Author Archives: Anita Mills

Community Gardens Are Busting Out All Over!

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potting trashThe last two weeks have been hectic.  The Community Garden Conference in Grand Prairie, sponsored by the Tarrant County Food Bank and assisted by the North Texas Food Bank, was well attended.  I was there with GROW North Texas; we team-taught a seed starting class.  Andrea, the GNT Farmer Advocate talked about soil mixes, while I got my hands dirty and muddy, mixing up the seed starting concoction, and then I lead the “trash talk”.  In other words, how to start seeds by repurposing things like toilet paper rolls and empty water bottles; how to roll a newspaper pot with a spice jar, and how to convert a strawberry clamshell into a mini-greenhouse.  It was lots of fun, and a majority of the attendees took advantage of the hands-on, to plant some seeds and make some seed-starting pots.

DK raised bed

On Sunday I had a chance to visit Divine Kinship’s project in southern Dallas County.  They are working with permaculture instructor Nicholas Burtner to transform a 3+ acre piece of property that is currently grass and cedars.  It has a lot of elevation changes, a seasonal creek on one side, and a variety of soils ranging from caliche to sand.  It’s almost overwhelming all that they have to do to transform the property into a food forest and permaculture scape.  But large jobs are best broken into manageable pieces, and they are setting up raised beds, with plans to start planting in the next few weeks.  The beds are crafted from logs, and filled with wonderful mulch that will break down into incredible soil.  The mulch will also hold water from the rains.

Note in the middle of the bed you can see some reddish bumps with white dots on top.  Those are terra cotta pots, made into ollas, with rocks covering the holes on the top.  I’ll be teaching a DIY olla class, as well as using other recyclables for repurposing soon.

Winter Vegetable Planting!

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It’s still possible to plant winter vegetables and get them up before the warmth of late spring gets to them.

SpinachI’m going to be adding more spinach (40-50 days to maturity). But I could also plant arugula (40 days), turnips (50 days), carrots (60-75 days), (red) mustard (45 days), bok choy/pak choi (45-55 days) , collards (70 days), chard (50-60 days), kale (40-60 days depending on variety) and … at the end of the month … lettuce (50-60 days) and peas (snap peas as early as 55 days, others up to 70 days). And don’t forget radishes!  They can be seeded and harvested within 30-45 days, depending on the weather.

I was on a tour of community gardens in Dallas last week, and we saw someone with some peas that were at least 2′ high!  We all marveled that they had survived, given that the day was in the 20s with a wind chill! But the tour also brought home to the city planners for whom the tour was organized, that gardening can be done in North Texas year-round.

There is no right or wrong with gardening. No one is going to come and take your garden away if you don’t succeed! Your reward is vegetables.  If you plant something and it doesn’t thrive, it just means you have learned something.  You can hedge your bets by following guides for best dates to plant, but they don’t always work – particularly if we have a late freeze or spring comes early and summer heat comes earlier. Sometimes it’s fun just to try something outside of the guides – just to see if it works! Like the year I decided to winter-over my chard and I found out it can be grown in this area like a perennial.

Gardening is about finding out what works for you, for your gardening style and your location.

And remember….if our average last frost is in mid to late-March, starting some vegetables from seed 8-10 weeks earlier indoors means you’ll have transplants ready to go into the ground on time!

 

The North Wind Doth Blow

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I spent all day readying the “homestead” for the cold, arctic front that is supposed to drop temperatures into the teens by morning.

Covered the faucets with either a bucket or, in the case of the front faucet, taped some of that airy packing material Amazon uses around the pipe.  Disconnected the hoses, to allow air space in the pipes.

For the chickens, I took out an old 18’x12′ tarp I had in the shed.  With a helper, I managed to get it over the run and enclosed the run, staking it out on one side like a tent.  BUT….I came back later and found that the tarp had ripped – well, separated is more like it – on the seams where the three 8′ sections had been bonded.  Oops!

Coop cover oops So what to do, what to do?  I used to use coat hangers for everything – they are really very handy. So I got out my wire nippers and a couple of coat hangers along with a pair of pliers and attached the top of the middle section of the tarp to the hardware cloth of the run.  Although not totally enclosed now, I’ve at least blocked most of the north and northwest winds, the chilling ones.  I anchored the bottom of the tarp with bricks and pavers.  I’ll know how effective it was in the morning – by seeing if the chickens’ water is frozen.

Coop cover FastenerAbout 8 or 9 tonight, I’ll heat a red brick in the oven to 350 degrees, wrap it in an old pillowcase, and put it into the coop.  The radiant heat will help the chickens (I know….they have down and feathers, but I worry about them and spoil them) weather the cold.

Out of the Starting Gate!

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During the cold days the plants may be dormant, but we can’t be.  Too much to do – planning, mostly.  When I was by the community garden on Saturday, the giant red mustard was indeed giant – about 18″-24″ leaves.  I’d cut a few leaves from the outside about 10 days before, and it just stimulated the plant to make more leaves.  Yum.  The taste is a bit sharper than green mustard, but the greens I cooked last night were scrumptious, when mixed with chard that I also harvested.

In my container garden, however, the mustard is not growing quite so large.  Note to self – don’t plant so many things in one container!  Evenso, the mustard leaves in the container are at least 12″ when planted with broccoli and chard. As shown in the picture.

Mustard

So how do I cook greens (all types)?  With garlic and olive oil.  I sautee the minced garlic in olive oil in a thick-bottomed sauce pan till it’s soft, then start adding the chopped greens, making sure they are olive oil’d before adding another bunch.  Then I add about ½” of water in the pan, and slap on a lid, turning the fire down low.  Let them cook about 10-15 minutes, till done.  I served with beans and cornbread last night, but greens alone (maybe with some pepper sauce!) or with poached egg are good. Both tasting good and good for your body.

So after all that, I’ve resolved to order more giant red mustard seeds and plant some more while it’s still cold. I order mine from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (see last week’s post for more information on this excellent source of non-GMO seeds).

Mustard seeds

The community garden’s spinach is doing well.  We planted in mid-November, alternating rows of spinach and carrots (I’m partial to the red-cored chantenay).  Both are about 4-5” high and the spinach was so thick, we thinned to 4” apart, picking the largest plants to leave room for the smaller ones to grow larger.  In about a month, we can start harvesting the carrots – they are already baby-sized and (I tasted one) so sweet.  Something to look forward to.

On another note, I visited family over the holidays, and was discussing gardening with a relative.  We looked out the sliding glass doors (okay, it was just too COLD to go out and look closely), and I saw barren beds, with dry dusty dirt exposed.  I looked at the barren trees in the yard and asked what happened to the leaves.  The yard man blows them together and bags them and hauls them off.  I restrained myself – leaves are the BEST mulch for wintering barren beds.  They preserve and nurture all those soil micro-organisms that are crucial to a plant’s well-being.  And they hold moisture in the ground so that what plants are left (like shrubs) are protected from the cold.  Since the relative had cardboard in her garage, I suggested that she put it out as mulch and wet it down good. Take a deep breath.

Now for my rant:  don’t let those leaves go into the landfill!  They are so valuable for your plants during the winter as well as your lawn.  If nothing else, put them on the compost pile. That’s how to return the nutrients to the soil.  That’s how nature does it and replenishes soils year after year – think about a forest floor, that is soft and moist and alive and rich.  That’s how all our growing beds should be.

 

Gardeners….It’s Seed Ordering Time!

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The garden catalogs are arriving in my mailbox, and I scan the pages, dreaming of wonderful plants for the spring, summer and fall.  The neat thing is that I get the paper catalog (okay, I’m a throw-back and love to touch it, see it, and feel it), but I can order online! Best of both possible worlds.

Seed catalogs

My favorite seed companies each have a unique offering.

The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (www.southernexposure.com) is located in Virginia, so I can be assured that the varieties they offer are probably going to work in Texas. I love reading the descriptions of their offerings.  All seeds are coded for those best suited for the Southeast, heirloom, ecologically grown and USDA certified organic.   The heirloom varieties often have an indication of when they were “discovered” and where they originated.  For example, “Fish Pepper…African-American heirloom from MD.” or for carrots…”Chantenay Red Core…introduced from France in the late 1800s.” or “Cosmic Purple…yellow and purple carrots were first recorded in Asia Minor in the 10th c. For the first few hundred years of managed cultivation, carrots were predominantly purple.”  Wow!  A history lesson along with descriptions.  SESE also carries grains and cover crops:  want sesame? hairy vetch? red clover, sorghum and broom corn?  They have seeds!

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com) perhaps has the most extensive catalog – it’s almost like a thin book!  Baker Creek is located in Mansfield, MO, so I can be assured that I can find varieties that will work well in Texas. They carry vegetables, herbs and flowers. I can also get flax if I care to try growing fiber crops.  The pictures are incredible.  One eggplant that caught my eye was the Turkish Orange. It’s described as coming from Turkey. “The 3” round fruit are best cooked when they are green to light orange.”

Botanical Interests (www.botanicalinterests.com) is located in Colorado.  But it has some very interesting varieties and a wonderful selection (3 varieties) of Texas Bluebonnets in their flower section. I think one of the heirlooms I’m going to try this year is the Scabiosa Pincushion Flower. It’s described as “Perennial. Blooms summer through fall.” Sounds wonderful with blue-purple and white flowers. On the peppers page, I learned that peppers have been around since 7500 BC and are cultivated around the world. Columbus brought the spicy pods back to Spain and about 50 years later “they were being grown throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia and the African coast.”  The selections are not quite as extensive as offered from some of the other seed merchants, but there are good, solid varieties.

 

The Landreth Seed Company, “purveyors of find seed since 1784,” is based in Pennsylvania (www.landrethseeds.com). Their catalog has the look of an heirloom.  They even have a section specifically for a children’s garden. Vegetables offered are selected for their interest, such as purple plum radishes, African mini-bottle gourd, and Mexican sour gherkin.  All varieties that are selected for their potential attractiveness to children. One section highlights varieties best suited for a patio/container garden.

The Pinetree garden seed catalog (www.superseeds.com) is a new one for me this year. Pinetree is located in Maine, so I will look through it to locate varieties that may be experimental for me.  They also offer loose tea, such as “Nilgiri – organic, fair trade certified.” They offer culinary herbs, medicinal herbs and dyeing herbs as well as tobaccos for the gardening.  I may try out the Hopi Red Dye Amaranth this year, since I’d really like to try dyeing some of my wool with reds.  Pinetree was my source for the Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper) seeds. It is described as “A legendary variety from India with its extreme heat, said to be one of the hottest pepper[s] in the world with a Scoville rating over 1 million units.”  They take about twice as long as other peppers to mature.  But my youngest daughter and her husband like to try extreme peppers, so this was a good choice for them to try.  Note:  only 20 seeds are in each packet!

It’s a good idea to order seeds (at least for spring) soon, because if a transplant goes in mid-March, but is started indoors 8-10 weeks before planting, that means January is the time to start those seeds!

We’ll talk more about starting seeds in the coming weeks.