Weekly Garden Thread - January 22-28, 2022 [Reading & Resources Edition]

January 22, 2022 | Diana in Wisconsin/Greeneyes

[Diana in Wisconsin]

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.

If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located.

This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.

It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to our New & Improved Ping List.

NOTE: This is a once a week Ping List. We do post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time!

[CaptainPhilFan]

I’m used to ground gardening, but even now am checking out what size pots I’d need if I decided to do that. Raised beds are so nice. I’d have to truck in dirt and that may be cost prohibitive. This clay is so different here than the Hudson River Loam I’m used to :)

[mairdie]

Very strange. I have a 15,000 page personal website and I always post off my website. I see the images here, and when I do a copy link and put the url in my browser, I see them both. I don’t use image libraries.

The page one of them is coming off is

http://www.iment.com/maida/favs/house/library/

This is the page where I show how I created the wood from which I built the library. Seems to be up and working.

[Augie]

Cold and dry this past week here in Central Missouri. There’s still several inches of frozen crunchy snow on the grassy areas, and lots of pack ice on driveways and back roads.

This last round of bitter cold pretty much wiped out the kale and collards. I guess I should have picked it and packed it away, not that I have any space to pack it away. Freezers are all full, and I picked up 81 pounds of deer sticks and summer sausage at the locker plant yesterday. It’s in a cooler in the barn right now, and I’m shopping for another freezer.

[metmom]

Counting the days until I can start my spring seeds……

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[metmom]

We got GE chest freezer that is a garage friendly one that works at low temperatures. We have it in our garage, where, at the moment, it is pretty nippy.

The thing is enormous. We got it in Oct 2019, just before the SHTF, and boy were we glad for that thing.

It’s very basic and not internet connected or “smart”, no computer chips that we know of. Mr. mm says it could not be a simpler design.

[metmom]

It’s a GE FCM16SWW Freezer.

And it’s BIG.

[metmom]

I went to the local WM around Christmas time and found all kinds of garden fertilizer marked way down.

Even Home Depot had liquid copper sulfate concentrate for dirt cheap, so I picked up some of that as well.

I ALWAYS look to buy off season. Can’t always be guaranteed to get what you want, but when you do, it is very worth it.

[metmom]

How do you use wood ash on the garden.

We have a wood stove and are also collecting the ash, but didn’t know where to dump it.

If it can be used in the garden, all the better. But doesn’t it make the soil more alkaline?

[TianaHighrider]

after my poor garden failed last year. This year I hope to home honeybees and put up a fence around my garden. Prayers for a blessed garden for me and not just the area critters!
XD

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Favorite Gardening Books (not in any particular order):

365 Days of Gardening - Christine Allison
The Flower Farmer - Lynn Bycztnski
52 Weekend Garden Projects - Nancy Bubel
All New Square Foot Gardening - Mel Bartholomew
Month-By-Month Gardening in Wisconsin - Melinda Myers
The Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden - David Hirsch
Cut Flower Garden - Floret Farm
Maryjane’s Ideabook-Cookbook-LifeBook - Maryjane Butters
Storey’s Basic Country Skills - Storey Books
The Complete Guide to Houseplants - Ortho
The Do It Yourself Homestead - Tessa Zundel
The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook - Barbara Damrosch & Eliot Coleman

[Pollard]

If you've got red clay as topsoil aka no top soil but exposed subsoil because the top soil washed away years ago, look into Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. It was a book and then a followup book. I like the method in the first book.

1. Make 4x4 foot square raised beds, 6 inches foot tall.
2. Dig up 6 inches of soil and make your own 6 inches by mixing at least five different brands of compost together. Multiple brands because one brand is likely made from one base waste ingredient. Ground up rice hulls for instance.
3. Mix composts and soil which he has an easy method for using a tarp and pulling multiple times in different directions. Tarp needs to be bigger than just big enough to hold the soil mix.
4. Fill beds with your new improved soil/compost mix.
5. Divide into 16 - 1 foot squares using wood strips attached to the top of bed walls. Three strips in each direction, criss crossing to make a grid.
6. Start planting and keep in mind, for small plants, you can further subdivide the grid, though not with more wood strips. Just measurements or even eyeballing.

That 1 foot square can be halved in each direction giving you four 6 inch squares. divided by three gives you nine 4 inch squares. Divided by 4 gives you sixteen 3 inch squares. Radishes, if you like them fairly small, could be spaced 2 inches within that one foot square.(25 squares) A tomato plant would take the whole one foot square as would a pepper plant. It's all a grid and further dividing the grid for smaller items. The image above has one plant per one foot square but the book talks about subdividing.

You can have the four squares on the North side for four mater plants, then grow shorter things in front of them in further subdivided grids and so on. That way everything gets good sun. Radishes up front, lettuce behind that, something a little taller behind(marigolds?) that and maters in the back. The top image does do that to some degree.

You would want to check companion planting guides when deciding what to plants next to each other. Hence the maters in the back and marigolds in front of them. Basil would be another good one to go with maters. Check companion planting guide(s) to make sure you don't have enemies right up against each other.

In his followup book, he doesn't use any yard soil and only does 6 inch deep beds. He says that's deep enough even for the bigger plants like tomatoes and peppers. You could do a happy medium like 9 inch deep beds using 2x6 boards. Then maybe use 3 inches of soil to 6 inches of made compost.

They don't have to be 4x4 feet to use the system as you can see by the images for Square Foot Gardening; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Square+Foot+Gardening&iax=images&ia=images

Shouldn't use treated wood and untreated is only going to last a few years. That's a downside. You could brush boiled linseed oil on them or char just what's going to touch the ground. I've thought about making molds to make concrete side for beds. I wasn't thinking about the dividing strips at the time though. Guess you could mold recesses to just set the strips in. Once it's planted, you now longer need the strips. They look neat and tidy with the strips though.

Now you don't even need the books.

In my mind, raised beds shouldn't be sunk in and should be totally above ground for drainage. If I dig a post hole where I live and it's the rainy season, the hole fills with water which stays there for weeks even without more rain. Same with the above half in, half out raised beds or even a garden. You till up the soil 6 inches deep. Water gets in real easy now but how does it get out? All around the tilled area is hard un-tilled soil. You dug a pool basically and it's filled with loose dirt but water can't go sideways in clay so the soil stays saturated.

[LibWhacker]

The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology puts out a free app for your cellphone that helps you identify birds you see in the wild. Recently they sent me this free set of bird-friendly gardening tips. It shows you how to do birding from the comforts of your own backyard, presumably without feeding the fruits of all your hard labor to the birds!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

CLICK ON PICTURE
TO LINK BACK TO THE JANUARY15-21 2022 GARDENING THREAD

CLICK ON PICTURE BELOW TO LINK TO RESOURCE AREA. BOOKS, MAGAZINES, GARDENING SEEDS, SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT, AND INTERESTING GARDENING LINKS HARVESTED FROM PREVIOUS GARDENING THREADS!"

(The resource area is posted at the end of the the July 3-6 Gardening Thread beginning after post 112!) https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4022311/posts

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I had a lot of clay at my other farm; I lived across the road from a lake, and also had parts of my property that were very good at ‘holding water’ after a rain.

I gardened in-ground. The best I can suggest is to amend, amend, amend. Peat and Compost will be your best friends. Don’t add sand; that’ll just make cement.

I managed a Garden Center for 10 years before I retired, so I got deals on broken bags of soil amendments, but we also sold them at cost to other customers. I would find a local garden center and ask for discounts on broken bags if they’re willing and you’ll haul them away. I mean, they’re just heading for the landfill, anyway.

Consider looking into ‘Lasagna Gardening,’ too - which greatly speeds up the process if you don’t have a tiller, and straw (clean or used) is also your new best friend!

How to Make a Lasagna Garden:

https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-make-a-lasagna-garden-2539877

The book:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192504.Lasagna_Gardening

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Love the bird gardening tips. I usually have a few Jenny Wrens that take over and pretty much keep everyone else OUT!

They’re small but vicious little birds, LOL!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Thanks, Pete!

[Pollard]

Yes it raises the pH but I have acidic soil so it would be fine for me. It’s only short term. Doesn’t last three years like lime. Compost and more compost is best for any soil type in the long run, if you have the stuff to make your own.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Local birds at my house these days:

Goldfinch:

Red-Bellied Woodpecker:

Female Downy Woodpecker:

Purple Finches:

[CaptainPhilFan]

Thank you so much for a great resource and your shared knowledge. This may well become part of the plot :)