Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Local Gardening

Local Gardening

It is great if you have a garden going. And even greater if you actually reap something that you have sowed. There are a lot of ways to garden, a theory to go with every personality, and an abundance of consumer opportunity in every store you enter these days. Over the past few years with my gardens I have tried different ways to buy, and this year I think I am accessing some of the most Earth friendly and thrifty ways of obtaining garden supplies ever!

Potting soil can be one of the biggest expenses. When I was doing all container gardening it was ridiculous how many store bought bags I would go through. The expense and the waste plastic were very discouraging. This year we followed a recipe for potting soil we found in Four Season Harvest by Elliot Coleman. Take a large trash can with a lid. Mix 8 quarts compost, 8 quarts peat moss, 4 quarts Vermiculite, and one cup of organic fertilizer. Keep going with this recipe until your trash can is full, then use, and cover when finished for dry storage. It is amazing how cheap this is! Huge bags of peat moss and Vermiculite run less than $20 and can be found at any garden center, and a bag of organic fertilizer is around $10-$20. The fertilizer could be substituted by worm castings which are totally natural and won't burn plants. Really, really use this option! And please buy from Nana Jane's. They will give you complete help with your worms, are great with advise, and so nice to talk with. Worm castings are also sold at Johnson's Garden Centers and at the farmers' markets through Nana Jane's Worm Farm (they sell worm castings, tea bags for liquid fertilizer, worms, composters, and more. www.wichitawillie.com and 542-0221). All of these will take you pretty far. I would say that if you get the biggest bags you can get of peat moss and Vermiculite you should be able to fill up your trash can at least two maybe three times, and this is equivalent to about 5 bags of potting soil a fill. Organic potting soil from Miracle Grow runs $6.47 for 1 1/2 cu. ft. and $4.77 for 1 cu. ft.. If you are not doing organic, I beg you to start. You are doing yourself and your land no good by using synthetic materials. Once your soil has become accustomed to the harsh chemical additives, and pesticides, it takes a long time to rebuild the healthy, natural habitat that once existed. The soil can be worked with, please don't take its natural growing and pest control capabilities away from it.

Compost can be obtained at any garden center in bags, but this is the expensive, non-local way to obtain your main ingredient. There are some compost distributors around town. Schutte's Dirt Works (655-1067) on 47th St. S. and Greenwich has great compost from horse manure, sawdust, and straw for $17 a ton. He also sells topsoil and topsoil/compost mix for $10 a ton. Delivery options are available and vary with distance and weight. Hancock Excavating also sells a topsoil/compost mix for $20 a ton. They use a cottonseed hull compost. Delivery from them will range from $30-95 depending on distance. They are located at 63rd Street South and Broadway and can be reached by phone at 524-0900. Making your own compost can be very rewarding. There are a lot of ways to do it, and, of course, in this age of options and information there are tons of tools out there to help. For those of you with limited space I would highly recommend the worm composters. They are the fastest, smallest, and least smelly. This will give you more of a fertilizer than a compost, though, so I would mix some of this finished product with some topsoil to make a compost like substance. I would say about 1 to 1 ratio. Also, there are other systems that are cheaper, but bigger. Lots of build your own models out there for those of you with land and patience. We have a tumbler, and it is great. It keeps the smell down, and makes the composting go a lot faster. The tumbler advertises 2 weeks to full compost, but we just keep adding to ours, so this doesn't apply to us. It seems like 2 tumblers are the way to go, so you can stop adding to one and have finished compost in 2 weeks, while starting to fill your other tumbler. If you just leave your compost in piles, you can plan on waiting about three years for complete compost. A good place for composters is at Garden Supply Company online (www.gardeners.com). But, if you decide to go with a worm composter, please call Nana Jane (542-0221). This is a great system for homesteaders with lots of leaves in fall, grass clippings, and animal droppings. I definately recommend the straw bale construction outlined in the Four Season Harvest, and elsewhere. The way my grandparents composted their scraps and integrated organic matter into their soil was to simply toss their scraps into the garden. This will serve as a kind of weed suppressant, and soil conditioner. There is a ton of information out there about how to compost, so good luck! If you have questions feel free to ask, because we have done a lot of reading and tried quite a few systems ourselves.

All the information you ever wanted to know about vermiculite can be found at www.vermiculite.net. I would like to know if vermiculite could be replaced with ground up styrofoam. Any thoughts?


Here is a good brief on what peat moss is, is it sustainable, etc.:

www.peatmoss.com/pm-efaq.php

What is Canadian sphagnum peat moss?
Canadian sphagnum peat moss (CSPM) is partially decomposed sphagnum moss. Sphagnum’s large cell structure enables it to absorb air and water like a sponge. Although peat moss does not contain nutrients, it does adsorb nutrients added to or present in the soil, releasing them over time as the plants require. This saves valuable nutrients which are otherwise lost through leaching.

Is it true that it takes several thousand years for sphagnum peat moss to form?
No. Peat forms at a rate of 1 to 2 millimetres a year. According to a recent study by the North American Wetlands Conservation Council (Canada), harvested peatlands can be restored to ecologically balanced systems within 5 to 20 years after peat harvesting.

Isn’t there a shortage of peatland in Canada? Isn’t harvesting peat moss depleting these areas of wetlands?
No. There are more than 270 million acres of peatlands in Canada. Of that, only one in 6,000 acres (or .016 percent) is being used for peat harvesting. Canadian sphagnum peat moss is a sustainable resource. Annually, peat moss accumulates at more than 70 times the rate it is harvested. Harvested bogs are returned to wetlands so the ecological balance of the area is maintained.

Can the supply of peat moss be completely depleted?
No. The bogs that are being harvested will be restored to functioning wetlands. In addition, there are millions of acres of bogs in national parks and other preserves that can never be harvested.

What is the CSPMA Preservation and Reclamation Policy?
Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association (CSPMA) members agree to abide by the reclamation policy for all new bog development. It includes:
Identifying bogs for preservation.
Leaving buffer zones of original vegetation to encourage natural succession after harvesting.
Leaving a layer of peat below harvesting levels to encourage rapid regrowth.
Returning harvested bogs to a wetlands ecosystem, or, if that’s not possible, to other wildlife habitats or agricultural production.
For more information on this topic, please go to the Preservation and Reclamation Policy.

What is Sportrichosis and does it come from Sphagnum peat moss or Sphagnum moss?
You may have read about a fungal disease call Cutaneous Sporotrichosis, a chronic infection identified by skin lesions. The fungus which causes this disease has been found in several kinds of organic material and, because in extremely rare cases this disease can cause death, gardeners are rightfully concerned about protecting themselves from contracting it. Unfortunately, however, some of the information circulating about how gardeners can contract this disease has been inaccurate. It confuses two separate products; one of which is known to carry the fungus and one of which does not.
One of the materials know to carry the sporotrichosis fungus is sphagnum moss. This product is frequently being confused with sphagnum peat moss, a soil conditioner used by gardeners. The difference is an important one. While there have been cases of sporotrichosis resulting from handling sphagnum moss, There have been no cases as a result of handling sphagnum peat moss. Sphagnum moss and sphagnum peat moss are not the same product, as many avid gardeners know.
Sphagnum moss is the living moss that grows on top of a sphagnum bog. The fungus sporotrichum schenckii is known to live in this growing moss.
Sphagnum peat moss is the dead material that accumulates as new live material grows on top and exerts pressure on the peat moss below. The fungus is not known to live in the levels of a sphagnum bog where peat forms. Harvesters of horticultural peat moss remove the top few inches of the live sphagnum moss and only harvest the peat from he lower layer.
"Living" sphagnum moss is used in the floral industry to make wreaths and to line hanging baskets. Workers in the industry have been warned to protect themselves with gloves and heavy clothing to avoid puncture wounds or scrapes. Gardeners wishing to use sphagnum moss to create their own baskets or for other uses should simply follow the same advice: Wear gloves and long sleeves to prevent coming into contact with the dried moss.
Gardeners worldwide use sphagnum peat moss as a soil amendment because its unique cell structure enables peat to:
Aerate plant roots by loosening heavy clay soils;
Add body to sandy soil; and
Save water by absorbing and holding moisture
Peat moss is not only effective, it’s organic and safe to use.

Now that we have soil we need to grow something. Of course most of you know that seeds are going to be much cheaper than transplants, but growing time is longer and survival is not always guaranteed. For the first few years of my gardens I used transplants only, and these can be bought at the farmers market, or just about anywhere else. Prices range very little. Of course, for this website, we recommend the farmers' market buys. Also, I would suggest that you look into heirloom varieties. There are some good organizations out there promoting biodiversity by selling some less used seed varieties. Seeds of Change and Seed Savers Exchange are both really great companies that offer vegetable, fruit, and herb seeds. Seed Savers Exchange can be accessed online (www.seedsavers.org), and Seeds for Change can be purchased at GreenAcres in Bradley Fair, or online at www.seedsofchange.com. Both of these places also offer transplants. Also, the book, The Self-Sustaining Life and How to Live It by John Seymour has great references for where to buy seeds, as well as anything else you ever wanted to know about homesteading. The book Seed to Seed teaches you how to save seeds from what you grow for just about everything. In my opinion, saving your own seeds should be the ultimate goal for any gardener trying to make a difference. It will extremely cut cost, and also, your seeds will become acclimated to this climate and soil, and over time your soil and your plants will need very little input. There will be better drought, heat, wind, etc. tolerance that will develop. Just everything about this system seems great. We bought all of our vegetable seeds through Seed Savers Exchange this year, and just looking through the catalog is so fun. Never before have I seen such beautiful variety. I hope one day it will be that exciting to walk through our garden. A great way to get a jump start on your seeds is to do some indoor transplanting. Just put your seeds in some potting soil and leave in a window that gets good exposure to the sun. To keep them as warm as possible you may want to build them a little home with a clear cover, and some people use grow lights to get them growing faster. Mike and I built a makeshift transplant system for outside this year, and it worked great. We used some old windows as the top, and built a box to suit those, then filled with soil, seeded, then watched them grow. This is amazingly self sufficient. It stays warm and moist inside. There were frosts and snows, and our seeds were fine with just this little bit of protection.


For those of you intimidated by the thought of a garden out in the yard, or the inability to do so, are not left out of the culture of growing your own food. There are hanging garden containers (bought and homemade), container gardens, raised beds, and bag gardens for you to dabble in. Hanging garden containers are easy enough to find. Topsy-turvys are sold on infomercials, a nicer looking version of these is sold at the Garden Supply Company, and some people have made some out of drilling a hole in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket, filling it with soil, and hanging it by the handle. Container gardens can utilize anything that will hold soil that you find. This is a great way to reuse old things, and a really fun way to design your garden. The only thing I can think of to inform you of for container gardens would be to make sure your soil can drain. If your soil does not drain well mold could become a problem. You could cut holes in the bottom of anything that doesn't already have holes, or you could put a layer of rocks between the bottom of the container and the soil. Also, make sure not to over water. Raised beds could be created out of anything that does not rot. Cedar planks are great and are not very expesive at Star Lumber. They also have scrap pieces that you can use as the corner posts for free. Hedge wood would also be great for this, or stones. Bag gardens seem to be the newest thing I see talked about. People are doing potatoes, lettuce, herbs, everything in bags. You could just cut off the top of a bag of potting soil and use this as is, there are also garden bags in Garden Supply Company, or you could make your own out of any old rags sewn together. I made a bag for our late plant potatoes out of burlap, but have not planted in it yet, so I don't know how is works yet.
The best advice I can give you about planting a garden is to suppress the weeds before they come. This greatly decreases the amount of manual labor involved in organic gardening. Container gardens and raised beds don't have much of a problem with weeds, but for our gardens we use mulch or straw around our plants to keeps weeds under control. Torn newspaper also does the trick. We also planted a few of our gardens with plastic this year, too. You simply cut holes in the plastic where you are going to put your plants, then fill the hole with potting soil and your seed or transplant. This is the best prevention method, but I don't know if it is as good for keeping your area wet longer like straw and mulch.

Well, I think I have exhausted the amount of gardening information I can share in one sitting, so I wish you good luck, good fun, and good harvests.


Sincerely,
Danielle