Community gardening

I loved being able to help out with a median planting this morning.

It's nearby, and one of my fellow garden club members had established it, when she was the director (for many years) of Asheville Greenworks (a wonderful local non-profit that plants trees and small-scale green spaces throughout the city and county).

We weeded, pruned, and planted.  Totally fun.

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Spaghetti squash recipes & planting

A store-bought spaghetti squash contained a bunch of sprouted seeds.
How long had it been sitting there in the store?

I was craving a spaghetti squash, so we bought one. The rind seemed unusually hard and quite a number of the seeds had sprouted. I try not to waste squash seeds of any kind, so if I'm not saving them for growing, I prepare them for eating. In this case I planted some of the sprouted seeds, dried 20 or so for future planting, and the rest I fixed for snacking.

Squash seed recipe

This seed recipe works for any of the winter squashes: including butternut, acorn, pumpkin, & spaghetti.
- Scoop out the seedy squash center and separate out the seeds.
- Place the cleaned seeds in a pan with 1/2 inch of heavily-salted water.(You could also use seasoned salt or maybe add some rosemary leaves for a different flavor.)
- Cook over medium heat until most of the water boils away—about 10 minutes.
- Dump the contents of the pan onto a cookie sheet and spread the seeds out.
- Dry in a 200-degree oven for 15 minutes or out in the sun for several hours.
- Ready to eat: eat them by themselves or mix with other seeds & nuts in a trail mix.

Easy microwave spaghetti squash

- Turn cleaned squash halves, split side down in a flat dish with 1/2 inch of water. (I use a 9"x12" glass dish so I can fit both halves in one dish. I stop the turntable from rotating for this dish.)
- Nuke for 10 minutes at full power.
- Take the pan from the microwave, turn the halves cut side up and test the squash with a fork to make sure that it's soft.
- Prop up the halves into the corners of the dish so they are level and pour spaghetti sauce into the seed cavities (I used half a 24-oz jar of store-bought sauce for both halves.)
- Top with freshly ground pepper, oregano & parsley flakes and then grated Pamesan cheese.
- There should still be some water in the bottom of the dish. Nuke for 5 minutes.
- Serve whole in a bowl. Eat right from the rind or turn it out into the bowl.
A delicious, filling, and gluten-free meal.

Prepared squash it ready to turn out of its shell.

The meat of the squash is stringy and fills the role of pasta.

Sprouted seeds

The beginning of August is a little early for planting the fall squash crops, but with sprouted seeds, I couldn't really wait. My long bed opposite from the garage was turned and mulched 6 weeks ago, so it was ready. I planted several of the sprouted seeds on one side of the squash swale and some summer squash seeds on the other side. The spaghetti squash seedlings are in a row above my name in this triangular-shaped swale as shown in the photo below right. The summer squash is to the left. The vines are likely to grow out from the area so this section of lawn will host the runners and we'll mow around them until they are done.

The sprouted squash perked right up when planted.
For more details on how I prepare the squash mounds see my post, From compost to dinners

My squash swale is at the far end of the outer bed. In addition to the spaghetti squash, I also planted some summer squash.

Ooh my rainbow carrots!

Rainbow carrots

I grow a lot of carrots from fall, through the winter, and into spring. We've enjoyed the cosmic purple  carrots over the last couple of years, but this time, I decided to branch out with more colors. I'm not sure if I have any purple carrots seeds left over, but I do have some orange carrot seeds so I'll have a more complete rainbow.

This seed pack includes deep purple carrot, yellow carrot, white Kutiger carrot, and nutri-red carrot seeds.

It's not quite time to plant these, but
I am looking forward to my:

Only the worms can see it.

 

 

 

Integrated pest management

It's a wasp eat caterpillar world out on our front porch step. This is why landscape-wide poisons are not used in our sustainably-managed property. You want Mother Nature to send out the troops when there are too many caterpillars in the area.

A potter's wasp found a caterpillar. It ate part of it, but then they disappeared. The wasp probably flew it to the nest, laid eggs on it and sealed it up.

Trouble in paradise

For 3 years we tried physical removal methods to knock back this invasive fern from our front pond.

See what we did to get rid of this invasive floating fern from our front pond in my post over on Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog, "Managing a native pond." Finally, we have a clear pond again.

More than a hundred crows gathered in the trees around our yard the other day. They all hung around for quite a while having a noisy ongoing conversation, and then, they all flew off. We've seen large groups of crows before, but not very often.

Summer's winding down, I can hardly wait to start planting more crops in my edible gardens again. What about you—are you ready for cool-weather edibles? In our book, "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida," there are 3 monthly calendars—one for each section of the state. Order your copy today.

Special Summer Appearance:
My presentation is "Organic Gardening—You can do it!"
Aug. 12th 10am at Fleming Island Library in Clay County.
1895 Town Center Blvd, Orange Park, FL 32003
(about 7.5 miles south of I295 & Rt 17 exit)
This event is open to the public and has been coordinated
by The Garden Club of Fleming Island.

Green Gardening Matters, 
Ginny Stibolt

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Finally, some green beans

I never thought it would be mid-August when I'd harvest my first beans of the season.  They're lovely French filet pole beans (I think). 

I poked in seeds very late, not expecting very much, but finally, I had 5 lovely beans to harvest. They'll be great with the (first) Cozelle zucchini that will be ready tomorrow!  Curious.

I'm already thinking about fall vegetables, seeds, sharing thoughts with others about fall vegetable gardening, etc., so it's definitely an odd feeling to have first beans and zucchini. And having summer cilantro that's lasting, too -- how unusual is that?  I'd sowed it thinking 2 weeks, and I've been using it for longer than that, along with lovely large Italian parsley and basil.

We had over an inch of rain this morning - a welcome soaking. 

Time to sow some fall beets, chard, spinach and other greens soon. 

Without the darn woodchucks, I'd put in cole relatives. Oh, well.

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A curious summer in the (vegetable) garden

I just now have a squash developing in my vegetable garden.  The pole beans are finally flowering.  But wait, it's early August?

Thankfully, I've been harvesting and putting up tomatoes since mid-July (also late!)

I'm also harvesting some chard and beet greens, and making pesto with both parsley and basil, hooray, and have some summer-sown cilantro, too.

A strange summer for veggies, to be sure.

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Passiflora lutea

 A smaller relative of the much more common Maypop (Passiflora incarnata), Passiflora lutea is another beautiful native Southeastern passiflora -- much more delicate than its more assertive congener!

Passiflora lutea flowers

So I was delighted to see it thriving on the porch railing, without the woodchuck herbivory of earlier in the summer (nor without the Gulf Frittilary caterpillar herbivory which would be more welcome).

Passiflora lutea

These are iPad2 photos, so not so good.  I didn't have my "good" camera along. I'm looking forward to having a better "spontaneous" camera in the future...upgrading my ancient flip-phone to a iPhone?

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Back in the Piedmont

A quick trip back home to the Piedmont found an overgrown garden (which I expected).  Even though it's been a bit dry, there are weeds in all of my vegetable beds.  There's an ancient dogwood that's finally giving it up, but it's not entirely unexpected.

I harvested some (very small) fingerling potatoes, which I'll be eating for dinner this evening, and there will be more to come, as I clean up the beds in a couple of weeks, I suppose.  There wasn't quite enough rain to encourage any real growth of new "spring" or "summer" potatoes, apparently.

My SCBG colleagues (where I used to work, and now volunteer) and I recorded some nice material around a SC Botanical Garden visit this afternoon.

Great fun to "see" the Garden after some time away, and looking forward to fielding radio calls tomorrow on YourDay, a Clemson University production that airs statewide on ETV radio.

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6 reasons to use pine needle mulch in edible gardens

I use pine needles in between my wide rows in the edible gardens.

Here are some of the reasons for using pines needles in wide-row edible gardens. (Read my post "Wide row planting & trench composting" for the details on this planting method.)

Pine needle mulch:
1) does a good job at limiting weeds.
2) doesn't form a crust, so even a light rain filters to the soil and doesn't roll away.
3) is easy to handle and remove when it's time for a crop change.
4) lasts for 2 or more years.
5) does not significantly acidify the soil below.
6) is free if there are pine trees in your neighborhood.

Corn salad, red-stemmed spinach, and garlic growing in wide rows in a winter bed. The pine needle mulch is 4 or 5 inches thick in the trenches between the rows. For crops like onions or garlic I mulch the whole row with about an inch of pine needles—the crop will grow right through it.

Use a very light layer of pine needles over the area where you've planted seeds. Here  I removed the smaller okra seedling and left just one to grow in this space around my okra swales, because you don't want to crowd okra. I always plant 2 or 3 seeds in each spot to make sure I get at least 1 good plant, especially when the seeds are older.

When ready to plant, use a leaf rake to clear the pine needles away. For this garlic, I'm ready to create the wide rows and to dump my kitchen scraps in the bottom of the trench between the rows. Note the wood chips on the path next to the garden.

This batch of needles contained a fair amount of soil after I removed it from the bed, so I raked the whole wad of needles across the lawn to clean them up. As a bonus, the freedom lawn receives an addition of compost.

I collect pine needles from the neighborhood
streets--after a storm is especially fruitful.
Then I keep a pile of them near my gardens.

Down by the lake, a longleaf pine drops its foot-long needles. Easy to rake and great for mulch. My husband mows every other week, so before he mows, I often head down there to collect a new batch.

Why not wood chips?

I've written before about using arborists' woodchips in the landscape, but I don't use them in my edible gardens for two reasons.

Wood chip mulch:
1) is impossible to remove completely once it's laid down. For other uses, like paths and more stable gardens, that's not a problem, but it doesn't work well with all the activity of changing crops at the end of the season.
2) depletes nutrients as it comes in contact with the soil microbes. Again for path mulches, this is an advantage for keeping down weeds, but we work so hard to increase the nutrient level in our edible gardens, why compromise it in any way? Eventually, the chips decompose and add nutrients and humus to the soil, but not at first.

Getting ready for fall...

Yes, it will be 6 weeks or more until I'm ready to start planting the cool weather crops, but there will be some end of summer crops like squashes, cucumbers, sugar snap peas and maybe tomatoes. It was time to turn under my marigold cover crops into their beds, so they'll be ready for the next set of crops. Read about my multi-year marigold experiment: Results: the nematode experiment. 

These two vegetable beds (with their marigold cover crop) are ready to be turned.

There is a Chinese fringe bush at the north end of this bed. Each year I remove its roots that are encroaching into the garden space.

I lay in unfinished compost on top of the marigolds and then
I'll add back the original soil.

First I pull the marigolds and weeds, and then I rake away the pine needles with a leaf rake. I raked the pine needles from this bed across the lawn as shown in a photo above to get rid of the embedded soil. Then I dug out about 5 or 6 inches of soil from the whole bed into the big cart. This bed is about 6.5 ' by 5' and I filled the whole cart. I laid in the marigolds, some grass clippings, topped it with a wheel barrel load of almost finished compost. (Completed or finished compost will not have any recognizable pieces of the original materials. This batch still has some leaf mold and small sticks and chips.)

Then I shoveled the original soil back in place and smoothed it out. I added another half load of compost on top of the soil. Finally, I covered it with pine needles and added wood chips in the walking areas around the bed.

In a few days, I'll turn the next bed.

After burying the marigolds, compost, grass clippings and layering back the original soil, I mulched the whole bed with pine needles. It will sit until fall when it'll be time to start the cool-weather crops. FYI, the downspout shown here, runs into a French drain that runs next to the sidewalk and is released into one of my rain gardens. The rain water then heads down to the lake in an open ravine.

The squash is done, so it was time to turn the marigolds into this bed, too.

I started near the okra (by the bench) and had a load of kitchen scraps ready to compost, so those went into the bottom of this bed for some extra nutrients.

Except for the okra, garlic chives, and the Greek oregano in the foreground, the beds have been turned. The outside bed was turned a couple of weeks ago and so I will probably start planting in that bed first when it's time.

Early in the spring pines also drop their male catkins (sex organs). These break down much more quickly than the pine needles, so if I rake them up, I use them to mulch my blueberries or in the compost pile where their acidity will be neutralized.

For further reading on pine needle mulch:
From Dave's Garden: Pine Needle Acidity: Myth or reality?
On Wildlife Gardeners' website: Pine Straw (Pine Needle) Mulch Acidity: Separating Fact From Fiction Through Analytical Testing

Amazing summer clouds just before sunset last week.

I hope you are enjoying the summer clouds and are planning for your fall garden of edibles. Why not purchase my book to help you get started? Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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