Don’t Forget to Feed the Garden

My Summer garden, which seconds as a winter compost pit

So two days ago, as I was digging around in the garden I found my soil cultivator. It is supposed to be a 3-pronged metal hand tool with a green plastic handle. However, my garden has been digesting it for a while. About a year and a half ago I was out turning the compost in the pit I call my summer garden. For some reason I felt the need to have my cultivator to help me turn the leaves in the compost. I remember I had completed my project for the night in the unfinished compost and so I began looking around at my tools. I had my shovel, my rake, and… where was the cultivator? After searching a while for it I realized I had left it in the ground. I dug around for it and have made attempts to find it previously. Over time I had given up all hope of finding it– until yesterday. This is tangible proof that my garden gets hungry! Call the cultivator an iron supplement.

As an organic gardener I have come to the realization that my compost needs to be fed often. In order to make the most of my limited backyard space, each of my two gardens seconds as a compost pile in the off-season. For house compost, I dig a ditch and throw all the biodegradable goods in. Once each ditch is almost filled I cover it with soil. Then I dig another ditch for additional kitchen scraps. My wife calls them “offerings” to my garden – perhaps suggesting that I worship my garden- which I do not! I sometimes get bags of leaves or a pickup bed of manure to add to the mix and add bioactivity to the whole system. From time to time I productively expend energy and focus my frustrations by turning the compost. When a change in the season necessitates the use of the garden I am composting in, I finish covering all the compost in my garden bed then add a layer of some very finished compost or a mix of sifted dirt, vermiculite, and peat moss.



The cultivator  looked like the other  tools until the compost "digested" it



Tomatoes in the Winter

A local middle school gardening club lead by one of its teachers has experienced a lot of success in producing food for students and teachers alike. This gardening club not only grows winter veggies but lives on the edge by growing summer veggies too. Below are some recent pictures from this lovely garden.

 

A well-kept Tucson Winter Vegetable garden.



Growing summer varieties in the winter is not for the faint of heart. Some individuals who live near trees or have some other safe place to grow more temperate vegetables can take more risks than the rest of us can. Often such individuals use trees, walls, houses, and others nearby structures as heat reservoirs. Growing tomatoes out in the open in February is not worth the work for me. Saying that, there are some gardeners here in Tucson who can – and do. They gamble their crop for bragging rights of having tomatoes in March or April.



February Tomato Blossoms.



A tomato plant producing tomatoes into February.




Large Indeterminate Cherry Tomato Plant in February



Broccoli is grown by many gardeners here in Tucson, though – despite having a picture of me with broccoli for my avatar – I do not grow it much because I am not willing to nurse it through the late summer or pay for starts in the fall. My attempts at broccoli starts have failed so many times that I have removed broccoli from my crop rotation all together.



Beautiful Blossoming Broccoli



I grow some artichokes, but mine have never grown this big. It helps if you grow it over multiple seasons.



If you leave them for a while, Artichokes can grow quite large

Many Tucsonans gobble down chilies, though I know very little about them. I have a pretty Caucasian background so I am only guessing when I say this is a picture of a Chiltepin pepper.



A Chiltepin pepper - I think

Here come the Rains



Finally - Winter Rains Arrive in Tucson

Why we actually recognize a day named after a rodent remains a mystery. Despite this, it seems that the groundhog may have been right in seeing his shadow this year. The winter rains have come, leaving snow on the mountaintops and perking my plants back up. My winter plants were looking quite sad in the recent heat. The wet cool weather enables their shallow root structure to access more nutrients than hot dry weather allows. Although I try to harden my winter veggies off when they are young, most winter crops do not develop a deep enough root system to allow me to water once a wee. In order to adapt to rain patterns I usually water once a week. In order to adapt to rain patterns I usually water by hand in the winter. However, this winter’s warm dry weather is testing my aspirations of being a lazy gardener.


Mt. Lemmon is dusted with Snow!



The Winter garden - rejuvenated by the winter rains.



The rest of my winter garden.

Wintersown Seeds

During my search for just the right tomato variety I stumbled upon a gardening forum that mentioned Wintersown tomato seeds. Wintersown is a non-profit organization that provides almost free samples of tomato seeds. They have well over 100 different varieties of tomatoes alone. All that is required to take advantage of this wonderful offer is to send Wintersown a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with their order form (that you print out) and they will send you your seeds. As a matter of caution, you will have to be a proficient enough gardener that you can achieve a high success rate from seed to tomato, as they only provide between 8-10 seeds per small bag that they send. In any case, I made sure to donate to their cause by sending them some extra seeds with my order. I really appreciate the service that Wintersown provides to us gardeners who need a few more tomato varieties. Last summer I even grew a Rio Grande tomato plant from my Wintersown seeds. Considering all that I received by trying Wintersown out I decided it was well worth my time to send them an envelope. Besides, there was no beating the price considering I now have the opportunity to try out several tomato varieties for the price of a few stamps.

Note: I did receive permission to link to their nonprofit site before posting this.



Some of the tomato seed varieties I received from Wintersown.org



Radiant Heating in the Winter

Though I have been gardening but a few years, as I have been doing so I have noticed that the climate here in Tucson is warmer than the catalogues that said “Zone 8” on them stated. Other than last winter when we had an unseasonably cold 15 degree Fahrenheit Temperatures (and all of Tucson was having their non-insulated pipes break) the temperature usually only dips near freezing at night for a couple of weeks. Given what I have experienced the last couple of years it is about time the USDA changed their map to better reflect more recent climate trends.

Given the unseasonably warm weather this year and finding that the weather forecast had no chance of freezing any time soon, I decided to transplant three of my tomato sets into the summer garden to see if I could get a jump on the season. I set out two of the plants with plastic around them to heat up the ground and the third I did not cover, but just set a milk gallon jug full of water next to it. The sun is now coming up before 7:30 so it should be warming up, right?



Left plant-was covered, Middle Plant-covered, Right plant-no covering.


Wrong. Just the other morning I found that the cold had really nipped at a couple of my tomato plants. So I cut them back. Then I noticed something else. The plant with the water next to it had no effects from the freezing while the other two did. I have noticed in the past that little tents or conches do little to stave off the effects of freezing and I have noticed that clear or opaque water containers help tomato plants from freezing but I have never seen this so clearly demonstrated. The practical science behind this is that the water bottle absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. The more water in containers, the more balanced temperature should remain.

For future reference - I will definitely make use of soda pop bottles and milk bottles (filled with water) to get an early start on the season. I’m glad that I could make this mistake so that others (and hopefully I) can learn from it.