Container Basics: GRound Rules

These days of wind and rain (and possibly) snow are a great time to curl up with a gardening book and dream of warmer days to come.  If your future gardening plans might involve a container or two, here is the first in a Series of Container Basics with some things for you to consider to ensure that you have a successful season.

Why Garden "in the Round"?

You might not be thinking of adding containers this year - you might be blessed with a sizable yard or community garden plot.  Even so, there are many reasons you might still want to add a container or two. Containers are especially valuable to the urban gardener, restricted as we often are in the sun and space available to us. Read on for how they can help your garden succeed.

Comfrey Attracting Bees

Minimize

There are some edibles that are exceedingly vigorous and so are often better off being grown in containers.  If you've ever planted mint, sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes), lemon balm, comfrey, or bamboo in the ground you might be regretting that decision.  So traditional garden or not, you will be much happier with these plants in a large pot, half-barrel, or upcycled horse trough.

Maximize

By the same token, containers can help you to maximize the

amount of land, light or heat available to you for growing plants. Maybe the best sun you get is on your front porch or driveway edge - containers allow you to "move the soil to the sun" and exploit an otherwise unplantable area for growing sun or heat-loving plants.  The reverse is also true, if you have a very sunny yard but want to grow ferns, hostas or other shade-dwellers and have a suitable patch on a shady back patio.

Microclimate

Say you want to grow blueberries in your traditional veggie garden.  This creates a conflict between the neutral-to-basic-loving vegetables, and the acid-loving blueberries.  A great solution to this could be containers, which allow you to make a soil-less mix with a lower pH (more acidic) while still having your blueberries near to the garden for efficient picking and watering.  More acidic soils are just the start - the microclimate of the container could be adapted to the specific needs of the plant, be they for pH, organic matter, nutrients, or heat.

Speaking of heat (which we are often lacking in the Pacific Northwest), you can also affect the microclimate by putting the pot on or against a surface that retains and reflects warmth, such as a concrete patio or a stucco wall. This is one way to encourage peppers to set fruit and ripen fruit. Containers also warm up faster in the spring and are better-draining than our native clayey soils (in Portland at least), giving you a jump start on planing. However they are also more sensitive to the cold, which can create some challenges for overwintering (we'll get to that in a future post).

Mobility

Microclimate and mobility go hand-in-hand, as containers can be moved as the temperatures drop to protected them from freezing.  Their movable nature can also be an advantage in chasing the sun throughout the day or season, to change up a design grouping, or even move them to a friends house for watering while you're on vacation!  I use the rolling platform at right to move containerized, heat-loving veggies from one side of the back deck to the other during the day as the sun and shadows change.  This effectively gives them "full sun" even though the whole deck is not in full sun all day.

Some Container Caveats

While there are very few hard & fast rules when it comes to growing in containers (depending on who you ask) there are come caveats that you should be aware of to be successful.

NUMBER 1 RULE!

You. Must. Have. Holes. Period.  Without holes, plant roots drown.  Perhaps surprisingly (or not) they need oxygen too!  In fact, in container 'soils' the optimum capacity is about 50% water, 20% air, and 30% solids. So you must give the water somewhere to go in order to let the roots "breathe".  And don't put gravel in the pot bottom to increase drainage, because it doesn't.  It simply gives you less room to plant in.  This will be the topic of a separate post, so you'll just have to trust me for now.

Meet Your New Puppy

YOU - and whomever you rope in to help you - are solely responsible for the growth & success of containerized plants! Being segregated from the native soil, containerized plants rely on you for regular water and soil nutrients.  You will also need to protect these plants from extremes of weather & temperature - heat as well as cold.  If you were planning on bringing home a new puppy you'd have done a bunch of research on the breed, what kinds of problems they are prone to, what makes a good diet, and likely even have a name picked out - so get reading and researching just what will help Julio the Jalapeno or Lucy the Lemon Tree grow and thrive.

Reduce Expectations

Constriction of the plant roots by the container can mean smaller size and/or reduced yields.  This is especially true when growing sun-lovers in areas of marginal sun (less than 6 hours), or when you forget the point above about you being the one responsible for the food and water.  However, you can use this feature to your advantage, for example the root constriction will also dwarf fruit trees, thus making them more manageable in height and spread.

Roots Are Sensitive

Roots are more sensitive and more crucial than above-ground parts - if the top freezes back, it can re-grow as long as the roots are alive, but the reverse is not true.  Remember: containers lower the USDA hardiness zone by 1 – 2 categories, so plants that might be hardy in the ground can be vulnerable in a container.  Roots are more sensitive to heat as well as cold, so dark-colored pots exposed to full sun in the heat of summer might also need protection.

Good Gardening Practices Still Apply

Right Plant - Right Place - Right Pot

Choosing plants, look for the following phrases that can lead you to more appropriate varieties: dwarf, compact, patio, small, mini, and early.  In general go small over big, bush over pole, and multiuse/season over mature crops such as lettuce that you can harvest while young versus cabbage that must form a full head. Additionally, unless you have lots of time or space, avoid anything that takes 85 days or more to mature; this includes winter squash, melons, corn, cabbage, storage onions, beefsteak tomatoes, mammoth sunflowers.

Choosing a place be aware of the amount of sun; access to water, the front/back door, or the place

you are most likely to use & care for the plant; and how the site might be affected by reflected heat, shade from the neighbors tree or house, or the prevailing wind; and the likelihood of being knocked over by kids, mowers, and/or dogs (or for that matter, peed on!).

Choosing a pot can affect how much you have to water, as well as how much heat reaches the soil.  More porous materials such as coil & moss (often founds as hanging basket liners), along with terracotta and wood are more porous, and will loose water more quickly.  Plastic, metal, stone and glazed pottery are less porous and this retain more water.  Dark colored containers, metal ones, and those with a dull finish conduct heat faster than those those with light or reflective surfaces.  Keep in mind too, that smaller pots will loose water and heat up more quickly than larger pots.  Thus bigger pots are better until they become a weight issue to move them.

Integrated Pest Management

Known as IPM for short, this is a pest management philosophy that uses a diverse hierarchy of methods and holistic approach to best gardening practices.  The hierarchy to control pests and disease is:

• Cultural - growing disease-resistant plants, crop rotation, pruning for air circulation, fertilization & watering schedules, and removing downed or fallen leaves & limbs (aka sanitation)
• Physical - using hand labor or machinery i.e. picking slugs of leave or spraying aphids off plants with a hard stream of water from the hose
• Biological - encouraging natural predators, parasites and microbes by planting a diverse landscape - providing food, shelter and protection for 'good bugs', also you can purchase predators such lacewings.
• Chemical - preventing and controlling pests and diseases with the least toxic but effective dose of pesticides. Those pesticides that are OMRI listed are approved for use in organic operations. Remember that even OMRI-listed pesticides are still by definition designed to kill.  As such, practice good pesticide application, including choosing a narrow-spectrum product, not applying on breezy days to avoid drift, and not spraying blooming plants to avoid catching pollinators in the crossfire. 

The Oregon State Extension publication Growing Your Own has a wealth of information on how to manage pests in your garden, as well as alternatives to chemicals, and a wealth of veggie growing information including a section on containers.

For pest management handbooks specific to the Pacific Northwest, you can beat what are collectively known as the PNW Guides that address Plant Disease, Insects, and Weeds respectively.  Bonus - they are all searchable online.

For guides specific to your region, check with your local state extension service - search for yours here.

Stay tuned for the next installment: Picking & Placing Pots

When the Pollen Rains, it Reigns

I've always been especially in tune with the spring-time raining down of pollen - and often suffered some what as a result.  And with this beautiful balmy boost to the spirits, in the full sun I see the golden snow as the trees release - and we sneeze.

One of the best and simplest way to combat the pollen onslaught is to cover your mouth and nose while you are outside, and shower off promptly when you come inside.  This keeps you from further tracking pollen all over the house, sprinkled on your dog and falling in your eyes as you toss your hair in the gentle breeze.

I was also reading an Organic Gardening article on Springtime Allergies and saw that they mention broccoli, kale, collards, and citrus as having 'the right stuff' to help prevent symptoms in the first place.  This happen to conveniently fit into the time of the year that you can buy or harvest these wonder veggies.

Get an easy recipe for Grapefruit & Arugula Salad with Pecans from my kitchen

Great Advice From a Garden Designer

A big thank you to Lorene Edwards Forkner who was the guest speaker this month at the Multnomah County Master Gardener meeting (open to the public and free!).  She delivered an entertaining presentation Plotting the Garden Year (or possibly alternately titled, Getting More Out of Less).

Lorene is a fellow Pacific Northwest gardener who cautions us that PNW gardens are just like a toad's metabolism - slow to get going in the cold, but really ramps up for those moments of sun and heat (about 3 months worth here).  Thus it is better to plant more plants earlier in the year when each one isn't giving you much opportunity to harvest, which you can then thin to fewer, larger plants as the season progresses and each needs more space to achieve ultimate abundance in the "space time continuum". Lorene was full of great garden sayings, three of which I have joined together for the following little gem:

"Gardeners adapt, that's what we do, we adapt - and we throw the dice, because there is always next year."

She was full of great advice too - grow up (vertically that is), chose crops that you can eat one plant all season long such as kale and chard, and save your repeat sowing for tender things such as salad greens and herbs. Forgo waiting 3 months for a "speedy" cabbage, and instead choose a fast-growing flavor mimic like kale or mustard greens.

And speaking of mustard greens, Lorene posits, "I bet you'd save enough money to buy a car by the time you're done filling your yard with heucheras, if you plant red mustard instead". Now that's a design plan I'd like to try!  I've been a big fan of red mustard for years, and I think it's about time it leapt out of the barrel and into the "ornamental" garden, not that there much of a distinction at the best of times in my yard.

She's big on herbs too - and why not! They are fantastic to eat, beautiful to look at, and great food for the bees too.  And speaking of bees, check out next month's speaker, Dr. Ramesh Sagili, delivering a talk on the importance of honey bees, and their current plight. Hint: planting a diversity of flowing plants and avoiding the use of pesticides (even organic ones), especially in the middle of the day when bees are most likely to be out foraging for nectar, are two of the many things you can do to help out.

Now you may have guessed from the numerous post I have devoted to fava beans that I am a fan. (This post has even given me the excuse to set them up with their own label). Well I am in good company in this regard - and now Lorene has turned us all on to crimson favas!  The splendor!  I am on the hunt but everywhere I go online seems to be out of stock... oh the humanity! Time for a dash to Garden Fever...

Lorene also has a really big soft spot for pole beans - she must have mentioned them at least a half-dozen times throughout the talk.  I have largely kept to bush beans, as I'm growing in containers and they can really take over, but she points out too that pole varieties fall into the "one plant, continual harvest category" and so that does make sense for small spaces. These also come in beautiful purple and magenta varieties that make them all the more becoming.  And she points out that with the darling hues they are easier to find and pick!

Other veggies that are great for the "cut back and renew" treatment, or the "continual picking from

one plant" scenario are kale, chard, and beet tops for the former, and in addition to the pole beans (I'm sure Lorene would be happier if I mentioned them again) are cherry tomatoes and tromboncino summer squash for the latter.  She enjoys these especially because they are a firmer type, and can even be eaten when large if left and treated like a winter squash.  Talk about double duty! This variety is especially fun because it can grow into all sorts of fun and twisted shapes (though probably less fun when trying to dispatch them in the kitchen with the veggie peeler...).

This double use of the vegetable that is open to the home gardener is but one of the great examples of "nose to tail eating" as Lorene puts it.  Don't fret when the radishes bolt at the first sign of heat.  Let them feed the bees, and after pollination will follow delectable juicy-spicy seed pods.  I have encountered these myself, and decided that I need to try some to pickled this year.  The radish variety 'Rat Tail', while unfortunately named, has been chosen specifically for this purpose.  Hardneck garlic scapes, nasturtium seed pods, and kale flower buds are all good eats too!  Thus, it is best to let go a little, and make room for serendipity.  For, as my friend Tricia is woe to behold, "you can't control everything in the garden" - though it probably won't keep her from trying, for a couple more years at least.

Some parting words from our engaging speaker: feed the soil, be gentle with it, because we all don't have the luxury of geological time.

Enjoy the Hopeful Signs of Spring!

Holiday Fieldtrip

We were recently out in Pennsylvania and has the distinct pleasure of friends taking us to the
Longwood Gardens, situated about 30 minutes east of Philly in the area of Kennett Square.  The Gardens comprise over a thousand sprawling acres of plantings, fountains, greenhouses, a tree house, and even a music house with a HUGE pipe organ!  The land on which Longw
ood sits has a long and varied history of stewardship, from the indigenous Lenni Lenape tribe,

through the clearing of land and planting of an arboretum by Quaker farmers in the early 19th century, to the eventual purchase of the property by Pierre du Pont.

He bought it in 1906 primarily to save the overgrown arboretum from being razed, but du Pont's interest in gardening soon led to grand changes to the Gardens over his lifetime and the acquisition of numerous smaller adjacent parcels to give room to additional farming activities.  After his death in 1954, the Gardens were given to the public, with a foundation set up to continue his goals of horticulture, education, performing arts and sustainability in perpetuity.

The holiday season is one of the most popular times at Longwood, with  a fabulous display of lighted trees and fountains outside - thank goodness for the hot chocolate with baileys(!) - and impressive seasonal display inside the massive greenhouse.  The chilly walk was definitely worth the price of admission, which are issued in timed tickets, so as not to crowd the many beautiful sights. You can round out the winter wonderland experience with an ice show set to music, and sing-a-long of holiday standards accompanied by the massive 10,010-pipe Aeolian organ.

I especially enjoyed the greenhouse, with numerous beautiful displays of potted bulbs: amaryllis, narcissus, and oriental lilies to name a few. These often floated in a sea of poinsettias,  alyssum, or dusty miller.  Numerous lighted plant 'chandeliers' and wreaths dotted the space, lending a lush and regal feel. There was even a display of apples, amazingly color-blocked in a shallow pond to delineate a green and red scroll pattern.  The greenhouse also featured many walls of potted orchids, an extension of Mrs. William K. du Pont's famous collection that was given to Longwood in 1957. An impressive container collection to be sure!

The orchids are part of the permanent collection and can be seen
any time.  I'm very much looking forward to a return trip in the spring or early summer to see what delights the warmer seasons bring.

Happy Garden Dreams!

A Great Day for Weeding

[Random September Garden Musing]

Today is a great day for weeding
The sun is shining, the air is crisp
The work rewarding
The pace brisk

Breathe in the blue sky
Soak in the bird song
For tomorrow it is supposed to rain
And more rain to come before long

Today is a great day for weeding
Digging up ivy, pulling out grass
The barrels are gleaming
with bare dirt en mass

Breathe in the bird song
Soak in the blue sky
Forget for now what tomorrow brings
And join the sparrow who sings on high

Long overdue weeding mind you!

Fall Planting

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Well, its been a while... renovations, reservations, vacations... they all can take their toll on the garden.  If you've had a outrageously full summer as I have, then your garden may have gone all jungle tangle on you despite all those tame spring fantasies from whence you planted.

When I remember to lift my head out of the paint bucket, or unglue myself from the back splash, I have been rewarded by the 'veggies that could' (survive neglect).  From the wild mishmash of grape vines and volunteer nasturtiums I have plucked peas, fava beans, kale, early lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and of course, zucchini.  Excavating further to the perennial herbs, I appear to still have lovage, marjoram, rosemary, sage, and Italian oregano. So with these small treasures I have maintained that small thread of connection to my garden while both worlds were enveloped in beautiful chaos.

As the seasons turn, I contemplate - can I fit in a late-September sowing of something that will have a chance to germinate in these last few fits of sun before the rains set in?  Is it too late for cover crops?

And so I turn to the Oregon Tilth Planting Calendar, and see that I might try one last hurrah with the same springtime crops I started with, as the season seemed to elapse in a blink of an eye and a cloud of sanding dust.  Those same crops that we push the envelope with in spring, because of their tolerance of lower light and cooler temperatures, are the same ones we can try to coax back into the cold season of fall.

Fall-planted fava beans, shallots and garlic will overwinter, for spring and summer crops next year.  In fact, I tried fall-planted fava beans last year, and to my delight they made it through the winter at a seemingly permanent state of 6" high, to explode with growth in spring.  In fact, they out-produced the spring-planted favas, as where they were both planted is on the North side of a large birch-bark cherry tree,

and as it leafed out in the spring, it increasingly shaded the smaller spring-planted favas while the winter-planted favas were already setting flowers and fruit.  So keep this in mind if you have a sunny spot that becomes less so as spring turns to summer.  In fact, I think I'll exclusively plant fall favas from now on. A bonus too, is that they make a good cover crop over the winter, even if they all don't make it to spring. Just turn those back into the soil, a couple weeks before you are ready to plant in spring.  For more on fava beans, check out this post.

Other veggies to sow now are peas and radishes. Choose quick-maturing varieties for greater success - indicated by the 'number of days' section on the seed package.  Use the package directions to plant, and ensure that the seeds stay moist if those fall rains aren't helping you out. If you get a cold snap during the germination period, try covering the seed with row cover to increase the microclimate around them by a couple of degrees.

If you have a cold frame or a method to cover your container (see resources below), then you could also try your hand with lettuce and mustard greens as they will need more protection to reach a mature stage. Look for lettuces with 'winter' or 'hiver' (French for winter) in their names, or anything that suggests being more cold-hardy. One tried and true variety is 'The Marvel of the Four Seasons' (or Mervielle de Quatre Saisons as its know in its native French).  I'm also going to broadcast sow some mesclun mix, as this is eaten at an earlier stage in growth.

The thing to remember is to be patient - the lower light and cooler temps will make the time from planting to germination longer, sometimes by double.  Help this along by either: 1] starting with transplants (bought or home-grown), 2] germinating seeds indoors just like in elementary by wrapping seeds in wet paper towel, 3] covering the seeds with a cloche, row cover, or cold frame to help warm the air a couple degrees.  Watch it though - if you have a cover on and get a 70 degree day, you can fry those little seedlings, so keep an eye on the forecast.

So in a nutshell the name of the fall planting game is:

• early varieties/short number of days
• cold-hardy varieties (like you would use in the spring)
• giving some cold-protection will help things along
• transplants are great if you can make/find them

RESOURCES

Some great sources for fall planting and looking towards overwintering crops are:

Oregon Tilth Planting Calendar - pdf you can download and use throughout the year to record planting times

Fall and Winter Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest - pdf from OSU Extension, includes how to make cold frames and cover beds

OSU's Growing Your Own is also a great, general resource, with a specific section on Fall & Winter Gardening, including a simple calculation you can do to determine if a variety you want to start now will make it before the average first frost date.

Mother Earth News - winter container garden article about bringing those veggies inside for longer harvest

Garden Betty has a fun picture tutorial about starting seeds on paper towel (or coffee filters, or newsprint).

And if you had a bumper crop this year, or just like to get a heaping box of late-season bounty from your neighbor, farmer or green grocer, check out these great Canning and Preserving Links at Very Good Food ~ For Goodness Sake.

The Garden As (In)Dependence

I recently came across a couple of articles that extol the virtues of the garden, as both a means to

our becoming more independent and self-reliant, and the reverse - understanding our dependence on farms and the natural world as a whole to supply our food. Taken together they offer two complementary angles on the complex web that is the 'food economy'.

First was Robert Rodale's 1976 editorial about personal independence from a past issue of Organic Gardening & Farming. Click here to read the whole article. What he wrote nearly 30 years ago is just as pertinent today: that by regaining some of our independence - be it through cultivation, energy, transportation or thought - we become more self-reliant and resilient, as individuals and as a nation. (Emphasis throughout is mine).

The garden is the best place to start looking for ways to help people become more independent. A garden is both the symbol and reality of self-sufficiency — especially an organic garden, which recycles organic wastes of the yard and household, permits the production of significant amounts of food with only minimal reliance on outside resources. Any campaign to boost personal independence should start by helping people become gardeners — teaching, motivating, and making land available. p.2

Through the garden we are able to do more with our own resources, and promote our independence from one of the largest areas of (potential) corporate influence in our lives -

agribusiness.

Here we can turn to the second article to see how promoting independence through the garden can help us to connect more directly with the food on our plate. Wendell Barry states in Pleasures of Eating: 

Most urban shoppers would tell you that food is produced on farms. But most of them do not know what farms, or what kinds of farms, or where the farms are, or what knowledge or skills are involved in farming. They apparently have little doubt that farms will continue to produce, but they do not know how or over what obstacles. For them, then, food is pretty much an abstract idea —something they do not know or imagine — until it appears on the grocery shelf or on the table. p.1

By engaging directly with our food through growing it, we establish a personal relationship with the seasons, the cycles, the reality of food and feeding ourselves. We are less likely to mindlessly shovel food into our mouths if we have used a shovel to procure it.

For most it is not desirable or feasible to grow all one's own (or one's family's) food, however the simple act of growing some food - be it a pot of thyme on the windowsill or thirteen barrels of tomatoes - helps us to get in touch with the miracle of life and the complex web that sustains us. This conscious eating is in contrast to what Berry observes as a an exile of eater and eaten from biological reality.

When food, in the minds of eaters, is no longer associated with farming and with the land, then the eaters are suffering a kind of cultural amnesia that is misleading and dangerous. The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality. And the result is a kind of solitude, unprecedented in human experience, in which the eater may think of eating as, first, a purely commercial transaction between him and a supplier and then as a purely appetitive transaction between him and his food. p.2

Both authors advocate returning at least some aspects of food production to a smaller scale - ideally erasing many or most of the steps on the trajectory from farmer to eater. Consider Rodale's (27-year-old) statement:

Eating bread in America today is an act of faith in the smooth functioning of one of the most complex food-supply systems ever conceived. p.1

Contemplate, as Rodale does, the network of farmers, grain suppliers, food chemical plants, machine shops, trucking firms, advertising firms, and plastics manufacturers that are required to make one loaf of bread. As he states, "not everything is done most efficiently in big, complex ways". With complexity is more vulnerability to the slings and arrows of fate - climate change, oil prices, inflation, labor strikes, war, business failure, and so on. Compare this with the simple act of making bread at home.

Berry echos this sentiment that bigger isn't necessarily better, but from a health and ecology standpoint; "... as scale increases, diversity declines; as diversity declines, so does health; as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals necessarily increases". This dependence on drugs and chemicals is all too apparent in the conventional food systems that relies on feedlots and overcrowding to achieve 'economies of scale' in the production of animals for meat, eggs, and dairy. Not to mention the chemicals needed to maintain huge monocultures of food crops for humans and livestock.

By maintaining a close connection to the food that sustains us and our local economies, we are not only asserting our independence, we are more able to connect too with the awe-some force of life at work in each mouthful. And in this way we are most able to truly be grateful for the gifts from farm and garden. Some food of thought from Mr. Berry:

Eating with the fullest pleasure — pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance — is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. p.3

May your eating be filled with pleasure.

Sources

Berry, W. 1990. Wendell Berry: The Pleasure of Eating. In: What Are People For? Reprinted at http://www.organicgardening.com/living/wendell-berry-pleasure-eating?page=0,1

Rodale, R. 1976. It’s Time for a New Declaration of Independence. Organic Gardening and Farming. Reprinted at http://www.organicgardening.com/living/new-declaration-of-independence?page=0,0