Delicious December ~ Winter’s June 2019!

A misty morning at the garden…..

Harvests, Maintenance, Planning & Getting Seeds!

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, 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 spring garden, 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 there.

Harvest Brassicas of all sorts! The big ones, broccoli, cauliflower and if you live in a good chill area, Brussels sprouts, have grown big enough now and your earliest 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 onetime 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!

Winter brings a lot of tasty Root crops. Winter 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 pup, bunnies, shred into salads, add to winter soups and stews, slice/chop/stick 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 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 nozzle under those low cabbage leaves. 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.

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.

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 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. Rainy Day Tips for Spectacular Veggies!

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.

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. 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.

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

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.

Do not compost diseased or infested leaves or plants. Don’t put them in green waste. 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 because you will need 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 them, 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 they 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, 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 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′ 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 heat and drought tolerant varieties. Always look for disease and pest resistance. 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 order for the entire year, while seeds are still available.

The Santa Barbara 2020 Seed Swap is Jan 26, very soon! Get your seeds ready to share, and prepare your ‘shopping’ list! Remember, a Seed Swap is a random affair. Get your standby favorites from those reliable catalogs. Use Seed Swaps as fun backup source and most importantly, for local seeds.

For further help making your decisions see:

Veggie Seed Saving Plant by Plant!
SeedSaving! An Easy Annual Ritual & Celebration!

Choosing Seeds: Catalogs to Seed Swaps!

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.

Delicious choices to consider:  Perennial  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. 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 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 wiggler worms. The BEST soil enhancer and you will have a 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 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. 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 12th Annual Seed Swap is Sunday January 26! 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!

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!

Updated annually

 

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Please enjoy these November images at Santa Barbara CA’s Rancheria Community Garden!

Check out the entire December Newsletter!

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. In 2018 they lasted into September and October! Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

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April 2019! Time for those Luscious Heat Lovers!

Green gear in honor of Earth Day 2019! Plant a garden. Grab the kids, a shovel and some seeds and hit the dirt with your family. Whether you plant one tomato plant in a pot or a large garden of fruits and veggies, gardening with your kids will teach them about the cycles of nature and the beauty of growing your own food. ~ Mother Nature Network

Recently night air temps have been steadily in the early 50s. Soil temps in the sun are now just 51° – 56°. 60° to 65° are what we are looking for. PEPPERS especially need warmer temps, nighttime temps steadily above 55°F and soil temps above 65°F. If planted too soon, sometimes they miss their natural sequence of production, and never produce. Check out the Quick Guide to Summer Veggie Soil & Temp Preferences!

APRIL through JUNE Planting Timing  

APRIL is true heat lovers time! Start MORE seedlings indoors NOW for successive June plantings. Sow seeds. If seeds and tending seedlings aren’t for you, get transplants and pop them in the ground per their right times! April 1 or as close to it as you can, start your Jicama seeds! Winter squash for sure. It needs time to grow big and harden for winter storage. MAY 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, 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. Long beans need warm temps to start from seeds. 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.

While we are waiting for the right temps, do soil preps that may still be 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!

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 slowly just perfectly! And if you made it, you know what’s in it! Make it HOT, Cold, or In place! In place takes the least time, is the most efficient, is a worm buffet! Make a trench in the top 6″+ of soil, put in your ingredients, chop fine, sprinkle with well aged manure, mix in some soil so the chopped bits don’t form an impervious mat, cover with the soil you removed. Give it 2 to 3 weeks and you are ready to plant! 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.

Put in last minute amendments, soil preps for May plantings of cantaloupe, okra, more tomatoes. About Manures

Heat lovers are eggplant, limas, okra and peppers, pumpkins! Transplant early-maturing varieties of beans, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, peppers, squash, and tomatoes. Sow and/or transplant asparagus, beets, carrots, celery, chard, corn, herbs, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, heat-tolerant leaf lettuce, okra, summer-maturing onions, parsley, peanuts, the last peas (choose a heat-tolerant variety such as Wando), white potatoes with zucchini, radishes (with cukes to repel cuke beetles, and with eggplant to repel flea beetles), rhubarb, and spinach.

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! Check out this nifty page of options at Bonnie Plants!  See Tomatoes are the Fireworks of Your Summer Garden! 

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, Terra Sol will be having them again this year! Call ahead to see when they will arrive – save space for them! Please support your local nursery and their families.

Time for heat-resistant, bolt-resistant lettuces of all kinds! Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson are some. Green Star wins the beauty award and is super productive! Tips for super Successful Transplanting!

Strengthen your garden! Remember, plant your Companions! Keep the biodiversity rolling! Plant pest deterring plants first so they will be up and working when you put in your seeds or transplants!

• Alyssum, in the image above, 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!
• 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! 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 and put in winter plants! See much more – Living Mulch/Green Manure!

Keep ’em coming! If you have already done some planting, mid to late April, schedule to pop in another round! Poke in some bean seeds where your very last peas are finishing, add cucumber seeds or transplants between the beans, plus dill at each end of the trellis to be there when you pickle those cukes! Plant more radishes to deter the Cucumber beetles, repel flea beetles. Fill in spots that could use a helper companion plant like calendula or chamomile. 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, again, 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 littles. As the bigger plants start to shade out the littles, remove strategic lower leaves of the big plant so the littles get light too! If you anticipate a HOT summer, plant littles on the morning light side of larger plants.

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

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. Thin baby plants you have deliberately or not overplanted! Many are great tiny salad greens. Most of all plants need space for their roots, or they struggle for soil food (can literally be rootbound in place), are weak and disease/pest susceptible, are not able to reach their full productive size. See this terrific post on Thinning Seedlings by DeannaCat!
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.

Water Wise Practices!

• Please always be building compost. Compost increases your soil’s water holding capacity.
• To save water consider planting IN furrows, where the moisture settles. Plant crosswise to the Sun’s arc so the plants’ root areas will be slightly shaded by the depth of the furrow in early AM and late afternoon. If you still want your plants on top of the furrow, make the raised part of your furrows wide enough that you can put a mini trench on top of it! That holds the water up at your plants’ feeder roots area. If you make low slopes to your trenches, and you water carefully, your furrows won’t degrade from water washing the sides away. Nor will seeds or plants be buried too deeply.
• Make mounds with basins on top. For virus sensitive plants like toms and cukes, make sure the bottom of the basin is higher than the level of the surrounding soil level. Rather than losing water to evaporation from overhead watering, put the water right where it will do the most good and nowhere else. Make the mound to the dripline of your plant so small surface feeder roots get moisture for food uptake. For larger leaved plants, put a stake in the center of the basin so you know where to water. With a long watering wand you can water under the leaves rather than on them ~ unless they need a bath to remove dust. Fuzzy leaved plants like tomatoes and eggplant don’t like wet leaves.
• And, once your soil is heated up, PLEASE MULCH! Straw, Self Mulch, living mulch of understory plants like lettuce, or plant soil feeding living mulch legumes! It keeps your soil cooler, more moist, less water needed. And it stops light germinating weed seeds!  Mulching right for each plant!Straw is dead, but has its advantages. It gets fruits up off the ground and keeps soil from splashing up on lettuce leaves! Straw mulch can help reduce cucumber beetles 3+ different ways. 1) Mulch might directly slow beetle movement from one plant to another. 2) The mulch provides refuge for wolf spiders, daddy long legs and other predators from hot and dry conditions, helping predator conservation. 3) The straw mulch is food for springtails and other insects that eat decaying plant material; these decomposers are important non-pest prey for spiders, helping to further build spider numbers!

  Living Mulch, Self mulching, planting closely enough so your plants self shade, is tasty and uses your soil nutrients. It’s most efficient space use is planting effective smaller companion plants under, beside, among, around larger plants.

  Soil feeding Living Mulch You can up the amps by tossing a mix of legume seeds under your plants to feed your soil as well! You may decide to do both. Plant the small plants you need, grow legumes under the rest along with the right companion plants per the crop there.

• 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.
• Dust Mulching, cultivation, weeding, is perfect to break up exposed soil surface. That keeps the water from wicking to the surface and evaporating. Do it especially after rains. If you use a hula hoe you do two things at once! Just a half to one inch depth cuts off weed sprouts that use water. 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 few weeds after that for awhile. Get ’em while they are small and easy to do. Smart gardening.

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!

…each a miracle of seed and sun, I’ve always been one to enjoy tomato or cucumber right off the vine, with never a trip into the house—one magical wipe down a shirt-front and they’re ready.. ~ commenter Rachel

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March images from two of Santa Barbara’s Community Gardens! The rains gods blessed us again and again! Some plants are the biggest we have ever seen! We have delicious organic food and beautiful flowers. Check out the local first year orchard shots.

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 April 2019 GBC Newsletter!

April! Time for those Luscious Heat Lovers!

Quick Guide to Summer Veggie Soil & Temp Preferences!
Use Cover Crops to Improve Soil!
Virtuous Veggies Alkalize Your Body for Top Health!
Biochar! Should I Use It?

Upcoming Gardener Events! 

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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Grow a Pollinator Meadow at Home in Your Veg Garden!

Stunning lovely many colored bee, butterfly and hummingbird flower meadow mix includes drought tolerant plants! You can select low or tall growing mixes… And, of course, only your personal favorites as you wish! If you are growing natives, make sure the seed mix is native to your area!

The most fabulous choices to grow are a diversity of flowering multipurpose companion plants with your veggies! If that includes being a native plant, hallelujah! 

Companion Planting maximizes your connections!

Companion plants may be other vegetables, like Radish! It is grown for the bulb, can be planted as a living mulch understory, can be let to grow up among cukes and zukes to repel cucumber beetle, is a trap for flea beetles, makes lovely edible flowers! We eat Cilantro leaves, it repels aphids, enhances the growth of Brassicas, its flowers attract tiny pollinators that eat aphids! The seeds become Coriander on your spice shelf.

Some companions are colorful! Calendula! Chamomile is bright beauty. Arugula and radish flowers are delicate and detailed! Some flowers are total dainty princesses – cilantro, carrot and celery, the three Cs! Let arugula, cilantro, chamomile, a carrot or two, and a celery go to flower summer through fall 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, the Plant Dr, improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!

The best kind of biodiversity is companion planting! See Super Spring & Summer Veggies Companion Planting Tips!

And what if they are not companions?! Grow beauty for the pollinators just because you love beauty and your special little friends! Flying insects are the most common pollinators. From Cornell: Native bees are two to three times more effective than honeybees! A special note about the importance of Bumble bees! Honey bees DON’T pollinate tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant or blueberries, but bumble bees DO! Bumblebees do what is called buzz pollination, sonication! Please see all about it in Sue Rosenthal’s post at Bay Nature! See the PBS Bumblebee Buzz Pollination video! More about Bees!

Be careful with those lovely hybrids, especially ‘double-blooms.’ A slight change in scent or shape and your pollinator may not be able to recognize them.

Design for Habitat and No Pesticides!

When you are thinking where to put things, select permanent spots for herbs, gateway points for flowers and edible flowers! Designate a permanent patch for all seasons 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 smaller beneficial insects like hoverflies. Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents! Cosmos is cosmic! Breadseed Poppies will literally have your bees rolling in pollen and provide seeds for your bread baking!

Prairie Nursery in Westfield WI says: Pollinators are attracted to blooms that fit the pollinators’ physiological traits – specifically the length of their tongue. Some bees are generalists, flitting among flowers to drink nectar and collect pollen from many plant species. Flat or shallow blossoms, such as asters or coreopsis, attract a variety of bee species. But long-tongued bees will be attracted to plants with deeper nectaries and flowers with petals that form long tubes. The inclusion of a variety of floral shapes [and sizes] attracts a more diverse array of pollinators.

Grouping plants in clumps of three or more attracts bees to the plants and allows them to forage efficiently. And don’t forget the water. Pollinators get thirsty while they are working in the sun! They like shallow water sources. A shallow birdbath with stones in it is perfect!

Farmers are planting wildflower rows! See Stripes of Wildflowers! The stripy fields have been planted across England and other countries as part of a trial to boost the natural predators of pests that attack cereal crops and potentially cut pesticide spraying! Plant flowers among, alongside, your veggies! In fact, plant your flowers right in the center of things where they can serve several plants at once! Make that a short walk, or fly, for your beneficial insects! You may not plant stripes six meters wide, but do grow plenty of flowers the length of your area!

Current UCDavis research published Dec 18, 2018 says “Planting wildflowers is a key strategy promoted nationally to support wild and managed bees,” said Williams. “Successful adoption of these plantings in agricultural landscapes will require that they not only support pollinators but that they also avoid supporting too many pests. Plant selection going forward will need to balance multiple goals of pollinators, pest management and other functions. This research is a first step on the path to identifying plants that will meet these goals.”

All Season Support! Text for images from UCDavis Arboretum post for native California bees!

Some bee species are active all year, others only in April and May, still others in July and August, and all need food! New queens are born in the fall, and after breeding they may find a place to hibernate for the winter. When they emerge in spring, they need nectar and pollen sources—or they can’t start their colonies.

Spring

California poppy, Eschscholzia californica is technically an annual, but did you know they will “perennial-ize” by sprouting the following year from their roots and lower stems or by re-seeding?! Look for sweat bees scrambling around the bottom of the flower and covering themselves with pollen.

Check out Renee’s California Poppy seed scatter can!

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Summer

Blanket flower,  × grandiflora is a colorful daisy-type flower popular with a number of native bees. In the Valley they attract long-horned bees like Melissodes which can be easily observed collecting nectar and pollen from the showy orange and yellow flowers. This plant may be short-lived in heavy soils. Image by Cerena Childress, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden
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Fall

Germander sage, Salvia chamaedryoides blooms with beautiful dark blue flowers from late spring to early summer and again in fall. It is a primary nectar source for a number of bee types. Male carder bees may be most noticeable as they set up territories around flowering patches and knock into other bees that enter their area. Deadheading spent flowers in early summer will help the blossoms (and the bees) return in fall.
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Winter

Goodwin Creek lavender, Lavandula × ginginsii ‘Goodwin Creek Grey’ hybrid lavender is a tough and long-blooming sub-shrub that can be used to provide winter structure to your pollinator planting. Blooming early and lasting into summer, it is popular with large carpenter bees and a range of other smaller bees for its nectar. It can be pruned to shape, to increase branching, or to keep a compact form. See How to Care for Your Pollinators in Winter Image at UCDavis Arboretum 

Grow host plants for butterfly & moth caterpillars too! Some are quite particular, even to only one kind of plant.

Other special pollinators!

Don’t forget the other littles! Butterflies, midges, beetles! Wasps, ants and flies – especially Hoverflies, even slugs! Some of them will make you more happy than others, but thank them too for pollinating!

Bird pollination even has a name, Ornithophily! In the US, hummingbirds are key in wildflower pollination.

About 87% of flowering plants are pollinated by animals. These include wild flowers and those used by people for food and medicine. While many ground plants benefit from small mammals’ pollination, some flowering trees rely on similar relationships with tree-dwelling or flying mammals. Bats are probably the best known mammal pollinators. Hundreds of plants rely on these busy, flying nectar lovers to spread their pollen at night.

The ‘little dragons,’ lizards and skinks, not only pollinate, but eat insect pests!

Where your pollinators live!

Flowers are much more than a pretty face! They are habitat. That means food and shelter, moisture – the morning dew, and for many wild bees, a place to sleep at night! You don’t always see them because they generally get up earlier than Honeybees.

First and foremost, just because your flowers are done, doesn’t mean beneficial insects don’t still need food and living quarters. Be more conscious about planting permanent habitat for them. Plus, if you have year ’round habitat, they will be ready to work for you as soon as your plants are up!

Stripes of Wildflowers says they plant oxeye daisy, red clover, common knapweed and wild carrot. Likely they carefully chose those plants for the results hoped for. This combination probably serves the majority of common beneficial predators, large to small, needed to replace those pesticides.

• Oxeye daisy is a pretty little perennial – grows year after year, no replanting necessary.
• Depending on your climate, Red Clover, a legume, is a perennial that has the added advantage that as they die they also feed the soil the flowers are growing in!
• Common knapweed is a tall, thistle-like grassland perennial that doesn’t like wet areas or acidic soil.
• Wild carrot (Daucus carota), also known as Queen Anne’s lace, is a biennial plant in the parsley family. The flower head has trillions of tiny flowers! It is perfect for smaller beneficial insects, strongly attracts Syrphid flies aka Hoverflies!

The common factor here is by planting perennials and self-seeders, there is always habitat, and no replanting necessary! Though Wild carrot is a biennial, it self-seeds like crazy, keeping a constant supply of flowers! Your choice of flowers, that insects love, that bloom all year long and are there all the time, is garden wisdom!

Honey bees have their hives, but native bees don’t. Most species of wild bees are solitary, and some 70 percent of them dig a nest in the ground to raise their young—something they can’t do if mulch is in the way. Leave a little bare ground and protect it from being stepped on! No mulch needed! They favor a slight slope or well drained site.

Install some living quarters, a bee block or bee hotel, which are available online or at some garden stores. Bee hotels are a pollinator’s paradise! Pollinators’ housing needs are hugely diverse! Bare soil, hollow twigs, big holes in trees, little holes of only a certain depth. You could also drill holes of varying sizes in a dead tree that’s still standing (if beetles haven’t already done it for you). You can easily build them yourself! They can be simple and small or a luxury condo like this one! See more!  Please see these super useful detailed tips here!

Put your bee home up in March or early April! This will offer prime nesting sites for solitary bees for laying their eggs. Soon they will be buzzing, hovering and feasting about your veggie garden! Plant their favorite flower foods in time to feed them! See more about their favorite food! Plant plenty of native plants for your wild bees.

For those of you with space for shrubs and trees, find out the best varieties to seasonally support our precious pollinators all year long! If you don’t have big space, plant your mini bloomers in containers, on your apt balcony, wherever you can! Don’t forget to plant the street strip with drought tolerant abundantly flowering native plants, buckwheat might be one! Check with your local nurseries that support pollinators, local botanic gardens, master gardeners, for the best plant choices for your area.

There are so many ways you can work together to help!

Jennifer S Holland, writes for National Geographic: Learn more about organizations that support pollinators and their habitats, such as Pollinator Partnership. You can also participate in citizen-science programs for pollinators such as Bumble Bees (Xerces Society), The Great Sunflower Project (San Francisco State University), Fourth of July Butterfly Count (North American Butterfly Association), and the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (Monarch Watch).

If you have questions, one wonderful resource is the National Gardening Association! State your location when requesting information. The National Gardening Association reaches more than 7.6 million gardeners a year, and during the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge recorded on its website:

• A 25% uptick in participation in its forum, “Gardening for Bees and Butterflies.
• A 45% increase in searches relating to pollination.
• 140,000 photos of pollinator-friendly plants and pollinators uploaded.

Sharing is Caring!  Put up your conversation starter informative sign. Be proud & happy!

Plant significant, do-the-job flowers for bees, the colors they love the most, purple, then blue! Plant for pollinators of all kinds, plant for the good-guy predators! Do it in your yard, in your veggie garden, along the street!

“When California was wild, it was one sweet bee garden throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the ocean.” ~ John Muir, “The Bee Pastures”

Make your  life  a lovely Meadow!

Updated 7.24.23

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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 City’s remaining 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. In 2018 they lasted into September and October! Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

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Courting Solitary Bees!

Put your bee home up in March or early April! This will offer prime nesting sites for solitary bees for laying their eggs. Soon they will be buzzing, hovering and feasting about your veggie garden! Plant their favorite flower foods in time to feed them! In addition, let a carrot or two, a celery, some cilantros and arugula flower up!

(Several excerpts from the UC California Agriculture Urban Bee Study)

California has 1600 native species of bees! Santa Barbara County has 5 families, 19 genera, 67 species! Solitary bees deserve a sweet space in our gardens and in our hearts!

Plant what they eat!

In an urban bee study by UC California Agriculture, California plants that got high counts of visits were easily accessible plants, cosmos (Cosmos spp.), lavender (Lavandula spp.) and catnip mint (Nepeta spp.), partly due to their long flowering periods. Of native bees throughout California, the two most attractive plant families to bees were Asteraceae (which provide pollen and nectar) and Lamiaceae (which provide nectar).

Bumble bees (Bombus spp.), small sweat bees (Halictidae) and honey bees all enjoy California Poppy. Honey bees and large carpenter bees (Xylocopa spp.) love palo verde (parkinsonia aculeata), wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) and autumn sage (Salvia greggii/microphylla/cvs.). Digger bees (Anthophora edwardsii) forage faithfully on manzanita flowers (Arctostaphylos).

Blanket flower (Gaillardia x grandiflora) and sunflower (Heianthus an-nuus) attract long-horn bees (Melissodes spp.) and honey bees.

Already you have learned the names of some of your bees, plus what they like to dine on! Plant different kinds of plants to bring more bee diversity!

Some 60 to 80 species were identified in each city where study counts were done; the ultra-green sweat bee (Agapostemon texanus) was among the most common. Top, a female on bidens (Bidens ferulifolia); below, a male on sea daisy (Erigeron glaucus). Many bees lived here before urbanization; they and others have adapted. For example, honey bees (Apis mellifera), alfalfa leafcutting bees (Megachile ro-tundata), Megachile apicalis and Hylaeus punctatus. Megachile ro-tundata is a commercially important leafcutting bee. Honey bees, the most common yellow-faced bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii), the large carpenter bee (Xylocopa tabaniformis orpifex) and the ultra-green sweat bee (Agapostemon texanus) live throughout California.

Severely wet winters and springs are hard on bees. They prefer warm, sunny mornings with little or no wind.

And, they need safe living quarters!

Bee hotels, a pollinator’s paradise, are small to large, simple to elaborate! Pollinators’ housing needs are hugely diverse! Bare soil, hollow twigs, big holes in trees, little holes of only a certain depth.

Solitary (nonsocial) bees will nest in a variety of substrates in urban gardens. The digger bee (Anthophora edwardsii) nests in bare dirt. About 70% of solitary bees nest in the ground! Solitary means a male and a female bee mate, and the female constructs a nest and lays an egg in each single cell she creates, with 3 to 10 cells per nest depending on space; there is no hive, division of labor or social structure as in the social honey bees and bumble bees.

Many of these solitary bees prefer to construct their nests in soils with specific characteristics, such as composition, texture, compaction, slope and exposure. Nesting habitat can be provided for these bees in gardens by leaving bare soil and providing areas of specially prepared soil, from sand to heavy clay to adobe blocks. Make a Miner bee nest! Excessive mulching with wood chips will greatly discourage ground-nesting bees, which need bare soil or a thin layer of natural leaf litter.

If you see soil like this, DO NOT WALK ON IT, rope it off so others don’t either. The Miner bee nests in colonies of separate tunnels excavated into hard clay. Females construct the nest, softening the hard clay with regurgitated water and removing clay particles with their mandibles.

Other bees nest in pre-existing cavities. Honey bees nest in large tree cavities, underground and in human structures such as the spaces between walls, chimneys and water-meter boxes. Bumble bees commonly nest in abandoned rodent burrows and sometimes in bird nest boxes. Most cavity-nesting solitary bees such as Hylaeus (Colletidae), and most leafcutting bees and mason bees (Osmia [Megachilidae]) prefer beetle burrows in wood or hollow plant stems. Nest habitats for these bees can be supplemented by drilling holes of various diameters (especially 3/16 to 5/16 inches) in scrap lumber or fence posts, or by making and setting out special wooden domiciles in the garden. Once occupied by bees, these cavities must be protected from sun and water exposure until the following year, when adult bees emerge to start new generations. Neglecting to protect drilled cavities occupied by bees can lead to bee mortality. Some people tuck them back in old mailboxes. You will find some excellent bee care tips at Wings in Flight!

A special note about the importance of Bumble bees! Honey bees don’t pollinate tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant or blueberries, but bumble bees DO! They do what is called buzz pollination, sonication! Please see all about in Sue Rosenthal’s post at Bay Nature! And Bumblebees can harvest pollen from flowers 400 times faster than honey bees can!
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Hollow twigs, bamboo, various size holes drilled in logs and 4X4s.

 
Left, sealed nursery chambers. Right, adult emerging from nest.

Image by French photographer Franck Barske

Some bees are big, others need very tiny spaces!

Large carpenter bees (Xylocopa) excavate their nest tunnels in soft wood such as redwood arbors or fences, and small carpenter bees (Ceratina) use pithy stems such as elderberry or old sunflower stalks. Partitions between the brood cells are usually composed of bits of excavated material.

How good does it get?! This is an epic weather protected, farm-size community for solitary bees that opens to both sides!

How about this Pollinator Condo?! [It needs weather protection….] Lower larger holes are for Bumblebees. Bumblebees will also nest in old bird houses.

What a creative beauty this one is and uses so many natural materials!

You can buy bee homes, even bee home making kits, but if you are even a little bit crafty, why not make one?! It could be big, it could be on a post, or small and decorated hung among the tomatoes! Please check out these super important detailed tips here!

The bees will love you!

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The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, then became this blog too! 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!

Read Full Post »