Book Review of Gardening for Geeks

Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi packs a big punch of great practical organic information, ideas, projects, and philosophy into a lot of small, easily digestible pieces. Bright and informative without being preachy, the book includes a huge range of stuff in a relatively small space.  It runs the gamut from how to create a sustainable ecology to materials, gadgets, fertilizers, native plants, pollinators, making a worm bin, a bee box, raised beds, storing saved seeds, vertical gardening, building soil, using either a compass or the internet to decide how to situate your garden, canning and water catchment, among other things.  (PHEW!) It also touches on French Intensive, bio-intensive and square-foot gardening, (each of which have had whole books written about them) -- all distilled into straightforward prose.

The first chapter focuses on what (Habitats, for example), why (because you need a balance of all the creatures that make the whole system – food for you, food for pollinators, food for pests (which are food for pollinators and other beneficial creatures in the garden – it’s a complete circle) and how you achieve it.  The last chapter includes some recipes followed by an appendix with a few seed sources.

Gardening for Geeks offers succinct reasons why you would do something (create compost, check to see if the redwood you plan to use to make raised beds has been chemically treated or kiln-dried, for example) – keeping in mind the average person, who doesn’t have the luxury of turning growing some food from part-time pleasure into a fulltime job (even if they wanted to).

The format is visually appealing and well organized with plenty of illustrations both photo and drawing, and includes great little break-out tips that catch your eye as you flip through.  This is a book you could give to inspire a novice gardener without making them feel overwhelmed, to your favorite gardening friend without insulting them, since there is bound to be something inside that even he or she hasn’t come across or imaged yet, or to yourself since it’s like the crib sheet to a host of gardening courses. Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi (Adams Media, $15.95).

Carroll County Twilight Meetings a Big Hit

Monday May 20th saw yet another successful Twilight Garden meeting at the Carroll County Public Demonstration Garden.  Nearly 40 folks showed up last night to learn about Salad Table construction, Salad Table soil media, best Salad Greens for a table, watering, fertilizing and harvesting.  Additionally, the people were led on a tour of the many raised vegetable and edible perennial raised beds to learn about best practice food gardening.  The Carroll Grow It Eat It Team began this new public outreach program last month with the topic of Pruning.  Twilight meetings are scheduled monthly on the third Monday of the Month with four more topics remaining for 2013.  Composting is slated for June.  July will see a discussion on pollinators and herbs.  August will focus on cover crops with a season ending September meeting focused on "Putting the Garden to Bed & productive garden maintenance.  

Steve Allgeier introduces the Carroll County Extension
to interested citizens.

Bill Corun leads the Salad Table
construction discussion with  class participants.

These meetings place a capstone on a very successful public outreach for 2013.  The Grow It Eat It team has already concluded their class room meetings delivering 16 topics over eight weekly meetings.  Class interest and attendance was outstanding with results averaging nearly 60 people per meeting.  

"A great team can do great things and the Carroll team is a wonderful group of Master Gardeners who have fun, focus on best practice food growing and who possess real dedication", said Butch Willard, Co-Coordinator of the team.

Butch Willard shares the values of
Raised Bed Gardening.

Butch Willard told of  Salad Table success stories and University of Md best practices.

Drip Irrigation Installation At Baltimore County Demonstration Garden

On Friday, a large group of volunteers installed two drip irrigation zones at the Baltimore County demonstration garden.  The perennial zone (540 square feet of asparagus, raspberries and blueberries) used a drip tube system where half inch drip tube (with pre-installed half gallon per hour pressure compensating emitters spaced every 12 inches) was installed on either side of the row.   One inch of water can be delivered to this zone in two and a half hours.

The second zone contained numerous raised beds (mostly 4 x 10 feet) which will be irrigated using drip tape.  The irrigation team laid 380 feet of one inch lay flat tube which is the feeder tube for the  drip tape.  Tube to tape fittings were punched into the tube and drip tape was attached.  This zone was 800 square feet and can be watered in two hours.

More information on drip irrigation can be found at
 http://extension.umd.edu/mg/giei-powerpoint-presentations and clicking on MG6 DripIr.Phillips.

Shown in the picture are Tiffany, Debby, myself and Paul, who were some of the volunteers installing the system at the demonstration garden.

For never was a story of more woe

... than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Otherwise known as: the weather is more and more unpredictable; pay attention!  I planted tomatoes and peppers in my community garden plot on Friday 5/10, thinking "surely this is late enough to be safe."  And yes, I'd looked at the weather forecast and saw it would get cold again, but we couldn't possibly have a frost that late, could we now?  And then as the forecast firmed up, I went over Sunday and wrapped up all the plants in floating row cover.  And then Tuesday, after the frost (that didn't even happen at my house) was over, I planted the tomatoes at the demo garden, and gave away all my extra plants.  Wednesday I unwrapped the community garden plants, sure that they'd be fine, and... well, you can see what happened.

They didn't all die, actually, and thanks to the generosity of fellow gardeners I'll still have plenty of tomatoes, but I won't have the Shakespearean witticism that was putting these two next to each other.  Although I suppose it's even more appropriate that they died young.  (I did plant a Juliet tomato at the demo garden and have an extra Romeo pepper to pair with it, though, so I'll have the joke somewhere.  I hope those two get their happy ending.)

Thanks to the indoor bug problem, my plants were very well hardened-off.  I think the location of my plot had something to do with the lack of resistance: it's in the "valley" of the decidedly-sloping community garden, where cold air tends to pool.  I wrapped the row of peppers (I'd only planted four so far, aside from the isolated Romeo) in row cover as a unit, and the middle two look fine while the outside ones have some damage but are alive.  The tomatoes were all wrapped individually, since I didn't have enough row cover to do the whole area; more than half of them died.  Another lesson learned: the more warm air trapped, the better.

Although, like Nancy, I think I should invest in some Wall o' Waters.  These weather oddities are going to get more common, so we all need to be prepared to protect our plants, or else plant even later than we've been used to doing (which is difficult when the temperatures soar early).

I am popping over to plant a couple of sweet banana peppers today.  There just better not be any more frosts.

Crimson clover and barley cover crops

I like growing cover crops to improve and protect garden soil. Dealing with a winter cover crop that has resumed vigorous spring growth can be a challenge. Here's a bed of barley (planted mid-September) that I covered in mid-April with a brown tarp when it was 18-20 in. high. I was surprised that green growth was still visible after 3 weeks although the plants were greatly weakened. If you simply mow the crop, without weakening it first, it will likely regrow from the crowns.

I then mowed the barley to a 2-in. height and will plant through the residues using a bulb planter for transplants and a narrow hoe to make a furrow for sowing seeds.
Crimson clover is beautiful in early May and will return extra nitrogen to the soil when it decomposes. It's a a little easier to deal with. Mowing it close to the ground will kill it when it's in full flower. I'll plant sweet potato slips into the residues.