Planning the Fall Garden: What’s Growing On…

It’s time to start planning the fall garden. This year I’m planning on having my daughter help plan the garden from start to finish and have her plant her own little garden as well to take care of.

September is the best time to start planting in Southern California. The weather is cooling off, not too hot and not too cool. The first steps to having a vegetable garden is of course, planning!

Picking a site

First and foremost, you need to have some space to plant. It doesn’t need to be a large space, but there are three things you’ll need to keep in mind as you decide where to plant.

1. Sunshine. If your plants can’t get sunlight, they can’t photosynthesis and this means they’ll starve. You want to choose a spot that gets at least 6 hours of sunlight a day.
2. Water. Plants are thirsty. They need water, especially in southern California. Make sure the area you pick out is convenient to a watering source or that you can install an irrigation system relatively easily. Having to lug water to the garden every day soon becomes a chore, so make it easy on yourself.
3. Soil. I’m lucky in that my soil is pretty good where I live, a little on the sandy side but I have a twin-barrel composter that turns my kitchen scraps into great nutrients to feel my soil.

What to grow?

When I first started out, I wanted to grow a little bit of everything. This ended up being a bit overwhelming and I ended up with only a few plants of each, they didn’t really grow well, and I ended up letting a lot of the veggies die on the vine because I only had one or two at a time and not enough to really make an effort of turning them into a good dinner.

A better approach is to consider what you most like to eat, and then narrow it down to only maybe 4 or 5 veggies that have a lot of versatility and are prolific in their production. I’ve found that tomatoes work really well because they are easy, prolific, and can be eaten right from the vine as my daughter often goes out into the garden for a mid-afternoon snack. Lettuce, carrots and snap peas also work really well because they take minimal preparation time. I would stay away from things like corn, eggplant, pumpkin, asparagus, or other veggies that take up a lot of room and need preparation before they can be eaten.

Once you’ve gotten the type of veggie, it’s time to break out the catalog and pick 2 or 3 varieties that will grow well in your area. It is important to have several varieties as insurance just in case one species doesn’t grow well in your area. With a little trial and error, you’ll be able to find the exact type that grows best in your area with your style of gardening. Also, some varieties are smaller than others and are described as disease resistant.

Garden Layout

There are two styles that I’ve found work the best:

1. Rows. Gives you lots of room to walk between the rows and easy access to the crops. This is good for large gardens but uses a lot of land for not a lot of yield.
2. Intensive. Planting in squares or large bands. This means less pathways and a little more reaching to get the produce, but a good use of space. don’t make the bands so large that you have trouble reaching into the middle.

Between the two, I am going with the intensive method, and will be using a book called Square Foot Gardening that does a good job of laying out that all is involved with this method.

Seeds or Seedlings

Between the two, I much prefer buying seedlings that someone else has already gone to the trouble of starting. There are several reasons for this:

1. I am impatient. I want to see my plants growing!
2. I know exactly what I’ll have. With seeds, not all germinate and you need to thin out the ones that aren’t doing well.
3. Starting seeds takes time and attention. They take extra time, and as the lazy gardener, I want to keep my garden on automatic as much as possible so I have more time to play with my daughter.
4. Seedlings are durable. Since I’ll be with my daughter, it’s much harder to crush a 5 inch plant to death than a 1/2 inch sprout.
5. And because of #4, my daughter can participate at the very “start” of the gardening and see her plants in the garden from the beginning.

Caring for the garden

I love doing this with my daughter. It can be fast, easy and fun. It is also a great little ritual to get into when I get home from work to spend a few minutes in the garden where I can visit and connect with my daughter as the stress of the day melts away. There are a few things you need to do.

1. Water. If you have raised beds, you’ll want to water every other day, otherwise twice a week should be fine.
2. Weed. just peruse the garden as you look for produce to harvest and pick the occasional weed.
3. Fertilize. I use composted kitchen scraps, but others may want to use packaged commercial fertilizer. Be sure to follow the directions on the box or you may end up damaging your crops with too much of a good thing.
4. Check for diseases and pests. Make sure you don’t have fungal growth, aphids, whitefly, or other insects. If you do, nip it in the bud before it becomes a problem. I use insecticide soap as a safe deterrent.

Harvesting

This is the best part and the reason we’ve gone through all this work! I’ve spent many evenings with my daughter in our small garden “discovering” ripe red tomatoes and eating them right from the vine. I would encourage everyone who has a garden to plan a garden dinner every once in a while where you go out with your son or daughter and pick the produce and together create a dish for dinner. This is fun, adds to the excitement of gardening for your little one, and is rewarding in that you know you are eating the food that you nurtured.

Enjoy!

Composting With Worms vs. Hot Composting

Hot Composting

As the name implies, thermophilic composting involves an important heating stage. This heat is caused by microbial metabolism and is dependent on the size of the heap, C:N ratio of the materials, moisture content and aeration. During this heating stage, temperatures will ideally be in the 140 F (60 C) range, but will often be higher or lower.

This type of composting typically follows the ‘batch’ model – that is to say all the materials for the heap are piled up at one time and no more is added. In order to establish a sustained heating phase a ‘critical mass’ of materials is required. Assuming adequate C:N ratio, a pile needs to be at least 1 cubic meter in size (somewhat larger is probably better though).

Hot composting can be achieved when materials in the pile have a C:N of between 20:1 and 40:1, but ideally it should be between 25:1 and 30:1.

Pros
1) Enables processing of larger quantities of materials in a smaller area
2) Can proceed relatively quickly under ideal conditions
3) Can kill weed seeds and pathogens
4) On a large scale can proceed easily in cold weather

Cons
1) Can be labor-intensive (piling wastes, turning pile etc) and require more attention
2) Heat can kill off many beneficial microbes
3) May require some stock-piling until sufficient materials available for ‘batch’
4) Heating can lead to considerable nitrogen loss

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Vermicomposting

As mentioned, vermicomposting is somewhat similar to hot composting in that it involves the breakdown of organic wastes, but one of the major differences of course is that it involves the joint action of earthworms and microorganisms (whereas the other process relies solely on microbes). I should mention that the term ‘earthworm’ is actually somewhat misleading, since the worms needed for worm composting are specialized for life in rich organic materials (not soil).

Worm composting is also a much cooler process – working best at 59-86 F (15-30 C). It typically follows the ‘continuous’ composting model – that is to say materials are added continuously (usually in smaller amounts).

Again, C:N ratio while fairly important, is not quite so critical for optimal performance. Materials with high C:N ratios (such as paper sludge) have been processed quite readily via vermicomposting.

Pros
1) Tends to be somewhat less labor-intensive – no turning/aerating necessary (worm activity helps to mix, fragment and aerate materials)
2) Cooler temperatures help to conserve nitrogen
3) Higher moisture contents not an issue (and actually preferred)
4) Materials can be constantly added (no need to stock pile in preparation for next ‘batch’)
5) Size of system unimportant – ideally suited for both indoors and outdoors
6) Considerable academic evidence to indicate that vermicomposts have beneficial properties not found in hot composts
7) Under ideal conditions, wastes can be processed very quickly

Cons
1) Won’t kill seeds (and although there is a fair amount of evidence to indicate pathogen destruction, more research is required)
2) More space required to process similar amounts as hot composting – need to be careful with amount added (since excess heat will kill worms)
3) Outdoor systems much more limited by cold weather
4) Worms need to be separated from compost
5) Worms (although quite resilient) do require some attention and proper care.

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As far as which of these two processes is “better”, it totally depends on the situation. I personally think an optimal approach (when possible) is to combine BOTH of these two methods. By ‘pre-composting’ then vermicomposting waste materials you can get the best of both worlds. Pathogen and weed seed destruction of hot composting (without too much nitrogen loss), followed by fast processing by worms and production of high quality vermicompost.

Needless to say, I’ll be talking about both these processes (along with other related composting methods) in much greater detail in coming weeks and months, so do stay tuned!

Composting Basics–A Balanced Diet

The materials you add to your compost pile or bin are food for the organisms that actually make the compost. It's helpful to categorize these materials based on their carbon nitrogen ratio. All living things on earth have both nitrogen and carbon in them. Those materials with a ratio below 30, or 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen are considered high nitrogen inputs and are called greens. Those with higher ratios are high carbon browns.

Most of us get the lion's share of our material from either the yard or the kitchen.

• Yard and Garden Waste
  • grass clippings, green weeds, and most garden trimming are greens
  • fall leaves, dead dried plants are browns
• Kitchen Waste
  • food waste including fruits and vegetables as well as meat and dairy leftovers would all count as greens. It is often recommended that meat, fish and dairy be left out of the compost, but with care you can compost them.
  • dirty paper napkins, used kleenex, the rolls from toilet paper and paper towels, as well as shredded paper from the home office can make up part of the compost browns.

Don’t Toss that Yard Waste!

Yard waste makes up 20-30% of a community's residential waste.  On average, each rural or suburban household produces about 6000 pounds of yard waste per year, which could easily be composted to produce a useful soil amendment.