A (college) student vegetable garden

Ecoplex vegetable garden

The students at the Clemson University Ecoplex (a duplex retrofitted with energy-conserving features) were up for trying a vegetable garden this fall.

They weren't experienced, but game, and following soil prep (and support and encouragement by an committed CU Housing staff member and CU's Sustainability Program), we planted out transplants of lettuces, mustards, and red cabbage as well as sowing seeds of mesclun mix and other greens in late September.

I was delighted to receive this photo late last week (in addition to reports along the way).  The fall vegetables have been flourishing, and the students report that they've been sharing lettuce and greens with neighbors and others.

Adding nutrients

My experience with the raised beds in the mountains was an eye-opener. 

Fresh commercial compost supported a remarkable lettuce, chard, bean, and tomato harvest (and it's still coming).

So at home in the Piedmont, I've refreshed all of my turned-over beds with compost (with big bags of Brown Kow, a commercial cow manure compost product). 

I wish I had enough homemade compost to do it, but obviously, keeping nutrient availability high requires a LOT more that what I've been doing.  And I'm happier using Brown Kow (a venerable product that I've used in the past) than the 'compost' offered up as a generic big box equivalent.

I've sowed seeds of mesclun mix, arugula, cilantro, etc. in flats and directly in the soil. We'll see.

Happily, the asparagus beds are flourishing, too.  Woodchucks DON'T like asparagus.  Hooray!

Fall kitchen gardening

I'm doing a program tomorrow on fall vegetable gardening.  It's so hot and humid, it's hard to think about sowing spinach, lettuce, chard, beet, kale, turnip, collard, mache, onion, and arugula seeds (not to mention transplants of broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower.  But it's time.  It may not be too late to try a few baby carrots, too, and nurse them along in the heat.

But I was reminded, updating this program yet again, how much I've learned about gardening seasons in the South, and how even simple season extensions (cold frames, row covers, and the like) can extend our three seasons of growing to four.

I haven't yet decided whether to sow kale (Tuscan, Siberian, and Red Bor) in the main vegetable garden or the satellite garden (they're susceptible to both root-knot nematodes and woodchuck herbivory); nor have I figured out what I'll plant in my raised beds in the mountains, when the tomatoes and beans finally decide they're finished.  I may need to come up with a cover for the planted beds, to provide a bit of protection towards potentially earlier frosts.

Growing food, building community

This is the tagline for Garden Fest, an event in its second year at the South Carolina Botanical Garden (my workplace).

SC Master Gardeners providing advice about planning a garden

Supported by a network of groups from SC Master Gardener volunteers, Clemson University's Home and Garden Information Center, (CU) Students for Environmental Awareness, Upstate Locavores, CU Dirt to Food, a troop of middle-school Girl Scouts, and SCBG and Bob Campbell Geology Museum staff, it was a rewarding event.

Ellie Taylor of Upstate Locavores sharing ideas about container gardening

We're basically encouraging folks to grow more of their own vegetables, and providing information about how to do it.

At the introduction table, I talked to young families, retirees, and mid-life folks, all who were interesting in growing more of their own food. It was a nice event.

Joey Williamson and Janet Scott, from CU's Home and Garden Information Center providing advice

Vegetable transplants (a variety of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, and herbs) went off to new gardens (I donated the seeds so I feel a lovely sense of potential bounty shared).

Newly-sown flats

I'm hoping I'll get some transplantable seedlings out of these newly sown flats. I seeded Even Star arugula and collards, spinach, mache (very cold hardy), Siberian kale, and winter hardy lettuces.

It's nuts, of course. We could get a frost any time (on average Oct. 15), or it could be above freezing through late November or early December.

I've got my cold frame ready, though, for these flats.

Fall vegetable gardening

It was a good day in the garden. Feeling much better today after a nasty bout with H1N1 last week, my gardening companion and I puttered happily doing (relatively) small garden projects. Tiring, of course, and it required a bit of rest on both of our parts, but it was delightful to be outside.

I cleaned up the rest of the satellite (vegetable) garden, and transplanted some asparagus seedlings that I'd grown from seed (a European variety called Precoce d' Argenteuil) which I'd purchased in an enthusiastic buying session last winter. They clearly must have been described in a evocative way. They were nice hefty young seedlings and I tucked them into a bed rich with organic matter.

I covered other beds with nicely decomposed straw, thanks to my hay bale experiment last spring. I didn't actually end up with crops from the hay bales (uh, woodchucks can climb, I guess), but the compost planting holes stimulated decomposition much more rapidly than usual. One of the double bales is still in good shape, so I'm going to leave it for a spring planting experiment. We'll see.

My plan is to plant garlic and shallots in some of the satellite garden beds this fall, but let the others get ready for spring greens. Other garlic cloves will be planted in the main vegetable garden, which I'm planning to cover in spring with a crab/shrimp shell fertilizer product that will encourage chitin-consuming micro-organisms. (The idea is that they will also yum up the root-knot nematode larvae, which have chitin in their composition). Hmm.

But letting the main vegetable garden beds be largely fallow over the summer growing season next year may be the most effective 'rotation' to decrease the populations of nematodes.

Slow gardening

I'm feeling awfully behind in my fall gardening at this point.

I 'should' have transplanted greens by now; my home-grown brussel sprouts and broccoli seedlings are languishing in pots. I keep catching a poor young opossum instead of the voracious woodchuck in my Havahart trap. This last time (I think it had pushed its way in, as I hadn't left it set), we provided water and food (dog kibble and fresh apple pieces) before it recovered enough to scamper off into the forest edge.

I managed to get out before dusk this evening , and sow a round of mixed wild kale, Tuscan kale, and some Oriental Spinach, and managed to water them in well.

If I can just keep enough water on those beds, maybe I'll have something to work with, after all. My flats of arugula and mustards look fine, but they're in partial shade in nice fluffy moisture-retentive potting mix.

It's been dreadfully dry in August and early September, so everything is looking wan (the gardener included!)

Dry weather

The return of droughty conditions is hindering germination of fall greens in the main vegetable garden. Lettuce, spinach, and arugula, directly sown, aren't appearing so far. I sowed a second round this evening, hopefully to a better result. I've been too preoccupied with other things to be scrupulous about watering them every day, which doesn't help either.

The salad mixes, wild mustards, and arugula sown in flats are doing fine, but they're in partial shade and easy to keep moist.

But happily, I'm harvesting a few heirloom tomatoes from container-grown plants, and French filet beans, thanks to seeds from my friend CEN, and I'll be sowing some mustards and kale directly in the garden tomorrow evening.

Planting a fall garden

My e-newsletters have been touting planting a 'second' garden lately (Renee's Garden, Vegetable Gardener (Fine Gardening/Tauton Press), and the Tasteful Garden (a family-owned nursery in Alabama). I loved this piece (also on Vegetable Gardener) from Kitchen Gardens magazine archives on cold frames by Elliot Coleman. Geez, thanks to Elliot Coleman, I'm promoting growing vegetables year-round here in South Carolina. At least three seasons!

One of the nicest things about the Vegetable Gardener e-newsletter is that they're providing archival material from KitchenGardener magazine. I had subscribed, years ago, just before it stopped publication, and there is great information to be gleaned from their archives.

Happily, growing vegetables is a subject that doesn't change a great deal; we add new vegetables, extend the seasons, and grow organic, but it's still about improving the soil, plant nutrients, and water.

I was delighted to have a nice group in a Fall Vegetable Gardening workshop this morning. And I'm looking towards fall in my own garden, to be sure, after a bit of an August respite (probably for the best) defined by having to lounge around to recover from minor surgery. Hhrrmph.

I'm going to be sowing seeds of kale, lettuce, collards, and mesclun mix tomorrow in flats and containers. Chard, beets, carrots, chard, spinach, borage, mache (corn salad), dill, fennel, leeks, and cilantro won't be far behind.

What fun.