When your tomato plants start to flower, it’s a good idea to give them a brisk shake once a week. This will send the pollen flying and increase fruiting. With honeybees in decline, tomatoes will need more help than ever.
Shake the Stake
June 15th, 2010 .Got Beans?
June 5th, 2010 .
Instead of planting the same old green beans, try some beans in Technicolor. There are beans in white, red, purple, yellow and mottled pods. Plant a variety! Nothing looks cooler then a yellow bean plant next to a red bean plant next to a purple next to a white. After you pick and clean them, steam them very briefly, cut them diagonally, toss them with perhaps some onions and oregano, and apply a vinaigrette dressing. Bon Apetit!
Sticks and Salts
June 2nd, 2010 .There’s and easy way to jump phosphorus levels for your tomatoes — toss in a couple books’ worth of match heads into the soil around the seedling when you plant. Growing tomato plants are hungry for magnesium, too. Water them once or twice a season with two tablespoons of Epsom salt dissolved into a gallon of water to provide it.
Mysterious Wisteria
May 25th, 2010 .
Although wisteria in flower are one of the most beautiful plants on earth, they can be problematic. Most common is failure to bloom. The answer is to never fertilize them, with one important exception.
Since they are legumes, members of the bean family, they produce their own nitrogen. But it’s phosphorus they crave, in the form of triple super phosphate powder. For a mature plant, sprinkle 4 to 6 cups in a large area around the base of the plant. This is best done late February to early March and usually results in a tremendous bloom. Forget all the other bad advise about wisteria, such as root pruning. Wisteria crave water, and the more the get the faster they’ll grow.
Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) grow in a counter clockwise fashion and come in blue, white, purple or pink. They leaf out soon after they bloom, somewhat obscuring the flowers.
Chinese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) come in the same colors, but have an important distinction. They bloom on bare wood and don’t leaf out until much later, creating a breathtaking display that can last two weeks or more. They grow in a clockwise direction.
Wisteria are big burly plants and can cover literally hundreds of square feet. The flowers are edible and considered a delicacy in Asia. Any sturcture on which they grow must be extremely strong. They also can be trained to a “standard” in which all side shoots are taken off every fall, leaving a central leader. When the leader reaches 8 to 10 feet in height, they are allowed to branch out, in effect creating a wisteria tree.
Tomato News
May 18th, 2010 .
Did you know that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a titanic gift to tomato lovers? Tons of great tasting heirloom tomatoes came pouring forth. The black krim, perhaps the tastiest — and ugliest– tomato from the Russian Georgia. Stupice tomatoes come from Czechoslovakia and blow early girls right out of the water. Sasha’s altai tomatoes have a great cold resistance because they come from Altai mountains on the Russian-Chinese border. We have a great selection of all these heirloom tomatoes and more. And when you visit you can check out the biggest tomato plant in Boulder, 36 feet long and still growing. Pay us a visit, won’t you?
$5 Coupon Valid through 5/31/2010
April 28th, 2010 .
Our bedding plant greenhouses and store is in bloom with a beautiful selection of annuals, perennials, green plants, and cut flowers! Print this coupon and bring it in by May 31st, 2010 to receive $5.00 off any $100 purchase of bedding plants, cut flowers, or indoor house plants.
Get The Rabbit Habit
April 20th, 2010 .No doubt about it, rabbit manure is some good stuff! It has 12% nitrogen - two to three times the level of other animal manures - and can be used fresh. It won’t burn your plants. Turn it into manure tea and use regularly and you’ll have pepper plants the size of Christmas trees.
Starting Seeds
April 14th, 2010 .
Most seeds can be direct-sown into the garden when the time is right. But many folks like to get a jump on the season by growing vegetable starts. These are usually warm weather plants - tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, melons, cucumbers, etc. While you can grow them in a container with drainage - i.e. a Dixie cup with a whole hole in the bottom - most folks use seed trays and cell packs.
There are two trays, one with performations in the bottom and one without - you’ll want one of each. Cell packs are sheets of small cells that nestle snugly inside the seed trays. You’ll want one sheet of cells for each tray you intend to plant.
Clear plastic covers are also a good idea. You’ll need at least one, which can be rotated to other trays as the seedlings sprout.
For most seeds you don’t need starting mix - any good quality potting soil will work as well.
Put your unperforated tray on the bottom, insert the performated tray into it, followed by the cell pack. Dump an appropriate amount of potting soil into the center of the cell packs and spread it equally into the cells. Use your thumb to lightly tamp down the soil in each cell.
Put two seeds in each cell, cover with additional potting soil (1/4″ for tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, 1/2 inch for melons and cucumbers) and firm the soil lightly.
Lift the perforated tray and cell pack together out of the bottom tray. Fill that tray with an inch of warm water and float the perforated tray with the cell pack on it. Watering from the bottom up will give you even watering and minimize seed displacement, something that can happen when you top-water.
When the cells are dark and evenly moist, put the perforated tray with the cell pack over the sink to drain, dump the excess water out of the bottom tray and then place them back in the bottom tray. Snap on the plastic cover.
Put the assembled trays in a sunny, warm spot during the day and the warmest place possible at night. Most warm-weather seeds germinate best from 70 to 85 degrees, going slightly cooler once they develop leaves. If you’re growing different kinds of seeds in one flat, try to keep the estimated germination times as close as possible.
Seedling heat mats can be pricey, but are a good long-term investment, espeically for tomato and pepper starts. Another good, warm place to put your trays at night is on top of the your refrigerator, toward the back. Since the tray is higher in the room it will stay warmer and get additional warmth from the coils releasing heat in the back of fridge.
Once you’ve achieved 50% germination, take the plastic cover off for good. Keep the first seed to germinate in each cell and pluck out the other.
If your seedlings are tall and pale they aren’t getting enough light. Use a flourescent light to boost light levels and length of day (see below).
If they rot at the base - called “damping off” - they’re too wet and too cold. Toss the contents, sterilize your fresh potting soil by putting it into a 250-degree oven for an hour and start again.
Seedlings that seem spindly can be toughened up by putting them in the path of an oscilliating table fan set on low. The movement of the air will make them more robust, but also more likely to dry out.
Keep the cell packs evenly moist. With the cover on, they won’t need much water.
You can use fluorescent light to start your seeds or extend the length of the growing day. If hung by a fine chain, they can be precisely raised and kept 2″ to 4″ above your seedlings. You don’t have to use more expensive daylight spectrum bulbs. For most purposes a regular white bulb works just fine. Sow your seeds 6 to 8 weeks before you intend to plant them. which in our case will be around Memorial Day.
Organic Seeds
April 13th, 2010 .While you’ll pay a premium for oranic seeds, what’s more important than how organic a seed is, is how organically it’s grown. Being smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, there’s not much room for any potential contamination of a lettuce seed. But there’s a big difference in how it will be grown. The truth is that while some seed companies pride themselves on strictly organic seeds, most commercial seed companies buy their seeds from seed producers in bulk, provenance unknown.
So rather than concentrate on expensive seeds, concentrate on growing them the right way.
Put Your Garden on Wheels
March 15th, 2010 .One of our customers had a dilemma - he wanted to grow tomatoes but he had only four hours of sun on one side of his house and four on the other. Tomatoes need at least six hours of direct sun to produce. So we took an old shopping cart, set two five gallon buckets (with drainage holes drilled in the bottom) inside it, hung two from each side and one from the front. Filled with good quality potting soil and planted with tomato starts, he could now grow seven tomato plants by moving the cart from one side in the morning to the other side in the afternoon.
Putting your container garden on wheels - on a wagon or a cart - means that in the mountains you can wheel your plants out during the day and inside at night. The threats of hail or a sudden freeze? Run ‘em inside. Nice spring day? Run ‘em out.
