Hail hath no fury..

If you have anti-hail shelters on your garden. This shelter, developed by the gardeners at Old Farm Community Garden in Colorado Springs, not only blocks hail, it acts as a greenhouse and wind shield, making for some happy, happy plants.


This shelter uses 10-foot lengths of half-inch PVC, bowed down and fastened to the raised bed. You could also use stakes to put it right in the ground. The plastic is 6 mill UV treated from American clay, though most garden stores will have something similar.

The sides lift to give gardeners easy access.

Tomato tips

There are lots of great tomatoes out there. Experiment and find what you like, but here are four very different varieties I plant every year:
Sweet Baby Girl
Stupice
Champion
Black Brandy wine

How to plant a tomato:
I don't mess with seeds. The growing season is too short. I'd rather pay $5 a plant and let someone else fuss with up bringing. This year I planted my tomatoes May 3. That's well before the average last frost date, but I protect them using walls-o-water. These inexpensive plastic sleeves act like a sweater for your tomatoes, which after all come from the tropics and aren't used to our cold nights. The water in the sleeves warms in the sun then keeps the plant warm all night. It also protects from wind. I recommend them even after the frost, and keep them on until mid June when the plants become too big.

The first seedlings

These oak leaf lettuce seeds were planted 4/27/08 and sprouted 5/3/2008. Tiny seeds need to be watered daily to germinate, and should be kept moist until their infant roots reach down into the soil. Even one missed day of watering can mean a failed crop.

Squirrel-proof planting

Every spring I have the same problem. The squirrels watch me as I plant my first seeds, then sneak into my garden once I'm gone to see if I buried anything tasty. I've looked around for a solution that would be cheap, easy, and effective and settled on wire mesh. I used a 4x4 foot section of 1cm wire mesh, laying it over a newly planted area for a few days until the squirrels forget. They are generally only interested in freshly disturbed earth. The mesh has another use once planting is done. I throw it over a wheelbarrow and use it as a screen to remove large bits from finished compost, leaving only the fine, dark humus.

What I'm planting this year... and when

OK, actually, I'm going on vacation until the end of April, so the first things here are what I WOULD BE planting if I was not in Oaxaca. I'll plant them as soon as I get back

Things to plant right now:

Oregon sugar snap peas
snow peas
arugula
oak leaf lettuce
Spinach -- I like a small leaf variety I can use in salads
bib lettuce
spicy mesclun
bull's eye beets
golden beets - my favorite, but not as prodcutive
Parsley - this is a tender perennial, I've had it come back for several years and it always re-sprouts around April 1.
Garlic -- should really be planted the fall before, but you can still plant it now.
Potatoes -- I've had good luck with purple Peruvians and French fingerlings. Make sure the soil is loose so you can filch potatos off the edges.


Things to plant in May

Pole beans - I like a slender haricots verts
Bush beans

The following tomatoes
Sweet Baby Girl
Stupice
Champion
Black Brandy wine

I plant tomatoes may first. This will only work if you use walls o' water to protect them from frost. Even if you plant after the frost date (May 15 or so) Walls o' Water will still help your plant by keeping it warmer at night. You'll get earlier fruit and more of it.


Things to plant in late May or June

Cucumbers - I grow both pickling cukes and lemon cukes. I've never had much luck with bigger varieties.
Squash -- summer squash, ONE zucchini and patty pan squash. Forget the directions the packet gives about planting on a mound, it's too dry here.
Peppers -- best to start inside or buy plants

Here's a full planting guide from the CSU Master Gardeners.

No time to make good soil? Buy it

I highly recommend composting home and yard waste to improve your garden soil. It saves landfill space, saves money, and saves buying sometimes unsustainable alternatives, such as peat moss. But if you didn't start last year, you're not going to get meaningful amounts of compost from your yard any time soon, so to boost your soil, there are several bag alternatives you can buy relatively cheaply. The one recommended to me was cotton boll compost. It's rich in organics, plus, it's a by-product of cotton, so you're not mining a natural source. It has a nutrient ration of 7-2-2, an acid pH, which is good for Colorado Springs soils, and has lots of trace minerals. Unfortunately it can possible pesticide residue from the cotton industry, (so if you're strictly organic, it's not for you) but it's also the compost of choice for commercial gardeners in town, according to the folks at Good Earth Garden Center. So, I'm trying a little experiment: I have amended one of my beds (left) using my own compost, plus coffee grounds. I amended the other using 4 cubic feet of cotton boll compost. We'll see how they match up as I start planting next week!

Potassium?

The first of my monthly garden columns hit the Gazette this morning and I immediately spotted a mistake. Healthy soil, I said, provides lots of nutrients like nitrogen and potassium to plants. Plants do need potassium, but I meant to say phosphurous. I think, as a trail runner, I was getting me dirt confused with me. Anyway, there's a great new book on building healthy soil called The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah Martin. It's set up for wetter climes, so doesn't fully address watering your compost, but it's still a great read.

Coffee gets my compost steaming

After adding approximately four big bags of wet coffee grounds to my compost pile a week ago, I went out to stir it yesterday and saw something I'd never seen before: steam. That's a good thing, it means the micro biotic community in my bin is chugging along at a speed that is creating its own heat.

I've never seen that happen before. Usually my compost is very slow. I have a tendency to let it dry out, which essentially mummifies the yard waste instead of letting it break down.

Why did coffee grounds do such amazing things: two reasons.
1. They're loaded with nitrogen which is rare in the compost pile at this time of year. (Green things generally have nitrogen.)
2. They're loaded with moisture, and since the tiny particles can be easily mixed in, they spread the moisture around.

So, if you want to start composting with grounds, here's a recipe. You want to mix "green" and "brown" material. You want a 1 to five ratio of green to brown.
Green is any fresh material (such as grass clippings) that can provide nitrogen to the pile. Brown is any old material (especially dead leaves) that can provide food for the micro organisms to break down. Coffee counts as a "green" material, even though it is brown in color.

Either layer the materials or mix them up. Make sure the pile is loose so it has plenty of air. Turn it every few weeks with a pitch fork.

For more composting advice, click here.

Turning up the dirt

I should have turned up my dirt and added lots of organics (leaves, grass clippings, etc) last fall, but I didn't. Instead, I have to do it now. Saturday I turned over all my dirt, making sure to loosen any clumps. Last year I had problems with the dirt compacting too much -- not enough organic material in there. I want to use my own compost to revive it, but I'm not sure I have enough so I think I'll add my compost to one garden and sphagnum moss from the garden store to the other. Then I'll see which works better.