May 2009

The garden is in, it’s growing like a weed, and the heavy lifting is over.

Now what?

Well, people, now comes the good part.

The Crop Tour

Where I come from, the Crop Tour is a daily excursion on which you check how the crops are growing, if the bugs are eating them, or if it’s safe to drive across that wet patch yet.

Often showing themselves in the early evenings, those on a Crop Tour give themselves away with their slow moving vehicle, tanned-to-the-elbow arm out the window, and eagle eyes.

Photo by Sue Pederson, www.vert-a-go.com

Note that those on a Crop Tour should be approached with caution, as they are busy taking close note of things the rest of us can’t see, and chances are pretty good they’ve just had a rye and coke.

Same rules apply to Crop Tours here in the city, except we don’t get to drive a truck.

Observation and routine maintenance

The Crop Tour is all about taking stock of how your garden is growing and performing some routine maintenance. A lot can change in a garden in only a day or two: the tomatoes suddenly need staking, the flowers need to be deadheaded, the potatoes need hilling. Is everything getting enough water? What is with that crappy looking plant? Who is that creepy little bug?

Here, we’ll go through the first batch of tasks that need doing, and will keep returning to Maintenance and the Crop Tour as plants grow and jobs change.

First things first

When it comes to cooking and Crop Tours, we at Urban Land Army follow the advice of Nigel Slater, world’s best food writer:

“First, pour yourself a drink.”

Early evening is a great time for a crop tour because it’s cooled down a bit, you’re ready for a beverage and a stroll, and the plants have recovered from a day in the hot sun.

1. LOOK

Is everything ok?

Check the health of each of your plants by observing color, size, and stance.

Are they yellow, puny, and falling over? Maybe you are overwatering.

Are they brown and crispy, puny, and just sitting there like a stick? Maybe you are not watering enough.

Does the plant look good overall but has a few leaves that look like crap?

Just pinch them off and pretend like you didn’t see anything.

Are there holes in your plant leaves? Chomp marks? Do you see suspicious bugs or creatures like slugs? We’ll be talking about critters and critter control real soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, don’t panic, and keep in mind that everyone has to eat and plants usually outgrow a little bit of damage. Also, bugs don’t live forever and may be nearing the end of their life cycle and will go away soon. If you want to get a jump on it though, take a picture or describe the ailment as best you can and send it to us. We will try to help.

An important and satisfying part of the Crop Tour is spotting the good stuff, too. Are you noticing butterflies? Bees? Get down low to the ground and see what you can see - there is a whole world of little creatures on top of and just below the soil and it is pretty darn interesting. We’ll talk about encouraging biodiversity and beneficial insects in a future post.

Finally, would you eat this plant? You know in your heart what a healthy plant looks like, so if the answer is yes, they’re probably doing just fine and you can take a deep breath and enjoy your beverage.

Look how nice.

These plants are also just fine.

Lettuce

Parsley

Oregano.

And frankly, the potatoes are nothing short of fantastic.

Does this garden have enough plants?

Are all the plants filling in? Even when the plants are full grown do you think you’ll have too much bare ground? We took a step back and reckoned we would.

Because we forgot to plant the marigolds! These were in the original garden plan but got lost in the shuffle. French marigolds will add some more color to the garden, but they also emit a scent that scares off some tomato-loving bugs.

So off to the nursery we went, and picked up three 4-packs of “Durango” marigolds. We got these ones because we thought they were real pretty and they reminded us of an enthusiastic Urban Land Army member in Durango, Colorado. Here’s to you, Katie!

Watch, and learn

One of the great things about frequent crop tours is that you get to watch the life cycle of a bean.

Neato.

2. PLUCK

Thinning

Remember when we threw down some lettuce seed in amongst the plants? Well those little seeds grew like a damn, and now there are too many plants in this little space.

Remember that you want to leave several inches between lettuce plants - if they’re too close together like these little sprouts are now, then they won’t have room to spread out their roots and leaves, and won’t realize their full potential as a lettuce.

So, dear gardener, the time has come to harden your heart a bit and thin them out. We know it hurts, but take a deep breath and start plucking, choosing the strongest looking plants and leaving a few inches between. The remaining ones will grow into a lovely crop of July lettuce.

We know. We know you want to leave them all because you planted them and they grew. It’s not easy, but it’s for the greater good.

Natural selection, eh.

Prologue (about 1 week later)
Just look at them now!

Ok, they’re still too close, but we couldn’t do it either - we couldn’t pull out as many as we should have. We’ll move them around and space them out though and it’ll work. Sigh, our hearts are still too soft for thinning.

Weeding

As your plants grow, so will the weeds, and you don’t want these pesky things robbing your vegetables of space, sun, and moisture, so get them out! Early picking is important because if you let a weed hang out, flower, and then drop its seed all over the place, then you have an even bigger problem.

Weed identification can take time and experience, but since we have a pretty straightforward garden here and you know what you planted and what you didn’t, just pull out whatever doesn’t belong. We all have different weeds in our gardens, but Urban Land Army Headquarters is partial to dandelions and quack grass.

Remember, though, that a weed is in the eye of the beholder. Some people go to town on dandelion wine, or putting dandelion greens in salads. We are a bit old-fashioned in this regard and tend to yank the sucker out, but that’s just us.

Make sure you get the whole root of the dandelion or you will be seeing that fellow again.

And sometimes, you just get a happy surprise.

Two sunflowers - the top one looks like it is a red variety and the other one who knows - popped up side by side near the Sungold tomato. They were a little too close together and too close to the tomato, so we gently dug them up and transplanted them in a better place - at the back of the garden next to the bean trellis where they can grow tall and proud. These should make a real cute addition.

These sunflowers are a good example of the fact that stuff just grows, eh. You might end up with random seed and plants in your garden courtesy of friendly neighborhood birds and squirrels, the wind, not-quite-finished compost, or, if you live in a warmer place, from seeds overwintering in the soil. Some plants are just real outgoing and want to spread themselves around. California poppies, Bachelor Buttons, Johnny-Jump-Ups, and even tomatillos pop up all over our garden in the spring. If they’re not in the way and we like them, we just leave them be. Flowers are pretty and useful in a vegetable garden.

3. PINCH

Deadheading

After a flower has finished blooming, it will shrivel up and look crappy, and it is time to get it out of there.

Pinching off dead, spent flowers is called “deadheading” and is a satisfying part of any Crop Tour. You can even do it with one hand, so you can still sip your drink. Deadheading not only improves the look of your plants, it also helps to encourage more flowering as the energy is put into new buds and flowers rather than ones that are past their prime.

With violas you can pick off the entire stem, not just the flower. Just pinch it off at the base.

Now take all your little flower bits and toss them in your weed bucket…

Shameless promotion of Bucket Brigade - they make great weeding buckets too!

…or the compost, or what have you.

Lovely. This garden is really starting to shape up.

Yes, those are silver spiral tomato stakes!

Up next: Tomato staking, pruning, and fertilizing

Freshly back from a 2-week stint in the Great White North…HORROR! A hailstorm hit the Grow It Yourself garden!

As soon as I heard the dreaded pounding thwack of hailstones on the roof, I grabbed the nearest piece of Canadian plaid and rushed outside to cover up the tomatoes and baby lettuce.

Now, plants and hail do not mix at the best of times, but young plants - particularly tomatoes - are especially at risk of being pummeled. You also don’t want to kill them with kindness though, and crush the plants with your blanket. Before covering tomatoes and other tall plants, cast around for some sticks and shove them in the ground next to the plants - they will help to prop up the blanket and prevent plant crush.

Hail is every farmer’s nightmare and should be yours, too.

But luckily, the morning after, the sun is shining, the air is warm, and they all seem to be just fine.

Whew.

Now, maybe the tomatoes should have been covered up in the first place. Maybe, in these early days of spring, they should have been under one of those plastic domes or water tepees that you can buy, or under an upside down plastic bottle, or some such. Certainly, many people keep their tomatoes under cover this time of year, and certainly they were not the ones rushing out in a hailstorm with a plaid sheet.

But geez louise, I have never covered tomatoes in May and always had great success. And coming from Saskatchewan, where the leaves haven’t even come out, lush and balmy Seattle feels like my own personal Hawaii. Besides, like my mother always says, “These plants need to suck it up.”

So, in my defense, I was not paying attention at all.

Lesson #1: Watch the weather. Pay attention to the forecast and daytime and nighttime temperatures. If it’s not reliably above 50 at night, those tomatoes should probably be covered up.

Continuing with this theme…

What was I thinking?

A garden casualty.

Poor basil. I wasn’t going to plant these until I got back from my trip, but like every year, I am overcome with the sight and smell of lovely basils and…I forgot. Honestly, planting basil before June can be a leap of faith, and I clearly had too much faith. It was feeling mighty chilly yesterday afternoon so I did stick these jars over them before the hail came, which spared them from that hellish fate at least.

So young basil and dear readers, I just feel terrible, and if you too lost some plants by following my lead, I have a small supply of basil and tomato plants at Headquarters. If you’re in Seattle and need a replacement, drop me a line.

Up next: Maintenance and the fine art of the Crop Tour.

Now that the plants are in the ground, it’s time to water them in.

A few good things to remember about watering:

Water from the bottom, not the top

The point of watering is to water roots, not leaves, so don’t spray plants directly with water, particularly tomatoes, which can react badly. Instead, water plants at the base.

The only exception is lettuce, which seems to benefit from a bit of spraying from the top (makes the leaves more tender). Still, your primary watering should be around the base of the plants.

When watering seeds, use an adjustable spray nozzle attached to a hose or a sprinkler-style watering can. This is because the soil - and the seeds just below - should be watered lightly and in droplets. Watering with too much pressure can disturb the seeds.

Keep seeded areas moist. Don’t let seeded areas dry out. Without water, seeds shrivel and die, so don’t forget to get out there with the watering can. Plants are more tolerant of dryness, but new ones need to be treated with care and watered regularly.

How much do I need to water?

This is not an easy question to answer because it all depends, eh. It depends on your soil type (fast draining sandy, slow draining clay, or a nice mix), the weather (temperature and rainfall), and your watering system (soaker hose, drip irrigation, hose, watering can).

The best advice we can give you is to gently dig down to root level next to the plants, or to seed level near the seeds, and see if it is moist. If it is dry, water. If it is not, don’t water. Over time you will work out how much you need to water and how often.

That said, we have a few watering tips:

Soaker hoses or drip irrigation are best for vegetable gardens. These systems release water slowly and directly to the roots of the plants, saving water and preventing soil erosion in the process. We will soon be adding a soaker hose to the garden, so stay tuned for that.

Try to water during the cooler parts of the day to prevent evaporation. Early in the morning is best and the evening is also pretty good.

The Finer Points of Watering

On planting day we used a spray nozzle attached to our trusty hose. (A good quality hose, by the way, will save you a world of trouble.)

Each plant was watered individually at the base with a gentle spray.

The soil where the lettuce seed and green onions were planted - and the lettuce plants - got a light spraying. The water needs to soak in at least 1/4 inch for the seeds, so water until the ground looks thoroughly moist but not waterlogged. If you are unsure how much water has penetrated, just dig down a bit and have a look.

The tomatoes got a good drink. Fill your moat with water, wait for it to soak in, then repeat once more.

The potatoes also got a good soak since they were planted a few inches down. Spray the trenches until water begins to accumulate a bit. Let it soak in then repeat once more.

The beans also got a light spray on top. Back and forth, back and forth, until you reckon the water has soaked in to a depth of one inch. Again, dig down with your finger and check if you’re not sure.

A watered garden. So cool and refreshing.

Efficient and effective watering is a bit of a knack that you will develop as time goes on. We will be returning to watering tips and techniques throughout the season, so stay tuned.

Three more things to plant and the Grow It Yourself garden will officially be in the ground.

Tomatoes, potatoes, and beans each have their own special trick and you will need some extra supplies here: vegetable fertilizer and measuring cup, bone meal if you have it, bean inoculant, and little shallow dish or container of some sort.

TOMATOES

We are growing 4 tomatoes:

Glacier. An early maturing, red and tasty slicer.

Sungold. An orange ping-pong ball sized cherry. An all-time Urban Land Army favourite.

Green Moldovan. A late-season striped green slicer with sentimental value.

Black Prince. A prolific sauce tomato that is almost black. A new addition to our repertoire with a solid reputation. Recommended for new gardeners.

HOW TO PLANT A TOMATO

Dig a hole deeper than you would think. Tomatoes benefit from being planted quite deep, actually, and will send out a bunch of roots from the buried stem. If your tomatoes are a little on the short and stocky side, like ours, dig a hole deep enough so that the stem is buried by an inch or two. If your tomato has a long stem, dig a trench 4 or 5 inches deep and set the plant in it or dig a hole straight down about 6 inches. Don’t be afraid to bury the stem up to the top set of leaves.

Make sure the soil in the hole is nice and loose so that the tomato’s roots will be able to spread out.

Add 1/4 cup of vegetable fertilizer to the hole - about a handful.

If you have bone meal throw in a handful of that too. (We thought we had some. We did not. Harumph. Bone meal, high in calcium, helps to protect tomatoes from blossom end rot, an infuriating little disease that can sometimes, but not often, occur. We might get some later and work it into the soil so we can sleep at night.)

Now, mix the fertilizer and the bone meal together in the hole.

Holding the tomato so that it is straight and sturdy, backfill the hole with soil, press down firmly, and create your little moat about 1 foot around the base of the plant.

Put the tag in. You’ll forget which tomato is which - we promise you.

POTATOES

Now, potatoes are a bit of a special case.

First, you need to cut the potatoes a day or so before you plant them. Cut them in half, making sure there are at least one or two eyes on each piece. It is from the eyes that the sprout, and then the plant, will spring. Leaving them overnight heals or toughens up the cut side.

Second, potato plants are covered up with soil as they grow - this is known as “hilling”. You will be mounding up soil in hills throughout the season so that only about 8 inches of the plant is visible at all times.

Now, since this is a raised bed and the soil is already a foot above the ground, if you started mounding up soil even more then you would end up with tall, steep, and ridiculous hills of soil by the end of the year. And, you would run out of soil for mounding.

So here’s what you do if you have a raised bed: dig a trench 6 to 8 inches deep. If you have room, pile the soil next to the trench and then you can simply push this soil over for hilling when the plant starts to grow.

However, if you want as many trenches as you can pack in and don’t have room to accommodate these piles - and you just want to do things the hard way - you can do what we did. Put the soil in pails, store them in the garage, and use it for hilling when you need it. A little weird, yes, but square footage is precious in a city garden and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

We planted 3 rows and 3 kinds of potatoes: fingerling (Rose Finn), yellow (Yukon Gold), and red (Forget The Name).

Before you put a potato in the ground, make sure the soil in the trench is loose. We gave each trench a quick once over with the garden fork.

Push the potatoes an inch or two into the soil sprout side up, cut side down, 12 to 18 inches apart.

The rows (trenches) should also be 12 to 18 inches apart.

When they are all in place, cover them with a few inches of soil…

…and press down firmly.

BEANS

We are growing 2 kinds of beans: Scarlet Runner Beans called ‘Golden Sunshine’ and pole beans called ‘Bingo’.

Trust us on this one: inoculating your beans is worth it.

What’s inoculant? Inoculant looks like silty brown soil and contains Rhizobium bacteria, which are necessary for converting nitrogen into a form that beans (legumes) can use.

The benefits? Improved soil fertility, stronger root systems, and way more beans, people. Way more beans.

Inoculant comes in a little package, something like this (no brand endorsement here, just what we happened to get):

How to inoculate your beans:

Get a shallow bowl and dump your beans in it. Add a very small splash of water, just enough to wet them.

Shake the inoculant over the beans so that they are covered in the stuff.

Give it all a shake to completely coat the beans.

Plant in a straight row in front of a trellis/pole/suitable bean structure an inch deep and 1 or 2 inches apart. Cover.

THE GARDEN IS IN!

Up next: Watering it in

No more messing around - the plants are going in.

Here, we’ll go through the finer points of planting and the special needs of some of our plants.

Herbs

We start with chives, and an advanced move.

I already had some chives out front, so instead of procuring new ones, I divided the Mother Plant. Dividing a plant, or breaking it up into smaller parts - means that you can get two plants from the original one, or three or four or five, depending on how big the original plant is and how much you want to break it up. You can divide chives, you can divide daisies, or any other perennial plant that comes back year after year. (You can read more about dividing plants here, if you like.)

Easy: We dug up a clump of chives and then, grasping them by the base of the plant….

…gently pulled them apart.

This was a big clump and we could have easily broken it up into several more small clumps, but we just called it good.

The Finer Points of Planting

Using either a garden knife, trowel, or your own paws, dig a hole. You want a hole that has loose soil around the sides and the bottom so that your plant’s roots can plunge through and spread itself around. So dig around and loosen it up a little bit. The hole should be wide enough to accommodate the plant’s existing roots, and it should also be the right depth: the base of the plant should be level with or slightly below the top of the ground.

Like so:

Put the plant in the hole and hold it up straight by the base, then fill in the hole with the soil you dug out. Press down gently on the soil around the plant so that the plant is firmly in there and standing tall.

Since you’ll have extra soil now - the plant is taking up the space where the soil was - form it into a circular moat around the plant so that water will stay put and not run away from the plant.

By the way, these chives are going to flower soon - that’s what those little purple balls are about. They will open up and look pretty, then the stem with the flower on it will get tough and eventually dry out and we’ll remove it. Then new chives will keep growing.

For plants that are in a pot, like this thyme, here’s how it goes:

(Make sure the soil in the pot is well-watered prior to planting.)

To remove the plant, grasp it gently by the base…

and tilt the pot, squeezing the sides and pushing on the bottom to loosen the plant.

Once it’s out you’ll want to make sure the roots are loose and not all bound up tightly and wrapped around each other. In this case, the roots are in fine form so we just squeeze the sides of the soil a bit and gently nudge and separate the roots at the bottom.

We wanted to locate the thyme next to the bricks because it is low-growing and looks pretty spilling over the sides.

Here is the parsley (Italian/flat leaf), planted about 8 inches apart. The plants will eventually bump into each other a bit and create a nice big mass of it.

Basil

This looks like there are two plants - and sometimes you are lucky and do get more than one plant in a pot - but this is one plant with two stems.

Lettuce

We got a mix of red and green leaf lettuces and wanted to separate them into 4 blocks of different colours and types: one green loose leaf, one red loose leaf, one green romaine, and one speckled red romaine.

So we separated them into groups, gently pulling them apart.

Planting lettuce is quick - since these were small plants we just needed a little hole. If you have a garden knife, just stick it in 4 or 5 inches, pull the soil back, stick the lettuce in, and press down on the soil. Once you get the hang of it, you can really cover ground fast.

Seed, too!

Lettuce grows quickly and doesn’t live through the entire season, so if you keep seeding you can get a few crops of it. We wanted to eat some soon, so we put in plants that would be full grown in a few weeks, but we also want to have more lettuce once these were done, so we sprinkled each block with seed. These will start coming up in a week or 10 days and be full grown in about a month-and-a-half.

Take a pinch and sprinkle them around…

…then sprinkle a bit of soil on top, so that they are covered by 1/8 to a 1/4 inch of soil.

You can check your seed pack for exact planting depth if you want, but a good rule of thumb is to plant seed twice as deep as the thickness of the seed.

Lettuce blocks done. These will fill in and should look pretty great when they are full grown. Romaine lettuce needs more room than loose leaf, so we put 6 of these plants in the blocks, and 10 to 12 of the loose leaf.

Green Onions

These can be planted close together - 1 or 2 inches apart - and we thought they’d look cute in clumps and squares around the lettuce blocks.

A handy thing to do with green onions and lettuce: when you pull out a green onion, pop a new lettuce plant into the hole.

Plant the onions about 1 inch deep - the first knuckle on your finger is a good measure. Just push them in.

And cover them up, of course.

Tip:
When you are seeding, wait until you have put all your seed in before you cover them up, so you don’t lose track of what you’ve put in, and where.

Halfway there!

Up next: Putting in the tomatoes, potatoes, and beans.

The soil has warmed up and so have the days and nights, so it’s time to get the garden in!

The best time to plant is either early or late in the day when it is a bit cool and plants won’t get stressed by heat and blazing sun. A slightly overcast day is actually ideal seeding and planting conditions, but let’s face it - you get the garden in when you have time to get the garden in, and that’s just fine.

Supplies

The first thing you need to do is assemble your plants, seeds, and trusty tools (garden knife or trowel, gloves, shovel). If you are planting tomatoes and beans, grab your fertilizer and bean inoculant, too.

Now, maybe you’ve already sketched out your garden layout with a sharp pencil - to scale - on a fresh sheet of graph paper and know exactly where your plants and seeds are going to go. Or, if you’re like us, you stand and stare at the garden for the better part of an hour, and then make your move.

When deciding where to locate your plants and seeds, here’s what you need to think about:

Height: How tall will each plant get? You don’t want tall plants to shade out shorter ones, so put the tall ones at the back and the short ones at the front. Consult your seed pack or plant tag for size at maturity. If it’s not on there, check out our guidelines or do a search on the wide wide world o’ web.

Spacing: How far apart do you need to plant your seeds and plants? Your seed pack should tell you this. Also check out our guidelines.

Companion planting: Some plants just make a good team. Sometimes one attracts a pollinator that another one needs, or one chases away a pest that likes to attack another. Lettuce likes green onion. Tomatoes like basil and marigolds.

Convenience: It only makes sense: put the plants that you will be picking the most in the most convenient and accessible place. When you want to run out of the house and snip some lettuce and chives for supper, you shouldn’t have to reach across to the middle of the bed or take a lot of extra steps to reach. Plants like potatoes that aren’t picked frequently can be located in a spot that is more out of the way.

Ah, beauty: What colours, textures, and shapes will look good together? Will you group plants in a circle or a square, or in a wavy row? Saying goodbye to traditional, straight rows makes things more interesting and lets you pack in the plants.

After much staring and pondering with hands on hips, here’s what we decided:

We would locate the herbs - parsley, chives, thyme, basil, and oregano - at the front of the bed because they a) are short, b) should be handy for supper picking. A late-breaking addition to the herb garden - mostly for prettiness - is Pineapple Sage (the bright yellow one). This will throw out red flowers that will attract hummingbirds and serve as a bit of a break between the herb section and the vegetable section.

The lettuce would be planted together in 18″ square blocks surrounding the stepping stone. Each block would contain a different type and colour of lettuce, and we saw this in a book once and thought it was real cute. We would put in plants and throw some seed down in between the plants so that we have one crop now and one crop later.

The green onions (in the blue bag) would be planted in circular clumps and square blocks outside the lettuce blocks.

The tomatoes would be planted 3 to 4 feet apart along the edges of the garden. The one that would mature first and the cherry tomato would be located along the path where they would be handy for picking. The ones that would be planted at the back are indeterminate tomatoes - these kinds keep growing taller and taller throughout the season. The ones planted at the front are determinate - they grow to a certain size and stop, so they are shorter.

The three different kinds of potatoes would be planted in 3 short rows down the middle of the bed in between the tomatoes and behind the stepping stone.

The two varieties of beans would be planted in straight rows both in front of and behind the trellis. One variety would be planted on the left side of the trellis and the other on the right, resulting in a half-and-half situation.

The flowers (violas) would be planted along the edges of the garden bed in the lettuce and herb areas, and will spill over the bricks.

Before you start putting things in the ground, set the plants in place, then adjust, making sure you are leaving enough room for the plants to grow to their full potential, get enough sun (not get shaded by bigger plants), be convenient for picking, and look real nice.

That’s the plan, folks.

One more thing. When you take your plants out of their pots and put them in the ground, they have to adjust to a different environment and conditions, so they go through a bit of shock. Make it easy on them by watering them prior to planting.

Pick off any spent (dead, done, finished) flowers. Start with a good lookin’ plant.

Then water until it pours through the bottom.

Up next: Planting the darned things!