Delicious December ~ Winter’s June 2021!

Harvests, Maintenance, Planning & Getting Seeds!

A misty morning at the garden…..

We in SoCal are so fortunate that we can plant heartily in ‘Winter!’ Brassicas and Peas are the main story. What I call the ‘littles’ are the understory! Lettuces, root crops like beets, parsnips, turnips, Daikon radish. Smellies like onions and garlic, cilantro and arugula, and herbs like Rosemary and others, protect your garden from certain pests, and make your garden oh so fragrant and your meals so tasty!

If you already have these going, plant your last rounds now so waiting for their harvest doesn’t interfere with earliest spring plantings.

Well, there are several important events in December, LOL.

1. First is being sure everyone who knows you, knows what is on your holiday garden wish list!
2. Plan your 2022 gardens, get catalogs, and order seeds NOW – for the entire year to come!
3. Maintain your garden, keep up with SoCal winter harvesting, enjoy your bounty, try some new recipes!
4. If you wish, plant your last round of winter plants, succession planting – know that if they come in late they may interfere with earliest spring planting space. Place them carefully so tall early spring plants can be installed on time. Or leave those spots open. ‘Open’ might mean just putting some lettuces or other ‘littles’ there.

Harvest Brassicas of all sorts! The big ones, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts, have grown big enough now and your earliest plantings and varieties are producing handsomely. Harvest your brocs and caulies while the heads are still tight. If you miss that, harvest asap, even the flowers and flower stalks are edible! After you take the main broccoli head, let your plant continue to grow so it will produce smaller side shoots. Some varieties produce large 3 to 4″ mini brocs and later, smaller salad size ones right on through summer! Cauliflowers are a one time harvest though you can keep eating the greens. To replace them, you might choose to pop in some beautiful chard, a potato patch, or quick growing mini cabbages in the large open spots that become available. Some cabbages, especially the mini and early varieties, are now headed tightly and ready to eat – slaw, steamed, dropped into soups and cold weather stews. You can still replant them with mini cabbies if you love them!

Deliciously fresh and nutritious winter heading lettuces, kale, celery, bok choy, cilantro, arugula and all manner of cut and come agains are in! Table onions scallions, chives and leeks can be snipped or cut off about 2″ above the ground and let to grow back 3 to 4 times! Do the same but at about 3″ with cilantro and arugula. Let some of your cilantro and arugula grow out for flowers to bring the bees, make seeds for the birds and for you to plant more! The simplest way is to scatter some of the seeds where they are needed and let them come up at will!

Winter brings a lot of tasty Root crops. Winter long Cylindra Beets are colorful, and have cut and come again leaves too! Long winter radishes like Daikons are spicy! Carrots are splendid to eat at the garden, share with your kids, pup, bunnies, shred into salads, add to winter soups, stews and stir frys. Slice/chop/make sticks and freeze for later! Grow some Parsnips too! Turnips have so unique a flavor you might want to eat them separately to just enjoy that flavor.

Harvest peas when they get to the size you want them, and be prompt and regular with that harvesting to keep them coming! Plant more rounds if you love peas!

MAINTAINING

Sidedressing is like snacking. Some of your heavy leaf producers and big bodied Brassicas, may need a feeding now and again or just when they start to fruit. If they slow down, or just don’t look perky, slip them a liquid feed out to their dripline, or cultivate in a wee bit of blood meal. Get your long spouted watering can and foliar feed! Get that nozzle under those low cabbage leaves to get them fed there too! Lettuces love manures. Compost and manure teas, fish emulsion (when there are no digging predators), powdered box ferts, are all good. Winter feeds need to be easy for your plant to take up. Use ½ the strength of your summer feedings. Slow release is a wise consideration. An excellent way to get feeds to the roots is to push in a spade fork no more than 6″ deep. Push it in vertically (so as not to break the main tap roots), wiggle it back and forth just a bit, remove the fork, pour your foods into the holes, close ’em back up. Soil organisms will get right to work, your plant will stay healthy and be quite productive! Worm castings, though not food, work wonders with immunity, soil conditioning and help germination! Mix some in with your liquid feeds you pour around your plant. Especially add them to seed patches before planting! Protect the patch from worm loving predators.

The exceptions are carrots, peas and favas. Carrots get hairy and will fork with too much food! Over watering or uneven watering makes them split and misshapen. Your peas and favas are busy gathering Nitrogen from the air, feeding themselves. But if you didn’t use an inoculant when you planted the seeds, they may not be able to produce their own Nitrogen. If they yellow or look peaked, give them a bit, just a sprinkle or two, of blood meal for quick uptake, a little fish emulsion. Protect them from predators attracted to blood and fish.

A mini task is to keep covering the shoulders of carrots, beets, radishes, parsnips and turnips. They substantially push right up above ground as they grow. Planting their seeds deeper doesn’t compensate. It’s the nature of the veggie! Never hurts to put a handy little pile of extra soil near where you plant them, or plant them in a low sloped trench. When they need covering, pull the sides of the trench down to cover them. Uncovered shoulders look dry, are tough, sometimes bitter, and need peeling before cooking. Uncovered carrot shoulders don’t ripen but stay green, just like exposed parts of potatoes turn green. The green on potatoes is slightly poisonous, not enough to do harm, but it doesn’t look good.

Watering is important even in cool weather. Also, some plants simply like being moist ie chard, lettuce and short rooted peas, beets. No swimming, just moist. Finger check your soil after rains to see if your soil is moist at least 2″ deep. Sometimes it is rain moistened only 1/4″ deep, needs more water! Also, be careful of too much water, that makes for an aphid tasty soft plant. Watch WEATHER reports in case of freezes, heavy winds, rain. Before weather, stake and tie plants that need support. After strong winds check everybody right away to see if any plants need help. See more about rainy days!

Santa Barbara’s average First Frost (fall) date AT THE AIRPORT is December 19, Last Frost (spring) date is (was?) January 22. That can vary from the coastal areas to the foothills, and our climate is changing generally to warmer, so these dates may not be viable guides much longer, if even now. And remember, these are average dates! See great tips – Protect Your Veggies from Freezing

Except for erosion control, in winter, we pull mulch back to let the soil warm up during the short winter days. The only areas we mulch are around lettuces and chard to keep mud splash off the leaves. Also, it’s good to remove pest habitat, let the soil dry a bit between rains to kill off wilts fungi. Bag up, or pile and cover clean uninfested summer straw, mulches, to use as compost pile layers during winter. Do not keep straw from areas where there have been infestations. Don’t put it in compost, bag and trash it.

Pests & Diseases Prevention and removal! Keep an eye out for pests and diseases and take quick action! 

BEFORE you put in seeds, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around at least two times (to kill the generations) to keep snails and slugs from vanishing upcoming seedlings overnight, making you think they never came up! No, they didn’t let you down. Killing off the creatures ahead of time saves the babies. It stops new transplants from being seriously damaged or entirely eaten while they are small. Do this a few times, to knock off the generations, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for a while.

Don’t lose your crops to birds! There is less food for them in winter, and, often, little rain, so they resort to eating tender juicy veggie leaves and sip the dewdrops. Buy pre made covers, or get clever and cover seeded rows with DIY small openings wire tunnels or a patch cover bent that has sides bent to the ground to keep birds from pecking at little leaves or from plucking tiny seedlings right out of the ground! You can also use small plastic bottle sections to make mini sleeves that birds won’t go down into. Or for baby lettuces, make large plastic bottle cloches, though wire covers let more light in and water through! Bird netting is inexpensive, tears easily, but is good to stretch over peas on a trellis. See more about bird, animal and insect above ground protection covers!

A common pest of Brassicas is the larvae of the pretty little Cabbage White Butterfly, Pieris rapae. The green Cabbage Worm, caterpillar, chews large, irregular holes in the leaves. They blend so well you can easily miss seeing them on the undersides of leaves. Per Natural Planet: ‘They lay up to 200 tiny yellow eggs that hatch in 7 or more days. The larvae feed heavily for 15 or more days. There are 3 to 5 overlapping generations each year, as many as 8 in warmer areas. They bore into the center of cabbage heads contaminating them with its fecal pellets. The dark-green pellets can also be found in the crook of leaves near the stem.’ See here for some terrific natural ideas on what to do!

Chard and beets get Leafminers. Where they have eaten looks terrible but the good part of the leaves is perfectly safe to eat. Plant chard so mature leaves don’t touch, or best of all, in different places around your garden, not in rows or clusters. Thin your plants so they have room. Harvest leaves that might touch first. Remove infested leaves immediately to reduce spread! Beets are not a permanent crop, so they are planted closely. Simply harvest them at their leaves’ prime – ahead of the Leafminers.

A typical disease is Powdery mildew. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation, water early in the day so they dry before evening. For mildew apply your baking soda mix. The best combo is 1 regular Aspirin, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Before sunrise drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! It takes only an hour for the mix to be absorbed! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Prevention is so much better than after mildew has set in. See Aspirin Solution. Hose away aphids and whiteflies, mildew. Remove yellowing Brassica leaves. Yellow attracts whiteflies. In general, plant further apart for air circulation, water and feed just a little less to let those leaves harden up a bit. Soft fat leaves are an invitation to aphids and mildew!

Do not compost diseased or infested leaves or plants. Don’t put them in green waste. Bag and put them in the trash. Wash your hands and clippers before you go to other plants.

Windy days are prime time to gather leaves to add to compost or process for Leaf Mold, Mulch or Compost! Leaf Mold is low in nutrients, but makes a superb soil improver, conditioner for vegetable and flower beds. Leaf mulch is free for the making! Leaf Compost processes faster when made the right way! See more!

PLANT JUDICIOUSLY NOW

Per square foot, fast growing cut-and-come-again Lettuce, Chard and Kale are by far the top winter producers! Plant more big plants like brocs and cauliflower, but remember, with cooler weather, they will grow more slowly. That may interfere with early spring plantings in March. Allow enough time to let added compost, manures, worm castings and Sphagnum peat moss (increases water holding capacity) become part of the soil organism community. If you do plant more now, better to get transplants if you can, and shave six weeks of their needed growing time to maturity. Select faster maturing varieties now.

As lettuces tire, and other plants like carrots and beets are removed, add more of them and any ‘littles’ you love on the sunny side and between the big plants. If the littles need more sun, remove large lower leaves of the big plants. Mild tasting littles include bok choy, kohlrabi, garden purslane, arugula, mizuna, watercress, young parsnips and turnips, Daikon winter radishes, and Napa cabbage. For a little more spice, go for those dark green kales, mustard, rutabaga and turnip greens! Try some culinary dandelions for super nutrition! These are plants that will take you through February, March and leave enough time to add compost and to let sit until major spring planting begins in April.

Believe me, you are going to get spring planting fever along about March, so plan ahead for it!!! Start seeds indoors the first three weeks of January for early March plantings! Choose varieties that are cold tolerant and are early maturers for the soonest table eats!

If you have enough seeds, over planting is fair game! Thin your beets, carrots, chard, kale, mustard, turnips. Take out the smaller, weaker plants. They are great in your salads along with small tender Brassica leaves. Plant patches of Mizuna and mow it!

Remember your winter companion planting tips:

1. Carrots enhance peas, onion family stunts peas
2. Carrots thrive when Cilantro, Chamomile (a spring/summer plant), Marigold are planted with them.
3. Onions, leeks and chives help repel the carrot root fly. But remember you can’t put the onion family near peas!
4. Lettuces repel cabbage white butterflies. Plant them generously among your Brassicas.
5. Cilantro enhances Brassicas – broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale and repels aphids on them!

Besides beautiful bareroot roses, decide now where you will be buying any January bareroot veggies you want! Consider: grape vines; artichokes; short-day (sweet) globe onions; strawberries; cane berries such as raspberries (get low-chill types); low-chill blueberries; and rhubarb (be cautious where you plant it, it can be poisonous to humans – children, dogs and chickens), asparagus, and horseradish. Artichoke pups need 3’ to 4’ space, 6′ to 8′ is more a reality! They are hefty growers and live 10 years! If you keep them watered, and there is enough space, they are a great street strip plant!

SPRING PREPS

Seeds for Spring & Summer planting! Perfect time to sit with seed catalogs, do online research. Get your summer garden layout in mind. First choose what is good for your excellent health! Next might be how much plant you get per square foot if you have limited space and want to feed several people. When we are in drought conditions, water could be a strong consideration. Choose cold or  heat and drought tolerant varieties per your location. Always look for disease and pest resistance per your location.

When you are planting from seeds, it’s essential to know your long and short day varieties because of your location, equator to Alaska, north or south US! I’m in progress of getting a post ready for you. Another essential factor is days to maturity if you are a northern planter!

This is the time of year when the seeds of plants that self-seed need to be in the cold! Throw them on the ground now where you want them to come up in spring. Stake the area so you don’t disturb them. It’s called Cold Stratification! Thank goodness there are other options if you miss this window.

Get some early varieties, for earliest harvests along with later maturing varieties for a continuous table supply. Earlier variety fruits are generally smaller, but what a treat! Cherry tomatoes come in first. Place your seed order for the entire 2022, while seeds are still available. Another trick is to plant both bush and pole varieties at the same time. The bush varieties come in sooner, soon followed by the pole varieties that produce continuously!

FREE 13th Santa Barbara Community Seed Swap! We’re ON! SAVE THE DATE: It will be on Sunday, January 30, 2022, save your seeds to share!
New location, the Santa Barbara Community Arts Workshop (SBCAW), indoor & outdoor space. https://www.sbcaw.org

Already! Start thinking of next summer’s plantings – what seeds you will need. Process your seeds to share. Get some envelopes/baggies!

Remember, a Seed Swap is a random affair. Get your standby favorites from those reliable catalogs. Use Seed Swaps as fun backup source, new things to try, and most importantly, for local seeds. The last Saturday of January every year is National Seed Swap Day! Look in your area for an event, and if you don’t find one, collaborate with your local garden clubs or permaculture group to get one going if you have an appropriate location for safe distancing! If your climate is warm enough, holding it outdoors may work.

For help making your seed decisions see:

• Choosing Seeds: Catalogs to Seed Swaps! I hope you fall asleep with your catalogs and dream of a glorious garden!
• Smart Design for Your Spring & Summer Garden, Seed Selection!
• See also some of the bigger long term Permaculture choices for planning and designing your garden.
• Super SoCal Fall, Winter Veggies Varieties, Smart Companion Plantings!
• 4 Lovely Companion Flowers and What They Do!
• Delicious choices to consider:  Perennial Soon I will add Chaya, aka Tree Spinach, to the Perennial list!  Heat & Drought Tolerant – per Southern Exposure ~

Summer Lettuce Varieties: In summer you want a stronger lettuce, heat tolerant & slow bolting! Lettuce Leaf Red Sails is a beauty. Jericho Romaine from Israel has become the classic summer romaine for warm regions. Sierra, Nevada. Parris Island is slow bolting. Green Towers Romaine tolerates moderate summer heat and has some resistance to tip burn and bolting. Green Star is phenomenal! Super productive, tolerance to hot weather, bolting, and tipburn, so it can be grown all season. High resistance to downy mildew. Black Seeded Simpson. And there are more – try several!

Definitely start building compost for spring planting. You could plant green manure where you will grow heavy summer feeders like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, chilis, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, melons, and corn; hungry stalk vegetables like celery, fennel, rhubarb, and artichokes; or continually producing green, leafy vegetables like lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, or strawberries. Or plant it if you want a break! Just lay in some green manure seed mix – vetch, bell beans, Austrian peas and oats. In Santa Barbara area get the Harmony mix and inoculant at Island Seed & Feed. Let it grow two to three months to bloom stage. Chop down, chop up and let it lie on the surface about 2 weeks, keeping it moist. Add any amendments you want – additional manure, compost, and turn under. Let it sit two weeks to two months. Your choice. Let the herds of soil organisms do their work! I usually do about 3 weeks. OR, lay on as many layers of compost material as you can get for an up to 18″ deep area where you will be planting. Put in some surface feeding red wriggler worms. The BEST soil enhancer and you will have a tasty raised bed!

WINTER VEGGIES STORAGE

This is such a great post by Anthony Reyes at FarmScape Gardens, here is the link! Winter Vegetable Storage, Part 2

For veggies in your kitchen, here is the UCDavis Quick Guide to Fruits & Vegetables Storage!

Birds and Bees! Plant NATIVE wildflowers seed now to take advantage of winter rains for early spring flowers! Germination in cooler weather takes longer, so don’t let the bed dry out between rains. If you have space, make habitat for beneficial insects, birds and animals too! Start building now to put your solitary bee home up for wild bees in March or early April! If you already have one, clean it, and if you have an owl house, now is the time to clean it out too, asap! Depending on where you live they are usually empty from Halloween until early December! Nesting site selection starts in January, so build yours and get it up as soon as you can!

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Wonderful Gardener Style Holiday Gifts!

Please be generous with your time these holidays. Rather than just serving food, maybe show someone how to grow veggies, give them seeds with instructions, give them and the kids a tour of your garden – eat carrots together!

Layer up, enjoy these crisp days. Let the wind clear your Spirit, the rain cleanse and soften your Soul.

Happy December Gardening and a Blessed Winter Solstice, Yule!
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Updated annually

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See these wonderful November images at Rancheria Community Garden, Santa Barbara CA! We had six days of above 80 temps! We’re still getting strawberries! Winter plants are in beautiful progress! Lovely flowers, tasty veggies, butterflies, starting more fall plantings! We are Sowing the Future!

Check out the entire December 2021 Newsletter! It includes these items and more!

Wisely Select the Right Seeds for Your Annual Plantings!
Lettuce ~ Beautiful, Nutritious, Low Calorie!
Waffle Gardens, The Roots of Square Foot Gardening!
Heating Greenhouses Without Electricity!
Wonderful Gardener-Style Holiday Gifts!

Details of Upcoming Gardener Events! Santa Cruz Permaculture 2022 Design Permaculture Course, Mesa Harmony Garden Schedule, Sunday Dec 5 World Soil Day! US Composting Council’s 30th Annual Conference & Tradeshow! Sunday Jan 30 2022 Santa Barbara’s FREE 13th Annual SEED SWAP at new location Santa Barbara Community Arts Workshop!

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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

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November 2021 Garden Magic is in the Air!

Garden author Shawna Coronado has a fine front yard spread jam packed with winter tasties! Her most popular book is ‘Living a Wellness Lifestyle!’ Her website says ‘Making a Difference Every Day.’ YES!

November, shorter cooler magical days, rich and deep! More Brassicas, Peas, Chard, Lettuce!

SoCal September planted lettuces are being eaten, plant more! Peas are being eaten, plant more. Kale leaves are or soon will be ready to start harvesting. Broccoli and Cauliflower soon to be tasty! Cabbages will take a bit longer as they ‘heart up,’ pack those leaves on tightly. You can harvest them when they are small, or if you want more food, let them get bigger, but not so big they lose that look of bursting vibrance!

Plant more rounds of everything in space you have reserved, or as plants finish. At this cooler shorter days time when plants are growing slower, it’s time to plant from transplants. Seeds are fine, and seeds of the same plants, if planted at the same time as the transplants, give an automatic equivalent of a second round of planting! Just remember, as weather cools, they won’t germinate or grow as fast as ones planted earlier.

Space your plants well. Think of the footprint of your mature plant. Crowded plants can shade each other out, and winter already has shorter days. They don’t get their full productive size or produce as productively. Smaller plants too close together can get rootbound, suffer from lack of nutrition. The remedy is simple! Thin when young and eat these luscious little plants! Or thin when they are bigger – take the whole plant! Rather than planting so closely, keep some of those seeds back for another later planting, or deliberately over plant for tender additions to your salad! If they come crowded in a nursery six pack, gently separate the little plants, plant separately. If you are really brave, do it the John Kohler way! Video Give away your extras! Plant to allow airflow so your plants will harden up a bit. Don’t over feed or water, inviting sucking pests like aphids and whiteflies that easily feed on that soft tissue. Especially true for beets and chard that get leaf miners. Ideally with chard, often a ‘permanent’ plant, space them so the mature leaves won’t touch another chard. Plants that have generous space produce more and bigger!

If you like Broccoli a lot, try these varieties! Know that there are container minis like Small Miracle to giants like Premium Crop that make 9-10″ heads ideal for freezing.

1. Arcadia tolerance of both cold and heat, good in foggy or wet conditions. 63-70 Days, 5-8″ heads with excellent side shoot production. Extremely disease-resistant – stands up to rot and mildew. 24 to 36″ tall.
2. Cruiser 58 days to harvest, tolerant of dry conditions.
3. If you can’t wait, De Cicco is only 48 to 65 days to maturity. It is an Italian heirloom, bountiful side shoots. Produces a good fall crop, but considered to be a spring variety. Since it is early, the main heads are smaller.
4. Nutribud, per Island Seed & Feed, is the most nutritious per studies, having significant amounts of glutamine, one of the energy sources for our brains! Purple broccoli, in addition to this, contains anthocyanins which give it its color. These have antioxidant effects, which are thought to lower the risk of some cancers and maintain a healthy urinary tract as well.
5. Green Comet if you can get it! It is just like its name says, speedy! It is a low, compact broc and produces 3 to 4″ side shoots! Amazing plant!
6. Premium Crop is an AAS (All-America Selections) winner! Heat tolerant, 24-30″ tall.

Brassica/Broccoli Pest Strategies, Companions

• Research shows the more broccoli varieties you plant, mixing them up, alternating the varieties in the row, not planting in rows at all, the less aphids you will have! Biodiversity means to mix up your plantings to stop diseases and pests from spreading down a row or throughout a patch. Monoculture can be costly in time spent and crop losses. Plant different varieties of the same plant with different maturity dates. Pests and diseases are only attracted at certain stages of your plants’ growth and the pest’s own life cycle stages.
• Cilantro repels aphids on Brassicas – broccoli, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts! Said to make them grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener! Plant generous mini patches here and there. Harvest some; let others flower for bees and beneficial insects. Then share some seeds with the birds, collect some seeds for next plantings. Broadcast seeds where you will be planting more brocs.
• Heading winter lettuces like plenty of water to stay sweet, grow quickly, stay in high production. Put them in a low spot or near the spigot, on the sunny side of taller celery. Also, lettuces repel cabbage moths. Put a few of them between the cabbages. Lettuces you want under Brassicas, plant from transplants because dying parts of Brassicas put out a poison that prevents some seeds, like tiny lettuce seeds, from growing. Remove those dying Brassica leaves asap.
• Plant your Brassicas a little to one side to allow room for smaller understory plants on their sunny side.
• Keep your Brassicas cleaned of yellowing leaves that attract White flies.

See Super Fall Veggies Varieties, Smart Companion Plantings!

Brocs LOVE recently manured ground. Well-drained, sandy loam soils rich in organic matter are ideal. Feed up your soil out to where you anticipate your plant’s drip line will be. The trick to producing excellent broccoli heads is to keep the broccoli plants growing at a strong steady pace. Top-dress the plants with compost or manure tea; or side-dress with blood-meal or fish emulsion; and water deeply. Repeat this process every 3-4 weeks until just before harvest! John Evans, of Palmer, Alaska, holds the world’s record for his 1993 35 lb (no typo) broc! He still holds the record in 2021! He uses organic methods, including mycorrhizal fungi! And, yes, moose eat broccoli!

The Pilgrim Terrace April 2016 Cunningham Family monster Cabbages make the good sized Lacinato Kale behind them look small! The Cabbages were well over a foot wide at maturity!

If you reserved space for planting mid-January bareroot strawberry beds, plant it to 2 month crops, like lettuce that matures quickly, arugula, mustard, turnips, and crispy red radishes that are ready to pick in little more than a month. Arugula, spinach, pretty Asian greens, such as tatsoi or mizuna, grow so fast you will have baby plants to add to stir-fries and soups just three weeks after sowing. For a quick payback on your table, select the earliest maturing varieties available. Chard grows quickly, but it is a cut and come again plant, so give it a permanent location.

Or, pop in a green manure mix to restore your soil. Island Seed & Feed has the wonderful Harmony Four green manure seed mix and the inoculant that goes with it. Nov is late to plant this mix; plant as early in the month as possible. Cut down, chop, turn in sooner for mid-January bareroot planting!

Seascape strawberry variety is my #1 pick! It was bred locally at UCSB, is an everbearer, harvest June to October! It makes huge berries that have tasty flavor and keep well. It has long roots so seeks water deeper down, more heat and drought tolerant. It is Strawberry Spot resistant. More on Strawberries!

Celery is lovely, fragrant, low-cal! Like lettuce, it is a cut and come again. Feed it from time to time, it’s working hard. Plant it by the water spigot. If you have room, you can let celery, cilantro and carrots, flower and seed too! It is super susceptible to the wilts, so be prepared to let it go. Or, try Tango, a hybrid that is sweet, extra-crunchy, grows extra tall: up to 18 inches! You can also sow the seeds 6-8 inches apart instead of 12, which makes for a larger, heartier crop. It’s tolerant of temperature fluctuations, read less bolting, and resistant to fusarium wilt! Laura Melchor says: …addition to soups and stews and together with bell peppers and onions, is one of the “Holy Trinity” of Creole and Cajun cuisine. You can use your homegrown crop as a base for jambalaya or gobble up the crisp, crunchy stalks straight from the garden – with peanut butter, of course!

Peas on a trellis, in a cage, take up less space, are off-the-ground clean and easier to harvest. Make a note to plant carrots on the sunny side of peas to enhance the growth of your peas! Baby Little Fingers make small carrots quicker than most, only 57 days to maturity! Put some beets behind the peas. They will get light through the frilly carrot leaves and the peas will go up. Peas and beets don’t mind a fair bit of water, but carrots will split if overwatered. Plant the peas a little lower and the carrots a little further away and water them a tad less once they are up. The onion family stunts peas, so no onions, bunch onions, leeks, garlic, shallots, chives nearby. See Best Varieties of PEAS and Why!

1st half of Nov: Plant seeds of globe onions for slicing. Grano, Granex, Crystal Wax.

GARLIC! Hmm…usually I would encourage you to grow garlic but with these general overall warmer times, some garlic lovers are reporting they aren’t growing it here anymore. Garlic likes chill, so even in our regular winters we don’t get the big cloves like up in Gilroy CA, the Garlic Capital. Just like the new more heat tolerant artichokes, we need someone to breed some heat tolerant garlic! For now, if you don’t mind smaller bulbs, plant away. Plant rounds of your fattest garlic cloves now through Dec 21, Winter Solstice, for June/July harvests! See a LOT about GARLIC!

Divide your artichokes! Give new babies plenty of room to grow big and make pups of their own or give them to friends! Remember, they easily have a huge 6′ footprint when they thrive and are at full maturity. Plant bareroot artichoke now or in Feb, or in March from pony packs. They have a 10 year life expectancy and a huge footprint generally not planted with an understory! Please see the latest about Artichokes, A Wild & Wonderful Experience!  There are new things to know, varieties to consider, and Artichokes are a little different in their growing process than other veggies.

Shade  If you want a lower profile or space is limited, get dwarf varieties. That allows more flexibility when you choose how to place your plants or are filling in a spot where a plant has finished. Plant your Tall plants in zig zag ‘rows’ so you can plant them closer together. In the inside of a zig zag, on the sunny side in front of the ‘back’ plant, put in your fillers – medium height plants and shorties. A mix of winter beets like Cylindra, Bok Choy, mustards, longer winter radishes – Daikon, kohlrabi, parsnips, rutabagas and turnips would be exciting and give tasty winter variety to your table!

Soil & Feeding

With the majority of fall crops, the main harvest is leaves! Cut and come again means a long harvest…and a very hungry plant! So, plant in super soil to get a good start! Add composts, manures, worm castings. In the planting hole, mix in a handful of nonfat powdered milk in for immediate uptake as a natural germicide and to boost their immune system. For bloomers, brocs and caulis, throw in a handful of bone meal for later uptake at bloom time. If you have other treats you like to favor your plants with, give them some of that too! Go very lightly on incorporating coffee grounds either in your compost or soil. Studies found coffee grounds work well at only 0.5 percent of the compost mix. Yes, that’s only 1/2 a percent, barely a sprinkle! See more details about soil building! The exception is carrots! Too much good soil makes them hairy, fork, and too much water makes them split.

Also at transplant time, sprinkle mycorrhizal fungi directly on transplant roots, except Brassicas! Pat it on gently so it stays there. Direct contact is needed. Brassicas don’t mingle with the fungi and peas may have low need for it, so no need to use it on them either.

Winter plants need additional feeding, and steady adequate moisture to stay healthy and able in such demanding constant production. Give them yummy compost to keep their soil fluffy with oxygen, the water holding capacity up to par. Be careful not to damage main roots. Get a spade fork if you don’t have one. Make holes in your soil instead, then, if you don’t have skunks or other digging predators, pour in a fish/kelp emulsion cocktail! Or compost, manure, or worm cast tea down the holes. Your plants will thrive, soil organisms will party down!

Winter Water! An inch a week is the general rule, but certain areas and plants may require more or less water. Don’t let light rains fool you. Do the old finger test to see if the top 2” of soil are moist. If you are managing a landscape or larger veggie garden, slow, spread and sink incoming water. Install berms or do some terracing. Direct special channels to water your precious fruit trees. Carrying buckets of water builds character, but a gray water system is ace! See Rainy Day Tactics for Spectacular Veggies! See Santa Barbara Rebates for both residential and commercial assistance.

Securely stake tall or top heavy plants before predicted winds! Tie your peas to their trellis or plant them inside well-staked remesh round cages so the peas are protected from winds. Check on everything the morning after. Some areas may need more shelter and you could create a straw bale border, or even better, a permeable windbreak of low growing bushes, like maybe blueberries! Lay down seedless straw, a board, or stepping stone pathways so your footwear doesn’t get muddy. Treat yourself to some great garden clogs or fab muck boots! (Sloggers)

Some areas will be having freezes! See Protect Your Veggies from Freezing! Cover and tuck ‘em in! In all cases, rain, wind and freezes, keep a close eye on weather reports. If you have a special farmers’ weather report in your area, use that one!

Mulch? The purpose for mulch in summer is to keep your soil cool and moist. If you live where it snows, deep mulch may keep your soil from freezing so soon. But when SoCal temps start to cool, days are shorter, it’s time to remove mulch, especially if it is a moist pest or disease habitat, and let what Sun there is heat up the soil as it can. If your area is windy, lay on some mulch to keep your soil moist. If you regularly have high winds, anchor the mulch or use mulch that doesn’t blow away easily. When it is rainy, mulch slopes with mulch that won’t blow or float away. If needed, cover it – garden staple down some scrap pieces of hardware cloth, cut-to-fit wire fencing or that green plastic poultry fencing, or even floating row cover laid right on the ground. Or do a little quick sandbag terracing. Low to the ground leaf crops like lettuce, arugula, spinach, bok choy and chard need protection from  mud splash. Lay down some straw before predicted storms. Storms come with wind, so lay something over the straw, like maybe rebar pieces, to hold the straw in place, some remesh, or some anchored chicken wire. If the straw area is small, just pop in some garden staples. Everyone’s needs are unique ~ be creative!

Pest & Disease Prevention Drench young plants, seedlings getting their 3rd and 4th leaves, and ones you just transplanted, with Aspirin solution to get them off to a great start! One regular Aspirin mushed, 1/4 C nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap (surfactant), per gallon of water. Baking soda makes the leaves alkaline and inhibits fungal spores like mildew! Aspirin triggers a defense response and stimulates growth! Powdered milk is a natural germicide and boosts their immune system. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains.

RESTORE OR REST an area. Decide where you will plant your tomatoes, heavy feeders, next summer and plant your Green Manure there! Plant some bell beans (a short variety of fava easier to chop down) or a vetch mix for green manures to boost soil Nitrogen. The legume mix can include vetch, Austrian peas and bell beans, plus oats that have deep roots to break up the soil. When the bell beans start flowering, chop the mix down into small pieces. Let that sit on the surface, keeping it moist, for two weeks, then turn it under. The Nitrogen from the legumes’ roots nodules is only released after the plant dies. That’s why we wait 2 weeks – for it to be released into the soil. Being moist aids decomposition. If your soil can use other amendments, manures, green sand, compost with bark bits for water holding capacity, add them and turn everything under at the same time! Wait 2 or more weeks for it to mingle and get the soil organisms going again, then plant! Bell beans alone are great; you get a lot of green manure per square foot. If you change your mind, eat the beans!

Or cover an area you won’t be planting this winter with a good 6″ to 18″ deep of mulch/straw, crushed leaves, clean garden waste – spent plants, kitchen waste, sprinkle grass clippings so they don’t mat, seaweed, add amendments as you wish. Some gardeners add a bit of granular organic fertilizer for nitrogen. Alternate green/wet layers with brown/dry materials as possible. Then simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. This is called Lasagna gardening, sheet composting or composting in place – no turning or having to move it when it’s finished. If you are vermicomposting, have worms, add a few handfuls to speed up and enrich the process. Keep it slightly moist. Next spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

Birds and Bees! Plant wildflowers now from seed for early spring flowers! Germination in cooler weather takes longer, so don’t let the bed dry out. If you have space, make habitat for beneficial insects, birds and animals too! Start building now to put your solitary bee home up in March or early April! If you already have one, clean it, and if you have an owl house, now is the time to clean it out too. Depending on where you live they are usually empty from Halloween until early December! Nesting site selection starts in January, so build yours and get it up as soon as you can!

Santa Barbara’s 13th Annual Seed Swap is January 30 at its new location the Santa Barbara Community Arts Workshop (SBCAW)! The last Saturday of January every year is National Seed Swap Day! Look in your area for an event, and if you don’t find one, collaborate with your local garden club or permaculture group to get one going! Or just gather your neighbors and do it yourself! See more!

Plant gift plants or bowls or baskets for the holidays now! Make Lavender sachets! See Wonderful Gardener-Style Holiday Gifts!

Layer up, enjoy these crisp days. Let the wind clear your Spirit, the rain cleanse and soften your Soul.

Updated Annually

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Check out these wonderful October 2021 images at Rancheria Community Garden, Santa Barbara CA! We had a few days of above 80 temps. Many plants are still surprisingly in production! Persimmons and Cherimoya are in!  Winter plants are in beautiful progress! I saw an uncommon Gulf Fritillary Butterfly and two ravens (NOT crows)  have been hanging out in our area! From mighty flowers to tasty veggies, birds and butterflies, starting more fall plantings, our garden surely appreciated the fine RAIN we had! We are Sowing the Future!

Check out the entire November 2021 Newsletter! It includes these items and more!

Rainy Day Tactics for Spectacular Veggies!
Protect Your Veggies from Freezing! Cover and tuck ‘em in!
Cold Stratification for Some of Your Seeds
Magnificent Cabbages are Easy to Grow!
Wonderful Gardener-Style Holiday Gifts!

Upcoming Gardener Events! US Composting Council’s 30th Annual Conference & Tradeshow, Santa Barbara’s 13th Annual SEED SWAP! World Soil Day!

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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

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March 2019 Planting, Thoughtful Garden Design & Perfect Veggie Choices!

How quickly could you put this together, or something close to it, plus planted for good summer crops this year?! With or without finished paths wheelbarrow wide. The possibilities are endless!   

Last chance to design, make changes to your summer garden layout! March is often first plantings, if not, it is last soil preps before full on April plantings!

Many of the last days of February 2019 in Santa Barbara area were rainy and frosty! 8 AM Feb 23 the soil temp at Rancheria Community Garden was 40 F! That’s plenty chill and several plants were laying down. Many gardeners are waiting to plant. I haven’t seen any early toms, corn, or zukes, nor beans yet. Even the Oats one gardener is growing are growing quite slowly. Good choice to wait a bit. Soon the planties will be growing quickly! In the extremes of weather conditions we have been having be prepared for a hot summer! Select heat tolerant varieties of seeds and transplants.

Day lengths are still short. We want Night air temps steadily above 50 and soil temps 60 to 65 for starting our plants well. Peppers, especially need these warmer temps. They do best with nighttime temps above 55°F and soil temps above 65°F. Average March night temps are in the mid 40s.

MARCH through June Planting Timing 

Start MORE seedlings indoors NOW for late April/early May plantings – eggplant, peppers, and more tomatoes for transplanting into the garden in late April or early May. Also sow cucumbers, squash and sweet potatoes. The beauty of seeds is you can plant exactly what and how many you want! If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, get transplants and pop them in the ground per their right times! Plant Winter squash now so it will have a long enough season to harden for harvest and be done in time for early fall planting.

• APRIL is true heat lovers time! Eggplant, limas, melons (wait until MAY for cantaloupe), peppers, pumpkins and squash! Many wait until April, even May or June, to plant tomatoes. Wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before planting squash and melons.
• Some gardeners wait until JUNE to plant okra. It really likes heat and grows quickly when happy. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

With our warming temp trends, get bolt resistant/slow bolt varieties, heat, and especially drought tolerant varieties.

Right now plant pepper transplants (at the right temps) and cold tolerant, early varieties if available. If you love your peppers and want some early, or have a short growing season, next year order seeds for ones that mature quickly and are cool weather adapted! Plant those transplants in the ground first and others more heat tolerant soon after to carry the length of the season. For cold tolerant sweet bell peppers, get seed for Ace, Lady Bell or King of the North! Obriy Ukrainian sweet red pepper is both cold and heat tolerant! For hotties that don’t mind cold, order up Early Jalapeno,  Hungarian Hot Wax or Anaheim. Rocoto stands some cold but not a hard freeze. Manzano are reported to survive at 20°! The extraordinary feature of these two peppers, Capsicum pubescens (hairy leaves), is they grow into four-meter woody plants relatively quickly, and live up to 15 years! Truly sustainable! Now we need a bell pepper that can do that! If cold weather can happen anytime where you live, grow your peppers in pots; take them inside when it gets cold. Keep them on a cart or put the pots on roller wheels.

Plant determinate quick maturing tomatoes – start with small fruited varieties and cherry toms – for soonest tomatoes for your table! The moist soil at Santa Barbara’s community gardens has residues of Verticillium and Fusarium wilts, so some gardeners wait until warmer drier June soil to plant tomatoes and other veggies that are wilts susceptible – but remember, those fungi are also windborne. You can delay it, make it less, but not prevent or stop it. Cucumbers are especially susceptible and do quickly die from it, so if you love cukes, be prepared to plant 2nd and 3rd rounds, but do these successive rounds in different places! See more about how to avoid or slow down wilt and fungi problems! See more about selecting tomatoes!

Outdoors sow or transplant beets, carrots, celery, chard, herbs, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuces, green onions, bulb onion seed and sets (be sure to get summer maturing varieties), parsley, peas, peanuts (they do grow here!), potatoes, radishes, shallots, spinach, strawberries, and turnips. Transplant broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and kohlrabi seedlings. Time for heat tolerant, bolt and tipburn resistant lettuces of all kinds! The fabulous ruffly Green Star, Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson are some. Tips for super Successful Transplanting!

PLANT PLANTS THAT REPEL PESTS IN ADVANCE SO THEY WILL BE UP AND WORKING WHEN YOUR SEEDLINGS COME UP OR YOU INSTALL YOUR TRANSPLANTS! Those are radish, cilantro, potatoes, borage.

• Beans, Cukes, Dill, RADISH Combo! Depending on ground temps, tuck in some bean seeds where the peas are finishing, intermingled with cucumber seeds that will grow low along the trellis, below the beans, plus a few dill to go with the cukes! See more for bean/cuke planting tips. Plant radishes with the cukes to deter the Cucumber beetles. Borage repels tomato hornworm and is especially good with tomatoes, strawberries and squash!
• Tomato Tips:  La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In these drought conditions, consider getting only indeterminates.
• This is the LAST MONTH to transplant artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale; also strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry roots so they’ll bear fruit well this year.

Succession planting makes such good sense. Put your seeds and transplants in at the same time. Seedlings will come along 6 to 8 weeks behind your transplants so you have a steady supply of yummy veggies! But if tending seedlings isn’t your cup of tea, just leave space and put in more transplants in 6 to 8 weeks after your first planting.

It is perfect to put in fast growers like lettuce, beets, turnips, arugula, to hold space until you are ready to plant bigger plants. When it’s time for the bigger ones, clear a space/harvest, pop in your seeds or transplants and let them grow up among the space holders. As the bigger plants start to shade out the littles, remove lower leaves so the littles get light too! The smaller plants act as living mulch under the bigger plants. No need to plant smaller plants in rows of their own. Think circles and understory! Plant them around and under the bigger plants! If you anticipate a HOT summer, plant heat sensitive littles only on the morning or shady side of larger plants.

Put in borders of slow but low growers like carrots, mini cabbages, in more permanent places, like on what will become the morning side of taller backdrop plants like peppers and eggplant.

Depending on what legumes you choose, figure 3 1/2 +/- to grow another round of green manure to enrich your soil Nitrogen. In warming weather and longer days, it grows faster. In 6 weeks to two months chop it down and chop up. Give it 2 days to 2 weeks to decompose on the surface, keeping it moist. Add amendments, turn it all under, allow 3 weeks to a month for it to integrate with your soil, and the area will be ready to plant again. Or, dig your planting holes as soon as you turn it under, put in some fine compost, a smidge of manure, your other favorite amendments like worm castings, bone meal, a mineral mix, and plant! The rest of the area will take care of itself! See much more – Living Mulch/Green Manure!

Consider not growing kale or chard over summer. Kale will grow, but really is happiest in Winter. If you harvest a lot of your kale in summer, it often has smaller dry looking leaves growing at the top of a tortured spindly stalk. I’ve seen them over 5′ tall. The leaves get tough, lack robust flavor, and lack that cool weather vibrance. Fertilizing, watering really don’t do much at this point because the plant is just trying to survive. A different strategy is to harvest a lot less early on, let your plant branch and become bushy! Then you can harvest at several points, and the plant provides its own living mulch. Huge difference. Or maybe you need to plant a lot more kales so you don’t over harvest individual plants!

This is one kale plant in the image below! It has made all these branches, harvest points, by April at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden! Look at that abundance! It thrives all summer!

Chard suffers. It droops from midday heat, recovers, droops, recovers each day. That’s hard on a plant. It doesn’t produce much. Doesn’t seem reasonable to harvest when it is trying to stay alive. If you do choose to grow it, plant it where it will have a little shade in the hottest part of the day in summer or install some shade cloth for it. Plant shallow rooted living mulch plants around it. Keep it evenly moist. Flooding it isn’t what it needs when it droops from heat, and plants can literally drown. Chard is a fast grower. Why not harvest them mid to late spring? Plant something that will be more summer happy, plant chard again in fall when things cool down.

Broccoli, on the other hand, depending on the variety, produces side shoots like crazy all summer long! Just be sure to stake them if your plant gets large and top heavy! And feed it now and then. It’s working hard. Mulch brocs you intend to keep, deeply starting now while it’s still cool to keep them cool. Brocs are naturally a winter plant. Or encircle them with quick growing shallow rooted living mulch plants – lettuce (repels Cabbage butterfly), beets, etc. that won’t interfere with your broccoli’s roots. When you harvest those quick growers, when you have access to the soil, feed your broc, and plant more living mulch!

Tall: Indeterminate tomatoes in cages, pole beans in cages or on trellises. Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! Tall varieties of broccoli you keep for summer side shoots. Cucumbers are great on the trellis below the beans.

Middle height: Determinate tomatoes, bush beans, okra, tall peppers like Big Jim Anaheim or Poblanos, zucchini. White potatoes with Zucchini to repel squash bugs. Radish with cukes and squashes to repel cucumber beetles, with cukes, squashes and eggplant to trap flea beetles! Large Winter Squash vines and pumpkins are middle height, while some mini melons would fall to the lower mid height zone. Put in zucchini and vines, sweet potatoes, to take up space if you don’t want to do a lot of tending, but do know, you must keep those zucchini picked! If your zucchini is dense, and you miss seeing it, an unpicked zuke can become a 6″ diameter 2′ long monster in as little as 5 days!

Lower plants like eggplant, like a lot of heat. Put them on the sunny side, slightly in front of every other slightly taller plant. Leave a couple kale that will get taller. But, if they are leafless stalks with pom pom tops, they aren’t going to give any shade, so they could be left anywhere actually. Since they are a winter plant, mulch them deeply or plant lettuces or leafy plants around their base as a living mulch and keep the soil there moist and cooler, and feed them. Or grow the heat tolerant flat leaf kale like Thousand Headed Kale! It has many growing points instead of just one and self mulches!

Shorties & Littles: A lot of shorties will be in front of or the understory of taller plants, in some instances a living mulch, so there is no need to allocate, use up separate space just for them. Your plants all help each other. When the bigger plant leaves start shading out the littles below, harvest strategic large lower leaves to allow light and airflow.

Put beets and carrots in the short zone, as an understory, between and among big plants. Bunch onions away from beans, great with other short rooted plants like lettuces that need to be kept moist. Summer small bulbed variety radishes give a great spike of hot flavor to a cool summer salad! Some delicious mini melons are quite small leaved and low to the ground, are easily trellised though it is cooler up on that trellis….

Flowers & Seeds! Let arugula, cilantro, chamomile, a carrot or two, and a celery go to flower to bring bees, butterflies and beneficial insects – pollinators! Besides being beautiful and having lovely scents, let them seed out for seeds for next year’s plantings, to share at the seed swap, give as gifts! Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!

While you are thinking where to put things, select permanent spots for herbs, gateway points for flowers and edible flowers! Designate a permanent patch for year round flower habitat for bees. Cilantro is both tasty and has lovely feathery leaves and flowers in breeze, great pollinator food. Chamomile is downright heady scented on a warm morning. Comfrey, Knitbone, is both healing (arthritis/bones) and speeds your compost, is high in soil nutrition. Poppies are beautiful; humble white Sweet Alyssum is dainty and attracts beneficial insects. Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents! Cosmos is cosmic! See Stripes of Wildflowers!

Finish your Summer Gardening preparations!

• Install a greywater, rain capture system
• Install gopher wire protection.
• Install pathways, berms.
• Waffle Garden, basins & windbreaks, Water Garden. Excellent drought choices.
• Gather cages & trellises
• Terrace slopes – capture water runoff, prevent topsoil loss, mulch it
• Build creative raised beds, try Hugelkultur
• Get new containers, pallets, boards, net or wire for bird protection
• Organize where you will keep straw bales for summer mulch
• Setup Compost and worm box areas

Complete your Soil Prep! 

• Add compost, only 5 to 10%, & other amendments to your soil all at the same time.
• Add well aged manure as appropriate. Less in spring because you want fruit production, not leaf, unless it is a plant grown for its leaves, like lettuce, kale or cabbage! None for carrots, peas or beans.
• Add 25% worm castings. As little as 10% works. They are potent, help with seedling germination, boost immunities to disease.
• Adding Jamaican guano high in P, Phosphorus, at planting time helps your plants continue to bloom LATE in the season! Its NPK ratio is 1-10-0.2, takes 4 months to become available to your plants.
• Sprinkle with a tad of coffee grounds to reduce wilts fungi. Add only a ½ a % to your soil or compost. A tiny bit goes a long way!
• Don’t cover with mulch yet unless you need it for erosion control. Covered soil is cooler. Let your winter cool soil warm up. The exceptions are broccoli, cabbage, chard, and kale! Mulch ASAP because they like/need cooler soil.
• Water your prepped areas when you water your other veggies. Soil organisms need moist soil to live.
• Sidedressing! Hard working plants need fuel and water. As broccoli starts to head, give it a fish/kelp tonic! After the main head is cut, your side shoots will flourish!

Pests Reminders and Home Remedies!

• Before you put in seeds, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from vanishing upcoming seedlings overnight, making you think they never came up! No, they didn’t let you down. Killing off the creatures ahead of time saves the babies. It stops new transplants from being seriously damaged or entirely eaten while they are small. Do this a few times, to knock off the generations, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for a while.
• Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make on chard and beet leaves. Remove whole leaves that are too funky for rescue. Harvest the bigger outer lower leaves more often to stay ahead of the miners. Water a tad less so leaves are less soft and inviting.
• Hose APHIDS off chard, kale, brocs, cabbages. Keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed and new generations. Nearby, plant Calendula as a trap plant, radish to repel them. When you see unnaturally curled leaves, you will likely find aphids. Check both upper and undersides of the leaves and the tiny leaves at the central growth point.For hard to get at places, down the centers of chard, crinkly kale leaves, get out that spray bottle! Treat once, wait a couple days, treat the ones that got away and newborns.I tried it, it WORKS! The simplest is to spray with 2 Parts alcohol, 2 parts water, 1 part  soap. DO NOT use on seedlings, it will kill some of them. Spritz lightly rather than drenching or you may kill your bigger plant too! However. If the infestation is just over the top, with chard you can cut off the whole plant about 1 1/2″ above ground and simply let it regrow, though it may never be as healthy or lush as a newly grown plant. Sometimes it’s just better to start over, and not in the same place. Hose away any reappearing or lingering aphids post haste! Check out the ant situation.
• Regularly remove any yellowing leaves that attract whiteflies.
• Gophers You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after any rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.

Prevention A frustrating typical disease is Powdery mildew. It’s common on Curly Leaf kales, squashes, beans. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation. Apply your baking soda mix. Drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. A super combo is 1 regular Aspirin dissolved, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Not only is prevention so much better than after mildew has set in, but this mix stimulates your plant’s growth! See Aspirin Solution.

Do not compost diseased or infested leaves or plants. 

Thin any plants you intentionally over plant – carrots, beets, turnips, kale, chard, mustard. If you planted too close together, take out the shorter, weaker plants. They are all great in your salads along with small tender Brassica leaves.

Watering & Weeding Wind and sun dry soil quickly and short rooted plants like peas, or seedlings, need to be kept evenly moist.

Dust Mulching, cultivation, is perfect to break up the soil surface, especially after a rain! That keeps the water from wicking to the surface and evaporating. If you use a hula hoe you do two things at once! Just a half to one inch depth cuts off weed sprouts. Indeed, it turns the soil a tad, all that’s needed. More weeds will follow, but it’s quick and easy to repeat the process. Two, three times, a few days apart, and there will be little weeds after that for a while. Get ’em while they are small and easy to do. Smart gardening.

When grass has those frilly little green tops, it is blooming and seeding! Remove it ASAP. Better yet is to remove weeds before they seed! If at the seeding stage, gently pull, don’t shake the soil loose from the roots and spread seeds all over, if possible, and don’t put them in your compost!

Keep COMPOSTING! Soil building is the single-most important thing you can do for your garden. Compost keeps your soil aerated, has great water holding capacity, feeds just perfectly! And if you made it, you know what’s in it! Make it HOT, Cold, or In place!  Dry is dead, so be sure it is always slightly moist. Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way! And, like Will Allen says ….there is something very Spiritual about touching the soil, that’s where life begins.

The good work you do now will pay off with abundant summer harvests!

Oh, and see more in February’s Newsletter, especially about Tomatoes!

Updated 2.24.19

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Here in Santa Barbara many February days have been frosty cold and rainy, with more rain to come! If you are in a rainy area, remember, if the soil sticks to your shovel, wait a little longer to till. Enjoy these images from two of Santa Barbara’s Community Gardens!

2019 Mother’s Day is May 12! Here are some wonderful ideas for green and loving gifts! Get living gifts started now! Click here

See the entire March 2019 GBC Newsletter!

March Planting, Thoughtful Garden Design & Choices! 

Grow a Pollinator Meadow at Home in Your Veg Garden!
Clever Seed Planting Tips Indoors or Out!
How to Transplant for Super Successful Returns!

Upcoming Gardener Events! Mesa Harmony Plant Sale/Straw Bale Workshop, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Spring SALE! 49th Annual EARTH DAY Santa Barbara! 2020 International Permaculture Conference Argentina!

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

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August – Splendid Harvests, SeedSaving, Fall Starts!

For those of you who planted early spring, many of your plants are now finishing. It’s time to save seeds from your best plants! Clear space and ready soil for mini nursery seed beds in your garden or for transplanting from local nursery starts as soon as they become available.

Just getting started in a new garden, or you just love to plant?! Summer plants you can still plant for fall harvests are early varieties of determinate tomatoes, beans (bush beans are faster) and corn. Corn is more disease prone at this time though. Tuck in your year-round fillers, beets, bunch onions, carrots, summer lettuces, winter radish, to keep a colorful and delicious variety for your table.

ONIONS For the biggest, sweetest harvests, late summer and early fall are the prime times to sow seeds of short- or intermediate-day onions. Fall-sown short- and intermediate-day onions tend to yield more and are larger and sweeter than those seeded or transplanted in early spring.  Onions have stupendous flavor and come in white, yellow, red!

In our hot Santa Barbara foothills and further south, watch your melons, big squashes and pumpkins for their best harvest time – when their stem is brown and dry, or they are ready to ‘slip’ off the vine. Hold off irrigating melons about a week before they will ripen so their sugars will concentrate. Harvest okra while it is small and tender – bigger is NOT better! Let your winter squash harden. When you can’t push your fingernail in it, it’s ready.

Keep up with harvesting so plants don’t quit producing. More about harvesting! As in July, keep up with watering just beyond that dripline, replenish mulch.

If you are extending your season, give your favorite late summer/fall heavy producers you are keeping a good feed to extend their harvests. Eggplants have a large or many fruit, beans put out a ton of beans, tomatoes are big and working hard, peppers can be profuse! They like a tad of chicken manures scratched in, bunny poop and straw (pick up at Animal Shelters), well aged horse manure and compost makes them dance with the faeries in the night time!

Fertilizers highest in P, Phosphorus, keep blooming and fruiting optimum. Now is the time you wish you had added mycorrhizae fungi, the good guys, at planting time, to enhance Phosphorus uptake! Aged organic compost makes for healthy roots that make their own natural organic phosphoric acid that helps break down compounds of calcium and phosphate into a usable, soluble form. Digging it in now breaks the established feeder root network. It’s also too late to add bonemeal or guanos. They take 2 and 4 months respectively to become available to your plants. They are another must add at planting time. NOW, Phosphorus from fish bone meal 3-18-0 is easily taken up! So is chicken manure 1.1-0.8-0.5, but the P is a lot less. Scratch it in lightly, but only around your plant in spots. You want to leave the majority of the lateral feeder root system intact. The feeder roots not only supply your plant with food, but also with water so needed in late summer in SoCal.

• Peppers specially like a foliar feed of non-fat powdered milk (Calcium) and Epsom Salts (Magnesium & Sulfur). They also can use more Potassium. This time of year kelp meal is good source and releases quickly. If you have predators about, don’t get the kind mixed with stinky fish emulsion.
• Foliar feed all your plants with a super mixed tea – no manure in teas you will use on leaves you will eat, like lettuce! At the same time, for deeper root feeding, use a spade fork to make holes about your plant. Push it into the soil, wiggle back and forth a bit, then pour the rest of that tasty mixed tea down the holes. Replace the mulch and water well at soil level to the dripline. That will feed at root level too and give the soil organisms something to think about!

Seeds are your last harvest! Allow your healthiest top producers to seed. Tie a ribbon on plants (at top and bottom or where you might grab it) or fruits you want to save seeds from so you don’t accidently pull them in a clearing frenzy! Each year keep your best! Scatter some seeds about if they would grow successfully now! Or just scatter them about and when it’s the right time, even next spring, many will come up quite well on their own. Store your keepers in a cool dry place for next year’s better than ever plantings. Remember, these seeds are adapted and localized to you! If you are willing, take your extras to a local Seed Bank! While you are there, pick up some of your fall favorites and some new ones to try out! Hold some for your local Seed Swap! Our Santa Barbara area Seed Swap is in January. See more about SeedSaving!  How to Save Tomato Seeds!

After seedsaving, when your plants are done, let them go, compost if pest and disease free, start clearing space for fall soil prep.

Soil Prep!

August is perfect time to ready your soil for the very first fall plantings, mid August from seed! Do the seed beds first!

Some would consider the ultimate ‘soil prep’ to be installing gopher wire protection, LOL! Here we are at the turn of the season, a very good time to do the job. Get a team of friends together and go for it! Appoint a watcher to play music, make sure everyone stays hydrated. Bring gloves, wear sturdy shoes or boots. You may not be able to do the whole area at once, but do what you can. You will be so glad you did! You can do it!

Cover crop soil restoration! You can plant herbs, Calendula, all sorts of things, but a Green Manure mix including lots of legumes and oats does the best. Legumes collect Nitrogen, the number one element plants need for leaf growth! They deposit the N on their roots in little nodules. When you turn the legumes under, they not only feed your soil with their leaves, but those little nodules! Beans and Peas are legumes. Alway cut off rather than pull out their roots. Leave those roots there to feed your soil! The oats are what we call a dynamic accumulator! That’s terrific because their roots go deep, loosening the soil, creating channels for oxygen and water and soil critters to navigate. They bring nutrients up from deep below. Also, they produce more growth in late fall/early winter than in spring! Perfect for winter crop plantings! The Basics – Cover Crops   More – Living Mulch!

If you have enough area, plant one space entirely with a cover crop. If your area is smaller, each year plant a different section with your cover crop. Some years you can get two cover crops in, especially if you are planting successively for a steady table supply. When the first patch is done you plant it. You start your second patch where another area has been finishing. Or if you are doing one area for early planting, save another for planting bareroots in January.

If you are inclined, always be making compost with clean garden waste, kitchen scraps. Decide where you want to compost, leave the space next to it so you can move your compost back and forth. Or you can move your composter around to enrich the soil there. The fastest way to compost is to make a pit or a trench. Add your healthy green waste or kitchen waste, chop it fine, turn it in with some soil. If you trenched it, turn it a few times the next few days. If you have a pit, turn it two to three times over the next few days, then add it where it is needed when it is done. If composting isn’t for you, buy the best in bags you can! In addition to the basics, we want to see worm castings, mycorrhizae fungi, maybe some peat to loosen clay and add water holding capacity.

Seeds germinate really well and quicker when worm castings are added to your soil along with the compost. Castings also strengthen your plants’ immune systems! Add 25% for best results. Boost up seed beds (castings improve germination) and where you will be installing transplants. Put a stake where your planting holes will be so you can pay special attention at those points.

Start Seedlings for transplant, or plant seeds right in the ground! 

Get seeds for celery, chard, mustard greens, parsley, peas, winter radish varieties, and Brassicas: cabbage (especially red and savoy types, which resist frost better), brocs, Brussels sprouts, collards, cauliflower, kale babies, kohlrabi, Mizuna, pak choi, radish, rutabaga, turnips. Sow carrots (they do best from seed). Keep the soil moist and shaded until they’re up, and then gradually allow them more sun over a week’s time. Winter plants that get a good start while there is still some heat, will be producing a lot sooner than plants started while it is cooler. You will have a much earlier crop, plus time for a successive crop, maybe in December! Be sure to leave space to plant additional rounds to keep steady table supply.

If planting from seed is not for you, no time, gone on vacation, of course you can wait and get transplants when the nurseries bring them in. Just know nursery selections are not as big as what you can buy as seeds. Island Seed & Feed has a great seed selection in the Santa Barbara area, and there are marvelous seed companies. Be sure to get seed varieties that are right for your area!

Keep harvesting, do your soil preps, and wait for September or October transplanting. Labor Day weekend is a favorite big planting time for many gardeners, and that’s only a month away now! At that time you can plant both seeds and transplants, effectively two rounds at once, the seeds coming in six weeks after the transplants!

See Super Fall Veggies for help choosing the very best varieties and Fall companion planting! Don’t forget to plan space to commingle your valuable companion plants! They enhance growth, repel pests. Here’s your quick handy list of winter companions:

Cilantro with Broccoli! It makes brocs grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener!
Lettuce among, beside Cabbages to repel cabbage moths
Chives, Coriander, Garlic, Geraniums, Lavender, Mint family (caution – invasive), and onions are said to repel aphids.
Mustard and nasturtium can be planted near more valuable plants as traps for the aphids. A word to the wise, nasturtiums are snail habitat.
Calendula is a trap plant for pests such as aphids, whiteflies, and thrips by exuding a sticky sap that they find more appealing and delicious than nearby crops.
Peas and carrots together but NOT with the onion family

Among HOT August days, there are hints of fall. Days are a tad shorter; shadows fall in different places now. For us SoCal gardeners it’s time to design! It’s in our minds, maybe put to paper. What will be new and different this year, what will we try, is there a more productive variety? Will you be adding compost space, or a worm bin? Would you like raised beds this year? How about a greenhouse?! Have you ever planted a green manure cover crop? Will your soil be different? Will you be planting tall indeterminate peas in a cage that shades, or low bush peas? What about greywater systems? Rainwater capture? In the cool of summer evenings think it through….
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Please enjoy these July images at two of Santa Barbara’s community gardens, Pilgrim Terrace and Rancheria! Luscious veggies, some beautiful flowers, birdies, intriguing oddities!

Check out the entire August Newsletter!

AUGUST ~ Splendid Harvests, SeedSaving, Fall Starts!

Broccoli, the Queen of the Winter Garden!
The Larger Soil Pest – Gophers!
Greenhouses – the Six Weeks Advantage!

Upcoming Gardener Events! Mesa Harmony Crop Swap! National Heirloom Expo, Soil Not Oil, American Community Gardening Assn 39th Annual Conference!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

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May! Radiant Flowers and Tasty Veggies!

Are you having fun?! Does your garden make you this happy?! PLANT MORE!
In SoCal it’s Cantaloupe planting time!

Recent night air temps have been in the low 50s, a 45, and a 48. Quite cool. Soil temps are low too. Peppers especially need warmer temps, nighttime temps above 55°F, some say 60, and soil temps above 65°F. It’s still a bit cool for peppers, but many gardeners, including me, have planted them already anyway. If planted too soon, sometimes they miss their natural sequence of production, and never produce. Let’s hope they do ok. See Best Planting Temps Per Veggie!

May, June Planting Timing

MAY is time for cantaloupe, peppers, pumpkins and squash! Wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before planting squash and melons. Many wait until May, some even June, for warmer drier soil, to plant tomatoes to avoid soil fungi. Some gardeners wait until JUNE to plant okra. Okra really likes heat and grows quickly when happy. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

Long beans are spectacular and love heat. Late May, June is the best time to start them. They grow quickly from seed. They will last longer than other beans, hitting their stride toward the end of summer. Certain varieties of them don’t get mildew either! Their unique flavor keeps your table interesting.

While we are waiting for the right temps, do soil preps that are still needed. Weed out plants that won’t help your summer lovers. Make your soil fluffy with water holding compost, only 5 to 10%, while also adding tasty well aged manure! Add worm castings to areas that will be seeded.

Plant another round of your favorite heat lovers! Might be eggplant, limas, peppers and pumpkins! Transplant or seed different varieties of beans, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, peppers, squash, and tomatoes than you planted before! Sow and/or transplant asparagus, beets, carrots, celery, chard, corn, herbs, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, heat-tolerant leaf lettuce, summer-maturing onions, parsley, peanuts rhubarb and spinach! Add white potatoes and radish with zucchini, radishes with cukes to repel cuke beetles, and with eggplant to repel flea beetles. Add fillers and littles under bigger plants as living mulch! Put some color in your choices! Plant RED table onions, fancy lettuces! Tips for super Successful Transplanting!

Choose heat and drought tolerant varieties when you can. For example, why wait when it gets HOT and your tomato stops setting fruit?! Get heat tolerant varieties the heat doesn’t bother! Heat tolerant tomatoes  keep right on producing when temps get up to and above 85! Rattlesnake beans are a winner! They produce in up to 100 degree weather! They have a slightly nutty flavor. You do have to keep watch and pick almost daily because they get long and plump quickly – and are still tender!

Problem temps for tomatoes:

High daytime temperatures (above 85 F)
High Nighttime Temperatures (above 70 F)
Low Nighttime Temperatures (below 55 F)

Check out this nifty page of heat tolerant varieties at Bonnie Plant! If your plant is not heat tolerant, wait. When things cool down, it will start making flowers and setting fruit again. See also Tomatoes are the Fireworks of Your Summer Garden!

Time for heat and leaf tip burn resistant, bolt-resistant lettuces of all kinds! Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson are some. Green Star wins the beauty award!

Tomatoes! Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In Santa Barbara area continued drought conditions, consider getting only indeterminates. In the Mother Earth News tomato survey, they found gardeners chose heirlooms over hybrids if their soil is wilt/blight free. Otherwise, the longer the gardener has gardened, they more they chose wilt resistant toms if their soil has fungi. La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! See Special Planting and growing tips for your Tomatoes and Cucumbers! If you are interested in the Indigo family of tomatoes, in the Santa Barbara area, Terra Sol and La Sumida both have them this year!

Once you have these strong varieties installed particular maintenance will keep them healthy longer.

• Remove any leaves that will touch the ground if weighted with rain, dew or by watering.
• Remove infected leaves the curl the length of the leaf or get brown spots.
• Lay down a loose 1″ deep straw mulch blanket to allow air circulation and the soil to dry. No friendly fungi habitat. The most important purpose of this mulch is to keep your plant’s leaves from being water splashed or in contact with soil, which is the main way they get fungi/blight diseases.
• When the straw gets flat and tired, remove (don’t compost) and replace.

Flowers or veggies that are great companion plants for your tomatoes!

Companion Plants! Always be thinking what goes near, around, under, with, what enhances your plant’s growth and protects it from damaging insects and diseases, or feeds your soil! Keep the biodiversity rolling! Plant pest deterring plants first so they will be up and working when you put in your seeds or transplants! If you forget, you can always add your companions later.

• Alyssum is a great old fashioned pretty border plant, an understory living mulch. And WHITE Alyssum repels the cabbage butterfly.
• Basil repels several unwanted insects, is great near tomatoes but not in the basin with the tom. The tom needs less water.
• Beans, Cukes, Dill, Radish Combo! Cukes and Beans are great on the trellis, one high, one low. Dill to go with pickling cukes. Radishes to deter Cucumber beetles.
• WHITE Potatoes with Zucchini to repel squash bugs.
• Radish with eggplant, cukes & zukes as trap plants for flea beetles and to repel cucumber beetles.
• Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!
• Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips!
• Cosmos is for pollinators! More at SFGate
• Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents!
• Lettuce and carrots make a great understory below larger plants like peppers, eggplant. They act as living mulch! Leave a little open space to lightly dig in some compost or manure later in the season. If you already have enough lettuce and carrots, scatter a living mulch, soil feeding legume seed mix under those plants. At the end of the season you can turn it all under – aka Green Manure. Or remove the larger plants, open up spots in the living mulch and put in winter/summer plants! See much more – Living Mulch/Green Manure!

Now is the time watering becomes critical!

SEEDS need to be kept moist. If they dry they die and you either replant or if you don’t have time, just go get transplants. Of course, the advantage of seeds is you have a lot more variety choices than what you can get at the nursery if you aren’t too late in the season to get them if you don’t have any more… Always purchase extra seed for accidents and incidents, ie birds or insects.

TRANSPLANTS need to be kept moist the first few days until they acclimate to their new home. Gentle watering. I water once, then go back and do the whole area again, giving the first watering a chance to soak down. Flooding is not necessarily a good choice. Soil needs oxygen, and plants can literally drown.

THE SCHEDULE What schedule, LOL?! It all depends on the weather. In our area there are hot days, cool days, overcast days, not often windy. But very hot and windy together might mean watering twice a day, whereas cool and overcast might mean an inch of water a week could be just fine. Water beans, cukes, lettuces and short rooted varieties of strawberries more frequently – 2 to 3 times a week, daily in very hot or windy weather. Poke your finger in the ground after rains to see just how deep the water soaked in. Use your shovel and wedge a spot open to see if the soil is moist deeper.

Most plants need to be kept moist. Kept moist. Dry crusty soil keeps your soil from breathing. Compost, mulch and planting living mulch are all good answers. Compost has excellent water holding capacity. Work it in gently around the dripline of your plant so as to damage as few roots as possible. Maybe only do one or two sides of your plants so all the feeder roots are not destroyed. It will set your production back if your plant has to regrow them.

Living mulch has two advantages over dead mulch like bark or straw. 1) Living mulch can be an edible understory of small plants I call Littles. Their shade keeps the soil cool and moist. On balance they need water too, so you might use a wee bit of more water, but you also get 2 crops in the same space! 2) Living mulch can be soil feeding legumes under your bigger plants. They too shade and keep your soil moist and looser.

The plant that does well with straw is cucumbers! It keeps the fruits clean and soil free, and, drum roll, might slow cucumber beetle movement from one plant to another! Plus, it is great shelter for wolf spiders, daddy long legs and other predators. The more spidies the more healthy your garden!

The first plant you mulch is any Brassica – broccoli, kale – you are over summering. They like cool soil, so pile it on, good and deep, 4 to 6 inches. Peppers are quite the reverse, the last plants you mulch. They like soil temps above 65. Mulch keeps the soil cooler, so use your soil thermometer to see if the mulch is cooling it too much for your peppers.

If you live in a cool or coastal area, you may choose not to mulch melons at all! They do well on hot bare soil sheltered from cooling winds!

Furrows and basins are perfect for water capture, just like the SW indigenous peoples did with their waffle gardens. The water collects at the bottom, the wind goes over the berms. You can raise fungi susceptible plants, your tomato and cucumber basins onto the tops of your mounds so there is better drainage and your soil dries somewhat. For plants that are not wilt fungi vulnerable, dig your basins and furrows down. Let the normal soil level be the ‘berm’ for the wind to blow over.

Sprinkle and pat on Mycorrhiza fungi right on the roots of your transplants when you put them in the ground. It increases uptake of nutrients, water, and phosphorus that helps roots and flowers grow and develop. Ask for it bulk at Island Seed & Feed in Goleta

Save water by using a long water wand to water under your plants, not the foliage. Use one with different settings so you use only what your plant needs, and an easy-to-use shut off valve so you use water only when you need to.

Garlic, bulb onions, and shallots naturally begin to dry this month. When the foliage begins to dry it’s time to stop watering them. Dry outer layers needed for long storage will form on the bulbs. When about half of the foliage slumps to the ground, bend the rest to initiate this maturing. The bulbs will be ready for harvest when the foliage is thoroughly dry and crisp.

Natural Disease & Pest Prevention!

1. Be wise and pick the right plant varieties for your temps and conditions! Get heat tolerant, bolt resistant, drought tolerant, disease tolerant/resistant. If you are just starting, just start! You will learn as you go. Our climate is changing, so we are all adjusting and plants will be being hybridized, and hybridize naturally, for new climates. We can get varieties from other areas that are already used to conditions we will be having. Together we will do this. Locally, save seeds from plants that do the best with the heat and share some of those seeds at the Seed Swap and with other gardeners.
2. Think biodiversity! Plant companion plants that repel pests, enhance each other’s growth so they are strong and pest and disease resistant. Mix it up! Less planting in rows, more understories and intermingling. Split up groups so pests won’t go from one plant to the next, and the next. Allow enough room for air space between, no leaves of mature plants touching each other. That breaks up micro pest and disease habitats.
3. Make top notch soil!
4. In planting holes
   – Add worm castings for your plants’ excellent health. 25% is best; 10% will do if that’s all you got.
   – Add a tad more tasty properly aged manure mixes where manure lovers will be planted.
   – Add non-fat powdered milk for immediate immune system support at planting time
   – Put in a finely ground bone meal for 2 months later uptake when your plant gets to flowering time.
   – Add Jamaican guano high in P, Phosphorus, at planting time. It helps your plants continue to bloom LATE in the season! Its NPK ratio is 1-10-0.2, takes 4 months to become available to your plants. Other quanos don’t have this particular NPK ratio.
   – Add an eency tad of coffee grounds (a 1/2 of a %) if you have wilts in your soil
   – Sprinkle mycorrhizae fungi directly on transplant roots, all but Brassicas, at planting time to increase their uptake of nutrients and water.
   – Use acidic compost in strawberry patches and work in a little where you will be planting celery and string beans.
5. Immediately drench your transplants, foliar feed, with a non-fat powdered milk, baking soda, aspirin, soap mix to jazz up their immune systems. Specially give your peppers an Epsom salt and soap mix bath for a taste of sulfur. More details and all the recipes.
6. Maintenance! Keep your plants strong while they are working hard! Be ready to do a little cultivating composts and manures in during the season (called sidedressing), or adding fish/kelp emulsion mixes if you don’t have predator pests like skunks! Keep your plants watered and vibrant, but not so much as to make their leaves soft and inviting to munching insect pests like aphids. Trap gophers immediately if you are able.
7. Harvest promptly. Insects and diseases know when plants are softening and losing strength as they age. Insects are nature’s cleaner uppers, and they and disease organisms are hungry! If leaves are yellowing or not looking up to par, remove them. Whiteflies are attracted to yellow.
8. Prevention A frustrating typical spring disease is Powdery mildew. It’s common on late peas, Curly Leaf kales, broccoli, cucumbers and zucchini. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation. Apply your baking soda mix. Drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. A super combo is 1 regular Aspirin dissolved, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Not only is prevention so much better than after mildew has set in, but this mix stimulates your plant’s growth! See Aspirin Solution.

The usual May culprits!

• Cucumber Beetles get in cucumber, squash and melon blossoms. They aren’t picky. They are yellow greenish with black stripes or dots about the size and shape of a Ladybug. They are cute but are the very worst garden pest. They carry bacterial diseases and viruses from plant to plant, such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus, deadly to cukes. Radish repels them, is a champion plant, a hero of the garden! Plant enough radish for you to eat and to let others just grow, be there permanently or at least until the beetles are done, gone. IPM data Straw mulch recommended.
• Flea Beetles look like large black fleas and do hop mightily! They seem harmless enough, make tiny little holes in the leaves of eggplant, potatoes, arugula. But, those tiny holes add up. As the beetles suck out the juice of your plant they disrupt your plant’s flow of nutrients, open the leaves to disease, your plant is in a constant state of recovery, there is little production. Your plant looks dryish, lacks vitality. The trap plant for them, one that they like best, is radish! Thank goodness radish grow fast! Better yet, plant it ASAP when you put seeds and transplants in. IPM notes
• Squash Bugs like your Zucchini and other squash, cucumber and melons. Plant radish and WHITE potatoes amongst them to repel the bugs. You will get three crops instead of just one! IPM info
• Whiteflies do the honeydew thing like aphids do, leaving a nasty sticky black sooty mold or white fibers all over your plant’s leaves. The honeydew attracts ants, which interfere with the activities of Whitefly natural enemies. They are hard to get rid of, so keep a close watch on the undersides of leaves, especially if you see little white insects flying away when you jostle your plant. Whiteflies develop rapidly in warm weather, in many parts of California, and they breed all year. Prevent dusty conditions. Keep ants out of your plants. Hose them away immediately. See more Calendula is a trap plant for them.

Now is a the time to be thinking of soil prep for the future! Gather and dry good wood now for trial Hugelkultur composting at the end of summer, early fall! Woods that work best are alders, apple, aspen, birch, cottonwood, maple, oak, poplar, willow (make sure it is dead or it will sprout). Hugelkultur can be a simple huge pile or an elegant graceful design like this one. Could be right in your front yard! See more!

Plant Bee Food, Herbs and Flowers! Sow or transplant basil, borage, chervil, chamomile, chives, cilantro, comfrey, dill, fennel, lavender, marjoram, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, tarragon, and thyme. Be mindful where you plant them… Mediterranean herbs from southern France, like lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme, do well in hot summer sun and poor but well-drained soil with minimal fertilizer. On the other hand, basil, chives, coriander (cilantro), and parsley thrive in richer soil with more frequent watering. Wise planting puts chives by your broccoli, kale, but away from peas if you are still growing some. Cilantro, a carrot family workhorse, discourages harmful insects such as aphids, potato beetles and spider mites, attracts beneficial insects when in bloom. Dill is a natural right next to the cucumbers since you will use the dill if you make pickles. They mature about the same time.

Let some of your arugula, carrots, lettuces, cilantro bloom! Bees, and insect eating birds and beneficial insects love them and you will get some seeds – some for the birds, some for you, some to take to the seed swap! Grow beauty – cosmos, marigolds, white sweet alyssum – all benefit your garden in their own way! See Stripes of Wildflowers! Here are some special considerations – Courting Solitary Bees!

To plant a seed is to believe in tomorrow. Audrey Hepburn, born May 4, 1929

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See the entire May 2018 GBC Newsletter!

May! Radiant Flowers and Tasty Veggies!

Cantaloupe!
Pollination à la Honeybees, Squash Bees & Bumblebees!
Mulching ~ When, With What, How Much?!

Upcoming Gardener Events! International Permaculture Day, Mesa Harmony Crop Swap 2018! SBCC ANNUAL PLANT SALE, Fairview Gardens Programs, Quail Springs Programs!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

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The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Read Full Post »

March Planting, Thoughtful Garden Design & Perfect Veggie Choices!

How quickly could you put this together, or something close to it, plus planted for good summer crops this year?! With or without finished paths wheelbarrow wide. The possibilities are endless!  

Last chance to design, make changes to your summer garden layout! March is often first plantings, if not, it is last soil preps before full on April plantings!

Recent Santa Barbara temps have been close to freezing, a few plants lost. Day lengths are still short. We want Night air temps steadily above 50 and soil temps 60 to 65 for starting our plants well. Peppers, especially need these warmer temps. They do best with nighttime temps above 55°F and soil temps above 65°F. Average March night temps are in the mid 40s. The soil temp now is 51-53°F at Rancheria Community Garden.

MARCH through June Planting Timing 

Start MORE seedlings indoors NOW for late April/early May plantings – eggplant, peppers, and more tomatoes for transplanting into the garden in late April or early May. Also sow cucumbers, squash and sweet potatoes. The beauty of seeds is you can plant exactly what and how many you want! If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, get transplants and pop them in the ground per their right times! Plant Winter squash now so it will have a long enough season to harden for harvest and be done in time for early fall planting.

• APRIL is true heat lovers time! Eggplant, limas, melons (wait until MAY for cantaloupe), peppers, pumpkins and squash! Many wait until April, even May or June, to plant tomatoes. Wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before planting squash and melons.
• Some gardeners wait until JUNE to plant okra. It really likes heat and grows quickly when happy. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

With our warming temp trends, get bolt resistant/slow bolt varieties, heat, and especially drought tolerant varieties.

Right now plant pepper transplants (at the right temps) and cold tolerant, early varieties if available. If you love your peppers and want some early, or have a short growing season, next year order seeds for ones that mature quickly and are cool weather adapted! Plant those transplants in the ground first and others more heat tolerant soon after to carry the length of the season. For cold tolerant sweet bell peppers, get seed for Ace, Lady Bell or King of the North! Obriy Ukrainian sweet red pepper is both cold and heat tolerant! For hotties that don’t mind cold, order up Early Jalapeno,  Hungarian Hot Wax or Anaheim. Rocoto stands some cold but not a hard freeze. Manzano are reported to survive at 20°! The extraordinary feature of these two peppers, Capsicum pubescens (hairy leaves), is they grow into four-meter woody plants relatively quickly, and live up to 15 years! Truly sustainable! Now we need a bell pepper that can do that! If cold weather can happen anytime where you live, grow your peppers in pots; take them inside when it gets cold. Keep them on a cart or put the pots on roller wheels.

Plant determinate quick maturing tomatoes – start with small fruited varieties and cherry toms – for soonest tomatoes for your table! The moist soil at Santa Barbara’s community gardens has residues of Verticillium and Fusarium wilts, so some gardeners wait until warmer drier June soil to plant tomatoes and other veggies that are wilts susceptible – but remember, those fungi are also windborne. You can delay it, make it less, but not prevent or stop it. Cucumbers are especially susceptible and do quickly die from it, so if you love cukes, be prepared to plant 2nd and 3rd rounds, but do these successive rounds in different places! See more about how to avoid or slow down wilt and fungi problems! See more about selecting tomatoes!

Outdoors sow or transplant beets, carrots, celery, chard, herbs, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuces, green onions, bulb onion seed and sets (be sure to get summer maturing varieties), parsley, peas, peanuts (they do grow here!), potatoes, radishes, shallots, spinach, strawberries, and turnips. Transplant broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and kohlrabi seedlings. Time for heat tolerant, bolt and tipburn resistant lettuces of all kinds! The fabulous ruffly Green Star, Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson are some. Tips for super Successful Transplanting!

PLANT PLANTS THAT REPEL PESTS IN ADVANCE SO THEY WILL BE UP AND WORKING WHEN YOUR SEEDLINGS COME UP OR YOU INSTALL YOUR TRANSPLANTS!

• Beans, Cukes, Dill, RADISH Combo! Depending on ground temps, tuck in some bean seeds where the peas are finishing, intermingled with cucumber seeds that will grow low along the trellis, below the beans, plus a few dill to go with the cukes! See more for bean/cuke planting tips. Plant radishes with the cukes to deter the Cucumber beetles.
• Tomato Tips:  La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In these drought conditions, consider getting only indeterminates.
• This is the LAST MONTH to transplant artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale; also strawberry, blackberry, and raspberry roots so they’ll bear fruit well this year.

Succession planting makes such good sense. Put your seeds and transplants in at the same time. Seedlings will come along 6 to 8 weeks behind your transplants so you have a steady supply of yummy veggies! But if tending seedlings isn’t your cup of tea, just leave space and put in more transplants in 6 to 8 weeks after your first planting.

It is perfect to put in fast growers like lettuce, beets, turnips, arugula, to hold space until you are ready to plant bigger plants. When it’s time for the bigger ones, clear a space/harvest, pop in your seeds or transplants and let them grow up among the space holders. As the bigger plants start to shade out the littles, remove lower leaves so the littles get light too! The smaller plants act as living mulch under the bigger plants. No need to plant smaller plants in rows of their own. Think circles and understory! Plant them around and under the bigger plants! If you anticipate a HOT summer, plant heat sensitive littles only on the morning or shady side of larger plants.

Put in borders of slow but low growers like carrots, mini cabbages, in more permanent places, like on what will become the morning side of taller backdrop plants like peppers and eggplant.

Depending on what legumes you choose, figure 3 1/2 +/- to grow another round of green manure to enrich your soil Nitrogen. In warming weather and longer days, it grows faster. In 6 weeks to two months chop it down and chop up. Give it 2 days to 2 weeks to decompose on the surface, keeping it moist. Add amendments, turn it all under, allow 3 weeks to a month for it to integrate with your soil, and the area will be ready to plant again. Or, dig your planting holes as soon as you turn it under, put in some fine compost, a smidge of manure, your other favorite amendments like worm castings, bone meal, a mineral mix, and plant! The rest of the area will take care of itself! See much more – Living Mulch/Green Manure!

Consider not growing kale or chard over summer. Kale will grow, but really is happiest in Winter. If you harvest a lot of your kale in summer, it often has smaller dry looking leaves growing at the top of a tortured spindly stalk. I’ve seen them over 5′ tall. The leaves get tough, lack robust flavor, and lack that cool weather vibrance. Fertilizing, watering really don’t do much at this point because the plant is just trying to survive. A different strategy is to harvest a lot less early on, let your plant branch and become bushy! Then you can harvest at several points, and the plant provides its own living mulch. Huge difference. Or maybe you need to plant a lot more kales so you don’t over harvest individual plants!

This is one kale plant in the image below! It has made all these branches, harvest points, by April at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden! Look at that abundance! It thrives all summer!

Chard suffers. It droops from midday heat, recovers, droops, recovers each day. That’s hard on a plant. It doesn’t produce much. Doesn’t seem reasonable to harvest when it is trying to stay alive. If you do choose to grow it, plant it where it will have a little shade in the hottest part of the day in summer or install some shade cloth for it. Plant shallow rooted living mulch plants around it. Keep it evenly moist. Flooding it isn’t what it needs when it droops from heat, and plants can literally drown. Chard is a fast grower. Why not harvest them mid to late spring? Plant something that will be more summer happy, plant chard again in fall when things cool down.

Broccoli, on the other hand, depending on the variety, produces side shoots like crazy all summer long! Just be sure to stake them if your plant gets large and top heavy! And feed it now and then. It’s working hard. Mulch brocs you intend to keep, deeply starting now while it’s still cool to keep them cool. Brocs are naturally a winter plant. Or encircle them with quick growing shallow rooted living mulch plants – lettuce (repels Cabbage butterfly), beets, etc. that won’t interfere with your broccoli’s roots. When you harvest those quick growers, when you have access to the soil, feed your broc, and plant more living mulch!

Tall: Indeterminate tomatoes in cages, pole beans in cages or on trellises. Basil is great with tomatoes, and a pack of culinary dandelions! Tall varieties of broccoli you keep for summer side shoots. Cucumbers are great on the trellis below the beans.

Middle height: Determinate tomatoes, bush beans, okra, tall peppers like Big Jim Anaheim or Poblanos, zucchini. White potatoes with Zucchini to repel squash bugs. Radish with cukes and squashes to repel cucumber beetles, with cukes, squashes and eggplant to trap flea beetles! Large Winter Squash vines and pumpkins are middle height, while some mini melons would fall to the lower mid height zone. Put in zucchini and vines, sweet potatoes, to take up space if you don’t want to do a lot of tending, but do know, you must keep those zucchini picked! If your zucchini is dense, and you miss seeing it, an unpicked zuke can become a 6″ diameter 2′ long monster in as little as 5 days!

Lower plants like eggplant, like a lot of heat. Put them on the sunny side, slightly in front of every other slightly taller plant. Leave a couple kale that will get taller. But, if they are leafless stalks with pom pom tops, they aren’t going to give any shade, so they could be left anywhere actually. Since they are a winter plant, mulch them deeply or plant lettuces or leafy plants around their base as a living mulch and keep the soil there moist and cooler, and feed them. Or grow the heat tolerant flat leaf kale like Thousand Headed Kale! It has many growing points instead of just one and self mulches!

Shorties & Littles: A lot of shorties will be in front of or the understory of taller plants, in some instances a living mulch, so there is no need to allocate, use up separate space just for them. Your plants all help each other. When the bigger plant leaves start shading out the littles below, harvest strategic large lower leaves to allow light and airflow.

Put beets and carrots in the short zone, as an understory, between and among big plants. Bunch onions away from beans, great with other short rooted plants like lettuces that need to be kept moist. Summer small bulbed variety radishes give a great spike of hot flavor to a cool summer salad! Some delicious mini melons are quite small leaved and low to the ground, are easily trellised though it is cooler up on that trellis….

Flowers & Seeds! Let arugula, cilantro, chamomile, a carrot or two, and a celery go to flower to bring bees, butterflies and beneficial insects – pollinators! Besides being beautiful and having lovely scents, let them seed out for seeds for next year’s plantings, to share at the seed swap, give as gifts! Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!

While you are thinking where to put things, select permanent spots for herbs, gateway points for flowers and edible flowers! Designate a permanent patch for year round flower habitat for bees. Cilantro is both tasty and has lovely feathery leaves and flowers in breeze, great bee food. Chamomile is downright heady scented on a warm morning. Comfrey, Knitbone, is both healing (arthritis/bones) and speeds your compost, is high in soil nutrition. Poppies are beautiful; humble white Sweet Alyssum is dainty and attracts beneficial insects. Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents! Cosmos is cosmic! See Stripes of Wildflowers!

Finish your Summer Gardening preparations!

• Install a greywater, rain capture system
• Install gopher wire protection.
• Install pathways, berms.
• Waffle Garden, basins & windbreaks, Water Garden. Excellent drought choices.
• Gather cages & trellises
• Terrace slopes – capture water runoff, prevent topsoil loss, mulch it
• Build creative raised beds, try Hugelkultur
• Get new containers, pallets, boards, net or wire for bird protection
• Organize where you will keep straw bales for summer mulch
• Setup Compost and worm box areas

Complete your Soil Prep! 

• Add compost, only 5 to 10%, & other amendments to your soil all at the same time.
• Add well aged manure as appropriate. Less in spring because you want fruit production, not leaf, unless it is a plant grown for its leaves, like lettuce, kale or cabbage! None for carrots, peas or beans.
• Add 25% worm castings. As little as 10% works. They are potent, help with seedling germination, boost immunities to disease.
• Adding Jamaican guano high in P, Phosphorus, at planting time helps your plants continue to bloom LATE in the season! Its NPK ratio is 1-10-0.2, takes 4 months to become available to your plants.
• Sprinkle with a tad of coffee grounds to reduce wilts fungi. Add only a ½ a % to your soil or compost. A tiny bit goes a long way!
• Don’t cover with mulch yet unless you need it for erosion control. Covered soil is cooler. Let your winter cool soil warm up. The exceptions are broccoli, cabbage, chard, and kale! Mulch ASAP because they like/need cooler soil.
• Water your prepped areas when you water your other veggies. Soil organisms need moist soil to live.
• Sidedressing! Hard working plants need fuel and water. As broccoli starts to head, give it a fish/kelp tonic! After the main head is cut, your side shoots will flourish!

Pests Reminders and Home Remedies!

• Before you put in seeds, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from vanishing upcoming seedlings overnight, making you think they never came up! No, they didn’t let you down. Killing off the creatures ahead of time saves the babies. It stops new transplants from being seriously damaged or entirely eaten while they are small. Do this a few times, to knock off the generations, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for a while.
• Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make on chard and beet leaves. Remove whole leaves that are too funky for rescue. Harvest the bigger outer lower leaves more often to stay ahead of the miners. Water a tad less so leaves are less soft and inviting.
• Hose APHIDS off chard, kale, brocs, cabbages. Keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed and new generations. Nearby, plant Calendula as a trap plant, radish to repel them. When you see unnaturally curled leaves, you will likely find aphids. Check both upper and undersides of the leaves and the tiny leaves at the central growth point.For hard to get at places, down the centers of chard, crinkly kale leaves, get out that spray bottle! Treat once, wait a couple days, treat the ones that got away and newborns.I tried it, it WORKS! The simplest is to spray with 2 Parts alcohol, 2 parts water, 1 part  soap. DO NOT use on seedlings, it will kill some of them. Spritz lightly rather than drenching or you may kill your bigger plant too! However. If the infestation is just over the top, with chard you can cut off the whole plant about 1 1/2″ above ground and simply let it regrow, though it may never be as healthy or lush as a newly grown plant. Sometimes it’s just better to start over, and not in the same place. Hose away any reappearing or lingering aphids post haste! Check out the ant situation.
• Regularly remove any yellowing leaves that attract whiteflies.
• Gophers You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after any rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.

Prevention A frustrating typical disease is Powdery mildew. It’s common on Curly Leaf kales, squashes, beans. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation. Apply your baking soda mix. Drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. A super combo is 1 regular Aspirin dissolved, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Not only is prevention so much better than after mildew has set in, but this mix stimulates your plant’s growth! See Aspirin Solution.

Do not compost diseased or infested leaves or plants. 

Thin any plants you intentionally over plant – carrots, beets, turnips, kale, chard, mustard. If you planted too close together, take out the shorter, weaker plants. They are all great in your salads along with small tender Brassica leaves.

Watering & Weeding Wind and sun dry soil quickly and short rooted plants like peas, or seedlings, need to be kept evenly moist.

Dust Mulching, cultivation, is perfect to break up the soil surface, especially after a rain! That keeps the water from wicking to the surface and evaporating. If you use a hula hoe you do two things at once! Just a half to one inch depth cuts off weed sprouts. Indeed, it turns the soil a tad, all that’s needed. More weeds will follow, but it’s quick and easy to repeat the process. Two, three times, a few days apart, and there will be little weeds after that for a while. Get ’em while they are small and easy to do. Smart gardening.

When grass has those frilly little green tops, it is blooming and seeding! Remove it ASAP. Better yet is to remove weeds before they seed! If at the seeding stage, gently pull, don’t shake the soil loose from the roots and spread seeds all over, if possible, and don’t put them in your compost!

Keep COMPOSTING! Soil building is the single-most important thing you can do for your garden. Compost keeps your soil aerated, has great water holding capacity, feeds just perfectly! And if you made it, you know what’s in it! Make it HOT, Cold, or In place!  Dry is dead, so be sure it is always slightly moist. Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way! And, like Will Allen says ….there is something very Spiritual about touching the soil, that’s where life begins.

The good work you do now will pay off with abundant summer harvests!

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Mother’s Day is May 8! Here are some wonderful ideas for green and loving gifts! Get living gifts started now! Click here

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

See the entire March 2018 GBC Newsletter!

March Planting, Thoughtful Garden Design & Choices!

Stripes of Wildflowers!
Clever Seed Planting Tips Indoors or Outdoors!
Senior Veggie Gardening!

Upcoming Gardener Events! Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Spring SALE! 48th Annual EARTH DAY Santa Barbara!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

Read Full Post »

October! Final Summer Harvests, Seed Processing, Glorious Fall Planting!

Brassicas are the winter garden mainstay!

LARGE BRASSICAS

Broccoli is the favorite Brassica and rightfully so per the nutrition it offers. Plants differ in size, head color and shapes, how heat tolerant they are if you intend to let them over summer, and side shoot production. To get value for the room Brocs take up, a lot of gardeners seek varieties that produce a lot of side shoots after the main head is taken. Some newer varieties are already producing side shoots before the main head is taken! These smaller heads are great steamed if large, or tossed with your salad if small. Do as you wish! Research has shown there are less aphids when you plant different varieties of brocs together! Probably true for other large Brassicas as well. More!

Kale has been a recent have-to-have! Eat young leaves fresh in salads. Steam with other veggies over rice. High in Vitamin A and anti cancer properties! Lovely varieties – green or purple, flat or curly leaves. They just keep growing. They are technically a biennial, 2 year plant. The first year is for production, the second they make seeds. But. In SoCal they over winter several years. Or if we have exceptionally hot weather, they may bolt and make seeds the first year! You can end up with a pom pom style, especially the curly leaf kales. But they lose their verve, look tired and tasteless, rather tortured. A fresh young kale in good soil will easily take up a 3′ footprint and produce thick tender vibrant leaves like crazy! What a difference. I hope you start fresh ones each year. They grow so quickly. You won’t lose any harvest time if you plant a baby at the base of the old one, then take the old one down when you are getting those sweet young leaves from the baby. I’ll bet you forgot how good they can really taste! Just be sure to work in some good compost so it can be strong and keep producing well. More!

Cauliflower now comes in the standard white, also green, orange and purple! The disadvantage is there is only one head and that’s it, though as with any Brassica, the leaves are edible. Like Collard greens.

Cabbage is more dense for the dollar than Cauliflower though it too has only one head and takes a long time to grow – even the mini varieties! But what a feast! A cabbage head is amazing and you can fix it so many ways. Shred in salad, coleslaw, steamed, cabbage soup – Borscht, stir fried, cabbage rolls, cabbage kimchi, in tacos, as sauerkraut! Or try a traditional Irish dish, colcannon, a mixture of mashed potatoes, cabbage or kale, onions, and spices. YUM! There are many cabbage varieties as well – ‘white,’ red or green. Different sizes, and I do mean different. There are 4 to 6″ minis for container gardens, sooner eating or you just don’t need a huge cabbage. Easily more than a foot in diameter monsters! First they grow loose, then they fill in and make hard dense heads. An amazing plant! While your cabbages are putting on size, plant lettuces among them and other Brassicas. Lettuce repels cabbage moths. More!

Brussels Sprouts are charming. They like a colder climate to make big sprouts. In Santa Barbara SoCal area you need to be prepared to harvest lots of small ones.

All these big Brassicas need feeding from time to time because they are big, and most of them are continuously producing leaf crops! They are all susceptible to Mildew. Try for resistant varieties. Water in the morning when possible so they can dry by evening. A good reason not to over water or fertilize is aphids and whiteflies! They like softer plants. Use plenty of worm castings, as much as possible in their soil – as much as 25% if you can! Plant your Brassicas far enough apart, leaves not touching, for airflow when they are mature, so pests and diseases don’t easily spread plant to plant. Brassicas are generally frost tolerant, even a bit freeze tolerant, and it is said their flavor improves!

Cilantro is their best companion! If you like the scent, winter, early spring are good times for cilantro. It doesn’t bolt so fast. Summer it bolts, winters it will freeze, so replants go with the territory. Cilantro makes brocs grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener!

ENJOY LOTS OF SMALL BRASSICAS!

For salads arugula, bok choi, kohlrabi, mizuna, mustard, tatsoi, peppery sweet alyssum! Root crops are Daikon and White Icicle, pretty China Rose and handsome Long Black Spanish radish, turnips, rutabagas! Grow horseradish for fermenting. Plant these tasty small Brassicas in rows, between, among, around, in patches. A few here, a few there! Be artful and enjoy their many flavors at your winter table!

Peas – Flat, Snap or Pod

Flat is the same as Chinese or snow peas. String ’em or buy the stringless variety, and eat ’em right then and there or toss a few with your salad, steam or stew in Oriental dishes, add to your stir fry! Shelling or English peas are so delicious fresh out of the pod and might tasty steamed. SNAP peas are the sinful favorite of many. Few make it home from my garden. I just eat them. That’s why you get stringless varieties. Who wants to be picking their teeth at the garden, LOL?! Ok, if some of those snap peas do make it to the kitchen, add them to salads. If you must, lightly steam them, add them to stir fries. They are very tender. To keep their fresh green look, undercook….

Yellow, green or purple, you can get bush or pole peas! Bush peas come in sooner; pole peas grow tall, so come in later. Soon as your bush peas are done, the pole peas will come in shortly after, making for a steady supply. And the pole peas keep on coming. Compared to beans or tomatoes, peas have a shorter life span. And when they are done, they are done. Fertilizing, coaxing, additional water doesn’t help. Successive planting is the answer. Plant once a month or so if you love peas. You do have to keep them picked or, like beans, they stop producing. They have short roots and need to be kept moist. Onion family stunts peas! But carrots enhance peas! Plant carrots around the cage or along the trellis. If you plant carrots on one side of them, water the pea side so the carrots don’t get too much water and split.

Peas are the winter legume as beans are the summer legume of your garden! They are the trellis plants of our winter gardens. Put in your trellis first, then plant pole seeds, plus transplants of bush and pole all at the same time for them to come in one after the other. Your bush peas in cages will produce first, then your pole peas, and likely your seeded pole peas will follow in short order. Soon as your peas are done, clip off the plant, leaving the roots with their Nitrogen nodules in the ground to feed your soil. Plant more!

If you don’t have marauding birds, presprouting your seed peas makes sense! If you do have birds, cover them with aviary wire. PreSprouting peas is super simple. Paper towel on plate, lay out peas an inch apart, fold the paper towel over them, spritz with clean water, keep them moist. By +/- 5 days they will have sprouted. Get them into the ground, carefully so you don’t break the little roots. Presprouting assures no spots will be empty where a seed didn’t come up and you lose production! See more!

Make some Pea & Mint Crostini like at My Husband Cooks (Please do not drool on your keyboard while you are at this site.)

You can have a terrific time with beets! They thrive in cooler weather. Many colors! Grow the biggies, Cylindra! Plant them at the same time you plant smaller varieties so you have the littles first, then the biggies! Early Wonder Tall Tops and Dutch Baby Ball are a tasty choices, or red cold hardy Flat of Egypt! Try a yellow like Touchstone Gold!

Chard is an elegant super productive winter favorite! Handsome, colorful, really, they are the ‘flowers’ of the winter garden! Superlative nutrition, low calorie, easy to grow! If you want quantity, plant Fordhook Giants! They are wondrous – easily 3′ tall, foot wide leaves when conditions are right for them! Chard can’t be beat for production per square foot.

Lettuces thrive in cooler weather too, but do cover them at threatened freezes. Lay down tomato cages, cover, and secure the cover. Remove when the day warms up. Lettuces come in all kinds of shapes and delicious colors. They do best in rich soil, regular moisture. Winter is the cooler time when tender butter leafs and heading varieties do well.

Try super dense Salanova! Johnny’s Seeds says: Harvested as fully mature heads, the flavor and texture have more time to develop than traditional baby-leaf lettuces. The unique structure of the core produces a multitude of uniformly sized leaves, harvestable with one simple cut. Salanova is more than 40% higher yielding, has better flavor and texture, and double the shelf life of traditional baby-leaf lettuce, making it an excellent, more economical option. What do you think about all that?!

Perfect timing for tasty root crops – beets, turnips, rutabagas, daikon radish. Beets are a double winner because the roots and the leaves are edible. Pick leaves from time to time. When your beets are the size you want, pull them and eat all the leaves and the beets as well!

Winter is growing time for long Daikon Radish. And Carrots. Carrots are a dense root, so they take awhile. Plant short varieties like Thumbelina and Little Fingers for sooner eating. Kids love them! At the same time plant longer varieties to eat when the Little Fingers are one. You might enjoy some of the mixed color packs! The longer the carrot, the longer it takes to grow. Look at the seed pack to see how many days it takes to maturity. Of course, you can pull them sooner and smaller. 🙂 Avoid manuring where you know you will be planting carrots – makes them hairy. Steady water supply and not too much or they split.

Parsnips, celery and parsley are all in the carrot family and enjoy cool SoCal weather. Celery is in-the-garden edible let alone low calorie! Leeks and bunch onions, but no onion family near peas.

If you haven’t planted already…some of you carry your layout plan in your head, others draw and redraw, moving things around until it settles and feels right. Do add a couple new things just for fun! Try another direction. Add some herbs or different edible flowers. Leave a little open space for surprises! Stand back, take a deep breath and ask yourself why you plant what you plant and why you plant the way you do. Anything been tickling the back of your mind you are curious about? More about Designing Your SoCal Winter Veggie Garden!
 

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Plant longer maturing larger and taller varieties to the back, shorter early day varieties in front where they will get sun. Put littles on the sunny side of these. Plant your tall plants first, let them get up a bit. Then clip off the lower leaves and plant your littles. Or plant quick rounds of littles between the tall plants. They will be ready to harvest when the big plants would start shading them. A classic combo is lettuces among starting cabbages!

Mixes rule! Plant several varieties for maturity at different times and to confuse pests. Pests are attracted at certain stages of maturity. They may bother one plant but leave others entirely alone depending on temps and the pest’s cycle! There are less aphids on broccoli when you plant different varieties together. See Super Fall Veggies Varieties, Smart Companion Plantings!

Peas and green manure mixes – legumes and oats, feed and replenish your soil because they take N (Nitrogen) out of the air and deposit it in little nodules on their roots! If an area in your garden needs a pep up, plant it to green manure. Broadcast a seed mix of legumes and oats and let them grow. Bell beans, Austrian peas, vetch and oats from Island Seed & Feed Goleta is an excellent choice. The first three deposit N; the oats have deep roots that bring nutrients up and create soil channels for oxygen, water and soil organisms! Plant it where next summer’s heavy feeders, like tomatoes, will be grown!

If you are planning for mid January bareroot strawberry planting, be preparing your strawberry patch now if you are planting to plant green manure! The green manure mix I use takes 2+ months to grow. I chop it down when the bell beans flower. Chop it into bits, add acidic (azalea/camellia) compost, worm castings and turn it all under. It takes two to three weeks to decompose, let the soil organisms restabilize, and be ready to plant. That puts us right at mid January!

OR. Strawberry runner daughters can be clipped Oct 10 to 15, stored in the fridge for planting Nov 5ish. Remove any diseased soil where your beds will be; prep your beds with acidic compost like an Azalea mix. Commercial growers replace their plants every year. Some gardeners let them have two years but production tapers off a lot the second year. If you let them have two years, generously replenish the soil between the berries with acidic compost. Last year I laid down boards between the rows where my berries would be planted. The boards keep the soil moist underneath. I planted the berries just far enough apart that they self mulched (shaded the soil). Worked beautifully. I got the idea for the boards from a pallet gardener.

Plant in super soil to get a good start! Clean up old piles of stuff, remove old mulches that can harbor overwintering pest eggs and diseases. Then add the best-you-can-get composts, manures, worm castings. In planting holes, toss in a handful of nonfat powdered milk in for immediate uptake as a natural germicide and to boost their immune system. Throw in a handful of bone meal that will decompose for uptake at bloom time. If you have other treats you like to favor your plants with, give them some of that too! Go lightly on incorporating coffee grounds either in your compost or soil. In studies, what was found to work well was coffee grounds at only 0.5 percent of the compost mix. That’s only 1/2 a percent! See more details about soil building! If you have containers, dump that old spent stuff and put in some tasty new mix!

Winter Feeding Lettuces like a light feed of chicken manure cultivated in. All the winter plants are heavy producers – lots of leaves, some of those leaves are monsters! Cabbages are packed tight, leaf after leaf! They may need a light feed. Remember, it’s cooler now, so their uptake is slower, so give them liquid feeds of things easy for them to uptake. Fish emulsion (if you don’t have predators) or a tasty tea mix – compost, worm castings, manure (no manure tea for lettuces).

Give your berms a check. Restore or add, shift them as needed. Before wind or rain, double check cages and trellises, top heavy plants. Stake them, tie peas to the trellis or cage. Start gathering sheets, light blankets for possible cold weather to come. Keep tomato cages handy.

You don’t have to garden this winter! You can cover it deeply with all the mulch materials you can lay your hands on up to 18′ deep. Believe me, it will settle quickly. Let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. That’s called sheet composting or composting in place, lasagna gardening – no turning or having to move it when it’s finished. If you are vermicomposting, have worms, add a few handfuls to speed up and enrich the process. Next spring you will have rich nutritious living layers of whole soil for no work at all! Another wise option is to do something Hugelkultur style!

“Our most important job as vegetable gardeners is to feed and sustain soil life, often called the soil food web, beginning with the microbes. If we do this, our plants will thrive, we’ll grow nutritious, healthy food, and our soil conditions will get better each year. This is what is meant by the adage ‘Feed the soil not the plants.‘
― Jane Shellenberger, Organic Gardener’s Companion: Growing Vegetables in the West (Colorado)

Winter watering in drought areas is the same as for summer. Before 10:30 AM, after 4 PM. Watch which way water flows along the leaves. Some plants it flows to the center stem. Some drip water off the leaf tips in a circle around your plant, the dripline. Some go both ways. Make berms just beyond where the mature plant’s water flows. If at the dripline, that’s where the tiny feeder roots take up moisture and nutrients. That’s why they call them feeder roots! If your garden has a low spot, plant your water loving plants – chard, lettuces, spinach, mizuna, mints – there or near a spigot.

Fall Pests & Diseases

• Prevention Drench young plants, ones you just transplanted, with Aspirin solution to get them off to a great start! Drench your seedlings when they get up a few inches. One regular Aspirin, 1/4 C nonfat powdered milk, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap (surfactant), per gallon of water. Aspirin triggers a defense response and stimulates growth! Powdered milk is a natural germicide and boosts the immune system. Be sure to get under the leaves too!
• Brassicas, Peas! Lots of ants and on Brassicas, lengthwise curling leaves are the giveaways for aphids, then whiteflies. Aphids carry viruses. Aphids come in fat gray or small black. Avoid over watering and feeding that makes for soft plants, tender leaves that aphids thrive on, and ant habitat. Spray the aphids away, make the ants leave. Get up under those leaves, and fervently but carefully do the tender growth tips. Do it consistently until they don’t come back. Cinnamon is amazing. Ants don’t like it at all, and when you are starting seedlings it prevents molds and damping off. Sprinkle it on the soil in your six pack. Get it in big containers at Smart and Final. Reapply as needed. ASAP remove yellowing leaves that attract whiteflies.If Whiteflies and aphids/ants come along, give them a bath too! Get a good grip on your hose and swoosh them away when you first see them. Be sure to get hideaways under the leaves and in crevices!
• Chard, Lettuces, Spinach – Slugs and snails are the bane of so many crops, but these especially. Lay down something like Sluggo immediately. Then do it again in a week or so. Kill the parents, kill the children. After about 3 times you rarely need it again anytime soon.
• Biodiversity In general, avoid row planting where disease and pests wipe the plants out from one to the next to the next. Instead or rows, plant in several different spots. If you can’t help yourself, because your family always planted in rows or that’s the way farm pictures show plantings, remember, this is YOUR garden! Also, leave room so mature plants’ leaves don’t touch. Give them room to breathe, get good big leaves that get plenty of sun and produce lots more big leaves and many big fruits! Stunted crowded rootbound plants just don’t perform as well and are more disease and pest susceptible.

Keep up with your maintenance. Weed so seedlings aren’t shaded out or their nutrients used up.

If you have lots of seeds, over planting is an age old practice. Plant too, too many, then thin them with tiny pointy scissors, aka harvest the young, and eat ’em! Young radish sprouts, teeny carrots, beets, cilantro, arugula, onions, little Brassicas of all kinds are wonderful in a salad! If they get a little big, steam them or add to stir fries and stews. Another way to do it is plant flats of lettuces, mesclun mixes, and mow them! Tender baby greens! They will grow back 3, 4 times.

Have it in the back of your mind what summer plants you will be wanting, where you will plant them. Plant more permanent plants like a broccoli you keep over summer for side shoots (like All Season F1 Hybrid), or a kale that will keep on going, where they will not be shaded out by taller indeterminate summer tomatoes.

October is the last of Seed Saving time for most of us. Make notes on how your plants did, which varieties were the most successful. These seeds are adapted to you and your locality. Each year keep your best! Start sorting and labeling seed baggies on coming cooler indoor evenings. Store your keepers in a cool dry place for next year’s plantings. Generously gather seeds for upcoming January Seed Swaps!

Santa Barbara’s Seed Swap is January 28! The last Saturday of January every year is National Seed Swap Day! Look in your area for an event, and if you don’t find one, collaborate with your local garden club or permaculture group to get one going!

Plant gift plants or bowls or baskets for the holidays! Make Lavender sachets!

Take a deep breath of this fine fall weather!

See the entire October Garden Newsletter!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

 

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September Starts SoCal’s ‘Winter’ Season!

There’s kale and there’s kale! This truly tasty purple curly leaf kale image is by Steve!

Dear Gardeners – due to being gone to see the Eclipse, I am reposting last year’s September! I’ve reread, updated and added a few items. May your SoCal Fall/Winter season get off on a terrific start!

Last Harvests are being collected and stored, seeds saved! Some of you have started seedling nurseries or starts at home, many have prepped their soil and harvested seeds! If you didn’t yet, make your fall planting beds extra yummy – add 5-10% compost, 25% worm castings – seeds germinate better and do especially better with worm castings! Manure amounts depend on the type of manure. Rabbit poop manure can be used immediately with no composting! We want rich soil for those big winter plants. We want lots of those marvelous leaves for greens. Winter plants like brocs, collards, cauliflower, chard, are heavy producers, need plenty of food.

BUT NOT CARROTS!  Too good a soil makes them hairy and they fork.  And over watering, irregular watering, can make them split. Build your beds up so they drain well, are above the coldest air that settles low down. PEAS, the winter legume, make their own Nitrogen, so feed only lightly if at all

Some of you carry your layout plan, design, in your head, others draw and redraw, moving things around until it settles and feels right. Do add a couple new things just for fun! Try another direction. Add some herbs or different edible flowers. Leave a little open space for surprises! Stand back, take a deep breath and ask yourself why you plant what you plant and why you plant the way you do. Anything been tickling the back of your mind you are curious about? More about Designing Your SoCal Winter Veggie Garden!

Soil for your winter garden is the foundation for all your planting! See More!

If you need to skip a beat, take some time off from the garden, let it rest, but let nature rebuild while it’s resting!

1. You can cover it deeply with all the mulch materials you can lay your hands on up to 18′ deep. Believe me, it will settle quickly. Let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. That’s called sheet composting or composting in place, lasagna gardening – no turning or having to move it when it’s finished. If you are vermicomposting, have worms, add a few handfuls to speed up and enrich the process. Next spring you will have rich nutritious living layers of whole soil for no work at all!
2. You can plant it with green manure. Laying on lots of mulch is a ton of work when you do it, just gathering the materials can be a challenge. Green manure takes some work too, but it has awesome results as well. You broadcast a seed mix of legumes and oats and let them grow. Bell beans, Austrian peas, vetch and oats from Island Seed & Feed Goleta is an excellent choice. Legumes gather Nitrogen from the air store it in nodules on their roots! N is the main ingredient your plants need for their growth! The oat roots break up the soil. They dig deep and open channels for water and air flow, soil organisms.

It’s Brassica time! They are the mainstay of winter gardens! Their nutrition can’t be beat! Kale’s the Queen! Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, Cauliflower and collard greens! Then there are all the mini Bs, the fillers and littles – arugula, bok choy, mizuna, kohlrabi, mustards, radish, turnips. Rather than plant just six packs of transplants, put in seed at the same time when possible and stagger your plantings of the large Brassicas. Rather than all six cauliflower coming in at once, plant two now, two later and so on. Adjust that, of course, if you have a large area available to plant and a lot of people to feed! Another way to do it is to get varieties with early, middle and late maturity dates and plant them all at once! Plant both mini and monster cabbages at the same time! Minis come in sooner, monsters later!

Finicky eaters may enjoy a selection! Fall veggies come in lots of shapes and colors! Kales are renowned for their beauty and varieties – classic curly leaf, flat leaf like in the image (less aphids), Red Russian, Elephant, Red Bor that is really purple are just a few! Cauliflower comes in traditional shape and spiral, classic white and yellow and purple and green! Get seed packs of them all and mix them together! Carrots already come in color mix seed packets! Circus Circus is a fun choice, especially when your kids are planting! Beets are terrific fun! Yellows, reds, pinks, whites and Chioggias (concentric circles of colors)! You can get them in rainbow mixes just like getting rainbow chard mixes! Rather than have your finicky eater say no, open up that catalog or take them shopping a the nursery and let them pick what they would like to try!

More veggies that love cooler weather are beets, carrots, celery, chard, cilantro, leeks, spinach and especially lettuce – tender butter leafs and heading lettuce! If you anticipate a hot Sep, plant more heat tolerant lettuce.

• The winter legume is PEAS! Peas are like beans, they come in bush and pole types. And those come in three main types – shelling, eat-them-whole snap peas and flat China/snow peas! They are super easy to sprout! Dampen the paper towel; spray the towel to keep it moist. Takes 2, 3 days. Pop them into the garden by the trellis – if it is hot, devise some shade for them. You just need to be careful as you plant them so you don’t break the sprout off. Definitely plant some every month or so. They don’t live all season long. When they are done, they’re done. It is true that picking peas, just like picking beans, is labor intensive. I eat a lot of mine before they get home, so I don’t mind. Bush peas come in first and pretty much all at once; pole come on later and continue to produce. On the first round it makes sense to plant both at once!
• Onions For the biggest, sweetest harvests, late summer and early fall are the prime times to sow seeds of short- or intermediate-day onions. Fall-sown short- and intermediate-day onions tend to yield more and are larger and sweeter than those seeded or transplanted in early spring.

Varieties that do better in winter are long beets like Cylindras, long radishes like Daikons, pretty China Rose and handsome Long Black Spanish! Plant small beets like Dutch Baby Ball for quick beets while your Cylindras are growing twice to three times bigger!

Companion planting combos make a difference! Carrots enhance peas, onions stunt peas. Plant the carrots on the sunny side feet of pole beans. Combos can use space wisely! Carrots grow down, peas grow up, perfect! Cabbage babies need to be planted 12 to 28″ apart! A healthy plant will take up much closer to that 28″. They take a long while to grow, head, head tight! Plant lettuces that repel cabbage moths, or other fillers, that mature sooner, in the space between them. You can do this at home amongst your ornamentals, and/or in containers too! Fillers can be onion/chive types, beets. Short quickest growing winter radishes can be among the long slower growing carrots among the slowest growing, your cabbages. Cilantro makes brocs grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener! Research has shown there are less aphids when you plant different varieties of brocs together!

No need to plant patches or rows, unless you want to. Scatter them about on the sunny side between larger plants as an understory! Plant different varieties to keep your table exciting. Don’t plant them all at once, but rather every week or two for steady table supply. If you would enjoy a quick payback for your table, select the earliest maturing varieties.

If you have lots of seeds, over planting is an age old practice. Plant too, too many, then thin them with tiny pointy scissors, aka harvest the young, and eat ’em! Young radish sprouts, teeny carrots, little Brassicas of all kinds are wonderful in a salad! If they get a little big, steam them or add to stir fries and stews. Another way to do it is plant flats of lettuces, mesclun mixes, and mow them! Tender baby greens! They will grow back 3, 4 times.

When planting in hot fall weather, plant your outdoor seeds a tad deeper than you would in spring; soil is moister and cooler an extra inch or two down. It’s the law to keep them moist. If you plant successively for steady fresh table supply, plant a batch in September, again in October. Days will shorten and start cooling, but you are taking advantage of a fast start because your plants will grow quickly in the warmer weather now than later on. Sep plant from seeds, Oct from transplants.

Winter Feeding Lettuces like a light feed of chicken manure cultivated in. All the winter plants are heavy producers – lots of leaves, some of those leaves are monsters! Cabbages are packed tight, leaf after leaf! They may need a light feed. Remember, it’s cooler now, so their uptake is slower, so give them liquid feeds, teas, things easy for them to uptake.

Keep letting your strawberry runners grow for Oct harvest. If you will be planting bareroot berries in January, remove old plants and plant green manure in October. Your green manure will take close to 2 months to maturity, Oct, Nov. Turn it under by the first week of Dec., adding acidic compost at the same time, if your soil needs it, some coir for water holding capacity. If you replace your strawberries, in Santa Barbara area try Seascape, bred at UCSB. Big fill-your-palm plentiful berries, firm, tasty, strawberry spot resistant! They have long roots that gather plenty of nutrition and stay moist at deeper levels. Available at Terra Sol Garden Center – call ahead to get the date they arrive – they go fast and then they are gone!

Pest and Disease Prevention  Drench young plants, ones you just transplanted, with Aspirin solution to get them off to a great start! Drench your seedlings when they get up a few inches. One regular Aspirin, 1/4 C nonfat powdered milk, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap (surfactant), per gallon of water. Aspirin, triggers a defense response and stimulates growth! Powdered milk is a natural germicide and boosts the immune system. Be sure to get under the leaves too!

Brassica pests! Lots of ants and lengthwise curling leaves are the giveaways for aphids. Aphids carry viruses. Aphids come in fat gray or small black. Avoid over watering that makes for soft plants, tender leaves that aphids thrive on, and ant habitat. Spray the aphids away, make the ants leave. Get up under those leaves, and fervently but carefully do the tender growth tips. Do it consistently until they don’t come back. Cinnamon is amazing. Ants don’t like it at all, and when you are starting seedlings it prevents molds and damping off. Sprinkle it on the soil in your six pack. Get it in big containers at Smart and Final. Reapply as needed.

September is still Seed Saving time for some. Make notes on how your plants did, which varieties were the most successful. These seeds are adapted to you and your locality. Each year keep your best! Store your keepers in a cool dry place for next year’s plantings. Generously gather seeds for upcoming January Seed Swaps! If your area doesn’t have a seed swap, start organizing one!

Borage is a beautiful cool season plant with edible flowers, blue for bees! It has a large 3 to 4′ footprint, so allow for that or plan to keep clipping it back. What flower colours do birds and bees prefer?

Plant Sweet Peas for Christmas bloom! Plant gift plants or bowls or baskets for the holidays! 

This is a terrific time to put up a Greenhouse! You can start more seedlings, overwinter sensitive plants – eat tomatoes in December! Greenhouses can be perfect for you – the right size, easy to maintain!

September gardens are a magical time of creativity and transition!

See the entire September Garden Newsletter!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

 

Read Full Post »

August is the last of the great summer harvests!

Just getting started in a new garden, or you just love to plant?! Summer plants you can still plant for early fall harvests are early maturing tomatoes, beans (bush beans are faster) and corn. Corn is more disease prone at this time though. Tuck in your year-round fillers, beets, bunch onions, carrots, summer lettuces, winter radish, to keep a colorful and delicious variety for your table. More about harvesting!

ONIONS For the biggest, sweetest harvests, late summer and early fall are the prime times to sow seeds of short- or intermediate-day onions. Fall-sown short- and intermediate-day onions tend to yield more and are larger and sweeter than those seeded or transplanted in early spring.  Onions have stupendous flavor and come in white, yellow, red!

In our hot foothills and further south, watch your melons, big squashes and pumpkins for their best harvest time – when their stem is brown and dry, or they ‘slip’ off the vine. Hold off irrigating melons about a week before they will ripen so their sugars will concentrate. Harvest okra while it is small and tender – bigger is NOT better! Let your winter squash harden. When you can’t push your fingernail in it, it’s ready.

Keep up with harvesting so plants don’t quit producing. As in July, keep up with watering out to that dripline, replenish mulch.

Give your favorite late summer/fall heavy producers you are keeping a good feed to extend their harvests. Eggplants have a large or many fruit, beans put out a ton of beans, tomatoes are big and working hard, peppers can be profuse! They like a tad of chicken manures scratched in, bunny poop and straw (pick up at Animal Shelters), well aged horse manure and compost makes them dance with the faeries in the night time! Fertilizers highest in P, Phosphorus, keeps blooming and fruiting optimum.

• Peppers specially like a foliar feed of non-fat powdered milk (Calcium) and Epsom Salts (Magnesium & Sulfur). They also can use more Potassium. This time of year kelp meal is good source and releases quickly. If you have predators about, don’t get the kind mixed with stinky fish emulsion.
• Foliar feed all your plants with a super mixed tea – no manure in teas you will use on leaves you will eat! At the same time, for deeper root feeding, use a spade fork to make holes about your plant. Push it into the soil, wiggle back and forth a bit, then pour the rest of that tasty mixed tea down the holes. Replace the mulch and water well at soil level to the dripline. That will feed at root level too and give the soil organisms something to think about!

Seeds are your last harvest! Allow your healthiest top producers to seed. Each year keep your best! Scatter some about if they would grow successfully now! Or just scatter them about and when it’s the right time, even next spring, they will come up quite well on their own. Store your keepers in a cool dry place for next year’s better than ever plantings. Remember, these seeds are adapted and localized to you! If you are willing, take your extras to a local Seed Bank! While you are there, pick up some of your fall favorites and some new ones to try out! Hold some for your local Seed Swap! Our Santa Barbara area Seed Swap is in January.See more about SeedSaving!  How to Save Tomato Seeds!

After seedsaving, when your plants are done, let them go, compost if pest and disease free, start clearing space for fall soil prep.

Soil Prep!

August is perfect time to ready your soil for the very first fall plantings, mid August from seed! Do the seed beds first!

Some would consider the ultimate ‘soil prep’ to be installing gopher wire protection. Here we are at the turn of the season, a very good time to do the job. Get a team of friends together and go for it! Appoint a watcher to make sure everyone stays hydrated. Bring gloves, wear sturdy shoes or boots. You may not be able to do the whole area at once, but do what you can. You will be so glad you did! You can do it!

Cover crop soil restoration! You can plant herbs, Calendula, all sorts of things, but a Green Manure mix including lots of legumes and oats does the best. Legumes collect Nitrogen, the number one element plants need the for their growth! They deposit the N on their roots in little nodules. When you turn under the legumes they not only feed your soil with their leaves, but these little nodules! Beans and Peas are legumes. Alway cut off rather than pull out their roots. Leave those roots there to feed your soil! The oats are what we call a dynamic accumulator! That’s terrific because their roots go deep, loosening the soil, creating channels for oxygen and water and soil critters to navigate. They bring nutrients up from deep below. Also, they produce more growth in late fall/early winter than in spring! Perfect for winter crop plantings!

If you have enough area, plant one space entirely with a cover crop. If your area is smaller, each year plant a different section with your cover crop. Some years you can get in two cover crops, especially if you are planting successively for a steady table supply, or if you are doing one area for early planting, saving another for planting bareroots in January.

If you are inclined, always be making compost with clean garden waste, kitchen scraps. Decide where you want to compost, leave the space next to it so you can move your compost back and forth. Or you can move your composter around to enrich the soil there. If composting isn’t for you, buy the best in bags you can! In addition to the basics, we want to see worm castings, mycorrhizae fungi, maybe some peat to loosen clay, add water holding capacity.

Seeds germinate really well and quicker when worm castings are added to your soil along with the compost. Castings also strengthen your plants’ immune systems! Add 25% for best results. Boost up seed beds and where you will be installing transplants. Put a stake where your planting holes will be so you can pay special attention at those points.

Start Seedlings for transplant, or plant seeds right in the ground! 

Get seeds for celery, chard, mustard greens, parsley, peas, winter radish varieties, and Brassicas: cabbage (especially red and savoy types, which resist frost better), brocs, Brussels sprouts, collards, cauliflower, kale babies, kohlrabi, Mizuna, pak choi, radish, rutabaga, turnips. Sow carrots (they do best from seed). Keep the soil moist and shaded until they’re up, and then gradually allow them more sun over a week’s time. Winter plants that get a good start while there is still some heat, will be producing a lot sooner than plants started while it is cooler, and you will have a much earlier crop, plus time for a successive crop! Be sure to leave space to plant additional rounds to keep steady table supply.

If planting from seed is not for you, no time, gone on vacation, of course you can wait and get transplants when the nurseries bring them in. Just know the selection is not as big as buying seeds. Island Seed & Feed has a great seed selection in the Santa Barbara area, and there are marvelous seed companies. Be sure to get seed varieties that are right for your area!

Keep harvesting, do your soil preps, and wait for September or October transplanting. Labor Day weekend is a favorite big planting time for many gardeners, and that’s only a month away now! At that time you can plant both seeds and transplants for two rounds at once, the seeds coming in six weeks after the transplants!

See Super Fall Veggies for help choosing the very best varieties and Fall companion planting! Don’t forget to plan space to commingle your valuable companion plants! They enhance growth, repel pests. Here’s your quick handy list of winter companions:

Cilantro with Broccoli! It makes brocs grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener!
Lettuce among, beside Cabbages to repel cabbage moths
Chives, Coriander, Garlic, Geraniums, Lavender, Mint family (caution – invasive), and onions are said to repel aphids.
Mustard and nasturtium can be planted near more valuable plants as traps for the aphids. A word to the wise, nasturtiums are snail habitat.
Calendula is a trap plant for pests such as aphids, whiteflies, and thrips by exuding a sticky sap that they find more appealing and delicious than nearby crops.
Peas and carrots but NO onion family

Among HOT August days, there are hints of fall. Days are a tad shorter; shadows fall in different places now. For us SoCal gardeners it’s time to design! It’s in our minds, maybe put to paper. What will be new and different this year, what will we try, is there a more productive variety? Will you be adding compost space, or a worm bin? Would you like raised beds this year? How about a greenhouse?! Have you ever planted a green manure cover crop? Will your soil be different? Will you be planting tall indeterminate peas in a cage that shades, or low bush peas? What about greywater systems? Rainwater capture? In the cool of summer evenings think it through….

 

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See wonderful July images of Pilgrim Terrace and Rancheria Community Gardens, Santa Barbara CA! Veggies, flowers, gardening tips and info!

See the entire August Newsletter! (Sign up for it if you like!) 
AUGUST is the Last of the Great Summer Harvests!
Broccoli, the Queen of the Winter Garden!
Greenhouses – the Six Weeks Advantage!
Other Community Gardens – Zaytuna Farm, Permaculture with Geoff Lawton 

Events! 7th National Heirloom Exposition, 7th Santa Barbara Fermentation Festival, Soil Not Oil Intl Environmental Conference! 13th Intl Permaculture Convergence, India

 

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara’s community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

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Onion, Garlic, Leeks, Chives – Delicious SoCal Alliums!

Onion growing at Rancheria Community Garden, Santa Barbara CA
April 2019, beautiful plaited stem ~ Cerena Childress photo

Alliums, the Onion family, have been cultivated for decorative and edible uses as far back as 1594, and wild varieties have been foraged for millennia. The allium family provides at least one of the staple foods in nearly every culture!

Alliums are stinky and that’s exactly why we love them! They have a great array of flavors and aromas that call you to the kitchen to prepare meals with them, that call you to a mouthwatering meal! A lot of them can be grown all year long in SoCal, and if you live near the wild, they are deer resistant!

The bulbs are the most commonly eaten part of yellow, red and white garden onions, while scallions are usually harvested for their stalks, although the white base is also edible. Generally all parts of alliums are edible. And the lovely flowers are wonderful bee food!

Onions, Allium cepa, make us cry and give us bad breath but have stupendous flavor! Red onions are sweet. Yellow onions are good all-purpose onions. White onions are best used fresh. Some varieties of onions store better than others.

Table, bunch onions or Scallions Scallions are bunching onions, Allium fistulosum, with a bit less biting flavor. In summer heat, plant these onions in a spot with less sun. Plant all year long and you will always have fresh scallions.

Shallots, Allium cepa var. aggregatum, are a multiplier onion, which means that each shallot bulb you plant will produce a cluster of up to a dozen baby bulbs. They have a sweet and mild (although pronounced) flavor, with a hint of garlic, and lack the bite you get with yellow or white onions. Shallots are smaller and have longer, slimmer bulbs, are more commonly eaten raw.

Hot and dry! I’itoi onion is a prolific multiplier onion cultivated in the Baboquivari Peak Wilderness, Arizona area. This small-bulb type is easy to grow and ideal for hot, dry climates. Bulbs are separated, and planted in the fall 1 inch below the surface and 12 inches apart. Bulbs will multiply into clumps and can be harvested throughout the cooler months. Tops die back in the heat of summer and may return with heavy rains; bulbs can remain in the ground or be harvested and stored in a cool dry place for planting in the fall. The plants rarely flower; propagation is by division.

Leeks, Allium ampeloprasum, are tall, handsome and hefty! And they have that pretty leaf pattern! The leaves are large, flat. Leeks are easy to grow and their sweet, mild flavor and can be enjoyed fresh all year long in SoCal! Summer leek seeds can be sown from January to March to provide the best fall harvest and they overwinter well. You can pull up baby leeks at any time or savor mature leeks when they are about one inch in diameter. They too are a cut and come again. Cut them about one and a half inches from the ground and they grow back quickly 3 or 4 times! Use little ones in salads. Slice mature stems diagonally across and pop into winter soups & stews! The flower heads are elegant, the seeds are easy to harvest. Image by Jan at Jan’s Garden

Too much garlic, aka the stinking rose, Allium sativum and we smell like it! But that doesn’t matter to garlic lovers! There are festivals and restaurants that specialize in only garlic cuisine! It takes little space to produce a large supply of garlic. Elephant garlic, Allium ampeloprasum, makes a bulb about the same size as an ordinary garlic bulb, but it has only three to seven cloves and the flavor is mild.

Garlic is fun to plant! Check weather forecasts and plan to plant before a cold time! Let your garlic cloves or shallots sprout, plant them 6″ to 2″ deep, a 1/2″ if unsprouted. Don’t remove the skin. Plant in slightly moist soil, firm it lightly over the cloves, don’t water or water very little. Too wet and the cloves rot. Plant the biggest and best cloves for the sassiest plants! See more In six to seven months you’ll have beautiful cooking ingredients! Late October, November is likely the best SoCal garlic planting time to get the most cold weather for them. If you don’t mind smaller bulbs, you can also plant in spring.

Sadly, our SoCal warmth doesn’t make our garlic happy. In Santa Barbara our coastal humidity and lack of frosts and freezes like in inland areas let our plants get a lot of rust fungi. It stunts our plants and we get small bulbs. We can grow it, just not with the same jubilant success as happens further north, like at Gilroy CA, where winter frosts naturally kill off the fungi and plants are invigorated and healthy.

Chives, Allium tuberosum – smallest of all the Alliums, garlic chives, Allium schoenoprasum are a perennial (grow year after year). They are great for your baked potatoes or cottage cheese. The flowers are edible too! While easily grown from seed, they take a while to mature. A nursery purchase is easier! Plant them where they can live weed-free for a long time. A pot of chives close to the kitchen is always a treat. Clip the leaves with scissors about an inch above ground level. They grow back! Image compliments of Hudson Valley Seed Library

Ornamental Alliums are used for landscaping and often edible too! Society Garlic though ornamental, has edible flowers and leaves! And it’s a pleasure to mix veggie alliums in your landscape!

GROWING  Most species of these hardy perennials prefer a sunny location, and many require a period of dormancy. That often happens during the dry time of year. Not to worry if your plant dies back for awhile. Don’t pull it, wait for it. It will return and flourish again. These shallow-rooted plants need well-draining soil – no standing water for them! They need slightly fertile to fertile soil because they have those short roots, so the soil has to be good right where they feed! They can take clay soil quite well. They need weeding. They don’t compete well with weeds. Allow the soil to dry out between waterings. Not maybe bone dry, ’cause if you live on the edge and don’t water enough you may lose your plant. Rotating your allium crops can help prevent disease. If you have limited space, and not enough room to rotate, keep your soil fertile by amending with quality well rounded compost, resting your soil for a season, or putting in a green manure cover crop.

Alliums work well as companion plants for roses, carrots and beets, but inhibit the growth of legumes – that’s peas and beans. Otherwise, when grown close to other plants they tend to increase that plant’s resistance to disease and reduce insect infestation. The smell of onions mask the scent of a plant that might be attacked.

Per Plants for a Future ‘You can make a very good tonic spray from onion or garlic bulbs that will also increase the resistance of plants to pests and diseases, and garlic bulbs have in the past been used as a fungicide. Simply chop up the bulbs and soak them overnight in cold water – a few cloves in a pint of water should be adequate, and adding some camomile flowers if available seems to increase the effectiveness. The juice of the common onion is used as a moth repellent. It can also be used as a rust preventative on metals and as a polish for copper and glass. It is possible that other members of the genus can also be used in these ways.’

PLANTING

Seeds: Generally sow in late winter or in early spring. Sow thinly and only cover the seed lightly. Germination is normally quite quick and good. They are so tiny, you may not realize you have them, possibly pulling them thinking they are grass coming up! Wait a few days before you weed an allium planted area. Apply a liquid feed occasionally to make sure that the plants don’t get hungry. A number of species from Mediterranean-type climates usually come into growth in the autumn, flower in the spring and then die down for the summer. You do have to be careful that they don’t damp off.

Most alliums can be planted in the spring (May is still doable) for fall harvest/blooms in the later summer or early fall. Table, bunch onions or Scallions can be planted year round. Garlic likes fall to Winter Solstice plantings.

Onion varieties are region specific, plant the varieties your local nurseries carry, farmers grow, or experiment! For the biggest, sweetest SoCal harvests, late summer and early fall are the prime times to sow seeds of short- or intermediate-day onions. Fall-sown short- and intermediate-day onions tend to yield more and are larger and sweeter than those seeded or transplanted in early spring. If you do plant in spring, sow summer-maturing onions Feb/March/April. In our area, the  1st half of Nov plant seeds of globe onions for slicing. Grano, Granex, Crystal Wax. December/January plant short-day (sweet) globe onions. 

Bulbs! Divide in spring for winter-dormant species, or in late summer for summer-dormant species. The method of division depends the plant. With chives, the bulb is constantly dividing and a clump of bulbs is formed. Dig up the clump, break it into smaller sections, one bulb, replant. In other species, a number of small bulbs, or offsets, are produced at the base of the parent bulb. For rapid increase, dig up the bulbs every year & plant out the offsets.

Rhizomes! A number of species, like Society Garlic, form a clump of rhizome-like roots. In spring, dig up the clump, cut it into sections with a sharp knife making sure that there is at least one leaf- growing point on each section. Or, without digging it up, chop sections away from the part you choose to be the parent. Either way, plant the sections where you want them.

Some species, like the Tree Onion (A. cepa proliferum), and Walking Onion, also produce small bulbs, or bulbils, at the top of the flowering stem. Sometimes these are produced together with flowers, sometimes instead of flowers. Plant them out as soon as they part easily from the flowering stem. Some of the alliums with bulbils can become noxious weeds! Too true!

Transplants are often the easiest for busy gardeners. Carefully separate the little plants. Make a trench where you want to plant them and lay them with their roots outstretched along the edge of the trench as far apart between them as is right for what you are planting. Simply push the soil from the other side of the trench over their roots.

CAUTION! Alliums are poisonous to dogs and cats. Don’t grow these in your garden if your pets can access them, and never give a dog or cat table food that has been seasoned with onion or garlic.

HEALTH! If you are one of the lucky ones and garlic thrives at your micro climate niche, hooray! For humans, raw Garlic, in particular, acts like a natural antibiotic! A Washington State University 2012 study states that a compound from garlic is 100 times more effective than two popular antibiotics used in the treatment of intestinal infections caused by the bacterium species Campylobacter bacterium. Many other scientific research projects suggest that raw garlic has incredible healing properties. It has a substantial history. in France, gravediggers supposedly drank wine mixed with crushed garlic to protect them from the plague. It was also given to soldiers – in both world wars – to prevent gangrene caused by bacterial infection. The healing properties of this spice ranges from anti-infective to antioxidant.

Garlic is amazing! It is the only antibiotic that can actually kill infecting bacteria and at the same time protect the body from the poisons that are causing the infection. Clinical research found garlic’s effectiveness to be comparable to that of penicillin, streptomycin, erythromycin, and tetracycline. In addition, it has proven effective against some resistant bacteria that no longer respond to prescription antibiotics. It has also been reported that the vapor from freshly cut garlic can kill bacteria at a distance of 20 centimeters!

HARVEST, Drying! In May garlic, bulb onions, and shallots naturally begin to dry. When the foliage begins to dry it’s time to stop irrigating. Dry outer layers needed for long storage will form on the bulbs. When about half of the foliage slumps to the ground, bend the rest to initiate this maturing. The bulbs will be ready for harvest when the foliage is thoroughly dry and crisp. Some gardeners gather and store the bulbs inside. Others leave them lying on the hot ground for about a week. If you like, plait your onions or garlic!

Onion, Allium Cepa drying bundles by Larry Rettig at Dave’s Garden

STORAGE! 

Image at Masters Produce, Auckland NZ

Besides plaiting onions or garlic, or bulk dry onion storage, make healthy probiotic treats. Conveniently chop and put in freezer bags in the serving sizes or the amount you will add to favorite meal, freeze. Canning and drying are traditional. Dry thinly sliced onions and garlic to spice up a camp stew later on.

Onions IN the Kitchen tips!

Store in a cool, dark, dry place such as your pantry.

No fridge! Cold temps soften their texture plus onions flavour your other produce.

NO plastic bags; they accelerate sprouting and spoilage due to lack of air circulation.

Store onions and potatoes separately! Both give off gases that accelerate spoilage of each other.

SAVING SEEDS is a joy! Let a few of your plants grow out. Put a bag over the seeding flower stalk, bend the stem, whap or shake it, and let the seeds fall into the bag. I use a clear, zipper style plastic bag so I can see it happen and seal the seeds in so I don’t lose them if the bag gets dropped or bumped!

Enjoy the tasty range of shapes, colors, flavors of your alliums. Experiment with different varieties!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

See the March 2017 GBC Newsletter!

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic!

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