Posts from — November 2010

The tradition of gardeners turning to other gardeners for inspiration or advice is probably as old as the practice of cultivation. Most gardeners love sharing information and practices. I have had great conversations over the fence and walking through the neighborhood about the triumphs and tragedies, on a smallish scale, in our flower beds and back yard plots. Even when the ground freezes and weather drives us inside, the gardening discussion continues on the web.

While exploring the internet, I’ve met gardeners from around the world and from Ann Arbor. Those contacts have had an impact on my gardening. I was encouraged to try growing potatoes this summer. I was reminded that there is more than one way to kill a weed– and many of them don’t involve messing with chemicals (boiling water will do the trick). I have been dazzled by the beauty gardeners create with flowers and vegetables. For a moment as least, I have contemplated challenges of gardens that grow year round and opened my mind to the idea that somewhere there are home gardens containing mangoes, or lemons, or papayas — even if my own gardening experience makes that seem like an impossibility.

In the spirit of sharing, here are a few of the gardeners, scattered around the map or here in Ann Arbor, who I turn to for ideas, information, recipes, or a chuckle.

This garden is illegal– Based in Cleveland, the author has created a fun site that includes annual Tomato Tastings of heirloom varieties and a What kind of flower are you? quiz.

Garden Faerie’s Musings– I came across her garden blog online, read her posts at mlive and now here on AnnArbor.com. She’s generous with her gardening knowledge and posts lovely pictures.

Eat Close to Home– A blog focusing on two of my favorite topics, gardening and eating, with an emphasis on local foods.

Project Grow– A fantastic Ann Arbor non-profit organization that provides gardening workshops and classes as well as community garden spaces.

Cold Climate Gardening– The fitting tagline for this site is “Hardy Plants for Hardy Souls.” Lots of resources about gardening in our climate and a sizable directory of others doing the same.

Home Grown Evolution– This site is run by couple of pro-biking DYI-ers in LA who garden, brew, raise chickens, and experiment with self-sufficiency. They’ve written an inspiring and resourceful book, The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Suficient Living in the Heart of the City.

Kitchen Gardeners International– A site that encourages kitchen gardeners around the world with forums, recipes and groups. Includes a map directory feature showing members around the world.

Blotanical– Started by a garden blogger in Australia, this is cool site that provides a worldwide directory of garden blogs. I like the map feature which allows you to zoom in on the garden bloggers in a particular area (that’s where I first read Garden Faerie’s blog!)

No where can you meet more gardeners than on the internet. Where do you look for gardening ideas, information, encouragement, or recipes?

For the last couple of weeks, we have spent some of our 20 minute garden sessions gathering leaves from our yard and some of our neighbors’. Some bagged leaves are keeping dry in our barn for use next season, and some leaves have gone directly into our compost bins. A nice thick blanket of leaves now covers most of our garden beds. They will nourish the soil as they break down over the winter and discourage some of the weeds from popping up in the spring.

Here’s a handy technique we use for keeping those leaves we have rounded up in the garden bed. When we are planting in the spring, we usually put a ring of marigolds around the edge of our large bed, which is a circle 12 feet in diameter. Marigolds are one of Jim’s favorite flowers, and we both like the look of the ring of flowers. They provide a bit of color early in the growing season and develop into a pretty hedge surrounding the vegetables by mid-summer. We have also read that marigolds provide some natural insect repellent due to their not-so-attractive fragrance.

In the fall when we remove the spent plants in the garden bed and compost them ourselves or put them in yard bags, we leave the marigold ring standing. The marigolds serve as a natural fence for keeping the leaves corralled on the bed. In a couple of rains and frosts, the leaves start to mash down enough that they are no longer in danger of blowing away. It’s another sign that the garden is almost ready for a long winter’s nap.

A beautiful sunrise turned into another great fall day and a good opportunity to follow-through on a last minute garden scheme—to plant some garlic. We grew garlic some years back, but we didn’t continue to do. Jim recently read about Carolyn Herriot’s book Zero Mile Diet, which puts an emphasis on organic gardening methods, edible landscaping and growing more food at home, and we’ve talked about how we can increase our production. We use a lot of garlic in our cooking so we decided to give growing garlic another go. My only concern was that we had left planting too late.

A little research convinced me that planting garlic today, November 2, is certainly worth a try. I consulted the website of Diane Dyer. She and her husband are local garlic gurus who operate the Dyer Family Organic Farm, and I read that they are almost finished planting their garlic — to the tune of 14,000 cloves. They are planting varieties with names like Romanian red, Creole red, Purple Italian and Silver rose, which sound both beautiful and delicious and like something I will want to try next summer when they bring their harvest to the farmers’ markets.

With a little planning, I could even be planting some of those more exotic varieties myself. Since I waited until the local supplies of garlic sets have run dry and far too late to order, however, I instead planted separated cloves of some more common variety of organic soft neck garlic. Next year will be different, as the gardener’s mantra goes.

One problem we had in our previous garden bed was that the garlic got ‘lost’ among similar looking plants. This year, we decided to put the garlic all by itself in one of our raised beds to keep a better eye on it.

Planting garlic is a pretty straight forward operation. I dug a row about 6 inches deep in the soil, and then I planted a line of garlic cloves about 4 inches apart. Points up, root side down. I covered the rows with dirt.

One issue this time of year is the heavy presence of squirrels in our neighborhood. They like to dig and search around the yard and garden, especially on newly turned soil. Jim’s suggestion is a little organic blood meal sprinkled around the area. He hopes that perhaps it sends a chill of fear down the spines of the squirrels and makes them think ‘something bad happened here!’ as they scamper away. Regardless it adds nutrition to the soil and gives the gardener the illusion of a preventative action.

The weather is cooperating so if you want to try growing a little more of your own food, it’s not too late to plant garlic. Frosty days are coming soon so hurry up– who knows how long the possibility will last.