This could be you!

Want to start a vegetable garden this year?

Want to improve your gardening skills with hands-on help?

Urban Land Army offers vegetable garden consulting and we are booking appointments now.

We can help you to plan, plant, and learn how to grow a vegetable garden that would make your grandma proud. We also offer customized field manuals and pocket guides that are filled with gardening information and designed to help you plan and keep track of your gardening exploits.

Call or email Sandy to arrange a free half-hour consultation.

206 932 5880

sandy@urbanlandarmy.com

We are all-organic, all the time.

We are based in West Seattle, but love to travel. Contact us to see if your yard is within range.

It is a warm and sunny weekend in Seattle - ideal for outdoor spring cleaning and pea planting - but alas, I am confined to the chesterfield with the flu.

It’s not all bad though - I’ve been able to prepare a long list of projects for Urban Land Army’s Head Scavenger, Baker, and Master Builder, and he’s already tackling the most pressing and exciting one: the cold frame.

A cold frame is essentially a mini-greenhouse - a box with a glass lid - where you can grow burly little seedlings like lettuce, spinach, beets, parsley, and other hardy greens. Starting them outside in a cold frame lets you get a jump on the season, and it frees up space indoors for growing the more sensitive, heat-loving crops, like tomatoes, peppers, and basil. You can also use the cold frame to “harden off” (toughen up, weather-proof) these plants when they move outdoors in late-spring.

In researching building plans for cold frames, I came across a detail-oriented Canadian who provides a materials list, photos, and step-by-step instructions for building this solid and most excellent cold frame.

Note that building this particular cold frame is not for the faint of heart - you will require a circular saw and at least a rudimentary understanding of beveling - but you can simplify the design and take what you need from it. The basic principles - taller at the back than at the front, a wooden box with a hinged glass lid, are all there.

Prefer old-fashioned bricks and mortar or no-nonsense concrete blocks? These would work as a base too: just stack them up and add a glass or plexiglass top that is secured, weighted down, and easily removable in some way, shape, or form.

As for us, Head Scavenger has accumulated a good deal of scrap wood and old windows, so a quick trip to the back of the garage and we were well on our way to having a cold frame that means business.

The mock-up:

I will report back next weekend when the cold frame will hopefully be primed and painted, and ready to house the first seedlings of spring!

This Saturday, February 20 from 1-4 pm at South Seattle Community College, there is a Seed Swap and Sale!

Hosted by the good folks of Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle (CHOSS), you can swap and buy a wide variety of vegetable seeds from local seed companies and your neighbors. View a seed list, get directions, and read more about the event.

Sharing seeds is really smart for city gardeners because we often don’t have enough space to plant all the seed that comes in a pack. Over time, seed starts to add up, expire, and mildly irk Mr. Urban Land Army when new, different, bigger, better seed comes waltzing through the door each year. Sharing seeds with fellow gardeners helps to smooth things out and it is much easier on the budget.

Plus, sharing is nice.

If you are on the lookout for a handy way to share, store, and keep track of your seeds, we produce and sell the very nifty City Seed Pack:

These are empty packs that include space to fill in all the information you need to grow a good plant: seed name and variety, days to sprout, days to maturity, seed spacing, and more. Simply copy the information from the pack you’re taking seed from and fill it up with a tidy amount of seeds. Just what you need!

The City Seed Pack is sold in stacks of 5 for just 1 American dollar. If you would like to place an order, drop a line to Headquarters. We’d love to send some your way.

In warmish climates like the Pacific Northwest, the days are starting to get longer and a bunch of us have seed starting on the brain. Now is the time to get some of those babies started, and we’ll be showing you how with photos and how-to instructions.

In the meantime, get yourself to the Seed Swap and start building your seed bank!

And we’re busy planning it!

Bucket Brigade

We’ll help you throw your very own Bucket Brigade with a Bucket Brigade toolkit and workshop.

Grow It Yourself

Need help getting your vegetable garden in order? Want to learn how to start seeds indoors this winter? We offer one-on-one coaching and instruction, and will help you to build your gardening skills and eat well from your garden all season long.

Land Link

We’ll also be beefing up the Land Link program and rolling out some fun new projects like seed liberation and lawn and parking strip conversions.

The seed catalogues are starting to roll in and momentum is building, so stay tuned!

It’s 2010. Let’s garden better…faster…stronger!

Happy New Year.

Under a pretty green banner, Urban Land Army now offers vegetable garden consulting.

We know it’s cold and wet and bitter right now, but doesn’t that garden look full of possibility through the window?

Winter is a great time to think about this year’s gardening wins and losses, and what you want to grow next year. If you need some help with laying out a planting and harvesting schedule, starting seeds indoors, designing new or old garden beds, or picking out seeds and plants from the catalogue, we can help.

Kinder, gentler days.

We offer a variety of consulting services by the hour as well as complete vegetable gardening packages for everyone from the beginner to the time-strapped to the urban homesteader.

Services:

• Vegetable garden planning and design
• One-on-one garden coaching or classes in the garden with your friends
• Hands-on instruction with soil preparation, seeding, planting & harvesting
• Composting solutions
• Customized garden planners and pocket guides

We specialize in:

• Vegetable gardening for beginners
• Organic growing methods and permaculture design
• Growing a lot in a small space
• Bringing in the birds, good bugs, and butterflies
• Balcony and container gardening

Our goal is to help you build your gardening skills and grow a vegetable garden that would make your grandma proud.

Let’s chat.

There is still time to plant a fall garden and now is the perfect time to start building soil for spring planting.

Contact us to arrange a free half-hour consultation.

We’ll bring our clipboard and find out what you have and what you want. Then, if you like our ideas, we can get started on a digging plan.

Sandy Pederson, Proprietor

206 932 5880

sandy@urbanlandarmy.com

We are all-organic, all the time.

We are based in West Seattle, but love to travel. Contact us to see if your yard is within range.

Here’s the deal:

Seattle Tilth has been teaching people how to grow food in the city for over 30 years - way before most of us ragtag gardeners jumped on the bandwagon - and they’re holding their annual Harvest Fair this Saturday, September 12, 10-5.

Gardening workshops, urban livestock, a farmer’s market, music, and good times await you just behind the cheeriest address in Seattle:

Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. (in Wallingford)

And.

Every scrap of our gardening know-how has come straight from classes at Seattle Tilth, so we will be standing proud at the Fair with a booth in the Community Show and Tell area. Stop by! We’d love to meet you and hear how your garden made out this season and your plans for next year.

If you need a hand getting your garden in order, ask us about our brand new Grow It Yourself consulting biz. We can help you transform your yard, balcony, or parking strip into a vegetable garden that would make your grandma proud. I am scheduling appointments and work parties now to get you started on building soil this fall for spring planting.

Also ask us about our Bucket Brigade adventures this year (625 veggie containers handed out!) and how you can hold one of these events yourself.

We’ll be selling Urban Land Army t-shirts…

Harvest Fair pricing! $12 one day only.

And City Seed Packs for sharing seeds with that special someone.

Of course, we’ll have some cute little giveaways too.

Hope to see you there.

Tomato season is in full swing.

So that means the prize winners are reaching their full glory…

The beer can: a Canadian unit of measurement

…and it is time for some tips.

Is this tomato ripe?

You can tell when a tomato is ripe and ready to pick by its colour and feel.

As your hard green tomatoes begin to ripen and change colour, they will pass through a few shades before they are ready to pick and eat. If you’re not sure what they’re supposed to look like when they’re ripe, look up your tomato variety online or in a seed catalogue.

But in real life, a good way to tell is by giving them a squeeze.

Take hold of the tomato and squeeze it gently. Ripe tomatoes should be firm but have some give to them, especially on the bottom and on the shoulders.

If you’re still not sure, the best way to tell is by picking it and eating it. The flavour and texture will let you know if it is ready. If you do end up picking a tomato too early, just leave it to ripen on the counter.

Now, we all know what a ripe red tomato looks like, but what if you are growing yellow, orange, green striped, or purple tomatoes? What if it is called Black Pineapple? Ivory Egg? Black Prince?

A few ripe tomatoes

Green-striped tomatoes like Green Zebra or Green Moldovan turn a lime-green or yellowish colour when they are ripe…

with a little red on the bottom.

Black Pineapple: the reddish one in the middle is ready to go.

Sungold - when it turns orange, let it get orange-er. The one on the right is ready.

Cracking

Ripening tomatoes can crack if they are exposed to wild fluctuations in moisture. Say it has been hot and dry and maybe you forgot to water for a few days and then there is a 2-day rain and KAPOW! The tomato cracks open.

Dang it.

If this happens, pick the tomato and eat it because it will not keep very long. Just cut off the cracked bit.

Shock horror!

A vegetable tragedy

This travesty is a disease known as Blossom End Rot.

Blossom End Rot occurs when a lovely ripening tomato starts to develop a dark, watery spot on the bottom. The decay spreads quickly and eventually leaves the bottom of the tomato a sunken, scabbed over mess.

The sad truth is that once the bottom starts to turn dark, it cannot be stopped. This particular tomato is done for. Your only option is to pick it and toss it in the Yard Waste bin (maybe not a good idea to put it in your compost).

The problem usually starts with the first (lowest) set of tomatoes on the plant. Sometimes if you pick tomatoes that are showing signs of the disease, the rest of the plant will recover and the other tomatoes are not affected. Sometimes, though, the whole plant is doomed.

Was it something that I did?

Photo from somewhere in the depths of englishrussia.com

Erm, well, probably, yes.

Blossom End Rot is a calcium deficiency in the plant that can be caused by:

• Uneven watering. Maybe the plant wasn’t watered enough during a period of hot weather, or maybe it has been watered too much and has been sitting in cold, wet soil. Maybe there is a clog in your soaker hose next to this particular tomato. Planting a tomato too early in the chilly spring can also make it susceptible to blossom end rot. Make sure to water regularly and uniformly.
• Your soil may not have enough lime and therefore not enough calcium. The only way to know this is to get your soil tested (For instructions, see “Time to Bring in the Scientists”). An easy way to add calcium directly to the plant is to add a handful of bone meal to the planting hole when you plant the tomato.
• Shallow root systems. In order for the tomato plant to take up the calcium and nutrients it needs through its roots, the plant needs to have its feet rooted in deep, well-drained soil. Planting other plants too close to the tomato can also interfere with the tomato’s root system.
• Not enough phosphorus (P). Tomatoes need a fertilizer that is high in phosphorus - this is the middle number in that triplet you see on the fertilizer box. The middle number should be higher than the other numbers.

Ah, well. We usually have a couple of casualties every year even though I follow the rules, and every year I swear it happens with plum tomatoes or a tomato plant that I’ve bought and not grown myself from seed.

Hmmmm……

If you want to read more about this crappy disease and what you can do to prevent it, head over here.

An advanced move

Since we are almost in September and the long, warm days of summer are beginning to wane, you may want to take a good hard look at your tomatoes and decide whether or not these tomatoes are going to ripen on the vine before it freezes or at least turns cold.

To ripen your tomatoes faster, gradually stop watering. Depriving the plant of moisture stresses the plant and forces the tomatoes to ripen. Around here, we back off on watering in mid-August (to twice a week) and by the time we hit mid-September, we have stopped watering them completely.

Yes, there is an increased risk of tomato cracking if you get a sudden burst of rain, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Some handy tomato tools

Tomato preparation is made a heck of a lot easier with two handy tools:

A serrated knife. Your bread knife is the only knife worth using on a tomato. No squishing, spurting, or sawing.

The tomato shark. A melon baller with teeth. We don’t go for the one hit wonder kitchen utensils around here, but this serrated little number scoops out the stem (and seeds, if you don’t want those) real quick and nice-like. Highly recommended.

And suddenly, every drop of water from the hose is worth it.

“What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”

- A.A. Milne

Agreed.

But how does a fellow know when or how to dig them up?

Well, to borrow a prairie phrase, what a guy could do is dig them all now or let them sit for a bit.

We have the Northwest luxury of planting another round of lettuce and some fall and winter crops, so we wanted to get those potatoes out of the road and make room.

If you’re in a cooler climate and the potatoes will be the last crop your garden patch will see, you can let the plant hang out for a while. You want to dig them all up before it freezes, but in the meantime you can just rob individual potatoes as you need them. The rest of the potatoes will be happy enough down there.

Either way, you know your potatoes are ready to dig when the plant looks like crap.

An eyesore.

The tops of the plant will have turned brown and the stems will be all bendy and floppy. If it looks gross and half-dead, they are ready to go.

Dig

Put on your boots and go grab your garden fork or a shovel, and a pail.

Step on the fork, sticking it a foot deep or more into the ground and about 8 inches away from the base of the plant.

Loosen the soil around the entire plant - trying not to spear the potatoes lurking beneath…

…and then lift the plant out of the ground.

The potatoes will spring from the good earth loose or still clinging to the nodes of the plant.

So that’s how a potato grows.

You’ll be pulling up big ones and little ones. Eat up those little ones quick - potatoes taste best when they’re small and new.

The one that got away

You may have missed some, so roll up your sleeve, dig down into the dirt, and feel around for more.

If one does get away and you live in a warmish climate like us, they will sprout and pop up as a plant in the spring. Kind of nice.

Crop Yield: The Final Verdict

I don’t know about you, but I won’t be making my million on this crop.

Or even have many suppers.

Recall that I planted three kinds of potatoes: Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold, and Rose Finn Fingerling. We planted them in the Grow It Yourself garden and in another patch, too.

I must confess that the potato yields in the Grow It Yourself garden were quite sad indeed. The foliage on the plants was madness - the plants got to be 4 or 5 feet tall and I even had to stake them, which is a little embarrassing for a Canadian farmhand, not to mention just plain odd. I reckon there was an excess of nitrogen in the soil of this new garden bed, which was great for producing green, leafy foliage, but not great for potato formation.

Red-faced, I harvested only 5-10 potatoes from each of the plants.

In the other potato bed, however, Red Pontiac was the big winner with 20 potatoes per plant. Big, too. The others pulled their weight and we ended up with a good 50 lbs to put away for winter.

Storage

Potatoes live in the ground, which is cool and dark, and they like those same conditions above ground, too.

Keep them in a pail, box, or fancy potato bin in the coolest spot you have - the basement, the garage, or, if you’re really lucky, the root cellar.

Copyright of the lovely Three Potato Four.

Some kinds of potatoes keep better than others. We grew the Red Pontiacs specifically for winter storage, the Yukon Golds for summer eating and short-term storage, and the Fingerlings for supper. If you’re not sure how long or how well your potatoes will keep, it is worth looking it up or dropping us a line. Losing food you’ve grown is a crying shame.

In general, hard-skinned red potatoes and russet potatoes are the best keepers, yellow ones like Yukon Gold are pretty good but not long-term, and fingerlings are best eaten just out of the ground.

Stay tuned for more harvesting news and the ins and outs of fall and winter crops.

We’ve got room!

Photo from somewhere in the depths of englishrussia.com

Gardeners need a break too, for Pete’s sake!

But we know it can be nerve-wracking leaving your garden behind - you’ve worked hard to grow your food and you don’t want to turn your back on the whole enterprise.

Here are a few tips to help you breathe easy while you’re away:

1. Find a waterer who is up for the job - a reliable and decent sort who you know will show up and take care of business.

2. Make it easy on the waterer. Lump all your pots together in one spot. Minimize hose lugging by getting a splitter for your tap. This way you can attach more than one hose and all they have to do is turn it on. Think about how you can make watering as quick and efficient as possible - the last thing you want to do is irk the caretaker.

3. Give the waterer a tour and leave them with written instructions - it’s easy to forget the ins and outs of someone else’s place.

4. Give the garden a good drink before you leave so the plants are in good shape to begin with.

5. Mulch the garden with compost, grass clippings, a mix of shredded leaves and grass, or some such. An inch or two added to the top of the soil helps to prevent evaporation and keep the soil cool, so it holds moisture longer.

6. Tie up the tomatoes or leave string with the waterer - if you’re gone for a while, those suckers might start to topple over.

7. Fertilize if you haven’t already - your tomatoes need it if they’re flowering.

8. Pick anything that needs picking so it isn’t wasted. We’re bringing bags of lettuce with us and raided the basil to make pesto, which we then froze. And remember to tell the waterer to help themselves to the goods.

9. The garden isn’t going to be under your watchful eye and the waterer probably won’t be there everyday so don’t get bent out of shape if a plant or two doesn’t make it. It’s the cost of going on vacation and just another good example of natural selection in the garden.

10. When you come back, treat them to something real nice or fork over a handful of cold hard cash. They’ve kept your food alive and that calls for a big hearty thanks.

Now kick off your work boots and get out of here!

We all have our problems.

When it comes to garden pests, some of us are plagued with slugs and others stand down plagues of grasshoppers.

Perhaps raccoons level your corn or squirrels uproot your lettuce.

Aphids might infest your cabbage, prompting a cabbage nausea from which you will not soon recover. Trust me.

And cats:

From www.freephotosbank.com and spotted at eHow

Come on, you have a bathroom at home. It’s just rude.

The truth is that sooner or later we all come eye to eye with a critter that insists on eating our food or messing up our garden, and even though we all have to live together here on Earth, they can be a real pain.

Here at Headquarters, our nemesis is the flea beetle.

Flea beetles are small critters that often attack members of the Brassica family (broccoli, kale, collards, mustards). They chew holes in plants and can completely defoliate and kill a plant if it is young and tender.

Three years ago they descended on a crop of fall-planted collard greens and then overwintered in the soil only to attack the potatoes that were planted there the following spring. And then they went for the tomatoes. They went back down into the soil, overwintered, and…repeat.

Panicked queries to garden hotlines produced heavy sighs of sympathy and recommendations to pick up and move. Once they’ve moved in, they tend to stick around. Luckily I work from home so I can go outside, sneak up on them, and squish them several times a day.

They are fast so this approach takes cunning and a bit of training.

It’s not so bad

Everyone has to eat though, and it is always a good idea to plant a little extra as insurance against nature’s hungry. Sometimes a pest sticks around just long enough to do some damage and bring you to the edge of panic, and then they disappear as quickly as they came and the plants recover and all is well with the world again.

Whew.

Remain calm

Accept some damage. Would it have been worth it to spray the heck out of those hard-bodied-impossible-to-kill flea beetles with a pesticide and in the process kill beneficial bugs like ladybugs and bees that were lurking around and probably give my nearby lettuce a good coating, too?

Well, no. From past experience I knew that the potato plants would get eaten a little bit, I’d squish a bunch to make myself feel better, and then the flea beetles would go away and the plant would outgrow the damage.

The idea that you can wipe out pest populations completely is a bit of a pipe dream, anyway. A better approach in our opinion, and in the opinion of the people who hand out the World Food Prize no less, is Integrated Pest Management - a step-by-step approach to pest control that uses least toxic methods first. For more information and pretty pictures on controlling pests naturally, download this handy Natural Pest, Weed, and Disease Control guide.

When it comes to pest control, keep in mind that the first defense against pests is a healthy, diverse garden.

Here’s how it works:

1. Healthy soil = healthy plants. When you feed the soil (compost), you get plants that are strong, lush, healthy, and less attractive to pests (and diseases, too).

2. Start off with healthy plants. Not all plants are created equal. Here are some tips on how to buy healthy plants.

3. Keep things neat. Don’t leave weeds and old, dead leaves and plants lying around. Critters like slugs love to burrow in and munch on decaying plants.

4. Be vigilant. And by vigilance I mean Crop Tour.

Just like eating supper with your kids, daily crop tours help you to keep track of how things are going and whether anyone is being gnawed or bothered.

5. Plant a diverse garden. Mix perennial and annual flowers in with your veggies. Some flowers - Bachelor’s Buttons, Sweet Alyssum, and Anise Hyssop - do a great job bringing in beneficial insects like bees, butterflies, and ladybugs.

Bachelor’s Buttons

Others, like French marigolds, repel annoying insects.

We’ll cover how to encourage biodiversity in the garden on another day. Today, we offer up some information about common garden pests and how you can defend the homefront.

The Slug

They figure there are about 40 different kinds of slugs currently residing in the United States. When I pulled up one of the romaine lettuces in the Grow It Yourself garden, this is the kind of slug I found lurking inside:

Bleurgh.

The outer leaves were covered in slug slime and had to be chucked into the Yard Waste bin. I didn’t put the lettuce in the compost bin because I’m not taking any chances having slug eggs hatch in there and then having slugs spread themselves hither and yon when I spread the compost. No, sir.

Profile

You can spot slugs by their creepy soft bodies and shimmering slime trail. Lovers of lettuce and other soft-tissue plants, slugs take big chomps and leave jagged holes in your plants or, if it’s a small lettuce, they might strip the whole thing down to the stem. They may be slow, but they do not mess around.

Keep an eye out for them, but remember that big ugly slugs were cute kids once too. This is what a baby slug looks like:

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yogi/287839424/

And even smaller….

Slug eggs look like clear, shiny pearls.

From www.vegetablegardener.com

It gets worse.

We dare you to look up slug reproduction on Wikipedia.

Sigh, yes, slugs do some good. They feed on decaying leaves and plants and help recycle organic matter into the soil. They are also food for bigger critters like raccoons, and chickens and ducks really like them too.

How to get rid of slugs

Slugs are sneaky sorts and come out at night, so they can be a bit of a challenge to find. On the bright side, the most fun you can have in pest control is strapping on a headlamp and going slug hunting! Some people swear by the therapeutic benefits of a slug hunt.

Simply shine a spotlight on them (just follow the slime trail), pick them (did we mention you might want to wear gloves), and:

a) Dispose of them in a plastic bag and throw them away

b) Toss them into a pail of soapy water to drown and then toss somewhere else

c) Throw them into an open area or, if you’re not on good terms with your neighbours, over the fence.

Note that all of these options are gross and we’ve personally never hunted slugs at night, but we’re all for it. What did we do with our slug? We tossed it into a densely planted area - a slug wilderness of sorts - at the back of the yard.

What else can you do to get rid of slugs?

Don’t encourage them. Slugs like to lurk under stones, boards, plant debris, low-growing plants, compost bins, and the like, so keep these kinds of things away from your garden.

Copper barriers (slug zappers), beer traps (use the cheap stuff), and Diatomaceous earth (rough on their bellies and fun to spell), are all recommended as ways to control slugs in your garden. Read more about these and other slug-stopping methods here.

If you’re a Seattle/King County resident you can also direct your pest questions to the outstanding Garden Hotline: 206.633.0224 (They also take emails)

What about other critters?

To learn how to deter squirrels, check out these suggestions from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Raccoons giving you trouble?

Copyright The Oregonian

Quality tips here.

Epilogue

Our pest control philosophy is to not grow any plant that is a repeat pest offender. Nasturtiums always seem to end up crawling with aphids. Cabbage - ditto. We have diligently hosed off the aphids with water everyday (works great but you have to keep at it), but honestly it is a bit gross and we have bigger fish to fry.

On the other hand, aphids are loved by ladybugs everywhere and when you have an infestation, the ladybugs will come. So you could think of them as a food source for those little fellows.

Next up: Container gardening!

“Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn’t have the anxiety that we’d starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know?”

- James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader

James Earl Jones is right on.

A huge amount of security comes from knowing that potatoes are in the ground. We expanded the garden at Headquarters by a good 30 percent this year - part of it became the Grow It Yourself garden (with 3 rows and 3 kinds of potatoes) and the rest of it became…potatoes.

This is where things just get illogical. Potatoes take up quite a bit of room and are pretty cheap to buy so, to a hard-headed pencil pusher, it is probably not cost-effective or efficient to devote so much land to them.

But on Canada Day, when your arm is buried to the elbow and your fingers bump into that first potato of the year and you hold it up in triumph while your mom cheers from the patio and your dad pulls out more and more even though you just dug there and found nothing, and then you cook and eat them up with butter and just-snipped chives, well…

Oh Canada.

The potato schedule

If you planted your potatoes when we did - in late April - they are probably just starting to flower.

You should be able to dig down and find the first little potatoes in early July. (We’ll show you how this is done.) Through the summer you can rob just what you need for supper (take from different plants) and let the others grow to full size and harvest them in the fall.

In the meantime, you need to be watering and hilling - or piling up mulch (soil, straw, compost) to cover the leaves and stem of the plant as it grows.

You will need to hill 2 or 3 times through the season, and you ultimately want about a 12 inch mound. You can also think of it this way: mound it up so that 8 inches of the plant is showing at all times and the rest of it is covered.

The point of hilling is to create enough room for the potatoes to grow nice and big, and to keep them well covered - if they are exposed to sunlight they turn green and actually become toxic to eat.

Don’t freak out. The green is just chlorophyll and is not bad for you at all, but the colour indicates that a natural toxin in the potato - Solanine - has become concentrated in that part of the potato and this is what you don’t want to eat. If you ever see green on a potato, just cut it off. The rest of the potato is fine.

The same logic applies to storing potatoes - keep them in a cool, dark place rather than on a sunny, cheerful kitchen counter.

How to hill potatoes

Remember when I dug trenches to plant potatoes and I wanted to pack in so many that I didn’t have room to pile up the soil I dug out and I had to put it in pails? Good times.

Now we need to haul out our pails and return this dirt from whence it came.

Gently pile the soil next to the plant, right on top of the leaves.

Pile it up. Remember that you ultimately want a mound that is about 12 inches high.

If you actually have piles of soil on either side of your potato trench (normal), grab a hoe or use your own paws to scoop the soil over.

If you don’t have enough soil to do such a thing, you can also use compost (which has the added benefit of providing nutrients to the plant) or straw. Straw is nice because it keeps the potatoes nice and clean and they are easier to find. Mulching potatoes with straw is huge in Scandanavia.

How to water potatoes

To be honest, watering potatoes is one of those things that makes us a bit nervous. When they are hilled, it is hard to know whether they are getting enough water, too much, or what the heck is going on down there. Not enough water causes knobby potatoes worthy of entry in your local newspaper’s Weird Vegetable contest, and it also produces a smaller crop. Overwatering, on the other hand, can cause black or hollow centers in potatoes.

Shock horror!

It remains a bit of a mystery, but we’ve always ended up with good crops, so maybe it is not rocket science, after all.

This is what the potato people recommend:

During warmer summer weather, keep your potatoes well watered. We tend to give ours a good drink a couple of times a week, or 3 times if it’s really hot. (Note that we have pretty sandy, fast-draining soil - if your soil holds moisture longer you might be able to water less than this.)

We put the garden hose in the trench between the rows and let it run on a slowish trickle. How long depends on your soil and what you think is a trickle, but try 15 or 20 minutes per row. (You will probably have to move the hose to make sure all the plants in the row get watered.)

It is especially important to water when the potatoes are flowering and just after they have stopped because this is when the plant is actually producing potatoes. After this point the plant can tolerate a little more drought, so you can probably cut back to watering once or twice a week.

As always, watering in the cool morning is best.

Up next: Dealing with critters

Watering is one of those things that is a bit misunderstood.

As you stroll through your neighborhood in the spring and summer, you are likely to spot well-intentioned people staring blankly ahead, pointing a spray nozzle straight at their plants and hitting them with a full, deafening blast of water. Or, the sprinkler on the front lawn is also watering the sidewalk and unsuspecting terriers and pedestrians.

Inside, these people are thinking, man, watering stinks. I hate gardening. My flip-flops are soaked.

For some good information on watering your lawn, trees, and shrubs with less time, expense, and runoff, check out this handy guide: Smart Watering.

As far as the vegetable garden goes, we are here to help take the mystery out of watering with a handy device we use here at Headquarters:

The soaker hose:

The soaker hose is a form of drip irrigation. The hose is punctured with small holes that allow water to drip through it. When the water is turned on, the hose looks like it is weeping, or perhaps sweating.

Soaker hoses wind through the garden, placed about 12 to 18 inches apart.

What’s so great about a soaker hose?

Laying a soaker hose next to the base of your plants delivers water straight to the plant roots - right where you want it.

No more moving hoses.

No more standing there spraying plants and thinking about what else you could be doing.

You save money. Soaker hoses use much less water and deliver water more efficiently than sprinklers or the “point and shoot” method. So you get a lower water bill in summer when water rates are the highest.

You have healthier plants. Watering at the root level instead of from the top cuts down on moldy leaf diseases.

Soaker hoses are a recycled product. Now you can water and be a do-gooder at the same time.

The specs

You can buy soaker hoses at hardware stores, nurseries, and the like, or if you’re really lucky you can find them cheap or free on Craigslist or at garage sales.

They come in various lengths - 25 feet, 50 feet, 75 feet, 100 feet. You can buy adapters, gaskets, timers, and other gadgets to go along with them, so if you end up with one that has a leaky section or one that is too long, you can fix it right up. (Tip: we used a 50 foot hose in the Grow It Yourself garden, which is 13 feet long and about 6 feet wide and packed full of plants.)

Soaker hoses emit enough water to soak about 6 to 9 inches of ground on either side of it, so lay your hoses 12 to 18 inches apart.

Keep the hose at least 1 to 2 inches away from the base of plants.

These hoses have an open end at one end to attach to the garden hose…

…and a cap at the other end.

You can extend the length of your hose by unscrewing the end cap and attaching another soaker hose to it. Keep in mind, though, that you shouldn’t have a hose longer than 100 feet - at this length the water pressure gets pretty weak and it won’t emit as much water as the plants need.

How to install a soaker hose

Now, the plants are getting pretty tall and bushy, so this is a little late in the game to be installing a soaker hose in the garden, but sometimes you just have to do the best you can.

Warning: You are going to get wet and a little dirty, so ready yourself.

1. Unroll the hose and spread it out nice and long.

You will be inspecting the hose for leaks and to see that it works properly. Also, getting it a bit wet makes it much easier to carry and control. When these hoses are dry they tend to be unwieldy, flying about and crashing into plants, houseguests, and your own head.

2. Attach the soaker hose to your garden hose…

…turn on the tap, and wait for the entire hose to begin seeping. You do not want it to be spraying, straining, and making a sound that makes you think, “Is it supposed to sound like that?” With decent water pressure, you shouldn’t have to turn on the tap very far at all.

3. Gather up some sticks of some sort. As you lay the hose, it is helpful to put some sticks in the ground to help guide and secure the hose and keep it away from the plants. There is a risk of plant crush here, and you need to be careful.

4. If you have a helper, go collect them now.

Friendly advice: If you do not work well together on projects requiring patience and cheerful, collaborative problem-solving, maybe pick someone else. Or, just do it yourself (recommended).

Also keep in mind that this is only a job for the most precise and even-tempered of children.

Copyright Smart Family System

5. Consider your terrain. If your garden is on a slope, plan to lay the hose in a way that minimizes uphill travel for the water - instead of it going straight up, then down, try laying it across the slope.

6. You want to be able to attach your garden hose to the soaker hose in a convenient spot - at the edge of the garden and probably in a spot closest to the tap. So figure out where you want the hose to end. Probably the easiest thing to do is attach the soaker hose to the garden hose at the beginning, lay the end point where you want it, and then lay the rest of the hose.

Note: We have found that soaker hoses do not work particularly well with potatoes, since they are hilled up with soil and it takes a long time for water to penetrate through to the roots. We water those separately with the garden hose, so we skipped the potato section.

Potatoes in foreground

The Job

Secure the end you are starting with. A heavy object keeps it from getting pulled around and ending up where you don’t want it to be.

Starting at the edge of the bed, carefully lay your hose in between rows and next to plants, staying at least 1 to 2 inches away from the base of the plants. Secure the hose with sticks as you go.

Keep winding it through the garden, spacing the hose about 12 to 18 inches apart.

Gently…

When you are satisfied that the hose is laid out evenly and that all of your plants are going to get a drink, attach the garden hose and turn on the tap to test it out.

We ended up with a bit of overlap, but ah well.

Life isn’t perfect

And neither are soaker hoses. The hose can degrade if it is bent or exposed to the sun and the elements for long periods of time. This can cause the hose to spring a leak, creating a fountain effect whereby it sprays your plants with abandon instead of dripping calmly. If you have a new hose you should be ok, but our second-hand one needed some work.

Tomatoes are particularly sensitive about getting their leaves sprayed - they can develop leaf diseases if sprayed day in and day out, so check to make sure they are not getting hit.

If your hose has some leaks, just mound up some soil on top. This is usually enough to smother the leaks but still let water through.

Sometimes, a few strategically located leaks can be a good thing: if the hose doesn’t quite reach a plant, it might spray in its general direction and give the plant the water it needs.

This hose had a few leaks next to the lettuce, but I just left them alone because lettuce likes a little top watering.

As with most things in life, you need to take care of your stuff. To keep the hose in fine working order, keep a layer of mulch over it through the season. At the end of the season, remove it from your garden, carefully wind it up - lasso style - and hang it in the garage.

How long and how often do I need to water?

This will take a bit of testing and will depend on the weather and the type of soil you have, but try watering for 20 or 30 minutes once every 2 or 3 days. In really, really hot weather you might have to water every day.

To check to see if your plants are getting enough water, carefully dig down next to the plant into the root area. If it is moist, they’re good. If it’s dry, water.

Up next: Hilling and watering potatoes

I’ve been hearing an ugly rumor that people think it is too late to start a vegetable garden this year. Not true!

There are still loads of vegetable plants at nurseries and by this time they are a fairly good size, so you can get your hands on some pretty advanced tomatoes, eggplant, and maybe even squash. Depending on where you live and how big the plant is, you should probably choose ones that mature in less than 70 days. (Check the plant tag or ask.)

An herb garden is easily within reach - in fact, basil is a slow-starter and doesn’t reach its prime until later in June or July. Buy herbs like basil, chives, oregano, thyme, and so on, as plants (not seed) from your local nursery or other quality plant seller.

Lettuce, beets, beans, and carrots are all fast growers and can still be planted. In fact, you can plant these every few weeks through the summer, all the way up to July or August for a fall crop (at least here in Seattle). If you find lettuce and beets in plant form at a nursery, all the better - you’ll be eating them in no time. Beans and carrots will need to be planted from seed.

Plant onions to eat as green onions - green onions are simply an immature onion. Plant these as a bulb - sold in bags as “onion sets”.

If you have time and moxie, there is still time to rip out your lawn and get a garden in. We show you how.

If the prospect of converting your lawn or building raised beds seems overwhelming or unlikely to happen this year, do not fret: you can garden in containers this year. A container can be pretty and expensive or as cheap as a bucket found in your garage. Both do an equally good job - just make sure to drill or poke holes in the bottom for drainage, add potting soil (not dirt from the garden), and fertilize regularly (ideally with liquid fertilizer). More to come soon on container gardening. In the meantime check out Bucket Brigade - an Urban Land Army project that rescues unwanted buckets and turns them into vegetable containers.

So put on your boots and get out there! You can still have a first rate garden that would make your grandma proud. Just check out posts on fixing up your soil, how to choose seed and plants, and getting the garden in.

Less than a month ago, we stuck some plants and seed in the ground and now we have food for supper. It was a heck of a theory, and it worked!

Around here, the lettuce, parsley, and green onions are ready to eat. We know this because they’ve grown to a considerable size and look just like the food at the grocery store.

Picking food seems like it should be pretty easy, and it is, but there are some finer points worth mentioning.

As has been reported in the news:

Saskatoon Sun, June 2, 2002

It’s official, so get out there, man! If your lettuce leaves are at least 4 or 5 inches long and resemble a key salad ingredient, then grab a knife and get picking.

How to pick lettuce

There are a few different techniques for picking lettuce. Simply choose the one that suits the lettuce type and your personality.

Romaine or butterhead lettuce

Easy.

When the lettuce has formed an inner heart (romaine)…

…or a good sized head (butterhead)

…simply grasp the lettuce at the base and pull it gently out of the ground, trying not to disturb the surrounding plants.

Knock off the soil…

…and break off the root ball, disposing of it and any ugly leaves in the compost or yard waste bin.

Done.

Loose-leaf lettuce

Two approaches:

1. Leaf by leaf. Wait until the leaves grow to a decent size - at least 4 or 5 inches. With a sharp knife, cut the biggest outside leaves at the base. More leaves will grow from the inner bit.

2. Grasp all of the lettuce leaves and cut them off in one fell swoop right above the center bit (a couple of inches), from which new leaves will grow.

This is known in gardening circles as the “cut and come again” method. In other words, you cut it all off and it grows back again.

Holy lettuce!

Some additional notes

If you have a variety of lettuces planted close together like we do, harvesting the lettuce that bump up next to each other gives everyone more room to grow.

Cutting the outer leaves - and pulling out the romaine and butterhead types completely - also gives light and space to the little lettuce plants that have been lurking below.

These little ones should be ready to eat in a few weeks, so it’s not a bad idea to get your lettuce packs and seed some more for a late-July crop. The miracle of lettuce is that you can seed it every few weeks through the growing season and have a constant salad supply.

Washing and preparation tips

Free advice:

For best results, soak the lettuce in a bowlful of water for a few minutes. The dirt will sink to the bottom and the extraneous garden bits, and yes, the occasional bug, will rise to the top.

If the lettuce is warm and wilty, throw a bunch of ice cubes in the water and give it a few minutes - it will perk right up.

Pull out the leaves and give them another quick rinse if you like. Proceed with salad spinning or other favoured drying method.

But save the water! Water is one of those precious natural resources, eh, so instead of pouring it down the drain, step outside and water something with it.

If you are eating it right away, tear the lettuce into bite-size pieces. If you are bagging it up for later though, don’t tear it up - keep the leaves whole for maximum freshness. A resealable plastic bag with the air squeezed out works real well.

The first salad of the year!

And it’s a good one. Mr. Urban Land Army is a cook (and a baker), so he’s got the presentation down pat.

Parsley

Now, doesn’t that look appetizing?

To pick, select the biggest (oldest) leaves…

take hold of the stem at the base…

…and pinch or cut it off.

That would be it.

First parsley-inspired supper of the year:

Copyright Mollie Katzen, The Moosewood Cookbook, 1977

Forgot to take a picture of the end result, but it was really tasty.

Green onions

Their time has also come.

Um, pull.

We usually either wipe the dirt off with our hands and then on our pants - we’re pretty casual around here - or we clean it off on a paper towel and put it in the compost pail, then give it a rinse.

Whatever your method, the point is that you don’t really want to send a bunch of dirt down the drain.

On the menu this morning: Salmon Scramble on a toasted English muffin.

Gardening is delicious.

Up next: Installing and watering with soaker hoses

harvesting

Ladies, you understand that proper support is essential, and the same goes for tomatoes.

Tomatoes are a vine and need to be securely staked to avoid falling over and breaking along the stem. Technically you could let them trail along the ground - and some people do this - but getting them vertical saves space, gives the plants room to breathe, and protects the fruit from turning bad whilst sitting glumly in a wet spot or getting chomped by a strolling or crawling critter.

Once your tomatoes are about a foot tall and getting a little leany, it is time to get going on staking.

Tools for the job

To stake a tomato you will need a sturdy support of some sort and something to tie the tomato to it, like twine, women’s pantyhose, or any number of specialized tomato ties that you can buy at a nursery or from a mail order catalogue.

Most anything with a bit of height (4 feet+) and reasonable strength will serve as a tomato stake, so get creative. We’ve used pipes, bakery racks, thick pieces of bamboo, and tall 1″x1″ wooden stakes.

That is, until we discovered….cue soaring music….the tomato spiral!

Copyright Lee Valley Tools

Now, not only do these spirals look fantastic in the garden, you also don’t need to cut up all your pantyhose to tie up the tomatoes - you simply wind the plant around the spiral and it supports the tomato all on its own. As Lee Valley Tools explains, “This is the most popular way to support tomatoes in many European countries”. Clearly, much of Europe knows its stuff.

How to stake a tomato

Gather your tools: stakes, ties, and a knife or scissors to cut the ties.

If you have a temporary stake like we do, gently remove it, holding the plant as firmly and carefully as you would a small baby’s head.

Take your stake and place it parallel to your tomato plant about 1 or 2 inches from the stem, gently separating the leaves to get it in close.

Make sure the stake is standing up straight and then push it into the ground a good 8 inches or more. You want this thing to stay put in a windstorm and to be able to take the pressure of a plant heavily laden with tomatoes.

Examine it from a distance to make sure it is straight and make any necessary adjustments.

Then we simply wound the plant around the spiral. If you are tying it to a stake, place the tie below a strong side stem near the bottom of the plant and then tie another one to a strong side stem higher up.  Be sure to tie it firmly but not really tight - keep in mind that this plant is going to keep growing and develop quite a thick stem so you don’t want to choke it.

Done!

For now. Your tomato might outgrow its stake and require additional ones. If they get long and heavy branches and start to wander later in the season, just put in another one and tie it to that.

Tomato Pruning

Listen up: this part is really important for people who are growing indeterminate varieties of tomatoes.

Vocabulary

Indeterminate tomatoes are vining types that grow branches, leaves, and fruit until they are killed by frost in the fall.

Determinate tomatoes, on the other hand, are a bush type of tomato that grow to a certain size and then stop. They produce all of their fruit at once and do not need pruning.

How do you know if the tomatoes you are growing are indeterminate or determinate? Check the plant tag, seed pack, or google the name of the tomato. (If you can’t find a good answer, you can ask us, too.) In our garden, Sungold and Black Prince are indeterminate and Glacier and Green Moldovan are determinate.

Back to the pruning…

What do you want from a tomato? Tomatoes. Therefore, it is important that you prune your indeterminate tomatoes regularly so that the plant puts its energy into growing tomatoes rather than a bunch of unnecessary side shoots and stems that will only produce leaves. The goal is to have one main stem and to limit the number of wandering, lanky side shoots. Who wants foliage when they can have fruit?

Here’s what you do:

When on Crop Tour, watch for these little side shoots, or suckers, that grow between the main stem and the leaves.

Double triple check that you’re in the right place and that they don’t have any flowers or flower buds on them, and then just pinch or snap them right off.

Also watch for any new stems that are trying to grow up from the base of the plant. You really just want the main, original stem, so pinch these off too.

Easy!

Fertilizing your tomatoes

Now, you should have fertilized your tomatoes when you planted them, but if they have started to flower it is time to give them another shot.

Read the directions on your fertilizer pack, but probably you will want 1/4 - 1/2 cup.

Sprinkle it around the base of the plant and then gently work it into the soil with your fingers.

Water it in, filling your tomato moat. We took the spray spout off the watering can because we didn’t want to spray water all over the tomato - we wanted to fill the moat only.

Let it soak in.

If you used this direct pour method, you may have created a hole in the soil that can expose the roots of the plant. You don’t want that so just backfill it  and reform the moat if necessary.

That’s it! You’re done with tomato upkeep for the time being. Tomatoes grow fast, so keep an eye on those side shoots that need pruning and be sure to keep tying up the plant as it grows.

Before we sign off, check out the new paint job on the bean trellis:

Pretty, no?

Up next: Harvesting, or how to pick your food