Category Archives: kale

How to Move a Garden

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This past month has been occupied with moving a 750 sq ft garden from a site that is being converted to an access road. Although a permanent location is not solidified, nor is the design, the temporary arrangement is …. crates! About 110 sq ft of crates!

This was our garden … RIP

Milk crates (12″ cubes) are being used for the primary (new) crops, while vegetable crates (22″x14″x9″) are housing the asparagus crowns and the strawberries. Liners for the crates vary: the vegetable crates holding asparagus are lined with burlap bags, donated by a local coffee roaster. Since the burlap will deteriorate over time, when the asparagus needs to be transferred to its permanent bed, we can just lift the burlap and crowns as a whole and place in the bed, with minimum disturbance. When we moved the asparagus we carefully dug as far under the crowns as possible to minimize disturbing the roots. After a rain, they crowns have produced another crop of fronds. This is a good sign.

The strawberry crates are lined with net bags that housed onions for transport. Again, the strawberries were lifted with as much native soil as possible so that there was little shock. They have now been thinned and are mulched for the winter.

The milk crates are lined with weed barrier, to allow for drainage, but not allowing the soil to leak out. They are filled with soil from the garden and seeded with kale, spinach, carrots, turnips, arugula, and chicory greens. Take a look at the kale and spinach, thriving in the fall weather in its new home!

Thriving kale and spinach!

Now, as an aside, I’ll say that the milk crate garden idea comes from the Riverpark Farm NYC, which created and maintains a large farm solely in milk crates! And milk crates are so portable, that the farm has moved a couple of times since its inception. It’s a marvel.

So … here in Tulsa it can get quite cold. There is a plan. There are two methods that we used in the old garden beds:  mulching heavily and using row cover. The new, temporary, garden will receive those two treatments.

The asparagus already has been given a mulch of straw.  The mulch will insulate from temperature extremes, and will help the soil hold moisture when it rains (or we water).  When the spears turn yellow, we will cut them to about 1-2” and then mulch with about 3” of straw.  This should carry them through freezes.

 The strawberries are getting some light mulching, but as the freezes start we will be adding straw.  In February of this year, when the Great Freeze happened, we completely covered the plants with straw.  When the weather began to warm again, we pulled it aside and the little green leaves perked up.

As for the rest of the crates, we’ll be creating a microclimate.  That means modifying the environment around the crates to lessen the impact of extreme weather.  In the next few weeks, bales of straw will be placed on the north side of the milk crates.  The straw will protect the crates from north winds.  Then the crates will also be sporting hoops to support row cover.  The row cover will also lessen the impact of weather extremes.  And, if it snows or ices, the snow/ice will settle on the row cover and become insulation! 

Winter Vegetable Planting!

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It’s still possible to plant winter vegetables and get them up before the warmth of late spring gets to them.

SpinachI’m going to be adding more spinach (40-50 days to maturity). But I could also plant arugula (40 days), turnips (50 days), carrots (60-75 days), (red) mustard (45 days), bok choy/pak choi (45-55 days) , collards (70 days), chard (50-60 days), kale (40-60 days depending on variety) and … at the end of the month … lettuce (50-60 days) and peas (snap peas as early as 55 days, others up to 70 days). And don’t forget radishes!  They can be seeded and harvested within 30-45 days, depending on the weather.

I was on a tour of community gardens in Dallas last week, and we saw someone with some peas that were at least 2′ high!  We all marveled that they had survived, given that the day was in the 20s with a wind chill! But the tour also brought home to the city planners for whom the tour was organized, that gardening can be done in North Texas year-round.

There is no right or wrong with gardening. No one is going to come and take your garden away if you don’t succeed! Your reward is vegetables.  If you plant something and it doesn’t thrive, it just means you have learned something.  You can hedge your bets by following guides for best dates to plant, but they don’t always work – particularly if we have a late freeze or spring comes early and summer heat comes earlier. Sometimes it’s fun just to try something outside of the guides – just to see if it works! Like the year I decided to winter-over my chard and I found out it can be grown in this area like a perennial.

Gardening is about finding out what works for you, for your gardening style and your location.

And remember….if our average last frost is in mid to late-March, starting some vegetables from seed 8-10 weeks earlier indoors means you’ll have transplants ready to go into the ground on time!

 

SNOW!

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As I write this Sunday evening, snow is drifting down…and sticking on my lawn and on my garden plants.  I have no fear that the chard will survive – it’s truly the wonder green.  I had a chard plant I kept going for two and a half years! I finally took it out, because I wanted to plant something else there.  Chard will freeze, wilt and spring back with watering.

But the mustard?  How will it fare?  I have both green and red mustard.  I’m sure the kale will make it.  Might just water it again tomorrow – deep watering – to give it some warmth.  And the lettuce under the window A-frame is missing out on the snow. 

That can be good and bad.  Snow can insulate a plant from deeper freezes.  But the ad hoc greenhouse may be just enough to keep the plants alive.  This is an experiment!

I tell anyone learning to garden – don’t be afraid to experiment!  That’s what it’s all about!  Try something new. Try a new plant. Try it in a new place or plant it in a new way.  You’ll have some failures. But you’ll also have some surprising successes – like my chard plant.

I’ll write more tomorrow – and may even take a picture or two to show how my garden did/did not survive the early snow.