Rob's Rants

Last week I got a start on this year’s vegetable garden. We had had a week of unseasonably warm weather earlier in April (a high temp of 86.6 °F on April 7^th! Seriously – our last frost date is usually April 27^th) so I and a lot of people in New England decided to get going earlier than normal. I know full well that we could still see a frost and the soil isn’t nearly warm enough to sustain tender seedlings, so I’ve started anything tender inside in my basement, but I was at least able to add two inches of compost and some fertilizer to my beds and turn over the top couple of inches of soil.

Anyway, here’s a table listing what I’ve put in the ground. I’ll be tracking the progress throughout the season.

Almost two weeks ago I started my seeds for this year’s garden. I just updated the table in that post with the dates for the potatoes I just planted along with some sprout dates, etc.

I also thought I’d record a bit about how I started the seeds this year.

One glance at the table will show you that Johnny’s Selected Seeds is my primary source for vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. For the record, I have no affiliation with them, receive no free stuff, and don’t even get a discount. But when I find a local company that has a great inventory, excellent service, and a lot of knowledge they are willing to share, I am happy to promote them. In the sever or so years I’ve been ordering from them they have never messed up an order. And all of their seeds are top quality and I swear I get nearly a 100% germination rate on everything I plant.

Now, about how I start my seeds.

I start everything on a table in my basement under a single, double-tube fluorescent grow light, and on top of warming mats. Most of this equipment came from my parents’ house after my Dad gave up gardening a decade ago so I have no idea where much of it came from. I suspect Gardener’s Supply, but I can’t be sure. The light frame holds two flats with a little room in between. The flats are suspended over the heat mats by about one inch.

In the flats I usually use peat pots for the seeds, but this year I switched to Cow Pots, which I first saw on an episode of Dirty Jobs in the Discovery Channel. Again, these are made locally to me in Connecticut, and they promise to solve a problem I’ve always had.

Peat pots promise to degrade when planted, but they simply never do. Honestly, I’ve planted them with seedlings in them, had a mediocre garden, then pulled up the plants at the end of the season only to find a nearly intact pot still attached. In fact, I have little pieces of peat pots that I’ve torn up and thrown onto the garden and they still come up in identifiable pieces two and even three years after I’ve dropped them there. So, for the last few years I’ve started my plants either directly in flats or in peat pots which I tear off the seedlings and compost separately. Cow Pots claim to degrade much better and not bind the plant roots. This is good. I intend to put them to the test.

But my first experiences with them have been positive. I suggest you check out their web site and give them a try.

For soil, I’m not too fussy. I usually grab a couple of bags of whatever Lowe’s has on sale at the beginning of the season. I fill the pots, plant the seeds, and let the go for a week or two. I will often plant four to six seeds per small pot and then thin down to one or two after a couple of weeks. Keep them watered and everything should be fine.

My Grow Light Setup

I do keep my grow light adjusted to just a few inches above the seedlings so they don’t get too leggy, and it is on a times so it’s on for 18 hours and off for 6. Then I just keep the flats watered.

After about a month (which would be around May 10th) I move the flats outside to a stand-up cold frame/mini greenhouse that holds about 4 full flats. I’ll give them a couple of weeks there to adjust to the natural sunlight and temperatures. Then it’s into the soil.

This system has served me well for many years. After that first round of plants makes it into the soil I will often start my second round of late summer plants like watermelon and pumpkins, as well as a second round of things like lettuce and basil. These I will often start in the outdoor cold frame, but occasionally inside if we’re having a very cool summer.

In one of my earlier garden posts I implored people to start their own vegetables from seeds rather than buying some mass produced seedlings raised by the thousand in some Mexican greenhouse. The benefits of selecting specific varieties are great – you can choose specifically for conditions that match your geography. Here in New England, we have a short growing season. Usually not much longer than 150 days between frosts. Choosing your own varieties lets New England gardeners select fast maturing varieties.

When a commercial greenhouse selects plant varieties they tend to emphasize things you wouldn’t – like plant strength and drought tolerance so that the plants will witstand a couple of weeks being shipped across country on a truck and won’t wilt when the Home Depot or Lowe’s people forget t water them a couple of days. Flavor isn’t always high on the list of characteristics.

If you can’t choose and start your own seeds, then the next best thing is to work with a greenhouse as local as possible. Mainly because a local business has an interest in selling things that will grow well in your local climate. Selling a bunch of plants that grow a few scraggly vegetables that taste like garbage isn’t exactly good for business.

Today I found another source here in Grafton, Massachusetts: Mapel Plants. Mapel has been around for 20 years, but is one of the best kept secrets in town. The owner, John Mapel has run a small greenhouse business along side of his other gardening businesses for years. And he stocks a variety of vegetables and herbs that are selected for flavor and for their ability to grow in this part of the state. My first clue that Mapel takes an interest in people’s success: they won’t sell warm-season vegetable plants before May 15th. Especially after the warm weather we’ve had recently, he is kind enough to remind people that we won’t really be frost safe until near the end of May. In fact, even though last weekend the temperatures hit 90° F, today it hasn’t climbed out of the 40s and we’re expecting frost tonight. I’ve seen a lot of small tomato seedlings in people’s front yard gardens that might not be there tomorrow.

Mapel has a great selection of the common vegetables and herbs, but they specialize in tomatoes, including some hard to find heirloom varieties. The list of varieties is posted here. In addition they have a variety of annual and perennial flowers and a selection of native New England wildflowers that they’ve propagated from ones growing on their property.

Mapel plants is the kind of local business I like to support. My wife and I grabbed a few things to supplement our garden this year and I’m sure we will be going back. Mapel plants greenhouses are only open from May through June, so don’t wait to check them out. Take a ride through one of the nicest parts of Grafton up Brigham Hill Road and check them out.

My tomato seedlings are about 8 inches tall now. For the last 6 days they have moved from my basement to a small cold frame I have outside to harden off, or adjust to the temperature and sunlight swings outdoors. Usually this helps grow healthier plants. But I’m afraid that I may have done more harm than good this year.

I wrote about the devastating effects of Late Blight on the tomato crop in New England last year. (And this was a problem all over the Northeast … check out this post on The Big Blog of Gardening.) I vowed that this year would be different. I started seeds bought from a reputable supplier (Johnny’s Selected Seeds) in fresh potting soil in my basement. I kept them on heated mats and under lights in a dry environment for weeks. Then moved the plants outside to my cold frame.

And this morning, I noticed that some of the leaves on my plants were showing small gray patches. Almost like powdery mildew. More distressing were one or two leaves with brown spots … spots that look to me like Late Blight.

Here’s an example:

I guess it makes perfect sense. Inside the cold frame at night, lots of condensation forms. So many mornings I  have opened the top to find the leaves of the plants soaked. And these are the perfect conditions for Late Blight — cool nights in the 50s, daytime temperatures in the 60s, and wet leaves.

When I first put the plants out last weekend I sprayed them with a combination of Plant Guardian Biofungicide and Shield-all II fungicide (both from Gardens Alive). I pulled out and threw five of the worst looking plants into the trash. And I plucked all the visibly infected leaves off the remaining plants. I just hope I’ve caught it in time.

But something tells me that my tomato crop is doomed this year. I mean, if there are already enough spores floating around to infect my plants, then many gardeners are going to be in trouble this year.

The first strawberries in may garden started to ripen last week while I was away in California. My wife and daughter were luckily home to begin the picking. The growing season has been weird this year, with some very warm days in April to get things started, followed by a cool period in May, and then another heat wave in the last week of May with temps pushing 90° F. So many plants seem “confused” and the strawberries are no exception.

I have three varieties planted: Earliglow (an early bearing variety), Seascape (a day-neutral variety), and Jewel (a mid-late variety). But all three are beginning to set fruit. The Earliglows have the biggest fruit by far though.

This is only the second year for the bed, so the plants aren’t dense and the berries are sparse. I cut back all the flowers and runners last year to help the plants establish themselves. This year, I’ll start to let the runners fill in the rows and make the area more dense.

They are growing this year on top of hemlock mulch. I started them last year with red plastic mulch that made it through the winter. Since I started the beds on a hillside that was pretty much weeds the year before, I wanted the plastic to help with the first year weed control. But now I want the plants to have room to set some runners.

There seems to be mild to moderate slug damage this year – probably 1/3 of the ripe berries showed some signs of being gnawed on. Time to sprinkle the Sluggo snail killer. Otherwise, I haven’t had to spray for anything.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I thought Late Blight had already begun to affect my garden this year. Thankfully, the crisis seems to have been averted.

The main help was several bright, sunny, warm days in a row. I was able to get the plants into the ground and prune off anything showing signs of discoloration or disease. And I think the sunlight worked its magic and killed off any remaining pockets on the leaves.

So for now I remain blight free. Though we’ve had several days of rain lately and the slugs are coming out in force and devouring everything!

There’s nothing like several weeks without rain and the first heatwave in 17 years to make this growing season in the garden the exact opposite of last year.

The official NWS report of the heat we’ve been having for the last week says this:

                  JUL 4   JUL 5   JUL 6   JUL 7   JUL 8   JUL 9

CENTRAL AND WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS

WORCESTER ASOS     87F     92F     96F     93F      -
  FIRST OFFICIAL HEAT WAVE SINCE AUG 26-28 1993

Coupled with the fact that it hadn’t rained in nearly two weeks and we have the opposite summer from last year. And the garden shows it. Nothing will fight back suspected late blight like two weeks of non-stop sunshine and dry weather.

I’ve managed to keep ahead of the heat with relatively little water, because I use a drip irrigation system. I can soak the plant roots deeply with relatively little water and none wasted. My garden system consists mainly of 1/4″ dripline tubing from Dripworks. I have about 50 total feet which according to specs should emit between 30 and 40 total gallons per hour. I usually give the garden a couple of hours of watering  every few days in this heat. And though that may sound like a lot of water, all of it goes to the roots. Compare that to a traditional sprinkler which can put out over 300 gallons per hour and which will soak the leaves and stems creating conditions ripe for fungal diseases.

So this year, I might harvest something! The tomatoes are setting fruit, the cucumbers are coming, and the basil and dill is doing great. And my pumpkins and watermelon (planted late) is doing well too.

Overall a much improved season from 2009.