Planting for Fall Gardens

We had a great weekend here in DC; we're having an anti-August which means it's not been horrifically hot or humid. Made for perfect weather for heading down to our community garden plot to plant some seeds. We put in fall, cool-weather crops: beets, lettuce, arugula, cilantro, a few more sunflowers (smile)...and plan to sow some beans and carrots by next weekend. Most importantly for me, we got to use finished compost to augment our soil! Wooo hooooo. Most importantly for EGirl? We have a baby pumpkin growing!

Later in the fall, I want to plant some onions and garlic, a cover crop to put nitrogen back into the soil, and some early spring seeds like peas. They'll come up first thing after the winter's over. Which will be a great change from the other years when it's been wet and soggy for eons and I've been afraid of stepping around my garden and compacting it down so I blow the entire early cool-weather crop season. Who knew you could do this?

Speaking of my novice gardener status, I thought I'd share the tips I got from the kind and generous Andrea of Andrea's Recipes: August Gardening tips (Virginia) and a fall garden planting guide (North Carolina). Both are germane to the southeast near DC. As is this tip for buying seeds from Ed Bruske of The Slow Cook (on the DCUrban Gardeners yahoogroup): the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. As Ed says,

You can also gain a wealth of knowledge from seed catalogues. My favorite seed company is one not too far from us, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange located outside Charlottesville. They collect a lot of knowledge from local growers and give specific information about planting times for our area. They are also very accessible, not a big, corporate operation.

Happy gardening and I hope you're having your personal version of the perfect Anti-August.

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Better Drainage for Container Gardens and Beds

In case you're planting up a storm these days, I thought I would pass along a tip a kindly, more experienced gardener shared with me. Most pots and containers have lousy drainage. And many people overwater when they're starting out. If you have soggy plants, they may rot. So grab a drill like I did this morning (CBoy was so thrilled! Trucks, heavy equipment, mud puddles, and power tools in one morning?!) and get started.

If you're smart, you will do this before you fill up your planter, but if you're like me and can only get to things when a certain tiny person will allow them to happen, don't worry, you can still do it. Plastic pots take a regular drill bit. Ceramic pots need a special drill bit, so don't head outside unless you've got one. Aim for about 6-8 holes, evenly spaced around the bottom of your pot. If you've already planted, this one is too late, but next time throw a bunch of gravel or rocks at the bottom of the planter as well to improve drainage.

If you have a garden bed that's flooded (like our sad, sad, formerly hoped-for peas-broccoli-and-arugula lake), a guy in the community garden this morning suggested the following: separate those perfectly-joined boards at the edge of the plot to allow for better drainage. Sometimes, you just need a stranger to point out the obvious! Nice guy that he was, he tactfully suggested this path when I inquired about which plants might thrive in rice-paddy conditions.

For water retention, a tip on the package of my new upside-down tomato planter (cool, huh? for our deck) made me smile: water it with soapy water to help the soil and roots retain water. Sounds like a case for graywatering if I've ever heard one!

Hope you're having lots of rain as well for your gardens, and that your plants are sprouting! And any and all gardening advice is welcome here.




Works for Me Wednesday post
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Composting Commences

So, I finally got my composter put together! Many thanks to the helpful folks at Glover Park Hardware and Achla, who took pity on me after I confessed that the assembly directions, uh, composted, and the bolts and screws that came with the composter? Migrated. Now that I've assembled it (I am woman, hear me roar) I have been gleefully saving our kitchen scraps and tossing them into the tumbler, and I've collected some leaves from the fall (good strategy to leave them around the back patio, eh?) and some dryer lint. We sure have plenty of that. I seem to have an excess of green stuff (nitrogen rich materials) though and not enough brown stuff (leaves). There is some kind of crazy web of white mold or who knows what organism growing in there. But it doesn't smell (good sign! no anaerobic bad organisms pleeease) and it's a huge barrel made of recycled plastic so we won't be nourishing any local rodents.

Lucky for me, it's International Composting Week (thanks, Chewswise!) and local President of DC Urban Gardeners and Slow Cook blogger Ed Bruske has an amazing video series he put together on composting basics. I slapped the first video up below to get you started. I am so thrilled that CBoy is taking a rockin' nap because I just got a whole bunch of ideas about how to help my compost balance (I can compost shredded junk mail/newspapers and cardboard boxes to keep the brown factor up) from watching the whole series. What can I say...Ed's soothing chitter chat about compost was kind of addicting. Ed notes that 25% of the stuff we send to the landfill is food waste from our kitchens. So composting is a great step. Next up? He's convinced me that I may actually have space for worms (my kids are gonna love this). Vermicomposter for Mother's Day, anyone?!

Happy Composting, readers! (And for those of you who are all, this is way too much effort -- first, it's not so much work, and second? If you have indoor space go worms!) I know the soil in *my* community garden needs some black gold...may it not be too late for my languishing peas and arugula! If you have any tips for a neophyte composter (that don't involve any land space - I can't compost in a corner of my yard like my parents used to) or any great worm facts, let me know!



*Photo courtesy of sxc (which, fyi, is a great source for free photos) and Bomania.
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