When you go out to the garden, express your sense of style — and get the job done.
The Real Deal Hat, made from recycled canvas truck tarps. Inside the hat, it says, " ... don't take care of this hat; it will take care of you. There is nothing you can do to this hat that hasn't been done before ..."
Me in my pinch-front hat.
Detail on the Real Deal Hat
Zombie-killer Woody Harrelson in the Real Deal Hat.
In recent years, gardeners have become more and more fashionable. For instance, you can buy hot-pink gloves, flowered wellies and pumpkin-orange ankle boots. — and you can get them dirty. But if you really want to get fashionable, think about a hat. It says more about your sense of fashion than anything else.
For those who wear hats, the choices are better than ever. You can find Asian-style conical hats, crushable hats, visors, pith helmets and boonie hats. All provide some measure of protection from the sun. And that's the thing I like about hats in the garden: They're stylish and functional. You get to make a fashion statement and get the job done.
In my work as a landscaper, I wear a pinch-front style made of straw. It's an old friend that keeps me from getting too much sun and makes customers think — if only for a second — that a Nashville superstar is pulling their weeds.
This year, I was excited to see a new hat in our summer lineup called the Real Deal Hat. It's made in Brazil from recycled canvas tarps. Each hat is unique and may include patches, seams, holes and Portuguese writing or lettering. A piece of wire in the brim makes it easy to shape it as you wish.
The hat was discovered about two years ago by Real Deal founder Walter R. Perkins. He first saw a similar hat in a seaside marketplace while visiting Brazil. Eventually, he found out where the hat was made, about two hours inland, south of the equator. According to Frank Rabey, Real Deal's public relations guy, "He made a fairly harrowing trip to their town; the heat, he says, was almost unbearable." Perkins met with a family of sewers to see if they could make hats for him, suggesting a design with more of a traditional fedora shape. Within hours he had several prototypes.
Today, the recycled Brazilian hat has attracted many followers over here with its funky, renegade style. "The funny thing is that for many customers, the more beat up the hat looks when it arrives to them, the better," Rabey says. For instance, a fisherman from Wisconsin wrote about the reaction he got from a clerk upon returning to his hotel after a day of fly fishing: "That is the rattiest old fishing hat I have ever seen. I bet that hat has some stories to tell." What's more, the hat has been made famous by Hollywood; it was worn by Woody Harrelson in the movie Zombieland.
Zombie killers, renegades ... sounds like the hat for me. Maybe a pair of those pine-green Mud Gloves, too.
If you want to get your vegetable garden off to a fast start, you need to plant your seeds in soil that's warm enough to ensure good germination.
If you want to get your vegetable garden off to a fast start, you need to plant your seeds in soil that's warm enough to ensure good germination.
For each type of seed — beans, carrots, lettuce — there is a range of temperatures at which that particular type of seed will germinate (see the chart above). Beans, for example, will only germinate if the soil temperature is above 60 degrees F and no warmer than 95 degrees F.
How do you take your soil's temperature?
We use our Compost Thermometer, which goes from 0 to 220 degrees F.
There is also an “optimum temperature” at which seeds germinate most readily. In the case of beans, that optimum germination temperature is 80 degrees F. In a perfect world, you would wait for the soil in your garden to be 80 degrees F before planting your beans. At that temperature, you could expect nearly every seed to germinate.
But when spring comes, we are eager to get our gardens planted, and we don’t want to wait around until midsummer to plant beans. In cold climates, the soil temperature in our gardens may never reach 80 degrees, and even if it did, by that time the crops wouldn’t have a chance to mature before frost. Hot-climate gardeners need to get their crops planted early so they will mature before the heat of midsummer.
So how does a gardener know when the soil is warm enough to plant? Dr. Jerry Parsons, Extension Horticulturist at the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, has identified what he calls a “realistic” soil temperature for germination. This is a soil temperature at which gardeners can expect good germination and strong early growth. Germination rates may be at 70 percent rather than 100 percent, but you can just sow the seeds a little more thickly.
The chart above indicates the minimum and maximum germination temperature ranges for each vegetable crop. The location of the black dot indicates the optimum germination temperatures (according to the University of California at Davis). The green dot is the “realistic” soil temperatures that Dr. Parsons recommends to ensure good germination in the garden. For practical purposes, you can start planting as soon as the soil reaches this temperature.
When you're deciding how to manage pests in your garden and landscape, keep this in mind: First, do no harm. The vast majority of garden visitors are either helpful or harmless.
Learn to identify ladybug larvae, right. They are major aphid eaters.
As you make your first visits to the garden this year, you're sure to see a few bugs. Keep in mind that the majority of garden visitors are either helpful or harmless. Get on a first-name basis with as many of them as possible. Here are some of the "good guys" that you should know:
Ladybugs: The familiar ladybug is a well-known aphid eater. Plus, it's cute. Although ladybug larvae are far from cute, they eat even more aphids.
Lacewings: Another aphid-eater. The lacebug larvae won't win any beauty contests either, but they rival ladybug larvae in the aphid-eating department.
Caterpillars: Not all caterpillars are pests. If you like butterflies, take time to learn to identify pest caterpillars and good caterpillars, including their eggs.
Pest eaters: In addition to ladybugs, other beneficial insects that help control pest insects include dragonflies; parasitic (non-stinging) wasps; tachinid and syrphid flies; and the colorfully named damsel, assassin and big-eyed bugs.
Decomposers: Centipedes, sowbugs and ground beetles break down organic matter, helping release the nutrients to garden plants.
Pollinators: Bees, moths, butterflies, wasps and beetles all play a role in pollination, ensuring that crops are fruitful.
Toads: You'll have fewer slugs if toads are in residence.
Spiders: Spiders control aphids, caterpillars and other insect pests.
Bats: Most species consume huge numbers of insects every day, and others are important pollinators.
Birds: Most backyard birds eat a combination of seeds, berries and insects. But in late spring and early summer, birds are busy filling the mouths of their hatchlings, and baby birds like nothing better than freshly caught bugs.
I talk with urban and suburban gardeners every day and I’m impressed with how people cope with food production in small spaces. Those with decent soil and sun in the right place often plant in the ground, mixing ornamentals and food together in their small plots.
Slideshow: Small-Space Gardens To see captions, click on the image. To share comments or explore further, go to Flickr.
Grow Beds help small-space gardeners grow more in less space.
More Information
Space-Intensive: Everything for small-space gardening, including tools, raised beds, supports, soil and fertilizer.
I talk with urban and suburban gardeners every day and I’m impressed with how people cope with food production in small spaces. Those with decent soil and sun in the right place often plant in the ground, mixing ornamentals and food together in their small plots. As I walk through neighborhoods, I see peppers, eggplants, chard, kale and tomatoes tucked into flower borders. String beans share trellises with morning glories and clamber over the tops of picket fences and along the railings of fire escapes.
Space constraints frequently lead to other creative techniques, like using food crops as ornamentals. Customers tell me about planting hedges and screens of blueberries, raspberries, dwarf fruit trees and sunflowers. I’ve encouraged homeowners to plant trellised grapes as property dividers, too, because they take up even less space than a hedge. On a trip to Portland, OR, I saw a tiny garden with a squash vine scrambling over an evergreen hedge and raspberry canes tucked into a 2 ft.-wide row between the house and the sidewalk.
Many vegetables varieties are pretty enough in their own right to grow without sacrificing ornament. Eggplants have beautiful purple stems and flowers and shiny, colorful purple, pink, white or striped fruit. Hot peppers cover themselves with fiery fruits. Lettuces offer a huge array of leaf colors, patterns, and shapes that even rival hostas. Tomatoes trained up a colorful spiral qualify as garden art. Most herbs fit easily into perennial and butterfly borders and some, such as creeping thyme and mint, can serve as ground covers. Try tall, feathery dill at the back of a border and curly parsley as edging at the front.
Last summer, I spoke with a city gardener with a postage-stamp yard who grows everything in our Grow Beds. She says that she has 14 of the 3 ft. x 3 ft. beds and she plants all her vegetables and flowers in them. The soil in her yard is poor, so she fills the raised beds with a rich mix of compost and topsoil. I've been using them for several years and love them, too.
Container gardens allow even landless gardeners to put some of their own food on the table. Recently, a customer told me that he plants half-barrels of sweet potatoes along the sidewalk in front of his apartment building. They enjoy the heat and look terrific all summer, he says, and they provide a bumper crop of tubers in the fall. Condo balconies support self-watering containers full of salad fixings and Revolution Planters hang from porches even in the most asphalt-paved neighborhoods.
Growing in small spaces has real benefits, too: fewer weeds and pests, less maintenance time, and often, more food per square foot. Raised beds, containers, and integrated gardens fit better into our busy and demanding lifestyles than the old 20 ft. x 40 ft. rototilled gardens I grew up with. Gardening has undergone a revolution in my lifetime, and, as Martha might say, “That’s a good thing.”
—Ann Whitman
Green Goods Supervisor, Gardener's Supply
Like many who lost tomato plants to late blight last year, I'm wondering: How can I make sure it doesn't happen again this year?
Plant a diversity of tomato varieties to reduce the possibility of disease.
Like many gardeners who lost their tomato crop to late blight last year, I'm wondering: How can I make sure it doesn't happen again this year? Unfortunately, there's no silver bullet. The most important thing you can do: be alert, be prepared.
Before deciding which tomato varieties to plant this season, consider choosing one that's shown some resistance to the fungus (Phytophthora infestans), which causes late blight. Though no varieties are immune to late blight, the ones on the list below stayed healthier than others. If you can, start your own plants from seed or buy transplants from a trusted local source. You might also want to plant some varieties that mature early, such as Early Girl, so if late blight does strike, you may still get a harvest.
Resistant Varieties
The following tomato varieties show high resistance to late blight. The information comes from the University of Maine Extension.
Legend
Matt’s Wild Cherry
Santa
Ferline
Fantazzio
Sun Chief
Juliette
Red Pearl
Plum Regal
Mountain Magic
Based on customer feedback and field trials, Heather Jerrett, R&D Trials Coordinator at High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, VT, notes that the following varieties show some degree of resistance:
San Marzano
Roma VF
Suzanne
Fortunately, the fungus that causes late blight is unlikely to survive the winter, especially if the plants were properly destroyed. The disease needs living tissue to survive, so it can't overwinter on tomato cages or supports. However, infected potatoes (the other plant that gets late blight) can carry the disease through the winter. Be sure to destroy any volunteer potato plants that come up. If you plant potatoes again, be sure to buy seed potatoes that are certified as disease-free.
If possible, avoid planting tomatoes and potatoes where you had them last year. Be sure to give plants plenty of space, based on recommendations for the variety. Maximizing airflow and light around the plants will help them resist disease. Make use of trellises and supports that will keep the vines off the ground.
Using soaker hoses or drip irrigation keep foliage dry, which makes it more difficult for late blight — and other diseases to spread. Avoid overhead watering techniques (sprinklers). Water early in the day so the foliage can dry before nightfall.
Learn to recognize the weather conditions that foster the spread of late blight. The disease spreads rapidly in cool wet weather, whereas dry weather tends to hold back the disease. Your local cooperative extension is probably monitoring disease conditions for home gardeners as well as farmers, so they may be a good source of information. Stay in touch with gardeners in your area so you'll know right away if late blight is near.
If the weather forecast calls for cool, wet weather, you might want to begin preventative spraying. The key word is preventively. Once plants are infected with late blight, it's too late to save them. Organic farmers and gardeners have had the most success with copper sprays (such as Garden Dust), and beneficial bacteria (Bacillus subtilis), as found in Serenade Garden Disease Control. Before using any of these sprays, read the label and use them accordingly. In most cases, effective protection requires that plants be sprayed as often as weekly throughout the growing season. Remember that these sprays do not prevent the disease, but they can slow its progress.
If your plants succumb to late blight, take action immediately. Pull up the plants and either seal them tightly in a trash bag, or place them under black plastic, where the sun's heat can kill the spores. Do not compost blight-infected plants. If left unattended, the disease will spread quickly from your plants to those of your neighbors and local farmers. Please, garden responsibly!
Posts
