Putting My Garden To Bed

Well, I am in the process of putting my garden to bed.

Here in Guerneville, in November, I start losing the sun because it hides behind the redwood trees and does not get high enough in the sky to provide enough sunlight. We also start having avery cool nights and the rains beat everything down. Everything goes into stasis. 

It took me years to realize this. In the past I used to strive mightily to get a Fall garden going and noting seemed to work. So I gave up and tossed in the towel. This year, I am doing something different. No, I am not trying to grow lots of veggies again. Although I do have some beds of lettuce, collards and kale going and they are trying to hang on.  My lemon tree has got a few lemons on it and the lemons are turning yellow. Not bad! But what I am doing is laying down a thick mulch of leaves and straw to cover the entire garden.

You see, I am slowly but surely moving into a permaculture, no-dig, Ruth Stout way of gardening. I am just going to not pay much attention to my garden for the next 5 months. I doubt that I will begin planting anything until the first week in April 2016. The rains can beat down the straw and leaves and this will help to protect the soil from being hammered. The bugs and insects will also assist in breaking down the thick mulch and the mulch will help retain moisture in the soil from all of the rain that we are supposed to get.

I am convinced that this is the way to go and I am looking forward to seeing how it all works out.

Are Worm Castings a Magic Bullet?

I was doing research on how to control a very serious whitefly problem in my garden and I came across one suggestion to use worm castings. Apparently there is something in it that whiteflies do not like.

My main focus was getting the whiteflies off of my tomatoes; they were literally sucking the plants to death. My tomatoes were looking really bad. I went out to Harmony Farm Supply and purchased a 2.25 lb. bucket of Mega Worm Earthworm Castings. After putting a tablespoon per gallon of water in a bucket and letting it steep for a few days, then watering my tomatoes with this solution, I noticed an almost immediate drop-off in whiteflies on my tomatoes. Mega Worm is not entirely water soluble but that is okay. This product is not cheap, however. About $15.00 per bucket! Ouch!!!

Later, I discovered that Harmony Farm Supply also carries 1 cu. ft. bags of E.B. Stone Organics Super Earthworm Castings. I could not buy a bag fast enough. They are not giving this stuff away either. About $9.00 per bag. Super ouch!!! It is a lot more water soluble and I put a heaping tablespoon per gallon of water in 5 gallon buckets. I only let this steep overnight and I used this solution to water tomatoes and other plants in my garden and garden beds that I am preparing to plant. The whitefly population seems to have died off completely. I have been adding the Stone Castings right out of the bag to my garden beds and around plants.

What is it with this stuff? Vital Earth's Mega Worm states that its castings contain "beneficial bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that assist in the uptake of nutrients." If that is so, then the castings are probably helping with the uptake of calcium and maybe my blossom end root problem will disappear.

At any rate, I am completely sold on using worm castings in the garden. I am not completely sold yet on installing my own vermicomposting operation at home.

Blossom End Rot Torture, Part 2

As I often do when I am perplexed by a gardening problem, I went to Google to find out if I was alone about having BER only on my San Marzano tomatoes (which, by the way, are considered to be heirloom tomatoes), and to find out what, if anything, I am doing wrong.

I discovered that I am not alone. Even more surpisingly, I discovered that there has been a scientific study that found that resistance to BER is controlled by a pair of dominant genes. In fact, a new tomato gene has been designated as BER. Wow! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

The BER problem does affect other vegetables such as bell peppers, squash, and other fruiting types of veggies. But, my checking out a GardenWeb Forum on the issue indicated that many people are having a BER problem mainly with the sauce and paste varieties of tomatoes. San Marzanos are the classic Italian paste tomato. As noted above, all of these tomato varieties seem to tilt toward having BER imbedded within their genes and no matter what you do or the weather conditions, you are probably going to get some BER.

When I first planted San Marzanos a few years ago, I had a bumper crop and not one hint of BER. We put up so much sauce in our small chest freezer that we almost had no room for anything else. The next year the BER showed up and I was completely speechless because i did not know what was happening. I did some quick research and I instituted a regular watering program and this helped to rescue the season for me. I could not believe that I did not have enough calcium in my soil. This year I added plenty of bone meal and compost to the planting holes and I thought I was doing OK on the watering. But the BER showed up again in force. The shocking thing is that not all of the green tomatoes on the same plant are getting it. I just do not get it.

One commenter on GardenWeb stated that we should not be too attached to the idea that we must plant paste varieties to get good sauce. There are lots of other tomatoes that will make good sauce for you and are not susceptible to BER. Finally, many of the comments I saw seemed to indicate that people may be abandoning paste tomatoes altogether because of the BER problem in favor of finding others that are not so prone to this issue.

I am ready to jump ship myself and I will not be buying or planting any San Marzanos next year.

Cracking the Tomato Code

Not much garden work done today because I had 3 long meetings to attend connected with my volunteer work with our local library.

But I did notice that some of my tomatoes are beginning to turn red and my plants have been in the ground since early May.

My neighbor has several tomato plants and they are no where as big as mine, but she does not have any sign at all of whitefly damage or blossom end rot. In fact, BER only seems to show up on my San Marzanos. Also, my neighbor has resigned herself to not having very much of a harvest. Elsewhere, people seem to be having a great tomato harvest and the tomatoes I saw growing at Harmony Farm Supply (my favorite nursery) on July 18, 2015, when I attended their Customer Appreciation Day and gardening workshops, were healthy and beautiful. I have no idea what they are putting into the soil, but they are using drip irrigation.

So what do I do to crack the tomato code?

1. Am I growing the right tomatoes for my area? I seem to remember reading somewhere, a long time ago (I hope I can find that article), that we should only be growing cherry tomato varieties up here on the North Coast.
2. What kind of fertilizer should I be using?
3. Are my tomatoes getting enough sun?
4. Do I have to install a trip irrigation system?
5. I have had a serious whitefly problem (on all tomato plants) and BER problem (only on the San Marzanos) two years in a row. What do I do to stop these issues in the future?
6. Are heirloom tomatoes turning out to be really better? Or, have we been sold a bill of goods again by marketing hype?

I just do not know what is going on here but Iam determined to find out.

Blossom End Rot Torture

That scream of angst you are hearing is coming from me as I water my garden.

I have Blossom End Rot (BER) only on my San Marzano tomato plants - 5 of them. On each of the plants, some of the green tomatoes have BER and some do not. And, this is occurring even right next to each other on the same plant. What is going on here? I scream inside so as not to torture my neighbors, but I still feel like I am in one of Grand Inquisitor Torquemada's chambers.

I thought I had prepared for BER by using bone meal in each planting bed and adding in lots of compost. But that does not seemed to have worked as I thought. I can only assume that inconsistent watering and the amount of watering is the problem that I have to work on.

Last year I had a very severe BER problem that  shocked me to the core I had never seen this problem before) and I was able to harvest a small crop of San Marzanos after I stepped up my watering of those plants. I have started a daily watering program. In addition, I am including worm casting fertilizer in my watering cans (1 tablespoon per gallon of water) to help these tomatoes to produce beautiful ripe tomatoes that are free from BER. I can only hope it works.

Gardening is supposed to bring a smile to your face everyday. It is not supposed to be a daily visit to a torture chamber.

Summer Heat and Watering the Garden

We are beginning a major heatwave here in Guerneville this week and I am spending lots of time to make sure that everything is getting watered. 

With regard to watering:

1. I do not have a drip irrigation system, so I am still watering by hand.
2. I have been very concerned about chlorine and other chemicals in my water. I purchased six, 5 gallon buckets that I fill daily with water using my hose. The chlorine evaporates overnight and I water in the morning by pouring the water from the buckets into watering cans. It is hard work, but I am trying  to minimize the amount of chlorine that goes into my soil. I tell people that I can smell the chlorine in my Sweetwater Springs Springs Water District water. The District is really overdoing the chlorine.
3. I still use the water directly from the hose on perennials, but I am trying to cut down on that.
4. No overhead watering in the veggie garden.
5. Consistent daily watering, I have come to believe, will help solve my blossom end rot problem (BER) on my San Marzano tomatoes. The BER can also be caused by a lack of calcium in the soil and I took steps this year to make sure there is plenty of calcium in my soil.
6. Mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, and mulch some more to conserve water.
7. If you are not seeing worms in the several inches of your soil means that you are not mulching enough and your soil is too dry.
8. I am using gray water from my house to water my plants in pots and perennials in the ground.

Gardening During the Winter in Guerneville, California

In Guerneville, gardening during a rainy winter is a pain in the, well, you know! Right now we are having a very wet and soggy December here at the Russian River in Sonoma County.

At my house, even though I have planted a few varieties if kale and Champion collards, they are sitting in soil that is waterlogged and supersaturated. It is very muddy out there. So my garden right now is in a kind of almost underwater stasis. I am sure that nothing is growing very much at all. 

This is a time of year to clean up and organize the garden. On sunny days during the winter, I try to move forward on outside projects: building retaining walls, creating a walkway, making repairs on my house and, of course, constantly making compost. My compost never heats up by the way. I just let time work for me to keep everything moving forward. I do however toss in a tablespoon or two of bone meal and blood meal onto each layer of the compost as I build the pile. I never turn it and the new stuff goes into a heavy duty trash can that I drilled air holes into the sides and covered with 1/4” hardware cloth to keep local critters ( rats, mice, possums, cats and dogs) out of the can. These animals cannot take the lids off of my cans. After the compost reduces in the first can, I fork it over into a second can that I have configured in the same way as the first one.

This is the Brute Trash Can I use...

And, here is a link to the site that told me I can compost a lot of things: http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm

One of the best books I have ever seen about making compost is this one: “The Complete Compost Gardening Guide: Banner batches, grow heaps, comforter compost, and other amazing techniques for saving time and money, and ... most flavorful, nutritious vegetables ever” at Amazon.com.