought I would need small scissors but it ended up working fine to just pinch the stems of the beets chosen to be eaten as micro-greens with my fingernails. I’ll go through the patch again in a week to keep them spaced far enough apart that their leaves don’t touch.

Persian Cress transplantsThe rest of my day was spent on the Spring Salad Garden, which ended up planted in containers on the patio in the back garden. I transplanted Persian Cress, a variety of lettuce varieties, Bloomsdale and Guntmadingen spinaches. I seeded one pot with Beta Salad Mix and another with two varieties of Romaine, because we like it and because Frank Tozer says it’s one of the most nutritious kinds of lettuce to grow.

The salad garden ended up on the back patio because it’s close to the kitchen and well-lit. Even if it’s already dark when it’s time to put together a dinner salad, we can still pop out to the patio and snip away. And I am hoping that slugs and snails will find it very annoying to have to climb vertically on dry terracotta in order to attempt to ruin my salad greens. Earlier this week we were running late getting dinner together and had to pick spinach by flashlight. We discovered dozens of slugs had gotten there ahead of us. Yuck!

Salad Days

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Green onionWe actually managed to over-winter a few loose-leaf varieties of lettuce and a surprisingly hardy French chicory whose leaves turned a gorgeous deep burgundy in the cold weather. But most of our winter salads are made of chard, spinach, mustard greens, beet greens, radish sprouts, arugula and green onions we discovered bursting out of a compost pile. Now that we are on the far side of the Winter Solstice, I’m starting the Asian greens–the Pac Chois and Chinese Asparagus–and a much more expansive salad garden.

I chose High Mowing Seeds ‘Beta Mix’ to anchor the salad garden this spring. It’s a blend of beet and chard varieties that should have no trouble germinating even if we have a cold February. Of course, that’s anybody’s guess. The next ten days of weather here call for Sunny and 60’s which will make a wonderful germination window for just about anything I want to plant as long as I can keep all the seedbeds moist enough.

I plan to include spinach, mostly the Guntmadingen from Adaptive Seed, several Romaine varieties and some ‘Rubin’ lettuce they gave me yesterday when I made the pilgrimage to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Petaluma. The ‘Rubin’ leaves have a warm red-gold color that just has to be good for you.

If I can bear to cut and compost more of the favas and other cover crops, I’ll also put in some of Territorial Seeds Italian Saladini blend. But the problem with lettuces is that you really don’t want them all at once, you want them over time. Unfortunately, the window of optimal eating for any individual lettuce plant is actually very short. I’m using two different strategies to try to keep the family in salads this spring. First, I’m planting mixed varieties, so not all the plants in the mix are ready at once. And, second, I’m planting in small sections every couple of weeks from here until the weather gets settled and really warm and we switch over to eating orach and other summer greens and tomatoes and cucumbers fill our salad bowls.

Are you starting the spring salad garden yet? What are you putting in this year?

January Blooms

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Thyme and 'Negreta' Fava Beans

Thyme for Favas

OK, fine. I broke down and grew a flower. Sure, the blooms might be technically edible, but I admit it, I am growing something in the garden that’s not for eating. Those of you who know me might suspect that it’s not actually just one flower. It’s a lot of flowers. More on that in a minute. First, these beauties, surrounded by my Extra Thyme plants, are ‘Negreta’ fava beans that are about ready to transplant into the garden. That will make three varieties of favas on the place, growing lots of biomass, holding the soil together and deflecting some of the compaction from the rains, fixing nitrogen, and making winter beans for the crock pot. And they do make really nice black and white flowers. But those aren’t the flowers I’m talking about.

Flat of Blue Borage, Rutabagas and Spinach

Baby Blue Borage

This year, for the first time, we’re growing over a dozen beneficial or “insectary” plants that are either good companions for crops we especially like, are good food for pollinators or insects we like having around the garden or do good things for the garden soil.  The first one we started, shown here on the right, is Blue Borage which is supposed to have flowers that taste like cucumbers but we’re trying it as a companion for beans, spinach, strawberries and maybe one of the tomato patches as well. It should bloom a good part of the year and we can always toss it in a salad in an emergency cucumber shortage.

We’ve also got some nice looking Calendula coming up from Seeds of Change seed I’ve been hanging onto since 2007. I had no idea it would still sprout but it looks fine so far. We’re also trying ‘Tangerine Gem’ and ‘Pesche’s Gold’ Marigolds, which are supposed to be bad for the bad nematodes, Cleome, Zinnias, Echinacea, Cosmos, Mexican Sunflowers, ‘Texas Hummingbird’ Sage and Alyssum.

Persian Cress Sprouts

Is Persian Cress like English Watercress?

And that doesn’t take into account the herbs, like my Extra Thyme, which is growing in several spots in the garden. We’re also starting Sweet Marjoram, Italian Flat-Leaf parsley, Mexican Tarragon and I’m not sure which category to put the Sesame in. I thought it would be fun to try to grow our own sesame seeds. Does that count as an herb? And does anyone know the difference between ‘Persian’ Cress and English Watercress? Are they related? That’s gardening for you. It always brings up more questions than it answers!

My Little Seed Data-Bank

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In my quest to achieve new heights of garden nerdom, I have begun to compile a database of the seeds I am planning to use for 2011.   The first 122 hopefuls are listed by seed source, type, variety, year the seed was packaged for and any comments I have to add from previous years of growing them. Most of the seed is open pollinated, from small operations owned and run by actual people wherever possible. Some of the seed I purchase from a couple different sources so I can compare how each performs in the garden under our growing conditions.

Seed to Seed

I’m growing open-pollinated seeds from Bountiful Gardens and Adaptive Seeds because I like the idea that I could save seed from year to year and eventually end up with a variety that has adapted to perform better in this area in the ways that matter to us. My mother-in-law handed down some of the family fava bean seeds to me this Christmas Eve. They have been adapting to growing in our Zone 9b location for at least 35 years, and to growing in nearby Santa Cruz for several generations before that.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 75% of agricultural crop diversity was lost during the 20th century. Think about that for a minute. The climate is changing at the same time the diversity of crops we are going to need to meet the challenge of that changing climate is being lost. Farmers all over the world used to save their own seeds, seeds that adapted to the local conditions, just like my in-laws saved their favas and basil seeds. But now enormous amounts of seed diversity are being lost and huge corporations are controlling, patenting and hybridizing seed resources. 25% of the world’s seed supply is already controlled by just three agro-chemical corporations. I think they can manage without the seeds growing in my yard too.

 

Hybrid vs. Open-pollinated