January, Bareroot, Seeds & Soil!

Happy Green New Year, Gardeners!! 

Stunning Sicilian Violet Cauliflower, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden!
Love your Mother! Plant winter bee food! Capture water! Grow organic! 

Santa Barbara’s average last frost date is January 22! This isn’t to say there might not be another frost after that…and plants won’t produce fruit until they have enough hours of sun, and for some, warmth including day/night and/or ground temps. Know that you are taking your chances. If you lose ’em just replant! Guarantee your success by starting another round of seeds in a month or so, both for backup and succession planting.

With your summer garden layout in mind, get SEEDS! Start them indoors NOW! Check your 2015 seed catalogs for drought and heat tolerant varieties or look in southern states or world areas that have desert low water needs plants and order up! The seeds of these types may need to be planted deeper and earlier than more local plants for moisture they need. They may mature earlier. Be prepared to do second plantings and use a little water.

You have planting timing choices to make this year. So far, here in Santa Barbara, we have been having a super mild winter, hot at times, finally getting some frosts the last few days of December. We May start planting some spring crops very early, ie zucchini in January! Some crops, like tomatoes fruits won’t mature well because the day lengths aren’t long enough yet, air and ground temps are too cool. For those it’s better to wait. However, if you get planting fever, put in small fruited varieties and cherry toms to start your tomato season. You can probably better use that area though for other quick plants, grown for their leaves, until it’s the right time to plant toms. Plants grown for their leaves can be removed at any time and you still shall have had lush harvests.

This is THE time to start peppers from seed! Peppers take their time, much longer than other plants.

Check out  Seed Soaking/Presprouting Tips & Ideas!

If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, wait and get transplants and pop them right in the ground per their right times! No fuss, no muss.

If you love your winter crops, and aren’t necessarily in a rush to do spring/summer, amend your soil immediately and plant one more round, from transplants if you can get them or have starts of your own. In cooler January weather, plantings will mature slowly, but they will mature faster than usual as days are longer, things are warmer. Most January plantings will be coming in March, April. That’s still in good time for soil preps in April for the first spring plantings in April/May.

For us SoCal gardeners, besides beautiful bareroot roses, this month is bareroot veggies time! They don’t have soil on their roots, so plant immediately or keep them moist! Grape vines; artichokes; short-day (sweet) globe onions; strawberries; cane berries such as raspberries (get low-chill types); low-chill blueberries; and rhubarb, asparagus, and horseradish. Bare root planting is strictly a January thing. February is too late.

Think twice about horseradish. It’s invasive as all get out! If you do it, confine it to a raised bed or an area where it will run out of water. If you have long term space available, add in some deciduous fruit trees! Rhubarb, though totally tasty in several combinations, ie strawberry/rhubarb pie, has poisonous leaves! That means to dogs, small children and unknowing people. Either fence it off, or don’t grow it. I don’t recommend it in community gardens because we can’t assure people’s/children’s safety.

Plant MORE of these delicious morsels now! Arugula, beets, brocs, Brussels sprouts if you get winter chill, bunch onions, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, culinary dandelions, garden purslane, kale, kohlrabi, head and leaf lettuces, Mesclun, peas, potatoes, radishes – especially daikons, and turnips!

If you need more robust soil, you may choose to put in 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. Green manure can be beautiful favas or a vetch mix to boost soil Nitrogen. Favas are big and you get a lot of green manure per square foot. If you change your mind, you can eat them! 🙂 Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw! That will flatten down in no time at all! Simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. That’s called 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. Come spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

Repeat! Excellent Winter Garden Practices!

When you put in new transplants, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from seriously damaging them while they are small. Before you anticipate your seedlings coming up, sprinkle some pellets around the plant, along both sides of rows. That keeps the creatures from mowing them overnight, making you think they never came up! Do this a few times, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for a while.

Keep watch on your chard and beet leaves. Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make; 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 the leaf is less soft and inviting.

Thin any plants you intentionally over planted – 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.

SideDressing – that’s feeding your plant during its growing time! Your plants will love a liquid fertilizer, like a stinky fish/kelp, that is easy for them to uptake in cooler weather. Sprinkle fertilizer around your plants or down a row, and dig it in a little, especially before a rain! Water it in. Use ½ the strength of your summer feedings. Rabbit manure can be scratched in directly with no composting. Pretty box mixes are fine! Lay in some of your fat compost in the top 3 to 6 inches of your soil. If you haven’t been a fertilizing mid-season person before, think about how hard your plant is working. Big brocs, for example. Heading is your cue to help them along. Worm castings, though not food, work wonders!

Especially feed your cabbages, lightly, time to time, because they are making leaf after leaf, dense heads, working hard.  I often see kales lose their perk. You would too if someone kept pulling your leaves off and never fed you. Feed them too, please, while feeding your cabbages.Don’t feed carrots, they will fork and grow hairy! Overwatering makes them split. Your peas and favas are busy gathering Nitrogen from the air, feeding themselves, so little to no feeding is needed for them.

Glance at beet roots, turnips, in general, for low soil, especially after rains. Maybe you aren’t quite planting your seeds deeply enough or watering in a way that washes the soil away? Anyway, cover up beet, carrot, radish and turnip shoulders to keep them from drying and getting rough looking and tough.

In SoCal winter is not a time for mulching except for erosion control. Its purpose in summer is to keep the soil and plant roots cool, and retain moisture. In winter, we pull the mulch back to let the soil warm up during the short days. Also, it’s good to remove pest habitat, let the soil dry a bit between rains to kill off the wilts fungi, and let Bagrada bug eggs die. Bag up summer straw, mulches, for compost pile layers during winter.

Just in case, have old sheets, light blankets, old towels handy in case of hard freezes. If a freeze is predicted, for small plants, like tender lettuces, just lay tomato cages on their sides and put your coverings over them. Secure them well so wind doesn’t blow them around and damage your plants. Remove them when the sun comes out! No cooking your plants before their time! Santa Barbara’s average First Frost (fall) date is December 19, Last Frost (spring) date is (was?) January 22.

Standard Veggie Predators

• Gophers  You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after the rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.
• Aphids? Watch for leaves unnaturally curled along the length of the leaf, particularly broccolis, cauliflowers, kale, cabbages. Squish or wash any or the colony away immediately, and keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed. After that, water less so plant leaves will be less tender and inviting.
• White flies  Flush away, especially under the leaves. They are attracted to yellow, so keep  those Brassica yellowing, yellowed leaves removed pronto. Again, a little less water.
• Slugs, Snails  Sluggo, or the like, before they even get started, right when your seedlings begin to show, immediately when you put your transplants in! Once stopped, there will be intervals when there are none at all. If you notice tiny children snails, lay down another couple rounds.

COMPOST always! Soil building is the single-most important thing you can do for your garden. Compost is easy to make. Added to your soil, it increases water holding capacity, is nutritious, soil organisms flourish, your soil breathes! Make a compost pile, put clean green waste/kitchen trim in alternate layers with straw/leaves in a bin, trench in kitchen trim, lay layers on top of your garden with a light covering of soil so all the nutrients are contained and it doesn’t draw flies! The soil organisms will work at the top as well as from the ground soil up. Throw on some red wriggler worms to speed the process. Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way! Ask neighbors or kin to save non-predator type kitchen veggie scraps for you. Go lightly on coffee grounds.

Get your summer garden layout in mind NOW for January/February SEED SWAPS! Peruse seed catalogs and order up for your entire year’s plantings!  🙂

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We are very coastal, in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, so 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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Leave a wild place, untouched, in your garden! It’s the place the faeries and elves, the little people can hang out. When you are down on your hands and knees, they will whisper what to do. All of a sudden an idea pops in your mind….

Winter beauty and super nutrition to you!
Cerena

In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love. – Baha’U’Uah
“Earth turns to Gold in the hands of the Wise” Rumi

See the entire January 2015 Newsletter!

December has been a dramatic month at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We had HOT days, then finally some frosts and freezes! There has been some brilliant colors and winter bird flocks. See wonderful December Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden images! Happy 2015 gardening to you all! 

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Delightful December Holiday Harvests!

Happy Holidays with Lots of Green HUGS!! 

It is such a blessing to be connected with each and every one of you! Thank you for sharing so much, the support you give, for engaging your Spirit with our community. Please intentionally shop and give green. May it go well with you and yours now and in the New Year!

Chard, Bright Lights! 
Love your Mother! Plant winter bee food! Capture water! Grow organic!

September/October plantings are coming in, perfectly in time for your holiday table! For many, December brings the biggest fall harvests, is Winter’s June! I put the date I planted on my ID tags, along with the # of days to maturity. From time to time I check them. If it is beets or carrots and it’s about time for them to be ready, I poke my fingers into the soil to see how they are coming along.

With shorter and possibly cooler days, what you plant now will take a bit longer to mature, more than that 50, 60+ days.  So December plantings will be coming in late February, March. That’s still in good time for soil preps in March for the first spring plantings in April.

You have planting timing choices to make this year. So far, here in Santa Barbara, we have been having a super mild winter, hot, in fact, with no frost in sight. If that keeps up, we can start planting some spring crops very early, ie zucchini! Some crop’s fruits won’t mature well because the day lengths aren’t long enough yet. For those it’s better to wait. You can use that area for other quick growers until it’s their time. If you love your winter crops, amend your soil immediately and plant one more round, from transplants if you can get them or have starts of your own. They will mature faster than usual.

Check your 2015 seed catalogs for drought and heat tolerant varieties or look in southern states or world areas that have desert tolerant plants and order up! The seeds of these types may need to be planted deeper and earlier than more local plants for moisture they need. They may mature earlier. Be prepared to do second plantings and use a little water.

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, asparagus, and horseradish.

Plant these delicious morsels now! Artichoke pups (give them 3’ to 4’ space), arugula, asparagus, beets, brocs, Brussels sprouts if you get winter chill, bunch onions, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, culinary dandelions, garden purslane, kale, kohlrabi, head and leaf lettuces, mesclun, peas, potatoes, radishes – especially daikons, and turnips!

GARLIC LOVERS  Same as with Brussels Sprouts, these stinkies need good winter chill. December, is the last time to be planting garlic, with the special date being Winter Solstice day, Dec 21! Use the fattest cloves, give them super rich soil. Some say give them lots of water, others say little. Up to you. Try both? Also, you have the choice whether to plant with the skin on or presoaked skin off. Skin on protects the clove; skin off grows faster if it doesn’t get eaten or rot.  Again, up to you. But all agree, choose the hefty cloves!

Plant green manure where you will grow heavy summer feeders like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, chiles, 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. Green manure can be beautiful favas or a vetch mix to boost soil Nitrogen. Favas are big and you get a lot of green manure per square foot. If you change your mind, you can eat them! 🙂 Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw and simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. That’s called 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. Next spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

Excellent Winter Garden Practices:

When you put in new transplants, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from seriously damaging them while they are small. Before you anticipate your seedlings coming up, sprinkle some pellets around the plant, along both sides of rows. That keeps the creatures from mowing them overnight, making you think they never came up! Do this a few times, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for awhile.

Cover carrot, beet, radish, turnip, exposed shoulders with soil. Especially check after rains.

Keep watch on your chard and beet leaves. Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make; 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 the leaf is less soft and inviting.

Thin any plants you intentionally over planted – 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.

SideDressing – that’s feeding your plant during its growing time! Your plants will love a liquid fertilizer, like a stinky fish/kelp, that is easy for them to uptake in cooler weather. Sprinkle fertilizer around your plants or down a row, and dig it in a little, especially before a rain! Water it in. Use ½ the strength of your summer feedings. Rabbit manure can be scratched in directly with no composting. Pretty box mixes are fine! Lay in some of your fat compost in the top 3 to 6 inches of your soil. If you haven’t been a fertilizing mid-season person before, think about how hard your plant is working. Big brocs, for example. Heading is your cue to help them along. Worm castings, though not food, work wonders!

Especially feed your cabbages, lightly, time to time, because they are making leaf after leaf, dense heads, working hard.  I often see kales lose their perk. You would too if someone kept pulling your leaves off and never fed you. Feed them too, please, while feeding your cabbages.

Don’t feed carrots, they will fork and grow hairy! Overwatering makes them split. Your peas and favas are busy gathering Nitrogen from the air, feeding themselves, so little to no feeding is needed for them.

Glance at beet roots, turnips, in general, for low soil, especially after rains. Maybe you aren’t quite planting your seeds deeply enough? Anyway, cover up beet, carrot, radish and turnip shoulders to keep them from drying and getting rough looking and tough.

In SoCal, winter is not a time for mulching except for erosion control. Its purpose in summer is to keep the soil and plant roots cool, and retain moisture. In winter, we pull the mulch back to let the soil warm up during the short days. Also, it’s good to remove pest habitat, let the soil dry a bit between rains to kill off the wilts fungi, and let Bagrada bug eggs die. Bag up summer straw, mulches, for compost pile layers during winter.

Just in case, have old sheets, light blankets, old towels handy in case of hard freezes. If a freeze is predicted, for small plants, like tender lettuces, just lay tomato cages on their sides and put your coverings over them. Secure them well so wind doesn’t blow them around and damage your plants. Santa Barbara’s average First Frost (fall) date is December 19, Last Frost (spring) date is (was?) January 22.

Veggie Predators

• Gophers  You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after the rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.
• Aphids? Watch for leaves unnaturally curled along the length of the leaf, particularly broccolis, cauliflowers, kale, cabbages. Squish or wash any or the colony away immediately, and keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed. After that, water less so plant leaves will be less tender and inviting.
• White flies  Flush away, especially under the leaves. They are attracted to yellow, so keep  those Brassica yellowing, yellowed leaves removed pronto. Again, a little less water.
• Slugs, Snails  Sluggo, or the like, before they even get started, right when your seedlings begin to show, immediately when you put your transplants in! Once stopped, there will be intervals when there are none at all. If you notice tiny children snails, lay down another couple rounds.

COMPOST always!  Pile, in a bin, trench in, lay layers on top of your garden with a light covering of soil so all the nutrients are contained and it doesn’t draw flies! Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way! Ask neighbors or kin to save non-predator type kitchen veggie scraps for you.

Start getting your summer garden layout in mind. Peruse seed catalogs and order up for your entire year’s plantings!  🙂

---

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We are very coastal, in the fog belt part of the year, so 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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Leave a wild place, untouched, in your garden! It’s the place the faeries and elves, the little people can hang out. When you are down on your hands and knees, they will whisper what to do. All of a sudden an idea pops in your mind….

Winter beauty and super nutrition to you!
Cerena

In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love. – Baha’U’Uah
“Earth turns to Gold in the hands of the Wise” Rumi

See the entire November 2014 Newsletter!
See November Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden images!

Read Full Post »

November Abundance!

Artichoke Pups! Love your Mother! Plant winter bee food! Capture water! Grow organic!

Late August plantings are bringing the first fall/winter harvests of broccoli and cauliflowers now! But some of us waited for cooler weather, waited out the Bagrada bugs, and didn’t plant our Brassicas until mid October. By all means, you can plant now, and a second or third round for you who planted earlier or to replace plants that didn’t make it. Try purple or orange cauliflowers. I got some of those Sicilian Violets! Plant Brassicas ~ kales, collards, turnips, mustard greens, mizuna, kohlrabi, spinach. This year I am trying some smaller varieties of cabbages, Red Express, rich in lycopene and anthocyanins, and Baby Pixie, a mini white! I just can’t eat the giant heads quickly enough, and sometimes I’m lazy about doing probiotic processing. If you are in the foothills that get a good chill, do some flavorful Brussel sprouts!

Cilantro loves cool weather and is said to repel aphids on Coles/Brassicas – broccoli, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts! And, cilantro is said to make them grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener!

Transplants or Seeds! Definitely time to plant more lettuces, arugula, peas, parsley, chard, beets! Celery thrives in cool weather and makes pups. Speaking of pups, divide your artichokes and give the new babies room to grow big too and make pups of their own or give them to friends! Remember, they 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. Grow regular radish, and those cool season long icicle radishes and the larger daikons. Carrots enhance the growth of peas; onions stunt peas! Plant the Allium family, onions, leeks, chives, at least 3′ away from your peas. Further is better.

GARLIC!  Oh, yes, all kinds of that fine stinky stuff! Plant rounds of your fattest garlic cloves now through Dec 21, Winter Solstice, for June/July harvests! If one batch doesn’t succeed, another will! Garlic likes chill too, so we don’t get the big cloves like up in Gilroy, the Garlic Capital, Ca. If you don’t mind smaller bulbs, plant away. See a LOT about GARLIC!

Strawberry choices! In Santa Barbara area, plant your bareroot Albion strawberries NOW (Island Seed & Feed)!  NOV 1 to 5  Yes, the Santa Barbara dates are that specific! June bearers are Chandlers. Everbearers are Sequoias. OR plant bareroot Sequoias in January (La Sumida). Albions are a very firm berry. Both Albions and Sequoias are a large berry. Strawberry and onion varieties are region specific, strawberries even more so than onions. So plant the varieties our local nurseries carry, farmers grow, or experiment!

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

When planting transplants be sure to sprinkle mycorrhizal fungi directly on their roots, pat it on gently so it stays there. Direct contact is needed. This is good practice for all but Brassicas that don’t mingle with the fungi at all! Also, peas may have low need for it since they gather their own Nitrogen from the air and deposit it in little nodules that form on their roots.

Throw a handful of nonfat powdered milk, helps the immune system of your plant, in the planting holes of your big Brassicas, for immediate uptake, and bone meal in for later uptake when your plant is close to blooming. Add worm castings for plant growth hormones, immune boost! Don’t need a lot, they are potent.

It is great to RESTORE OR REST an area. Decide where you will plant your tomatoes, heavy feeders, next summer and plant your Green Manure there! Plant some hefty favas or a vetch mix for green manures to boost soil Nitrogen. The vetch mix can include Austrian peas and bell beans that feed the soil, and oats that have deep roots to break up the soil. When they start flowering, chop them down into small pieces and turn them under. Wait 2 or more weeks, plant! Favas are big and you get a lot of green manure per square foot. If you change your mind, you can eat them!

Presprout your favas! Presprouting equals 100% germination and mucho time saved since favas have a notoriously low germination rate! It’s a no-brainer since it is so easy to do! Just be gentle when you plant the babies. If fava is too tall and would shade out other plants, the vetch green manure ground cover mix grows shorter. It gets only 4-5′ tall. In Santa Barbara get it bulk at Island Seed & Feed. Be sure to get a packet of inoculant for the beans, peas and vetch.

Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw and simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. That’s called 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!

Be sure your soil is nutritious with excellent water holding capacity, has lots of humus in it. Worm castings are good for humus, and castings suppress several diseases and significantly reduce parasitic nematodes, aphids, mealy bugs and mites. Add safe manures. A mix of manures is quite tasty to your plants and offers a mix of nutrients. Cow manure is better than steer manure. Aged and salt free or very low salt horse manures are best and safe for your plants. Rabbit pellets are safe to use immediately and directly on your soil. Best to dig it into the top 3 to 6 inches so it doesn’t just dry up, off gas the Nitrogen, the very ingredient your plants need for superlative growth. If you have extra, you can top your soil with it, at which point it really becomes a mulch, maybe humus, keeping your soil moist underneath, rather than adding nutrient.

If you planted back in Aug, Sep, it’s time to Sidedress!  That might be cultivating in some yummy compost, well aged manures, bunny poop, and/or worm castings!  This would be especially valuable for crops grown for leaf, like lettuces, chard and kales, and celery that are in constant high production. Go gently with your carrots. In over rich soil they fork and get hairy!

Water  Keep your lettuces well watered for fast sweet growth. Go gently with chards and kales. Too much water softens them making them more susceptible to leaf miners and aphids. Not too much water for carrots either, or growth is too fast and they split, opening them to drying that makes them tough, and soil pests and diseases.

Immediately after transplanting, give your babies a boost! Drench young plants with Aspirin Solution, + 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda per gallon/watering can, to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day! Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains.

Check that your bioswales, drainage, Hugelkultur, terraces, are holding well, and clear your pathways. Keep your basins and perimeters of your beds in good condition to keep water where it is needed and water there only. At home, set up grey water and water capture systems. Lay down seedless straw, a board, or stepping stones so your footwear doesn’t get muddy. We will continue to pray for rain!

This year there is added incentive to cultivate, scratch up the ground 2 to 3″ deep, remove soil eating weeds. Not only does cultivating turn the soil to expose the Verticillium and Fusarium Wilts fungi that so affects our tomatoes and other plants, but it exposes those Bagrada bug eggs! We want them and the fungi to dry and die! While you are weeding, replace soil where beet or carrot tops have become exposed.

Gather sheets, light blankets, old towels, in case of hard freezes. If a freeze should happen, for small plants, like tender lettuces, just lay tomato cages on their sides and put your coverings over them, securing them well so wind doesn’t blow them away and damage your plants.

BEE FOOD! Plant wildflowers from seed for early spring flowers! Germination in cooler weather takes longer, so don’t let the bed dry out. If you are a seed ball person, fling them far and wide, though not on steep slopes where they simply wash away. What is a seed ball?

Winter leaf crop plants are incredibly productive and super nutritious! Cut and Come Again! Kale, cabbages, collards, lettuces. Cut bunch/table onions 1 to 2” above ground. They will come back 3 to 4 times – you will be amazed how fast! After you cut the main broccoli head off, let the side sprouts grow. Snip for salads, light steaming.

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.  We are very coastal, in the fog belt/marine layer part of the year, so keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

See the entire November 2014 Newsletter!

Read Full Post »

October, SoCal’s 2nd Spring, Winter’s Feast Starting!

Love your Mother! Plant more bee food! Eat less meat. Grow organic!

Many of us SoCal veggie gardeners have been delayed by Bagrada bugs, so it is definitely planting from transplants time, with a side o seedlings! The lovely gain from that is two successive plantings at once! The transplants have a 6 week head start on the seedlings. There will be two harvests, a third if you plant from transplants again in November!

Lettuces are bounding up! Any non Bagrada fall crops are great to plant now! Beets, chard, peas!

Shape your land! Put in bioswales, drainage, Hugelkultur, terraces, whatever your land calls for or is capable of. Remember, Slow, Spread, Sink your water. Keep that precious resource on your property to water your trees, your garden, improve our water table. Set up grey water and water capture systems. We will pray for rain! If you do raised beds, make your soil Rosina’s way!

Install gopher barrier perimeters or make baskets. Plant happily, sleep fearlessly and peacefully.

Prep your Soil for fat growth!

• Clear away weeds, debris, spent or unhealthy plants, habitat for overwintering pests/diseases.
• Most winter plants are heavy feeders. Brocs, caulis, kale, cabbages are big plants making lots of huge leaves! Chard, cabbages and lettuces are nothing but leaves! So now is the time to lay in that compost you have been making, and some worm castings – castings are most effective when a smaller amount is used—just 10-40 percent of the total volume of the plant growth medium that you put it in!  Add some manure to your lettuce, parsley and garlic beds, Brassica areas.
• Peas and carrots are the exceptions. Peas are legumes and make their own Nitrogen, but sometimes they can do with a tad more if that soil is depleted. Too good a soil makes carrots hairy and they fork. Depending on how you use your carrots, some of us don’t mind those two for one forked carrots! Over watering, irregular watering, however, can make them split and that opens them to diseases.
• Establish your pathways, put up your trellises or cages for peas.
• Plant, plant, plant!

It’s Transplant Time!  Put in cabbage and artichokes. Cilantro loves cool weather and is said to repel aphids on Coles/Brassicas – broccoli, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts!  

• From Seeds:  MORE arugula, beets, brocs, carrots, celery, chard, lettuce, mustard greens, peas, parsley (keep moist 20 days unless you presoaked your seed), radish. Fall marks the end of the season for small red radishes and the beginning of the season for larger daikon-type radishes.
• Potatoes?! Oh, yes!  Reds, fingerlings, Yukon Gold – your favorites! 
• Check those lettuce packets for seed planting depth.  Some you spread on the ground and simply pat in, water very gently. Others go in 1/4″ deep. True. 
• Did you already plant fall veggies in August, Sept, or both? Excellent! Plant another round!

Trap plants or not?! Trap plants attract Bagrada bugs! If you do decide to plant trap plants, interplant plenty of mustard every couple of weeks. Fast grower Giant Red is a good choice. Plant some among your lettuces to keep them off it. Don’t be surprised to find them on your Arugula too, another Brassica. Or don’t plant Brassicas – that’s all the Coles, broccoli, kale, collards, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, nor Mizuna, mustard, radish, arugula or turnips until the weather cools.

Green Manure  Each year choose an area or two to let your soil rest, be restored.  Decide where you will put your tomatoes next summer and plant a patch of favas there! Buy the organic seeds at your natural foods store bulk bins!  Presprout your favas! Presprouting equals 100% germination and mucho time saved since favas have a notoriously low germination rate! It’s a no-brainer since it is so easy to do! Just be gentle when you plant the babies. If fava is too tall and would shade out other plants, put in a vetch green manure ground cover mix. It gets only 4-5′ tall. In Santa Barbara get it bulk at Island Seed & Feed. Be sure to get a packet of inoculant for the beans, peas and vetch.

FIRST GARLIC? Indeed. It’s Vampire Time! Plant late October through Winter Solstice day. That’s at least two rounds, why not make it three?!  See a LOT about GARLIC! for tasty planting information. 

Harvest any lingering seeds.  Special notes about your Winter Squash:  Harvest and Curing – Fruit should be left until the vines are brown and withered, but should be harvested before frost or they will not store well. Optimum is when the stem is drying and the squash is well-matured, the rind hard and not easily broken with the thumbnail. With pruning shears, cut from the vine leaving 2 to 3″ of stem, and cure for 10 days in the field, or indoors in a cool place if frost is likely. Undamaged, they will keep for several months if stored in a cool dry place. Dampness is bad.

Cut your strawberry runners Oct 10 to 15 to put in fridge to chill at least 20 days until you plant them bareroot Nov 1 through 5! 

Those of you with container gardens, dump out that old spent summer soil, pop in some tasty new mix, install a trellis for the peas, anchor that pot! Get going – put in your seeds, baby transplants! You will soon be having holiday table treats, like crisp lettuces, bunch onions, colorful chard, nutritious kale!

Give your babies a boost! Drench young plants with Aspirin Solution, + 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, to get them off to a great start! Do this immediately for transplants!

Winter’s plants are incredibly productive! Cut and Come Again! Kale, collards, lettuces, leaf by leaf. Cut bunch/table onions 1 to 2” above ground. They will come back 3 to 4 times – you will be amazed how fast! After you cut the main broccoli head off, let the side sprouts grow. Snip for salads/steaming.

Enjoy the beautiful fall weather and nutritious feasting!

See the entire October 2014 Newsletter!

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September Change of Season!

Love your Mother! Plant more bee food! Eat less meat. Grow organic!

Bountiful fall crops are on their way! Labor Day weekend is the favorite fall planting time for many gardeners. Some like it even more than spring planting! Fall is cooler, slower paced, quieter. When and where there isn’t a drought, there is less watering.

If you want specific varieties, not standard fare at the nursery, you plant from seed. Plant them in a ‘nursery’ area in the shade of finishing summer plants, in 6 packs, under the grow lights, in the greenhouse! Plant your fall seeds outdoors 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.

Tasty morsels to plant!

• If you have plenty of space to accommodate a bad weather ‘error,’ and anticipate an Indian Summer, you can chance plant bush beans, summer squash, container type varieties of small tomatoes. At least plant earliest in Sep .
• Beets, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, are a big yes! And carrots, celery, leeks!
• Colorful Chard is the ‘flower’ of your winter garden! Mid-August is one of the best times, Sep certainly is good too! Marigold don’t mind cool days; lovely on a dark day.
• Plant more heat tolerant lettuces.
• It is so easy to sprout peas! Dampen the paper towel; spray the towel to keep it moist. Pop them into the garden by the trellis – if it is hot, devise some shade for them.
• 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.

I like what Better Homes & Gardens has to say – Sown in September, sprinters such as arugula, mustard, spinach, turnips, and crispy red radishes are ready to pick in little more than a month. Also try pretty Asian greens, such as tatsoi or mizuna, which grow so fast that you will have baby plants to add to stir-fries and soups just three weeks after sowing. If you would enjoy a quick payback on your table, select the earliest maturing varieties available.

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

Keep letting your strawberry runners grow for Oct harvest. Get your pallet ready if  you want a strawberry pallet that sweet first week in November!

Brassica (that’s your broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, B-sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, collards, turnips) Companions are aromatic plants like sage, dill, chamomile. Carrots, chard, beets, peppermint, rosemary, celery, onions, potatoes, spinach, dwarf zinnias. Brassicas are helped by geraniums, dill, alliums (onions, shallots, garlic, etc), rosemary, nasturtium, borage. Dill attracts a wasp to control cabbage moth. Zinnias attract lady bugs to protect plants. Avoid nightshades and strawberries.  Notice there are contradictions – potatoes are in the nightshade family. And usually we would avoid mustards, but now we have Bagrada bugs, we use the mustards as a trap plant for the Bagradas.

COMPANIONS!  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 carrots, 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 beets, or onion/chive types to repel Bagrada Bugs. Short quickest growing winter radishes can be among the long slower growing carrots among the slowest growing, your cabbages.

Brassica pests!

• Brassicas are the very favorite of Bagrada Bugs.  Keep a keen watch for them especially when temps are above 75°F. Bagrada bugs tend to be most active and visible during the warmer parts of the day, so that’s when to look for them. Bagradas make white spots on the leaves as they suck the juices out of your plant. They carry diseases and overnight the leaves start to wilt. If you don’t get rid of them ASAP, you lose your plant in short order. And that’s when they are polite. A plant can be so infested it is swarmed and it looks like the plant is moving.Per UC IPM, as an alternative to greenhouses, screened tunnels or floating row cover fabric can provide plant protection in gardens. The mesh of the screening material must be fine enough to exclude the Bagrada bug nymphs and should be elevated so that it does not touch the plants because the bugs can feed through these coverings. The edges of protective covers must also be buried to prevent the bugs from crawling underneath to the plants, and they must be applied before Bagrada bugs get into the crop.
• 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.

Make your fall planting beds extra yummy – add compost, worm castings, manures.  We want rich soil for those big 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.

Keep your water steady for plants still in production. Remove mulch habitat in areas where Bagrada bugs have been seen.

Build your new raised beds. Install gopher barriers! Put up a greenhouse.

RESTORE OR REST AN AREA  Plant some hefty favas or a vetch mix for green manures and to boost soil Nitrogen. Plant them where you had summer’s heavy feeders like corn, eggplant, summer squash, tomatoes or where you will plant heavy feeders next summer. The vetch mix can include Austrian peas and bell/fava beans, plus oats that break up the soil (they have deep roots). Favas are big, produce one of the highest rates of compostable organic material per square foot! If you change your mind, you can eat them! 🙂 Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw and simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. That’s called 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. Next spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

Pest and Disease Prevention  Drench young plants, ones you just transplanted, with Aspirin solution to get them off to a great start! 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.

September is Seed Saving time! 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.

See the entire September 2014 Newsletter!

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March! Night Air Temps Now 50+ Degrees

Disney’s Epcot Greenhouse Tomato Tree, Lycopersicon esculentum, originally engineered by Chinese scientists, yielded a total of 32,000 tomatoes by the time it reached 16 months! They won a Guinness World Record for the most tomatoes harvested from a single plant in a single year. Hope they taste as good as they look! Buy seeds, plant!

Night air temps are now 50+ degrees if you live coastal SoCal! At Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, we are about a mile inland. Temps vary if you garden further inland or are in the foothills or quite south of Santa Barbara. Check your soil temps too – 60 to 65°F is good. Master Gardener Yvonne Savio says ‘Planting them into the soil when air temperatures are still cool results in growth stress which is difficult for the plants to overcome. Peppers, especially, will just “sulk” if their roots are chilled, and they won’t recuperate quickly [if ever] – best to just wait till the soil has warmed before planting them.’ Peppers especially need nighttime temps above 55°F and soil temps above 65°F. Word.

First week of March get ’em in the ground! Seeds and transplants! If you plant transplants, put in seeds at the same time. They will be coming along 6 to 8 weeks behind your transplants so you have a steady supply of yummy veggies! Succession planting makes such good sense. If tending seedlings isn’t your cup of tea, just leave space and put in more transplants in 6 to 8 weeks from now.

Choose drought and heat tolerant varieties as possible. If our summer is hotter than usual, good chance of that, enjoy planting plants that need more heat than our coastal veggie gardens usually support. That would be melons, pumpkins, large eggplants, okra!

Timing is important! 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 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 and be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.

Right now plant cold tolerating quick maturing tomatoes, and pepper transplants. 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, potatoes, radishes, shallots, spinaches, strawberries, and turnips. Transplant broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and kohlrabi seedlings. Time for heat-resistant, bolt-resistant lettuces of all kinds! Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson are some.

• 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 below the beans, plus a few dill to go with the cukes! Plant radishes with the cukes to deter the Cucumber beetles.
• Tomato Tips:  La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! Ask for Judi to help you with your veggie questions. 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.
• Indoors, sow eggplant, peppers, and more tomatoes for transplanting into the garden in late April or early May. Also Cucumbers, eggplants, melons, squash and sweet potatoes.

Plant some lovely chamomile, cosmos, marigold and yarrow to make habitat and bring our beneficial good friends,  hoverflies, lacewings, ladybugs, and parasitic wasps.

Please see Drought Choices info before you choose your varieties.

Happy March planting!

See the entire March GBC Newsletter!

 

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December, Shortest Days, Deepest Roots!

SouleMama’s Baby Boy
Let’s keep growing good things together!

December Plantings!

November has gifted us with the fruits of our September plantings!  Just like those transplant tags say, maturity in 50, 60+ days!  Brilliant purple cauliflower, tightly packed broccoli heads, peas ready for garden eating – never mind taking them to the kitchen!  Lettuces are springing out of the ground.  Turnips have been eaten.  Chards, kale, and collard greens have produced bountiful greens!  For many, December brings the biggest fall harvests, Winter’s June, perfectly in time for your holiday table.  Don’t forget to harvest your sweet potatoes!  Cabbages, carrots and beets are taking a tad longer. 

With shorter and cooler days, what you plant now will take a bit longer to mature, more than that 50, 60+ days.  So December plantings will be coming in late February, March.  That’s still in good time for soil preps in March, then the first spring plantings in April.  Definitely plant one more round of your favorite winter veggies, from transplants when possible!  Artichoke (give them 3’ to 4’ space), arugula, asparagus – Pat Welsh (Southern California Gardening) recommends UC-157, beets, brocs, Brussels sprouts, bunch onions, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chard, culinary dandelions, garden purslane, garlic, kale, kohlrabi, head and leaf lettuces, mesclun, peas, potatoes, radishes/daikons, and turnips!

GARLIC LOVERS  December, is the last time to be planting garlic, with the special date being Winter Solstice day, Dec 21!  Use the fattest cloves, give them super rich soil.  Some say give them lots of water, others say little.  Up to you.  Also, you have the choice whether to plant with the skin on or presoaked skin off.  Skin on protects the clove; skin off grows faster if it doesn’t get eaten or rots.  Again, up to you. But all agree, choose the hefty cloves!

We have been super lucky, few bagrada bugs so far.  Just in case, keep planting Red Giant Mustard as a trap plant so the Bagradas won’t bother your brocs and cauliflowers.  Earlier in the year I found a few munching on my arugula.  Be warned.

Choose an area to prepare for spring planting!  Plant some beautiful favas or a vetch mix for green manures and to boost soil Nitrogen.  The vetch mix can include Austrian peas and bell beans, plus oats to break up the soil (they have deep roots).  Favas are big and you get a lot of green manure per square foot.  If you change your mind, you can eat them!  🙂  Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw and simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter.  That’s called 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.  Next spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

Winter Garden Practices

When you put in new transplants, sprinkle a bit of Sluggo type stuff around immediately to keep snails and slugs from seriously damaging them while they are small.  Before you anticipate your seedlings coming up, sprinkle some pellets around the plant, along both sides of rows.  That keeps the creatures from mowing them overnight, making you think they never came up!  Do this a few times, and there will be no tiny vegetarian predators for awhile.

Cover carrot, beet, radish, turnip, exposed shoulders with soil.

Keep watch on your chard and beet leaves.  Pull away those blotchy sections the leafminers make; 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 the leaf is less soft and inviting.

Thin any plants you intentionally over planted – 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.

SideDressing – that’s feeding your plant during its growing time! Your plants will love a liquid fertilizer, like a stinky fish/kelp, that is easy for them to uptake in cooler weather. Sprinkle fertilizer around your plants or down a row, and dig it in a little, especially before a rain! Water it in. Use ½ the strength of your summer feedings.  Rabbit manure can be put down directly with no composting.  Pretty box mixes are fine!  Lay in some of your fat compost in the top 3 to 6 inches of your soil.  If you haven’t been a fertilizing mid-season person before, think about how hard your plant is working.  Big brocs, for example. When they start to head, when plants start to produce, that’s your cue to help them along.  Worm castings, though not food, work wonders!

Especially feed your cabbages, lightly, time to time, because they are making leaf after leaf, dense heads, working hard.  I often see kales lose their perk. You would too if someone kept pulling your leaves off and never fed you.  Feed them too, please, while feeding your cabbages.

Don’t feed carrots, they will fork and grow hairy!  Overwatering makes them split.  Your peas and favas are busy gathering Nitrogen from the air, feeding themselves, so little to no feeding is needed for them.

In SoCal, winter is not a time for mulching except for erosion control.  Its purpose in summer is to keep the soil and plant roots cool, and retain moisture.  In winter, we pull the mulch back to let the soil warm up during the short days.  Also, it’s good to remove pest habitat, let the soil dry a bit between rains to kill off the wilts fungi, and let Bagrada bug eggs die.  In summer I use straw mulch, so I bag it up and use it in my compost pile layers during winter.

Just in case, have old sheets, light blankets, old towels handy in case of hard freezes.  If a freeze is predicted, for small plants, like tender lettuces, just lay tomato cages on their sides and put your coverings over them.  Secure them well so wind doesn’t blow them around and damage your plants.  Santa Barbara’s average First Frost (fall) date is December 19, Last Frost (spring) date is January 22.   One month.  

Veggie Predators

• Gophers  You can still put in wire protective baskets or barriers, especially now while the soil is softer after the rains. If you see a fresh mound, trap immediately.
• Aphids? Watch for leaves unnaturally curled along the length of the leaf, particularly broccolis, cauliflowers, kale, cabbages.  Squish or wash any or the colony away immediately, and keep doing it for a few days to catch the ones you missed.
• White flies  Flush away, especially under the leaves. They are attracted to yellow, so keep yellowing, yellowed leaves removed.  Probably need a little less watering.
• Slugs, Snails  Sluggo, or the like, before they even get started, right when your seedlings begin to show, immediately when you put your transplants in! Once stopped, there will be intervals when there are none at all. If you notice tiny children snails, lay down another couple rounds.

Any time is a good time to start COMPOSTing!  Pile, in a bin, trench in, lay layers on top of your garden!  Giving back to Mama Earth is nature’s natural way!  Ask neighbors or kin to save kitchen cleanings for you.

Start getting your summer garden layout in mind. Peruse seed catalogs and order up for your Spring planting!  🙂

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden.  We are very coastal, in the fog belt part of the year, so keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

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November, Deepening Magical Garden Days!

Winter Garden Beauty ala Sunset Magazine!
Peas at back, tall to low, beautiful color, contrasts! Do it!

November, though cooler, is a rich planting time!  Your composting is really paying off now! If you have more compost available, incorporate it with the soil in your new planting places, and plant another round! Keep ‘em coming!

Transplants:  MORE brocs, planting different varieties alternately in your patch to confuse pests.  Cilantro is said to make it grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener!  Collard greens are terrific nutrition steamed or chopped in winter stews.  Plant Brussels sprouts only if it gets cold enough where you are planting.  Do plant mixed varieties of cabbages, the big whites, and lycopene and anthocyanins rich reds. These powerful antioxidants help keep your heart healthy and prevent prostate cancer.  Try some purple or orange cauliflowers!  Celery thrives in crispy weather.  Healthy parsleys almost glow, and turnips are good for their greens too!  Plant nutritious low-cal chard bouquets of all colors! Chop chard for salads, stir fries, to toss into stews.  Sprinkle mycorrhizal fungi directly on the roots of your transplants when you put them in the ground!  Ask for it at Island Seed & Feed.  You won’t need much, and they will measure it out for you.  Or spray on the liquid variety.  Get your planties off to a good start!  

Seeds:  MORE beets, for greens and bulbs of many magic colors!  Kales are practically a flower – lovely Red Russians and beautiful curly leafs!  Kohlrabi is just fun looking!   Plant cool season lettuces where they are easy to reach to harvest; they are more likely to head when it’s cool.  Spunky mustard greens, like the giant reds, are not only tasty, but are a trap plant for Bagrada Bugs.  Grow regular radish, and those long icicle radishes and the larger daikons now. And more spinach, turnips and parsley.  Companion planting tip:  Carrots enhance the growth of peas; onions stunt peas!  Plant the Allium family, onions, leeks, chives, at least 3′ away from your peas.  Further is better.

We had Halloween, and if you didn’t plant in late Oct, now is still a great time for GARLIC!  Oh, yes, all kinds of that fine stinky garlic!  Plant your fattest garlic cloves now through Dec 21, Winter Solstice, for June/July harvests!  See a LOT about GARLIC!

Plant your bareroot Strawberries NOW!  NOV 1 to 5  Yes, the Santa Barbara dates are that specific!  June bearers are Chandlers. Everbearers are Sequoias. Strawberry and onion varieties are region specific, strawberries even more than onions. So plant the varieties our local nurseries carry, or experiment!

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

Bareroot Artichoke now or in Feb, or in March from pony packs. Try some of the new varieties.

If you planted back in Aug, Sep, it’s time to Sidedress!  That is cultivating in some yummy compost, well aged manures, could be throwing on some bunny poop, or laying in some worm castings!  This would be especially true for crops grown for leaf, like lettuces, chard and kales, and celery.  Just know that castings are not high in Nitrogen, food, but are for boosting your plants’ immune systems, plant-growth hormones. The humus in castings improves your soil’s capacity to hold water. Castings suppress several diseases and significantly reduce parasitic nematodes, aphids, mealy bugs and mites.  Do not enrich soil by your carrots.  In over rich soil they fork and get hairy!  Not too much water, or growth is too fast and they split.

RESTORE OR REST AN AREA  Plant some hefty favas or a vetch mix for green manures and to boost soil Nitrogen.  The vetch mix can include Austrian peas and bell beans, plus oats to break up the soil (they have deep roots).  Favas are big and you get a lot of green manure per square foot.  If you change your mind, you can eat them!  🙂  Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw and simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter.  That’s called 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.  Next spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

When you do garden cleanup, turn the soil to expose the Verticillium and Fusarium Wilts fungi that so affects our tomatoes, and other plants, so the fungi dries and dies! Weed and clear pathways. Lay down seedless straw, a board, or stepping stones so your footwear doesn’t get muddy.

Start gathering a stack of sheets, light blankets, old towels, in case of hard freezes.  If a freeze should happen, for small plants, like tender lettuces, just lay tomato cages on their sides and put your coverings over them, securing them well so wind doesn’t blow them away and damage your other plants.

This is your last chance to plant wildflowers from seed for early spring flowers!  Germination in cooler weather takes longer, so don’t let the bed dry out. If you are a seed ball person, fling them far and wide, though not on steep slopes where they simply wash away.  What is a, a seed ball?

See the entire November newsletter – November Veggie Gardening, Kale, Mycorrhizae Fungi, Green Friday, Henry Ford Greenhouse!

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The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden.  We are very coastal, in the fog belt part of the year, so keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. 

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Best Soils for Your Fall-Winter SoCal Plants!

Plants like these cabbages and broccoli really thrive when they have super soil!  Val Webb, gardening on the red bluffs above Mobile Bay, Alabama, says ‘…hoeing in a two-inch layer of clean, crumbly black mushroom compost. (I use mushroom compost because human sewage sludge — delicately referred to as “biosolids” in the federal regulations that allow it to be lumped in as compost and sold to unsuspecting gardeners — is frequently lurking in commercial bagged manure products [no date given]. Ewwww.)’  I agree wholeheartedly!  Use the best you have available, get prime results!

Plants vary in their soil needs.

Brassica Patches!  Since Brassicas are the backbone of your winter garden, and most of them are big plants, heavy feeders, they need good tasty soils!  It is true cooler weather slows uptake of cold soil Nitrogen, so be sure what you are offering is easy for your winter plant to take up!  That said, they LOVE recently manured ground.  Always use well composted manures.  Bagged manures are safe.  Bunny poop from your local shelter is safe.  Broccoli plants will grow in almost any soil but prefer a pH between 6.0 and 7.0 for optimum growth. A pH within this range will discourage clubroot disease and maximize nutrient availability.  We like that.  Well-drained, sandy loam soils rich in organic matter (compost) are ideal for broccoli plants and especially early plantings of broccoli.  Sidedress (feed) about three to four weeks after transplanting when the plants have become established. Nitrogen is important for high-quality.

Winter Lettuces  Lettuces aren’t necessarily persnickety, they are just hungry!  They too LOVE recently manured ground!  Nitrogen!  They are producing nothing but leaves, and if we are harvesting the lower leaves regularly, they keep right on producing up to 10 weeks!  That’s a lot of work, so they need a lot of chow!  

Onions  You are hearing these words again!  LOVE recently manured ground.  Deep garden loam in full sun makes them quite happy.  Whether using transplants or seeds, prepare the ground ahead of time. Since onions like a well-drained, crumbly, fertile soil, raised beds work well. Work a two-inch layer of compost into the bed before planting in fall. At planting, apply a complete fertilizer such as 10-10-10 at 1/2 cup per 20-foot row. Although onions are heavy feeders, save most of your fertilizing until spring when the bulbs begin to form. Don’t go too rich too soon or the tops will do all the growing.  Generally tops grow in cool weather, the bulb in hot.

Peas – Legumes  Peas are another creature entirely!  They are a legume – gather Nitrogen from the air and deposit it in little nodules on their roots!  They feed themselves!  So generally they don’t need fertilizing or rich soils, but do watch them.  If they start losing their perk and leaves start paling, a tad of blood meal will help if that’s the issue.  At the same time, give them a feed of light fish/kelp liquid mix for them to take up a bit later.  Favas are legumes too, but they usually do quite well without feeding even though they become huge plants.

Chard  Chard is practically a miracle plant!  A prolific grower, tolerates poor soil, inattention, and withstands frost and mild freezes.  They are sensitive to soil acidity though. A low soil pH results in stunted growth.  Chard prefers a pH of 6.2 to 6.8 but will tolerate 6.0 to 7.5. Loose, well-drained, sandy loam soils rich in organic matter are ideal for chard. If you have heavy soil, amend it well with compost prior to planting. Break up large clods of soil and rake the area smooth prior to planting your chard seeds.  Though it grows over summer, it grows best  in our cooler times of year.

Strawberry Beds  Strawberries like loose, loamy, slightly acidic soil (pH 6.0-6.5) and full sun to achieve peak berry quality, but they will tolerate a variety of soil conditions as long as they have adequate drainage.  Soggy soil makes for fruit and roots that rot. If your garden tends to hold water, mix 6 inches of compost into the soil to create a raised bed.  Raised beds are desirable near moist coastal areas.  Dig in lots of manure and compost before transplanting strawberries right at the soil level since strawberries are short rooted.  But not chicken manure.  They do not like the salts in chicken manure.  No matter how much you water in summer, it’s hard to get rid of those salts.  Once your bed is made, mulch it with pine needles. That helps your soil have the pH strawberries like.

Soil is the foundation of the life of your garden.  Read, reread, that chapter on soil in Gaia’s Garden!

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