Here’s a great tip from Mother Earth News–if you plant garlic in the fall and harvest it next spring, you’ll have bigger, better bulbs.

According to the site:

Try to plant your garlic about a month before your ground freezes, so the plants have time to get established. During winter, the crop will go dormant; then once spring and warmer temps roll around again, your plants will experience a burst of growth. By summer harvest time, you’ll marvel at the success of your crop!

The above picture, also from the site, illustrates the difference between planting garlic in the fall versus the spring.

Sadly, the bulb on the left looks familiar to me. I guess I have been doing this all wrong. I am adding garlic to my fall planting.

I wasn’t that into this living wall trend until I saw this post on Jetson Green pointing to an edible living wall. From the site:

GreenScaped Buildings installed the green wall with 100% recycled polypropylene plastic modules, a Uni-Strut frame, and Netafim in-line drip irrigation. The result is a lush and massive wall — now about 120 square feet on the east facing wall — that protrudes roughly 15 inches from the surface. It grows lettuce, peppermint, celery, parsley, sage, and other edible plants.

While I assume this particular wall is outside–it looks like it from the picture–a small home-sized version of an edible wall would be handy to have in a kitchen. Whenever you want a salad, just pick it off the wall.

The logistics of that would be pretty complicated, of course. Just getting the proper light to grow all these plants seems difficult. Still, an edible living wall would be a great thing to have on a patio or in a small yard.

(Via Urban Homestead)

I am interested in reducing water usage in my garden, so I have been reading up on various methods to do that. One of them is using a clay pot to irrigate, which I was reminded of by this post on Urban Homestead. They use ollas, pronounced OH-ya, to water their plants. This is an unglazed, terracotta pot that you bury in the ground next to your plant and fill with water. The water seeps out of the clay and is seized by the roots of the plant. According to Urban Homestead, “Plants love them, when removing them this past winter, they were hugged by roots of vegetables that had grown with them that past summer.”

(An olla buried in the ground.)

Currently, I use drip irrigation. We have connected a hose to a timer and every morning, water is sent through the hose and distributed to the roots of the plants. It works well, but I still wonder if there is a better way.

Urban Homestead says that by using ollas throughout the yard “over the last three years have cut our water usage in 1/2.” I wonder how that compares to drip irrigation. Because the olla is buried underground, there would be less evaporation in the air, so it may use less water. Also, the plant could take exactly the amount of water it needs whenever it wants it. With drip irrigation, you sort of guess how much water the plants need, which can lead to over- or under-watering. Because of this, clay-pot irrigation would probably be less stressful to the plant.

On the other hand, sounds like ollas are more work, at least for me. Since I have automated my watering, I don’t have to water my plants. With an olla, I would have to fill it frequently, plus watch it and make sure it isn’t empty. (However, if you don’t use drip irrigation, an olla would cut down your workload, since you would fill it less frequently than you would have to water the plant with a hose.)

Darn it, now I am obsessed with making an experiment. Here is what it would look like: I would have two plants, the same kind, planted side-by-side, under the same conditions. One would be watered with an olla, the other with drip irrigation. Throughout the season I would measure the water going into each plant as well as the yield of the plant. At the end of the season, I would compare and see:

a. whether one plant used less water than the other.
b. which plant yielded more food overall.

Tempting…

You can buy ollas here and here.

I am going to try to have a large fall garden this year. A friend recently pointed me to this chart on Mother Earth News called What To Plant Now. You click on your region and it tells you what you should plant for each month of the year.

I found this helpful because I have been confused about when to put in fall plantings in my area. The answer seems to be half August, half September. Here’s my plan:

August:

Green beans
Peas
Radish
Beets

September:

Arugula
Leek
Mustard
Fava beans

What are you putting in this fall?

The New York Times has an article on Thomas Jefferson’s 2-acre vegetable garden in his home Monticello in Virginia, which you can visit today. From 1809-1826, Jefferson grew 170 varieties of fruits and 330 varieties of vegetables and herbs.

The article says Jefferson was an “experimental” gardener. Really, though, he sounds like an organic gardener of today. He dug compost into the soil, saved seeds, and was an avid visitor of farmer’s markets.

He also sounds like he was good at making the most out of his crops. He gardened all year round and sowed plants successively to have a longer harvest. He also noted the warm and cold spots in the garden and grew plants accordingly, planting heat-loving plants like okra, melons and tomatoes on the mountain slope where they would get the most sun, and planting cool-season lettuces “in the low-lying, damper areas farther down the mountain.”

This being the time before pesticides, it was interesting to read how Jefferson handled pests and disease. The key, he seemed to feel, was good soil, which meant stronger roots and healthier plants.

As Jefferson said in a letter to his daughter dated July 21, 1793: “I suspect that the insects which have harassed you have been encouraged by the feebleness of your plants, and that has been produced by the lean state of the soil.”

He adds, “When earth is rich it bids defiance to droughts, yields in abundance and of the best quality.” His words reveal a man of the earth far ahead of his time: the scientific connection between fertile soil and plant health is only now being documented.”

Such a smart man.

I want to visit Monticello now.

(Courtesy)

This year, I have noticed a dramatic increase of ladybugs in my garden. I figured this was because of the dramatic number of aphids–and it probably is–but it may also have something to do with the yarrow plant I put on the border of my yard. It seems to be bringing in new insects I haven’t seen before.

(Yarrow Flower courtesy of Bailie Byrne)

Or maybe the ecology of the garden is just getting more complex. I’m don’t know.

Anyway, I’m trying to be optimistic about this, since most bugs, something like 99% of them, are harmless to your plants, and in fact, can help your garden. In particular, I have been trying to identify the predatory insects, those beneficial bugs that eat the “bad” bugs like aphids. I am hoping that by bringing beneficial insects into the garden, the cycle of nature will get the aphids under control without me having to do anything.

Everyone knows that ladybugs eat aphids, as well as mites and other critters. But I have learned that their larva eats something like 10 times the numbers of bug than an adult ladybug does. Also, the larva looks nothing like a ladybug.

(Courtesy)

It looks like an accordion crossed with an alligator. I have seen these in my garden too, but thought they were another bug. Apparently not, just baby ladybugs.

I also have been seeing this guy:

(Courtesy)

I thought it was a wasp or a yellow jacket, but it is a hoverfly. Like the ladybug, their larvae eat aphids, as well as mealybugs, scale, and leafhoppers. Adult hoverflies feed on pollen and are attracted by bright flowers, like yarrow. They don’t have stingers, either.

(Courtesy)

This is a Minute Pirate Bug. I think I have seen them around. It eats thrips, aphids, caterpillars, and spiders. So a bit of a mix there–spiders are cool–but anything that eats aphids is welcome in my garden.

(Courtesy)

Here is a Big-Eyed Bug. Creepy but effective. It kills everything–whiteflies, aphids, mites, cabbage loopers, and bollworms, among them. I haven’t noticed them in my yard, but I am keeping my eyes open.

(Courtesy)

Finally, this is a lacewing. It eats aphids, mealeybugs, mites, and caterpillars. I haven’t noticed it around either, but it’s kind of cute.

Incidentally, there is one plant that is said to attract all of these beneficial insects: the Buckwheat plant. It attracts all the above insects, except the Big-eyed Bug, and you can make cereal out of it.

(Courtesy)

Maybe I should plant some next to the yarrow.

Here is more on good and bad bugs in the garden.

(Image courtesy Life’s a Garden)

I am thinking a lot about garden shapes lately. One of them that particularly interests me is the herb spiral. You make a mound of dirt, put rocks around it so that it makes a spiral, and plant herbs on it.

(Image courtesy Saturday Evening Post)

Then you water at the top, and the design of the spiral brings the water down to all the plants. According to this article in the Saturday Evening Post, “In a “trickle-down” effect, water drains down into the lower levels, leaving the arid-loving plants high and dry, while the middle and lower levels stay progressively more moist.”

So you would then plant based on water distribution. At the top of the spiral, you would plant herbs that need less water, like rosemary, and then at the bottom, you would plant herbs that need more water, like chamomile.

The advantages of an herb spiral are:

1. It allows you to put more plants in less space. The mound has more surface area overall, so you can put many more plants in than you would if you planted them in a regular plot. This is especially great if you have a small yard.

2. It uses less water. You water once, and it is ideally distributed to all the plants based on their needs. No water is wasted.

3. It’s easier for harvesting. If you place the herb spiral right next to your kitchen door, say, all you have to do is step outside and snip a little bit off. No wandering all over the garden to cut various herbs–it’s all in one place.

I’m not sure I’m really going to do this since I already have some well-established herbs outside. But part of me is thinking about making a little herb spiral anyway, say right outside the kitchen. Maybe it will look like this:

(Image courtesy Sweet Local Farm’s flickr)

I am considering using cardboard to mulch my new garden bed. Sheet mulching, as it is usually called, is a no-dig gardening technique, meaning it is a way to make a garden bed right on top of weeds without having to till everything up. By putting layers of cardboard over the ground, you create a barrier that very few plants can push their way up through, so it means fewer weeds to deal with.

And that’s just the beginning of the benefits. Cardboard/sheet mulching:

* Helps build your soil because the organic material breaks down.

* Takes less work. You don’t have to dig, there are fewer weed.

* Allows you to shape your garden any way you want.

* Attracts worms to the garden. (But also snails.)

* Uses recycled materials–cardboard boxes or newspaper that most of us have lying around anyway.

Like with any gardening technique, there isn’t one clear way to do cardboard mulching, but there is a general principle involved. Here is the rundown, as I understand it:

1. Select your garden site.

2. Make a weed-free barrier around the garden. Use wood or stone or something like that to lock in the shape of the garden.

3. Stamp or mow down the weeds. Pull any weeds with deep roots, like dandelions.

4. Water the ground.

5. Lay down the cardboard. Remove tape and other things that won’t decompose and lay the cardboard in the shape you want. Overlap so there are no holes. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

(Image courtesy Native Sanctuary)

You can also use newspaper, but it apparently takes longer to decompose and doesn’t work as well.

6. Thoroughly water the cardboard. Soaking the cardboard speeds up its deterioration. Native Sanctuary suggests that you turn the water on and leave it for a few minutes.

7. Put compost on top of the cardboard.

8. Put mulch on top of the compost. Some websites recommend a layer of organic material like grass clippings under the mulch, but just as many seem to skip that and just use wood chips or hay.

9. Plant. At the point, you can put the plant right into the garden, although you may have to cut down into the cardboard to get at the ground.

That seems to be the common order. However, this site recommends that you put the compost under the cardboard, which I could see working too. Here’s their order:

The idea behind sheet mulching is to layer the ground in a way that is similar to how a forest floor works.

So, if we are looking at the above image of layers of a forest floor, I guess the original soil would be your bedrock (c), the cardboard would be the subsoil (b), the compost would be your surface soil (a), and the mulch/grass clippings would be your organic matters (o)?

Or would the cardboard be the bedrock and the plants the organic matter? Hmmm…

Anyway, here is a video of two people planting a sheet-mulched garden, which explains the technique a lot more simply than I just did:

If you have sheet mulched, I’d love to hear how it went for you. Did it get rid of weeds for good?

Here’s a fascinating little gadget: a time-lapse camera for your plants. It takes a video of the plant’s growth, then you can convert it into a time-lapse video like this one of a mushroom:

Or these vines:

Or this night-blooming water lily:

$79.95 at Signals. (Via Rare Bird Finds)

People ask me how I get 5-foot tomato plants loaded with fruit. I use my dad’s method. The secret ingredient? Cow manure. Tomatoes like a lot of fertilizer, so I mix the cow manure with the dirt and use that to fill in the hole. It works great. Here’s more:

How To Plant A Tomato:

You will need:

A tomato plant
Well-prepared soil
A bag of cow manure
Shovel
Watering can

Directions:

Step 1: Buy your tomato plant or grow it from seed. Prepare your soil for planting.

Step 2: Dig a deep hole with a shovel, at least the full length of the head of the shovel.

Step 3: Mix the dirt from the hole with cow manure. Take about one-third of the bag of manure and stir it into the dirt until it is about 50 dirt/50 manure. It is important to mix the manure since it would be too hard on the plant to just put manure in the hole. Adding the dirt cuts the heat of the manure and still gives the plant plenty of fetilizer.

Step 4: Prepare the plant by pulling off all the leaves except for the top bush of the tomato. So it will go from this:

To this:

I will put most of the tomato plant underground with only the top poking out. Why? All the stem you see there will grow roots, which will give the plant twice the roots it already has. That leads to a stronger, healthier plant that produces a lot of tomatoes.

Step 5: Plant the tomato plant. Remove it from the pot. Put a little bit of the dirt/manure mixture in the bottom of the hole and sit the tomato plant on top. Fill in the hole using the manure mixture. At the top, pack plain dirt around the plant. Make a little mound and a ditch around it for water to collect, like so:

Step 6: Thoroughly water the plant. Keep adding water until the ground saturates and the little ditch around the plant fills with a puddle of water. Voila, you’re done.

It’s important to note that this method is just for tomato plants. Many plants can’t handle the heat of the cow manure and still other plants won’t root if you strip their leaves off. But with tomatoes, I find it works like a charm.

What are your tomato planting secrets?