Growing Cauliflower

Now, I've tried plenty of the usual veggies in my garden before. Tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, herbs... But this year is my first year trying cauliflower. And I am forever indebted to Harmony Valley Farm because on our visit there a few weeks ago, I heard them mention the fact that you must TIE your cauliflower leaves to cover the new baby head of cauliflower in order to keep if white. If you don't it will turn brown! I had no idea! So I finally tied my cauliflower the other day. Well, rubber-banded it that is. I found an excellent illustration here.

What about you? Are there any last minute surprising garden tips you got wind of just in time? Or any that you didn't but wish you had?

Oh, and here's our first harvest from one of the square foot gardens, a beautiful little cucumber:

Growing Vertically

So I started this square foot garden thing this year and I am NOT a green thumb. I have relatively little experience gardening and loads less in building things. So when trying to envision what I could put in my garden to help my tomatoes and cucumbers grow vertically in my square foot garden I get easily overwhelmed! And since they are growing by leaps and bounds each day lately, this city girl realized she better get her rear in gear! I spent a lot of time searching online for vertical growing methods and found lots and lots of ways to build trellises and such but like I said, I'm not a builder! So I was THRILLED to find these ideas for staking my tomatoes and cucumbers to help them grow vertically in their little square foot of space. Think it'll work? I'm a tad bit worried about whether these will hold up under the weight of the fruit. What simple methods have you tried for vertical gardening? Got anything super easy? I'd love to hear it!

City Girl vs Slugs

I haven't had the time to devote to the slugs-eating-my-basil problem that I'd like. After my previous post I managed to go out and mix some coffee grounds into the top layer of soil around my basil, and also some of my lettuce that seemed to be getting eaten too. I had wanted to try the method of spritzing coffee directly onto the plant...but who has leftover coffee after it's brewed? Not this city girl! So I was completely surprised when I went out to the garden yesterday to do some work and saw the HUGE size of my basil plant now! City Girl vs Slugs: 1 - 0!!! It seems to have worked so well that I think I'll go put some more coffee grounds out there today just to make sure they stay away. And yes that is some huge Romaine behind that basil! Yum!
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HELP! What's Eating My Basil?

This year I was psyched to have planted a nice large, healthy basil plant directly IN the garden (as opposed to an herb planter as I've done other years.) Given that the plant started out so big and healthy, and it would have all that great garden soil to grow in I was expecting huge volumes of basil this year. YUM! I love the stuff!

But the past week or so I've noticed an alarming fact. My basil seems to have about half the leaves it had originally. HALF. Really. Many of them are just completely eaten away. I can tell it's an insect of some sort because it started with little holes in the leaves. So, after googling this problem (Yes, I literally searched for "what's eating my basil") I have come to the conclusion that it is probably slugs. I have seen enough of 'em in our yard to know we have a ton. Note to slugs: The war is officially on! That's MY basil!!!

So I found the best collection of tips on ridding your plans of slugs at GardensAlive.com. Check out this list if you think you're having some issues with these buggers too. And let me know how these work if you try 'em! For starters, this city girl is gonna head out there with some beer traps to confirm who my pests are, and also take the coffee approach. Now here are those tips courtesy of GardensAlive.com:

1) Beer. Yes, it really does work. It’s also the best non-personal way to confirm that overnight damage is due to the slimy beasts. Just don’t use the often-cited “stale beer”, which slugs like about as much as you and I do. Place commercial traps or old margarine tubs on top of the soil close to the damaged plants, wait until dusk and then fill them with the cheapest—but freshest—beer you can find. The next morning, they should be filled with dead drunken slugs. Dump this defeated debris nearby (where it will attract their cannibalistic pals) and repeat every evening.

2) Coffee. New research has found caffeine to be very effective at dispatching slugs. Save your dregs and spray them full strength directly on the beasts in the evening. Surround plants under attack with a mulch of used coffee grounds to deter slugs and feed the plants.

3) Iron phosphate. Turns out that iron is very bad for a slug’s digestion. Like deadly bad. So a new generation of products with brand names like “Sluggo” and “Escar-Go!” wrap iron in a slug-attracting bait. You simply scatter the pellets around plants in peril to wipe out the pests without poisons. (And a little extra iron is good for your garden soil.)

4) Copper. Slugs get shocked when they touch this shiny metal. You can buy ready-made copper plant guards or just adorn your raised bed frames with copper flashing. Hot-glue rings of pennies around the tops of your containers. Drop captured slugs into a jar of pennies and watch ‘em spark!

5) Diatomaceous earth. Available at garden centers, ‘DE’ is the mined fossilized remains of dinosaur-era, sea-going creatures called diatoms. It looks like white flour, but is incredibly sharp on a microscopic level, dehydrating slugs on contact. Surround plants under attack with protective rings of DE (be sure to wear a dust mask); freshen them up if they get wet.

6) Boards. Lay some old planks between your garden beds. The vampiric slugs will crawl underneath to hide from the sun. Come morning, lift the boards and scrape the slugs into a bucket with a flat piece of metal. Then do with them what you will. Hey—got any pennies?

7) Human hair. Surround your plants with a protective barrier of hair. The slugs will get all tangled up in it and strangle (hey—it was them or the hostas!); and the hair will eventually add plant-feeding nitrogen to the soil.

8) Citrus. Leave lemon, orange and grapefruit rinds out overnight near slug prone plants, and then collect and trash them—covered with slugs—first thing the next morning. Old lettuce leaves work well too.

9) Vinegar. A spray bottle filled with plain white vinegar is a great cure for slugs that aren’t on plants. An extremely effective mollusk dissolver, vinegar is also an herbicide—so don’t spritz the salvia.

10) Toads. Avoid all pesticides, provide water low to the ground and a damp shady pot for them to hide during the heat of the day, and these wonderful nocturnal predators will eat lots of slugs for you.

11) Rove beetles. These big black bugs don’t bother plants, but do eat LOTS of slugs and their eggs. So don’t hurt them!

12) Lightning bugs. The larval form of these summertime entertainers, the fascinating “glowworm,” eats slugs and their eggs. To encourage adults to breed nearby, turn off outdoor lights at night, allow a small area of your garden to stay moist and a little weedy, and don’t use pesticides.

13) Ducks! Just turn a few loose in the garden—these feathered friends (and natural fertilizer providers) are among nature’s FINEST slug-eaters! And all together now: “We can always use the eggs”. Thank you.

Square Foot Gardening 101

So I have done my fair share of dabbling in the gardening realm, but honestly have never been that serious of a gardener. Sometime in mid-July I get pretty tired of the whole thing, start forgetting to water and weed, and just let the whole thing go by the wayside. I've been lucky and usually get a pretty good crop of tomatoes and lettuce regardless of my haphazard care taking patterns.

But this year I'm gonna get serious. For real. As part of my efforts to be more green I wanted to find an easy way to grow even more in my own back yard. You've heard of the whole locavore craze? Well this City Girl aims to take it 'bout as local as it can get! Her own backyard!

In order to keep things simple and easy, I decided to give square foot gardening a try. It sounds easy. Less weeds, no need to remove topsoil, till the ground, etc. And supposedly you can grow more in less space! Sounds perfect? I thought so too! And now you get to join me in my square foot gardening experiment!

What is it? In a nutshell - you build a raised garden out of 2x6's and mark off square-foot-sized plots, using weed-guard or cardboard beneath them to prevent weeds or grass. You follow spacing guidelines for your plant to plant one or more per square foot (i.e. if spacing says every 12" then you put one in the square foot sized plot). How do the plants grow in just 6" of dirt? You use a special mix: 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite that supposedly retains so much moisture that they do just fine. And anything that climbs you grow vertically instead of horizontally.

I was originally going to replace my old garden plot with a square foot garden or two, but due to my lackadaisical gardening style, it is now entirely overrun by strawberries which were already flowering by the time I got around to building my square foot gardens. I just could not live with the idea of getting rid of all those strawberries (even if the squirrels do eat them every single year BEFORE they are even ripe), so I kept the strawberry bed AND added two square foot gardens.

Here's the strawberry bed, with some new netting I added to see if I could keep out those squirrels this year.I have a feeling they will still find a way to eat those berries up! I'm halfway considering the advice I read on a message board from someone who literally puts dozens of plastic forks tine side up all over in her strawberries to keep out the squirrels. What do you think? Have any great tips on keeping those pesty guys outta there? See the rhubarb buried in there too? That's another one I just had to let be.

Here's the two square foot gardens BEFORE planting.
And here they are after planting. I have chives, onions, rosemary, Italian parsley, various lettuces (4 romaine, and 6 others), tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, broccoli and cauliflower.


Let's hope that City Girl can actually pull this one off! Next on my list? Figure out how to build a frame for my tomatoes and cucumbers to climb vertically. Stay tuned for updates as the adventure continues!

Wanna-Be-Granola-Girl

I am a city girl at heart. I love my car, hair products, nice clothes, nail polish, central air, convenient foods and convenient life. I do not come naturally to all-things-green! But secretly I'm a Wanna-Be-Granola-Girl. There. I said it. Cat's out of the bag. So short of quitting my job and moving to a hobby farm to live the kind of sustainable life that I haven't a clue about, what's a city girl to do?

Well, I'll tell you! For starters here's what's on my plate for the next few months:

1. Join a CSA. For you other not-yet-so-green-city-dwellers that's short for Community Supported Agriculture. You sign up with a local farm to have farm fresh goodies delivered to a spot near you, usually weekly. I joined Harmony Valley Farm and will get organic veggies every other week, organic fruit on the opposite weeks, and once-a-month organic cheese. Yummy! (I think!?) Last week we got our first box of goodies and I have to confess I had never even heard of some of the items it contained: Parsnips, Chives, Salad Greens, Sorrel, Arugula, Ramps, Sunchokes, Black Radishes, Spinach, and Asparagus. Our cheese share contained organic cheddar, mozzarella and blue cheese.

2. Start composting - I'm attending my first how-to workshop next week hosted by our local recycling center. I'll bring home my first compost bin (deeply discounted through the recycling center) and let ya know how it goes!

3. Beef up my gardening skills to grow more of my own food. Sure I've done the usual tomatoes, peppers, and herbs, but I'm a pretty new gardener and not that adventurous. I'm just starting to put in my first "square foot gardens" and hope that this method is really as easy as it sounds! I've bought tomatoes, chives, leeks, onions, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, several varieties of lettuce, and several herbs to plant.

4. Bike Commuting. I'm not sure how many miles it is from my home in Saint Paul to downtown Minneaoplis where I work, but within the next few weeks I'll start bike commuting. My four-year-old's preschool is close to home so I don't anticipate any logistics problems. And the exercise will be amazingly good for me! I've got a biker friend who will help me get outfitted and plan my route.

5. Cloth Diapering, the ultimate adventure for a city-girl-gone-mommy!! My partner and I are expecting identical twin boys at the end of the summer and are already signed up for the one and only cloth diaper service in town. Just thinking of the cost of disposables for two makes me more than willing to give cloth a try. I'll be sure to keep you posted on this one when we get there!

Is that enough for ya? It is for me, for now at least! Check back for more posts as I embark on my green adventures. Next up will be recipes from my CSA adventure!