Category: Garden

Posts about gardening and related topics, such as canning and maybe other aspects of food preservation.

Post #G21-007: Core bed irrigation.

I’ve finally decided how I’m going to irrigate most of my garden beds this year.  I thought I’d write it up, briefly, while I wait for the rain to clear.  No pictures, no references, just words.

The back story:  I have about 500 gallons’ worth of rain barrels, located some distance from my various vegetable beds, and more-or-less level with them.  And last year, it was a real chore to get the water from those barrels to my vegetable beds.  That’s only enough water to put maybe 1″ on all my beds.  But it weighs upwards of two tons.  With a small submersible pump and some two-gallon watering cans, I managed it last year.  But I can’t say I was looking forward to repeating that this year.

I can, in theory, do what normal people do and water the garden with tap water.  At some point each year, I seem to run out of rain water and end up doing that.  But I like to avoid it, mostly because some plants can’t tolerate the chloramines in the municipal water.  (Peas, for example, bleach when watered with Town of Vienna tap water.)  So I have to use an activated-charcoal filter to remove the chloramines if I water with tap water.

(Plus, I just plain don’t like giving my town any more money than I absolutely have to.  It’s a long story.  But that’s yet another reason to avoid watering from the outdoor spigot.)

This year, I want to do something smarter with my rain barrels.  After having looked at my options, and tested a few, I’m going to do something a little out of the ordinary.  I’m going to convert my raised beds to core beds. Continue reading Post #G21-007: Core bed irrigation.

Post #G21-005: Your 70th percentile last frost date is actually your 90th percentile last frost date.

 

This is a short note on something that I’m sure is obvious to most seasoned gardeners, but not to me.  I’ll try to keep it short.

Edit:  My wife informs me that this is more-or-less incomprehensible.  Let me try to boil it down and save you the trouble of reading the full post.

A last-frost date tells you how likely you are to lose frost-sensitive plants if you blindly set them out on that date.  For example, the Old Farmers Almanac gives you the “70th percentile” last frost date, meaning, if you set your plants out on that date, there’s a 30 percent chance a frost will come along and kill them.

But if you don’t just set them out blindly on that date, and instead pay attention to the seven-day forecast on that date, you actually have a much lower chance of having your plants killed by frost.  Because, a) seven-day forecasts are pretty good and b) if frost is in the forecast, on that date, you’ll have the good sense not to set your plants out (duh).

The only real insight here is that, in effect, the labels attached to those last-frost dates — the likelihood you’ll lose your plants to frost — are wrong. (Or, really, they are only correct if you’re dumb enough to go ahead and plant with frost in the forecast).  The forecast lets you see with good accuracy seven days into the future, nobody is dumb enough to set out their tomatoes with frost in the forecast, and the combination of those two factors means that your actual risk of having frost kill your plants is much lower than the label on that date would suggest.

In my case (Vienna, VA, Zone 7), what’s labeled as the 70th percentile last frost date (nominal 30% risk of having frost kill my plants) actually only carries a 10% risk of having frost kill my plants.  And that’s because, on that date, you’ve got a real-time seven-day look into the future via the weather forecast.

I think that’s now all completely obvious.  As I say, the only real insight here is that the labels on the dates are, in a practical sense, wrong.  Those labels (e.g., 70th percentile) come from simply tabulating the last frost dates for the prior three decades.  They don’t account for the fact that you’ll have the good sense to wait, if frost is in the forecast as of that date.  And the second but important insight is that those labels are quite a bit wrong.  Just having the common sense to check the seven-day forecast (in my location) cuts that nominal 30 percent risk of frost damage down to 10 percent.

Two caveats:  The size of this “forecast” effect depends on where you live.  In some areas, the spread between these percentile last-frost dates is larger than it is here in Vienna, VA.  And, this doesn’t help you if the planting instructions tell you to (e.g.) plant two weeks before the last-frost date.  That’s outside the forecast window (or, at least, the reasonably-accurate-forecast window.)  This is really just about plants that should be planted directly after the last-frost date.

Back to the original and now totally unnecessary post.  You might want to read the final addendum, because if you actually work through the logic here, the likelihood of frost killing your plants is even lower than what I just said.

Continue reading Post #G21-005: Your 70th percentile last frost date is actually your 90th percentile last frost date.

Post G21-004: Low-effort three-season kitchen compost system

 

Edit 2024:  The approach I describe in this post worked well, but it looks bad in the kitchen.  In the end, I replaced my crude compost holder with the smallest kitchen compost holder I could find, the three-quart OXO model (Amazon reference).  That still forces me to empty it every few days, and as long as I rinse it (outside), there’s been no odor in the kitchen. 

This is a brief note on everybody’s favorite topic, rotting garbage.  I mean, composting kitchen waste.

Our household generates a fair amount of compostable kitchen waste  It’s nothing unusual:  Vegetable peels, coffee grounds, and the like.  But it’s enough volume that it’s well worth composting for the garden.

Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of methods for composting my kitchen waste.   All the ones I used to use were failures, to a greater or lesser degree.

Sometime the failure was due to the equipment.  But more often, it was operator error. Because, when you get right down to it, who in their right mind wants to deal with composting kitchen waste?  It’s way too easy to say “I’ll take the compost out tomorrow”, particularly if it’s a nasty job.  And if you ignore a composting system that needs some TLC, it’ll let you know about it.

It was only when I more-or-less gave up on the gizmos and the tricks that I stumbled across a system that works for me.  It was really a question of channeling my inner sloth.  So I thought I’d share what finally worked for me. Continue reading Post G21-004: Low-effort three-season kitchen compost system

Post #1073: No-dig potatoes as value-destroying gardening.

I grew potatoes for the first time last year.  Just a 4′ x 4′ test plot in a little raised bed filled with loose soil, essentially Mel’s Mix ™.

Based on that small trial, I’m sold.  Almost no work, almost no pests.  Great yield of calories per square foot.  Keeps well.

And tastes good.  Fresh potatoes taste better than potatoes that have been sitting around for a year.  Who would have guessed?

I now want to scale that up to a much larger garden plot at the back of my yard.

Continue reading Post #1073: No-dig potatoes as value-destroying gardening.

Post #G21-003: Is there still a canning lid shortage?

 

Edit on 5/18/2021: 

The final section of this is now a list of options you might consider trying if you can’t find Ball/Kerr lids locally.

As of 4/18/2021, it was clear that shipments of canning supplies for the 2021 canning season had begun.  In Vienna, VA, lids were back in stock in several locations.  That’s documented in  post #G21-013. 

I figured the lid shortage was over.

I figured wrong. 

Three weeks later, my local Walmart is out of stock, and lids are going in and out of stock at my local hardware store.  See Post #G21-020 for a summary of how the supply looks, in my local area, as of 5/8/2021.  Post #G21-023 for a 5/18/2021 update.

The original post follows:

I watched a presentation yesterday on YouTube, the focus of which is the ongoing shortage of canning lids in the U.S.A.  These lids aren’t re-usable, so if you do home canning using traditional (“Ball”) lids, you need a steady supply of them.

You may not hear about it much right now, as it’s not canning season.  But after looking into it, I think that’s sort-of true.  But only sort-of.  If you’re willing to pay a premium, or use no-name lids, there’s no shortage.  (See Amazon below).

But the very idea of a brand-new shortage is a little odd.  Nearly all other shortages of low-tech consumer goods were sorted out last year.  And it’s unsettling to see news of a shortage of a good for which there are nearly no substitutes (other than Tattler lids, which themselves appear in short supply).

After looking at the crazy current prices for lids (see below), I’m betting that the great lid shortage of ’21, such as it is, will not persist.

My explanation is that we’re seeing the impact of the seasonality of new product shipments by U.S. manufacturers.  In effect, this isn’t a shortage of domestic canning lids for the 2021 canning season.  It’s the last gasp of the 2020 canning season.  The 2021 season hasn’t started yet.  And when it does,  I bet that the lid shortage disappears entirely.

In this post, I lay out the evidence for that conclusion, such as it is.

Continue reading Post #G21-003: Is there still a canning lid shortage?

Post #G21-002: Sweet potato slips, rewritten: Ditch the glass.

My latest discovery as I plan out my garden is that there are few hot-weather vegetables that I would care eat.  I’m not quite desperate enough to grow eggplant (yet).  But I’m getting there.

I’ve decided to grow some sweet potatoes.  They like the heat, and by reputation, they’re easy to grow.  Except for that weird part about growing slips by suspending a sweet potato in a glass of water.  That’s unappealing.

Turns out, the sweet-potato-in-a-glass-of-water method is more of a kid’s science experiment than a gardening technique.  Real gardeners grow sweet potato slips by placing sweet potatoes in a warm, moist, loose medium, such as soil, potting soil, sand, or sawdust. 

And that’s the point of this post.  I’m going to try to summarize the best available advice on this topic.  See the bullet points at the end for the bottom line. Continue reading Post #G21-002: Sweet potato slips, rewritten: Ditch the glass.

Post G21-001: Garden lessons learned.

Last year I put in a fairly serious vegetable garden.  Partly it was for the exercise, partly it was to have something to do.

And partly, it was so I’d have something cheerful to see when I looked out my back window.  Like so.

 

I’m going to start this year’s garden posts with lessons learned from last year.  Scroll down to the headers in red to see if any of this interests you. Continue reading Post G21-001: Garden lessons learned.