Grow Your Knowledge

My apartment is full of all sorts of goodies of intrigue this time of year. At the moment, I have a bunch of parsley that I let go to seed drying, some brassica seed ready to be stored and two sheet pans full of flower heads waiting to be picked over. I’m in full swing of seed-saving, a project most home gardeners seldom think to do. Why spend $2.50 on a pack of cosmos AGAIN next year, when you have hundreds of seeds at your fingertips? Saving seed is not only economical, it’s a good self-education on a plant’s biology. (That was way garden geeky, I know)

Some tips for seed saving:

- Beans - if you’ve left some peas and beans on the vine too long, leave them be and let them turn brown and dry. Remove the seeds (ie the actual bean or pea) from the pod, and store in your freezer for an hour before bagging up and labeling. Why freeze them? Some farmer friends told me once to do it…….and so I do. This is also how you dry soup beans.

- Lettuces - If you let lettuces bolt and flower (and I know you do!), they will eventually grow little pods full of seeds. It’s a beautiful thing, and people are always surprised to see it. Give it a go with some of your lettuce this fall. To save seed, cut off the stalk just before the pods start to dry. Hang the stalks to dry, and once the pods are brown and dry, you can rub them between your palms to release the seed.

- Flowers - pretty simple here. Dead head your plant, and instead of tossing the head, save it for seed! I always leave my flowers out on a drying rack overnight to be sure that they are, in fact, dry. Be careful when you first take them in to the house, as they may have little teeny bugs inside. When seeds are completely dry, wrap them up. These also make a great hostess gift, if you get fancy with the wrapping!

Just-picked poppy pods in my kitchen

Good to know, also, is proper storage. Most seeds will do well in a small paper envelope, stored in a cool place. A garage or cellar is the perfect place. Finally, all seeds have variable viability, meaning that some seed keep for years, and some won’t last too long. I could go on for days on how to check germination rates and what crop stores longer than others………but that’s a conversation for another day. (or you can email me here)

This weekend, I drove three hours out to apple country (which is now more of a peach country) for a last-of-the-season swim in Lake Chelan and first-of-the-season green apples for making green apple pectin. On the road through Blewitt Pass and the farm country just east of there, I couldn’t help but think about big agriculture. Amidst green vineyards and irrigated fields, it leaves a lot to ponder for a lil’ urban gardener, like me (and you!).

As if the universe knew I was pondering, the next day I found an old National Geographic magazine sitting in the main cabin where I stayed. Drawn to the cover “Where our Food Comes From”, I picked it up for some lakeside reading. What I found was a fascinating article on soil that everyone should read. Now, I know soil doesn’t sound super important, but it is. Topsoil is not a dime a dozen, as we’re often inclined to think. We shovel it up, push it around, bulldoze it for housing developments, but much like seemingly free-flowing fresh water, it’s a precious resource everyone can do to learn more about. Read it - let me know what you think.

While our urban gardens don’t necessarily bare as large a global impact, soil is the number one factor to the success of a home veggie garden. (ok, ok - water and sun are pretty darn important, too) Whether you’ve just paid $200 to have a bunch of topsoil delivered this season, or you’re fortunate enough to have a backyard full of the stuff, it’s our job as land owners to protect the soil, so it keeps giving back. Why go through all the trouble of conditioning our gardens in Spring and Summer only to let them falter over Fall and Winter?

This fall, make sure to do right by the soil we grow food in and plant a cover crop or winter garden. Bare soil tends to wash away - both nutrients and general mass. Soil filled with plants will hold tight, the plant roots anchoring soil down and helping prevent run off. There are lots of choices for cover crop - clover, arugula and even your winter plants (think kale, chard or chicories). Whatever you choose, choose NOW and get it planted! The fall season is waning and what with cooler temps, it’s best not to hesitate. Walts Organic is a great resource for bulk cover crop seeds, as is City Peoples in Madison. For more information on what your choices are, check out this site by WSU.

Now get planting!

It’s happening. Days are getting noticeably shorter and cooler. Tank tops in the garden have been replaced by long sleeve shirts and there is a certain chill to the air - the seasons are changing.

In the garden, especially given this summer’s cooler temps and late start, you’ve likely been staring at branches of green tomatoes with hopeful eyes and fingers crossed. While we can’t control the sun, we can control the plant, and there are some late-season tips for getting the ripest tomatoes in the last few weeks of warm(ish) weather.

If you haven’t been trimming suckers off your plant all summer, now is the time. Essentially the branches on the main stem, suckers can be snipped off without affecting the fruit. By doing so, you are in essence re-routing the plant’s energy to making a full ripe fruit, not new leaves and branches. (That is a really simplified way of looking at it, by the way, but it works.)

To further encourage ripening, now is a great time to remove all the flower clusters on the plant, as well, and even the little green tomatoes. They really won’t have enough time to mature, so you’re not losing anything in the process.

My last tip is a tricky one that really depends on weather, so sometimes I use this, and other times I don’t. You can try and kill the vines by cutting off their water supply. This stress to the plant causes them to ripen fruit (fascinating that plants can register when they die, so they hurry to get seeds made). Trouble is…..if it rains you run the risk of disease to the plant. It’s a gamble, but in a cold year like this, it could be worth it.

If anyone has any other great tips, please feel free to comment. Be on the lookout in late September for green-tomato recipes. I’m certain that will be an upcoming post!

As recent weather patterns have managed to keep us indoors for a few days, now is a great time to capitalize on some garden-planning time. August is the time for planting your winter garden, counter-intuitive as it sounds. Kale, Asian greens, turnips, etc, all go in the ground this month. For the urban gardener, though, how do you make space?

Well, for starters you pull up and compost all that bitter old lettuce you still have going. No one is going to eat that anyway. There are likely other space savers in your patch that needn’t be there. The best trick of an urban garden is not to hang on to plants too long. Did you let your basil go to seed? Pull it, and make a mental note to clip it back next year.

If you’re not planting from seed, you can buy yourself another couple of weeks before getting the winter garden going. A great place for starts is Walt’s Organic over on Leary Way in Ballard. I’m also a fan of both PCC and the organics at City Peoples. Remember to plant in time for the starts to put on some good growth and strength for the cool winter conditions ahead (or is winter here already?).

Have you been eyeing the scorched grass in your planting strip or side yard, envisioning something lush, but fretting about the labor involved? In fact, it is easy to convert grass to vegetables, herbs or other plants. And so worth it! Here are some steps to take:

(1) Evaluate your site. Before getting rid of your grass, consider what you want to plant and whether you have the appropriate growing conditions. Most vegetables, fruits and herbs will grow only in full sunlight but lettuce, cucumbers, peas and some other vegetables will accept partial sun. Roots of nearby trees may compete with your edibles for moisture; tree roots generally extend beyond the tree’s leaf canopy.

Also think about the water needs for your planned garden. Vegetables need consistent watering. If you plan on running an automatic drip watering system to your planting strip, it’s less disruptive to get it under your sidewalk before you have a lot of plants in the way. You may also want to have underground utility lines marked before you convert the plot so you don’t accidentally dig into them. The city’s Call-Before-You-Dig number is (800) 424-5555.

(2) Test your soil. Soil tests will tell you if your soil has nutrient deficiencies and also whether dangerous levels of heavy metals are present. On Queen Anne, there is a risk of lead in the soil from paint on older houses, so it’s a good practice to do a soil test before growing edibles. Knowing the pH and nutrients in your soil will also help you decide what kinds of fertilizer to use and which crops will grow best (for example, blueberries need a low pH). The University of Massachusetts tests soil for nutrients, lead and cadmium at very reasonable rates. There are also local labs that will test for other heavy metals, such as arsenic. King County has a link to a list of approved labs.

(3) Remove the grass: You can remove sod by digging it out, smothering it, killing it with an herbicide or tilling it under. We only recommend the first two methods. Herbicides can affect water quality and other plants, and tilling may leave pieces of weeds and grass in the soil that can resprout, as well as unearth weed seeds.

Dig it. Sod can be physically removed by using a garden spade or fork or by renting a sod cutter, which slices the sod into strips that can then be rolled up. For removing more than a small amount, the sod cutter saves work. I found it pretty easy to use once I got the hang of it. This method is physically harder than smothering, but the advantage is that you’re ready to plant immediately. Note that if you have a lot of weeds in your grass with deep taproots (e.g. dandelions), it’s possible some roots will remain behind and start growing. Also keep in mind that when you remove the sod, you’re removing organic matter with it. This can be replaced by adding compost or a topsoil mix.

(What do you with all that removed sod? You can make great compost from it, or post it on freecycle.org or craigslist.org — someone just might haul it away for you. It makes great fill for landscaping projects. Just don’t plan on throwing it in your clean green. According to the City of Seattle’s website, you can’t put more than 60 lbs into yard waste containers. You can, however, bring it to the dump for a fee.)

Or smother it. Alternatively, you can smother the grass by putting down layers of newspaper or cardboard and then covering it with a mulch such as compost. Over time, the newspaper and grass will decompose and earthworms will work the compost down into the soil. First, mow your lawn as low as you can. Make sure the newspaper uses soy-based ink and don’t use anything with shiny paper, e.g. magazines or advertising inserts, as they may contain heavy metals. If your grass has weeds in it, including weed grasses, use more newspaper (many sources recommend six sheets, but you may want to double or triple that). Grass and weeds will grow anywhere there is light, so make sure the newspaper sections overlap each other well and that the edges of the bed are covered. You may want to wet the newspaper and anchor it with rocks to prevent it from blowing away until the mulch is delivered.

You can have compost dumped directly on the parking strip, and then it’s easy to spread the pile out. (If you have multiple sections, ask the driver to dump a portion on each so you don’t need to cart it around in a wheelbarrow.) The minimum recommended depth for mulch is six inches, but putting down more than that will enable you to plant right away if your grass didn’t have a lot of weeds. You also may want to use more compost if your soil is compacted or rocky. If you had a lot of weeds, it’s better to wait several months for the grass and weeds to die down before planting, as creating any holes above the weeds will give them the light they need to grow.

Although this method is easier, it will take several months before you can fully plant. In addition, the depth of the planting strip will be much higher than it was. If you’re doing this in the fall for planting in the spring and not planting anything on top, there is a risk the rain will cause some erosion, especially on hills. This can be reduced by having a thinner layer of compost near the edges or if suitable for planting, by sowing a cover crop such as crimson clover.

Now you’re ready to plant! Stay tuned for Queen Anne “ripped strip” plant recommendations. If you would like to chat with a neighbor who has already ripped their strip, email us and we’ll put you in touch.

Hi, my name is Anne and here is what is happening in my Queen Anne veggie garden (a ripped strip) this week.

I recently planted vegetable seeds for late fall, winter and spring harvest. I’ve found it’s actually easier to grow vegetables in the fall than in the spring, since after mid-September, no watering is necessary. As a bonus, many of the fall/winter vegetables I grow are ornamental, so they add life to the garden at a time of year when most plants are in decline.

You can still start some vegetables from seeds in late July or early August. Territorial Seed has a handy chart about when to sow. I also use Seattle Tilth’s Maritime Northwest Garden Guide, which has slightly different dates. Or instead of seeds, you can buy transplants in August or September — just make sure you save some space in your garden for them now.

Here are some plants I’m growing that could be started now:

Kale: This year I’m growing Lacinato kale, which is a beautiful blue-green plant with narrow leaves. In the supermarket, this is often called Dinosaur, Tuscan or Black kale. I’m also trying a new variety from Territorial Seed, called Red Chidori, which it describes as a frilly, dark red kale with “extra deep red central foliage”. Except when we’ve had sudden cold snaps in December, kale survives the winter without any special protection. It’s sweeter after a frost.

Swiss Chard: The varieties with colored stems are the most attractive, although Fordhook Giant (a variety with white stems and large leaves) is the most tolerant of wet, cold weather. Bright Lights, often called rainbow Swiss chard at the store, produces plants with pink, red, orange, yellow or white stems. If you prefer certain colors, you can plant more thickly and thin out the unwanted colors. There are also single-colored varieties such as Orange Fantasia, Pink Lipstick, Rhubarb and Golden Swiss. Swiss chard will sometimes die back in December or January, but some plants will revive and grow new leaves when the light levels and temperatures increase.

Kohlrabi: This plant is like a turnip, except the edible portion is above ground and the flavor is sweeter. It can be eaten raw or cooked. I grow Kolribi, which is a purple variety. Looking like a mass of purple spaceships with leaves, it’s always a topic of conversation in the garden. Most sources recommend harvesting kohlrabi by Christmas, but I often leave some of mine in the ground through early winter.

What’s going on in your garden this week? Drop us a line!