Tips for fall planting, Pruning Tomatoes and Cucumbers to promote Aeration

Lots of you have been asking, “What vegetables can I grow for fall?”

In general, greens and some roots crops like beets and turnips can be grown in fall.  I found some good information to help determine which plants will produce in our climate by the time the first frost date arrives.  According to Victory seeds, the first frost date for NYC is October 27.  Several factors affect this date pushing it either forward or back. For us, we are nearly surrounded by concrete and brick buildings making a heat island effect which may push the frost date back into early November. Also, many fall crops do fine under a light frost such as beets, cauliflower and lettuce.  Some survive a heavy frost,. like broccoli, kale and collards.  It's important that these plants are established and big enough when the cold comes, but they can definitely withstand a frosty night. For harvesting after a frost, I have to read up more on that!

Victory Seeds’ frost date selector
http://www.victoryseeds.com/frost/ny.html

USDA hardiness zones for NY state
http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/weather/zones.html

Johnny’s seeds has several interactive excel docs where you type in your first frost date and the type of crop you want to grow and it automatically computes when you need to plant, either by transplant (TP) or by direct seed (DS).  This is enormously helpful, because when planting for fall, several factors affect the last planting date.  It can get a little complicated, these factors are: days to maturity; days to germination; days to transplanting (if you plant directly from seed, this is zero), short day factor and days before the first frost.  Once you add all these days up, you get a total, then you count backwards by this total from the first frost date.

For example, according to the book: The New Seed Starter’s Handbook by Nancy Bubel, if you wanted to plant beets, you would have to plant them no later than August 14, 2011, giving a few days later, due to the heat island effect. 

I added 55 (days to maturity) + 5 (days to germination) +14 (short day factor) + 0 (days before the first frost) = 74

Then count back 74 days from Oct 27, and you get: August 14

Johnny’s makes it easy and does all that work for you.

I sent this post as an email, and attached to it the Johnny’s spreadsheet of when to plant based on the first frost date for NYC, Oct 27.  If you want to plant broccoli, do so ASAP!

Johnnny's Seeds Growing guides, Interactive Tools,
fall planting Calculator
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/t-InteractiveTools.aspx

Based on that spreadsheet, below is a list of what you can grow from transplants or from seeds:

• Transplant:  broccoli, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, collards (leaves will be small to medium size), chicory, radicchio, kale

• Seeds:  carrots (they will be small), Asian greens, Kohlrabi, lettuces, radishes (both round and daikon), spinach, swisschard, turnips, beets

We have seeds for some of these crops in the garden seedbox. The ones we don’t have are: Kohlrabi, daikon radishes, swisschard, and turnips. I suggest you purchase them if you like them!
For mail ordering seeds, I usually pick Johnny's selected seeds or the Cook's garden. 
stores in NYC that sell a selection of seeds include Whole Foods,  City Hydroponic which sells Burpee brand and Red, Rose and Lavender in Williamsburg sells Hart brand seeds (non GMO) which are grown in Connecticut, similar to our climate in NYC.  They sell a bigger selection than City Hydroponic.  Many Asian markets sell seeds for radishes and greens too.

Pruning Tomatoes and Cukes

I also found some helpful advice for pruning tomato and cucumber plants.  Something I didn’t know was that it’s important to keep air circulating through tomato and cucumber plants in order to prevent late blight from establishing.  It’s recommended to prune back any leaves near the bottom of plants that are yellow or wilted. On indeterminate tomatoes (heirlooms), it’s important to prune suckers or side shoots so the plant doesn’t get too heavy and so you concentrate the plant’s energy into fewer fruits. 

Cornell Audio on pruning cucumber and tomato plants from
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/newstopics.php?tid=46

videos on pruning tomatoes and cukes
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/t-video.aspx

 

I hope that's helpful, let me know if you have any questions.
If you'd like xeroxes on starting from seed from The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch   or  The New Seed Starter’s Handbook by Nancy Bubel  let me know!


 

Planting for the fall and Basil likes to be picked!

Now is the time to plant Kale, beets, arugula and a late planting of summer squash. 

By the end of august will be time to plant fall peas, swisschard, kohlrabi, radishes, fall lettuce, spinach, asian greens (Chinese cabbage, bok choi, choy sum, pak choi, mizuna, mustard greens, tatsoi) turnips too. 

Plant transplants of broccoli, collard greens, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower.

Pick your basil!  Every time you pick, you encourage the side shoots to grow and prevent the plant from blooming and going to seed. 

According to Homegrown Harvest by Rita Pelczar, “….the more often you harvest, the busier your and more productive your plants will become.  Pinching top and side stems will encourage the development of more stems and leaves. Frequent harvest also help delay flowering and prolong leaf production.  Herbs such as basil, marjoram and oregano can be cut back by two thirds when the plant reaches 12-18 inches tall” (149). 

If you are planning to purchase transplants, I suggest getting them from the farmers market.  I buy all my plants from the farmers market and I know that most gardeners who did so, have bountiful good tasting veggies. One vendor I really love (so does Joe Sotomayor) is Trina of Silver Heights farm.

She sells at Union Square on Wednesday/Saturday and for fall she’ll have transplants of: 

Peas, Asian greens, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce http://www.silverheightsfarm.com/index.php

There are two extra plots

Are you interested planting in these two plots?  

The two requirements to plant the plots are to pay for the cost of purchased soil ($21./per plot) and to plant low growing plants or flowers.

you could plant: lettuce, spinach, beets, kale, asian greens, etc.

How would you like to share the space, say so in the comments. I recommend getting started asap, as summer is half over!

Directions for Sheet Mulching/ Lasagna Gardening

This is for members who have started or will start their plots: 

Sheet Mulching/ Lasagna Gardening

May 17, 2011

Resources:

BBG Brooklyn Compost Project’s Lasagna Mulching Workshop; April 2, 2011

Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

          There’s many ways to layer materials in a sheet mulched bed (lasagna bed).  It’s basically alternating layers of browns (high carbon) with greens (high nitrogen).  Sheet mulching is similar to composting, but requires a higher percentage of carbon rich materials than in bin composting in order to slow down decomposition.  Sheet mulching has several advantages to traditional growing in tilled soil with added compost. First it’s a space saving method of composting, great for community gardens which have limited space for a composting area.  Old mulched beds can be moved around if needed.  Second, all the nutrients released during decomposition stay where they are, available to growing plants, whereas in bin composting, nutrients tend to leach out the bottom of the pile.  Fewer weeds germinate in piles built carefully and beds maintain moisture for growing plants, again if built well at the start.  Ideally, build your pile in the fall so there’s time for material to break down.  Make sure you have enough materials before starting and that any large pieces of material, such as food waste are chopped up. 

Ingredients: you can use an assortment of materials, but this is what we have at the garden presently (while supplies last):

Fresh manure

Cardboard

Food scraps

Coffee grinds

Leaves

Wood shavings/leaf mix: sticks need to be removed before using

stump grinds— from tree stumps and soil

Chunky compost

Vermicompost

Florist waste-chopped

Straw

Plant tone organic fertilizer

Fish emulsion

Directions:

1.     Water the area well one day before starting, no need if it's been raining

2.     Next day, slash down any weeds/ grass. No need to pull them out.

3.     Add soil amendments (optional)

4.     Make openings into the ground with a digging fork.

5.     Add high nitrogen materials like horse manure or food scraps

6.     lay cardboard, overlapping by 6”, (to prevent weeds from finding a way through) wet completely

7.     Add kitchen scraps, water

8.     Add stump grindings in the ratio of 1 part manure to 4 parts stump grinds, water

9.     Add unfinished compost, then add the following ingredients in roughly this order to total about 20” high.

10.  a light sprinkling of Plant-tone organic fertilizer

11.  leaves

12.  food waste

13.  straw

14.  leaves/wood shavings

15.  vermicompost

16.  Plant-Tone organic fertilizer

17.  compost and soil mix

18.  straw

 ***Water in between each layer***

Tips:

o       Before starting, keep ingredients dry

o       Water in between each layer; material should be the consistency of a wrung-out sponge

o       Don’t walk on the bed, this will compact layers. We want to keep them fluffy.

o      Use a rake to evenly spread material,  its OK for it to be a little chunky for trapping air.  You may need to use a digging fork to keep the corners sharp, and the bed level so you don’t lose planting space.

o       If using raw manure, should build 16 inches above that layer

o       For plant starts (transplants), punch out a hole that’s three times the size of your seedling; add some soil, seedling, a little more soil and tamp into place.

o       For starting seeds, make 3” deep trenches.  Fill with soil/ compost and plant seeds

Native Plant workshop at the BBG

I attended a fantastic workshop at the BBG organized by Greenbridge last Thursday.  The room was packed with gardeners and proponents of native plants, some with differing expectations for the 2 hour long workshop.  One group of homeowners wanted to know how to substitute their non-native, "alien" species with native alternatives, while others were intrigued to know of the latest in plant research at GNPC.  The presenter was Heather Liljengran who spoke on her work at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center.  She brought a wide range of books on native plants, and overall expressed her excitement at this time in our history when so much research on native plants is being conducted and there is finally a sizable constituency that cares about replanting our small and large landscapes with plants native to the NYC/Metropolitan region.

I will leave a set of handouts/ booklets from the workshop for our budding library of hard-copy materials in Dean Hainline's office. If you'd like to see them, shoot me an email and I can have them left for you in the front office.


Here's others links and resources about native plants and upcoming tours:

Greenbelt Native Plant Center
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_about/parks_divisions/gnpc/index.html

NYC Wildflower week:
http://nycwildflowerweek.org/ataglance.htm

Op-Ed NY Times piece:
"Mother Nature's Melting Pot"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03Raffles.html?scp=1&sq=native%20plants&st=cse

Flatbush Gardener
http://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/p/native-plants.html


Books:
Weeds of the Northeast
Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast
Bringing Nature Home


BBG Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants
and Great Natives for Tough Places
http://www.bbg.org/gardening/handbook/native_alternatives/

Streetscaping project is Moving Along

Things are moving along nicely with our Streetscaping project.  Pablo has measured all the tree pits, has adopted tree #7, (that’s the tree on campus Road, right where East 21^st street begins) a European Hornbean that he has lovingly named, “Musical Intelligence.”  Awwhhh little tree…

Chad has photographed each tree---Full length and bed views.

I had some specific questions regarding paving stone removal, and weather this was considered excavation/ did we need to hire an arborist? Yesterday, I got that straightened out when I called the Brooklyn Forestry division of the Parks Dept.  It turns out that we can complete a simple Tree Work permit and do not have to hire an arborist to remove the stones. It is not considered excavation.  

We do not need an architect to install tree guards, architecture drawing are only needed if tree is to be in front of a new building, or if you are designing unique tree guards rather than styles supplied from the city.  Also received information that each Borough president’s office has a budget for funding “tree Guards” and we may qualify. 

Pablo is going to contact Marty Markowitz’s office about that, Chad is working on completing the Tree work Permit; I’m filling out a compost requisition form in order to pick up compost and mulch from the DOS- Wasteless.

Soon, we will start caring for the tree pits.  We will remove paving stones with Dean Hainline’s many hammers and chisels, carefully.  We will add coarse compost or wood chips to the areas where the stones used to be.  Did you know it’s recommended NOT to backfill with soil?  I didn’t.  Tree roots need loose soil full of oxygen and good drainage.  Adding soil right away can reduce oxygen level in soil.  It’s recommended to wait 1 year to add soil, instead adding coarse compost or wood chips for now.

http://forestry.about.com/od/treeandforestcare/a/yard_tree_roots.htm

Compost and mulch will be added to the rest of tree beds, and then planted.  We are gathering resources for free plants and seeds, ones that have shallow root systems.  Pablo and Chad have ideas about doing different planting themes for the tree beds. 

There are many of you who expressed interest in the Streetscaping project.  We would love to hear your ideas.  Just think, if we can get this short stretch of Campus Road trees rejuvenated, we can move onto another stretch or teach/ inspire other groups with what we’ve learned.

I also went to this fantastic “Community Greening” workshop tonight, through the BBG’s Greenbridge program.  It was very well done, there are so many ideas/ projects/ people around Brooklyn, creating gardens and street projects who want to hook up and share ideas!

Just found these two sites:

On tree identification, TreeKIt

http://treekit.org/

Street gardening

http://www.streetgardening.org/

Can anyone pickup a rain barrel for our garden this Saturday?

Greenthumb Events and Workshops--Learn and receive Free supplies

It looks as though Greenthumb just revamped their website today!  It's fresh and easier to navigate than before.  At our garden meeting last Wednesday night, there many knowledgeable attendees who shared all kinds of resources for our garden to apply for funding and receive free supplies.  Shaquana shared about all the free materials available from Greenthumb.  The way it works is that garden members who attend workshops become eligible for free supplies.   Some are disbursed at the workshop and larger stuff is delivered at a later date.  I had heard of them before and had briefly looked at their website, until now.  I will try to go to as many workshops as I can.  I'm sure many of you are seriously interested if not already have plans to go. if you are going, let us know in the comments!

Here's the program guide for this Spring:  http://www.greenthumbnyc.org/pdf/2011SpringProgramGuide.pdf