Preventative Garden Maintenance

Finally, some sun. With a few sunny days this week, we saw most of the veggies and flowers doing quite well. Unfortunately, we also saw some early signs and evidence of pests beginning to target our veggies. Early detection of these garden pests allowed for us to take early and preventative measures to be sure they don't take over.

The pests of concern this week were snails, slugs, and flea beetles. First up, the snails and slugs. After a bit of research, we found that the slugs and snails were most likely destroying the bean leaves. When we first noticed the issue, we checked every plant for eggs, and insects. Since there was no evidence of any other pests, we decided to deal with the snail and slug issue. In the past, the organic garden has attempted to use beer to lure snails and slugs into containers. This process turned out to be quite messy and unattractive to have occurring in the garden. The results of the beer lure weren't helpful enough to be worth the effort. Since these attempts, we've been using Sluggo to deal with the snail and slug problem. The active ingredient in Sluggo, iron phosphate, is palatable to slugs and snails. Upon consumption however, they stop feeding and will most likely seek a less exposed place to reside.

Slugs and snails aren't the only pests on the radar. We've also identified a few flea beetles on multiple eggplants. The hoop houses seem to be providing some protection from pests. All of the plants that had flea beetles on then were outside of the hoop houses. While we've been continuing to monitor the presence of flea beetles, we haven't taken action to remove them. The plan to deal with them in the near future is to use neem oil. A solution of neem oil and water will be sprayed on affected plants. The neem oil works to suppress the appetite of insects such as the flea beetle, causing them to loose interest in feeding on plant leaves.

We'll see what next week brings but, for now it seems we have garden pests under control. Early detection and early action allowed for the problems to remain under control, minimizing the damage done to the garden. So far, the key to early detection has been regular walk through observation of every variety.

Here Comes The... Sun?

In terms of our agenda this week, we were in great shape. In the world of organic gardening however, extra time at the end of the day doesn't mean there's nothing else to do. We focused our efforts on some overdue maintance of our operation. Weeding, fence repair, and record keeping kept the ball rolling. Perhaps a more exciting aspect of this week was the opportunity to experiment with new types of companion planting.

Companion planting is combining different plants (herbs, flowers and veggies) to get a desired outcome.  Outcomes such as detering pests, attracting beneficial bugs, helping each companion grow etc.

Basil and Marigolds became companions to many varieties that have already been planted. They were both planted alongside Cucumbers and Peppers. The Basil alone was added to the Tomato beds. Two new companionships are that of Green Beans and Eggplant, and Dill and Brussel Sprouts. We're excited to see the outcome of the relationship offered by the Green Beans and Dill. That's the extent of our companion planting for now although, there's more in the works. To find out more about specific relationships between companions, how it all works out, and future companion planting we'd love to see you at our Garden Structures and Companion Planting workshop. For more information on this, and future workshops please subscribe to the sustainability mailing list.

While the weekend ahead looks a bit rainy, some sun in the week to follow would help many of our plants take hold. Some veggies that we'll be watching are the Pac Choy, Bush Beans, and Carrots that germinated this week. In addition, the Tomatoes! They're enduring these less than ideal conditions and more installments of hoop houses are definitely helping out but, they're going to need some sun.

Organic Garden Seminar Series

This season, we are excited to introduce our OG Seminar Series.  During the growing season, we will be running small workshops that will cover a range of different gardening topics.  The seminar series is meant for both the first time gardener as well as the Master Gardener.  While our intention is to teach you, we also hope to learn about your gardening experiences and what’s worked for you. 

Space will be limited for these workshops; a maximum of 10 spots will be available for each session.  Those on the Sustainability mailing list will have first dibs at a spot (you’ll get a notice a couple days before it goes out on the DailyDigest).  So if you haven’t yet, make sure you subscribe to the Sustainability mailing list (on the mySMC page, on the right there is a link called Mailing Lists – click on that and scroll all the way down).

Specific dates will be announced as each session gets closer; the times will be 12:15-1:00.

JUNE

Garden Structures & Companion Planting (3^rd week)
Our first seminar will go over gardening basics with a focus on garden structures and their uses (different types of trellises, hoop-houses, row covers, insect nets and plastic mulches).  Also, we’ll talk about the technique of companion planting and show you our favorite companions and discuss what their function is (and how well they’ve worked for us over the years)

Pruning (suckering) Your Tomatoes (4^th week)

Ever heard of suckers?  We’ll show you how to identify suckers in order to prune your tomato plants to ensure a healthy plant and a good harvest.  Bring a pair of garden pruners and we’ll do a hands on workshop!

JULY

Garden Pests! (1^st or 2^nd week)
We’ll walk you through the garden and show you how to identify many of the common pests that like to inhabit your garden: cucumber beetles, squash bugs, flea beetles, cabbage worm, tarnished plant bug, etc.  We’ll also discuss the organic methods we utilize to try to keep these pests under control.

Harvesting and Curing Garlic (3^rd or 4^th week)

Did you plant some garlic in the fall for a summer harvest (or are you interested in planting it this year)?  Do you know when the best time to harvest it is and how to “cure” it?  We’ll show you how to identify the right time to pull up your garlic as well as methods on how to harvest it without puncturing the delicious bulbs.

AUGUST

Planning your Fall Harvest (1^st week)

 Has your lettuce and spinach bolted?  Would you like to enjoy fall radishes or scallions?   We’ll go over making a plan to plant in order to enjoy a fall harvest of delicious greens  and other vegetables.  We’ll also discuss different ways to pro-long your fall harvest into early winter (some easy & cheap tricks to do this!)

Garden Vision Over Lunch! (3^rd or 4^th week)

Celebrate the end of summer with the Garden crew down in the garden.  We’ll harvest your lunch in the morning: fresh cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, sweet bell peppers, garlic hummus & pesto to spread on local breads.  Enjoy some garden cantaloupe for dessert.

While enjoying a very fresh, delicious lunch, we’ll talk about our vision for the Organic Garden program and ask you for ideas as well!

(We will be asking for a voluntary donation for this lunch session)

The OG Seminar Series Instructors:

Michael Carlin

Mike just graduated in May with a BA in Environmental Studies and is this year’s OG Intern.  His gardening experience comes from his parents.  Mike can’t remember a summer at home where he wasn’t in his parents garden taking care of vegetables and pests.  His interest in organic gardening has grown since his time at SMC through the Environmental Studies program and hearing from friends about the OG as well as different guest lectures by Heather Lynch talking about the program.

Piper Krabbenhoft

Piper, SMC ’14, is majoring in Environmental Studies and is this year’s OG Crew Member.  Piper was eager to become part of the OG Crew as she’s interested in getting back to where food comes from and how sustainability plays a role in this process.  She’s interested in rebuilding the human relationship with food, with a focus on the soil to seed relationship.  Piper took part in the India Trip of May 2012 with the Environmental Studies program which focused on biodiversity based organic farming; this trip solidified her passion for sustainable agriculture.

Heather Lynch

SMC Sustainability Coordinator/Associate Director of Facilities and Organic Garden Program Director, Heather Lynch is a fourth generation gardener.  An Extension Master Gardener (UVM Master Gardener program 2013) and a Master’s of Science candidate in Sustainable Food Systems at Green Mountain College 2015, Heather strongly believes in the importance of experiential learning when it comes to local food systems and the importance of having such a space to get hands-on learning in this growing field, especially for a campus in Vermont.

Bring On The Heat!

 We witnessed some extremes of Vermont weather since the last post. From snow in the mountains, to 90 degree heat on Friday. The weather and temperatures this past week provided a good example of the need to use various tools to allow the garden to thrive; in addition, as the soil began to heat up towards the end of the week new planting opportunities arose.

One new tool we're trying out are hoop houses with green house specific plastic. These hoop houses provide a smoother transition for some of our plants. We planted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and watermelon under the hoop houses to, hopefully, give them a better start. The hoop houses are a nice transition between hardening off and full exposure to the elements.
On a similar but different note, tools to assist with garden pests. This year, we've lowered the electric fence and, reduced it to a single wire. The single line fence now sits no more than 5 inches off the ground. The main pest we are trying to deter at this point are the rabbits. After a litter of (carrot leaf eating) rabbit kittens was born in the garden last year, we needed to do something.

So, we're trying out a few new tools to yield more, healthier veggies. From what we've seen, the hoop house plants are initially looking better than the ones planted in full exposure. As for the fence, we'll soon find out how effective it is.

Willful Weather & Willful Gardeners

What a week it's been down in the garden.  While we certainly needed the rain....we could have used just a tad bit less than the skies gave us.  This year's garden crew (Mike, Piper and Morgan) wasn't about to let the challenging weather get in the way of their work!

The main focus this past week was getting most of our cool season crop seeds and transplants in the soil, preparing many of the planting beds, getting our plastic covers down for some specific beds and starting to fix our garden fence.

Cool season crops:  One of the lessons the garden crew learned this week was about how important it is to know the needs of each vegetable (from seed to maturity).  Seeds have different ranges of soil temperature for optimal germination.  Since the garden soil was at about 60 degrees this past week, we focused on getting the seeds in that prefered a cool start.  This included our lettuce varieties, carrots, kale, onion and scallion transplants.  The snap peas, spinach, beets and some of the lettuce we planted last week were already up. 

Another planting method the gardeners did this week dealt with timing of harvest: they planted half of the lettuce bed (two more to go but we were afraid the heavy rains would wash the seeds out): this will result, in theory, staggered harvest dates! 

Planting Bed Prep:  A lot of weeding got done this week!  On certain beds, we also mixed in compost (for vegetables with higher soil nutriton needs) and put down red and black plastic on certain beds.  The plastic is meant to heat up the soil quicker for those veggies that like it a bit warmer (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, watermelon and cantaloupe) as well as to keep the weeds under control.  We are experimeting with the red plastic for our tomatoe beds, check back in August to see how it goes!  We also put up some metal hoops up which we'll cover with special greenhouse-grade plastic to create an even warmer environment (we're going to experiment this on 1 of our peppers and tomatoe beds to see if they grow a bit faster than the ones we don't cover).

Lastly, the gardeners also put black plastic around the entire perimeter of the fence.  We're going to see if this helps with the massive weeds that grow tall around our fence that end up providing a safe habitat for the bunnies, woodchucks and mice.  We hope that this saves some crops as well as time as the season progresses.

Next week, with a sunnier forecast, it will be our busiest planting week: feel free to come on down and help us!  We love visitors (and extra working hands).

The First Seeds Are In: Welcome Season 2013!

The full garden crew doesn't  officially start until next week, but we have already been quite busy down at the garden the past couple of weeks!  I don't even know where to start!
 
The sequence of events (what we've been doing to prepare the garden for its fifth season):
1) We tilled in our gorgeous green winter rye
2) We measured and measured....and measured to get our somewhat perfectly straight planting rows and walkways all mapped out with twine on the garden soil
3) Discovered the winter rye didn't appreciate being tilled and decided to re-root itself...
4) Had to till the planting rows a second time (a bit more tricky since we mapped out everything already....ahhhhh)








This brings us up to Wednesday, which was SMC Community Service Day.  Hands down, one of our top favorite days in the garden (okay, 98% of our days in the garden are our favorite; but this one is at the top)!  For the past four years now, the Organic Garden has been one of the sites that staff and faculty can sign up to volunteer on for this day (fyi, the Organic Garden fills up quick, all the spaces were gone within the first 45 minutes of sign-up!  so plan accordingly for next year's service day!)  It's such a treat for us to share the garden with other members of the community.  We've made long-time garden friends and new garden friends each year.

It's always amazing how much work you can get down with many hands in just a few hours.  Here's what the group accomplished: weeded the entire way around the main garden fence - both inside and out, weeded around 300 garlic plants, constructed two 15 feet long snap pea trellises, planted the snap peas and all our spinach, planted our beets and 1 bed of lettuce, and helped to secure the black plastic we have on our pumpkin/sunflower bed to keep the weeds down until we're ready to plant them (if this works, we just saved 3 days of weeding - no joke!).  All this in just a few hours!  With our first seeds sowed into the soil, we can officially say that the Garden Season for 2013 has begun!

Today we also got in all of our onion transplants (5 varieties)!  Make sure to check back in next Friday and see what we get in next week!

To all out there: here's to a wonderful season in the soil ahead!

Season 2013 Is Getting Started!

Greetings Garden Blog followers, we are back for the season!  Well not in full swing (weekly blog updates will commence end of May), but figured I'd give a little teaser of the upcoming season and what we have been up to so far.

The snow is pretty much gone down at the garden (although the ground still has some ice patches which we discovered taking soil samples for analysis last week).  Our winter rye cover crop is a lush green and as I type, is adding nitrogen and organic matter to the soil.  The garlic we planted last fall has started to wake up and the first few crocuses said hi when I checked just yesterday morning.  I don't know about you, but I am itching to map out the rows and get seeds in the soil!

We've started some of our veggies in the Biology Greenhouse in Cheray Science Hall!  So far, the onions are all going strong (4 varieties) and are about a couple inches tall.  We just started peppers and eggplant this week and next week, the tomatoes will get in the greenhouse.

Keep your fingers crossed for increasing temperatures and sunshine so the garden soil can dry out for us to till in the winter rye and get things into full swing!

Also, new for the upcoming season: attempting to grow okra, experimenting with more graden structures, experimenting with farmscaping for biological control (google it, we'll do a post on this during the growning season) and fortifying our carrots so that the bunnies do not demolish them for the 3rd season in a row (we're thinking double if not triple fencing around them, take that cute little bunnies)!!