growing season Archives - Organically Green

Prepare Your Garden for Spring

Posted March 17, 2021

It’s finally that time of year! Spring is almost here! It’s time to prepare your garden for another growing season.

Hopefully, through the winter you’ve been staying on top of things like deadheading and pruning that way you have a head start on cleanup tasks, but if you haven’t now is the time to start!

Remove old flower heads from perennial plants, living weeds, damaged branches, and older mulch and grass clippings. Most of these things can be placed in a compost heap to become incorporated into the soil. If it is already well-composted in place you can use organic matter to work into the soil and increase nutrient levels. You want to expose the soil so you can prepare it for flowers and other plants.

At this point you can add an organic fertilizer along with the older mulch, working the soil until it’s all mixed in. This will ready the garden bed for spring planting, and giving it the nutrients it needs to support your flowers and vegetables. This will also help to loosen up the soil which is important after being compacted all winter long. While you’re digging up the soil, it’s the perfect time to perform a soil test to see what your pH levels are and whether or not you need to make adjustments. Your local cooperative extension can help with this.

If you’re going to be using raised bed planters early spring is a good time to purchase soil specifically formulated for raised beds. While it may be too early to plant most crops, being prepared for warmer weather never hurts. If you decide to plant cool weather crops like lettuce, asparagus, and Brussel sprouts, be sure to cover crops with a frost protectant on nights that may still be extremely cold.

Finally, once you’ve gotten your beds prepared and your garden ready for next month’s planting you can spend some time dividing up perennials—like bearded iris, hostas, and daylilies. These perennials can often begin to crowd each other out over time, causing their blooms to get smaller and more sparse as time goes on. By splitting them you give them more room to grow. The most important thing to remember with splitting plants is that your garden tools must be sterilized with alcohol first. You can spread disease and pests from one plant to another if you don’t keep your tools clean.

Hay Bale Gardening

Posted February 15, 2021

Hay bale gardening, or straw bale gardening—as it should be called—is a great way to make your growing season easy and plentiful. They’re an alternative to using raised beds and they’re great for growing vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and strawberries with little to no effort on your part. Hay bales are a wonderful growing medium; though corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes aren’t a great choice for straw bales.

Before you start your straw bale garden it’s important to choose a location. Pick a sunny spot that’s near a water source or within reach of your hose. Once you start your garden it will be impossible to move due to the weight, so choose carefully.

Next, you’ll want to source your straw bale. Your local garden centers may carry straw bales, but be sure that they haven’t been treated with any chemicals and that they’re straw and not hay bales. Hay bales contain seeds that will germinate once you condition the bale, and you don’t want that. You want straw, which is the stalk of the wheat plant. Hay is generally sold as livestock feed, so ask before you buy to be sure you’re getting straw.

After you source your bales and have a location, put down some newspaper or cardboard under your bale. This prevents weeds from growing up into the bale, so make sure it sticks out a few inches around the sides of the bale. Then it’s time to condition your bale. Once you’re done conditioning the bales you won’t be able to move it anymore, so be sure about that placement!

Conditioning the bale is next. Conditioning basically turns the bale into a compost pile. You’ll begin by watering the bale. They have to stay wet, so do this once a day. This starts the decomposition process that heats up the bale. After day 4 sprinkle the top of the bale with fertilizer, such as a cup of ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) or half a cup of urea (46-0-0). Your local garden centers can help you find these. Do this for three days. After that, cut the amounts in half and do it for 2 more days. Each day water the fertilizer into the bale to ensure it penetrates all the way through. On the 10^th day stop adding fertilizer, but keep up with the watering process.

On day 11 you’ll want to check the bale’s temperature. If it feels about the same as your hand it’s safe for planting seedlings. If not, continue watering and check it the next day. You want to make sure it’s not hot enough to cook tender young plants.

Once the bale is conditioned you can use a small shovel or trowel to dig a hole in the top of the bale. If you are using container plants dig a hole slightly larger than the pot your plant came in. Then remove the pot, being careful not to damage the plant root, and place it in the hole you just made. Do not remove the potting soil around the plant. That should go in the hole along with the plant. Push the straw around the base of the plant to help secure it.

And that’s it! You have your straw bale garden. The most important thing you’ll need to remember once your garden is going is that it will need to be kept constantly moist. This can be accomplished through thoroughly soaked waterings every day or through the use of a soaker hose and drip irrigation. Whichever way you choose the microbes in the straw need that moisture to survive and help your plants to grow, so be sure to help them by keeping your hay bale moist.

Once your bale is done for the year you can take it apart and throw it into the compost pile so you can return the nutrients in it to the soil. It’s the perfect way to garden without waste. Give it a try this summer! You’ll love the results.

Planning a Spring Garden

Posted January 18, 2021

Planning a Spring Garden

Planning a spring garden is a great way to help you get through the dreary winter months. It may be too cold to start gardening, but there are still quite a few things you can do to make your life easier in the early spring.

Before you start planning there are still a couple of outdoor tasks to take care of, so make sure you get to those first.

Late fall and early winter are the perfect time to remove and discard diseased or bug-eaten plants from garden beds. Don’t toss them in the composting bin, however, as that can spread disease to plants the following season.

Check and see if any plant roots are growing where they shouldn’t be, such as into your septic field or your foundation. Some roots can even buckle your driveway. Make a note of these and have them taken care of asap.

Early winter is a good time to mulch overwintering plants and vegetables like carrots. Cleaning and storing your garden tools properly is also important so you have them ready for next year.

It’s always a good idea to check your grow zone to help you determine not only what the best plants are for your area, but also when to begin germinating seeds, and how long the plants growing season will be.

Start creating a garden plan. Sketch out your garden area and plan where you’re going to put your vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Remember to leave room for the plants when they reach adult size so your garden isn’t too crowded!

Break out the seed catalogs. Ordering seeds from reputable companies will mean you get high-quality seeds with a high germination rate. Read up on germination times for each plant so you’ll know the perfect time to start indoor germination. Seed catalogs often contain gardening tips to get the most out of the seeds you order, so make a note of those.

Check out your local garden center and pick up soil and extra mulch now, when it is often cheaper than in springtime.

Decide where you’ll want to keep your summer flowers. These are usually going to be planted in pots, so a sunny patio or deck is a perfect home for these plants. You may also want to start shopping for decorative containers for these now, so you’re ready to go once they’re available.

Finally, determine your goals for your entire yard overall. What do you want to get out of your yard? Are you looking to start a large landscaping project such as installing pathways, water features, and arbors, or do you just want to maintain your vegetable garden? Do you want to create a place for activities, or a calm Zen-like retreat? Working out your goals now will make it easier to create a realistic plan to execute come spring.

By taking some time to do these things now you’ll be ready to get out there and garden the moment the ground thaws and the weather warms. Remember, a little planning can go a long way, so the sooner you start the more time you’ll have!

Winterizing Strawberry Pots

Posted December 7, 2020

Strawberries are one of the more hardy fruits you can plant; but they still benefit from winterizing if you want to be sure of a full crop come spring, especially if you are living in zones below zone 7. If you live in zones 8 and higher they will often not need any help at all to survive the winter. Overwintered strawberries tend to bloom in early spring, letting you get a jump on the growing season. Being perennial, strawberries are built to survive cold weather, however, they do not have the woody bark some other perennials do so they need a little bit of help in cold temperatures so they don’t die or suffer injuries.

The way you overwinter your strawberries will depend on how you grow strawberries. Potted strawberry plants and those in hanging baskets are the easiest to overwinter. Winterizing strawberry plants in strawberry pots simply means moving them to an unheated garage. Once the crowns have browned and shriveled and the plants have entered dormancy it’s time to move them. This means that it has been below freezing for several nights in a row. First, clean up the crowns by snipping off any browned leaves to prevent them from rotting over the winter. Then, just move the pots inside against the house if possible for the ambient heat it provides if you live in a very cold location. However, if the garage doesn’t get below around 28 degrees Fahrenheit you’ll have no problem putting the pots anywhere in the garage, or even in an unheated shed.

For strawberries in the ground, or in a raised bed, winterizing strawberry plants is only slightly more involved. Plants in the ground will need a layer of insulating material to keep them warm. Straw or leaves work perfectly for this purpose.

It is important not to let the plants completely dry out. You want to keep the soil moisture level just slightly damp. A layer of straw will help with this for in-ground plants. Potted plants will have to be checked and watered about once a week.

By following these tips your plants will be bearing strawberries again come spring, and you’ll be sharing all of the sweet treats you made with them by early summer!

Prepping Shrubs for Winter

Posted November 16, 2020

Every year as fall rolls on you start thinking about winter. More specifically, you start thinking about your plants in winter. While some plants are easy because you can just bring them inside, the plants outside your home are a little more tricky. So how can you prepare your outside plants for winter?

The first thing to know about your trees and woody plants is that if they are bred to survive your hardiness zone you don’t really have to do anything to prepare them. Most local deciduous trees and shrubs can survive on their own with little-to-no intervention on your part. To prepare these shrubs for winter simply remove any dead or diseased branches that may snap under heavy snow and ice. Save the heavy trimming for spring so that you don’t lose any newly developed flower buds.

The exception to this is newly planted trees and woody shrubs that may need more care for the first year or two until their roots settle in. For these plants, you’ll want to mulch heavily, at least 2–3”, around the base to cover the entire root zone of the plant. This will help protect the roots from the constant freezes and thaws that are more damaging than staying frozen. Keep watering through fall, but stop watering them before the ground is frozen. These tips should keep young trees in good shape. If you are worried about branches snapping you may want to use a tree wrap of burlap around the tree for extra protection. You can find burlap at almost any garden center.

When it comes to evergreen foliage such as arborvitae a burlap wrap is a great idea to protect against snow, wind, and sun particularly for the plant’s first three years of life. Winter sun can activate growth activity in evergreen trees, meaning that when the sun goes down and freezing temperatures return the active areas can be killed. Drying winter winds can pull moisture from these plants leading them to turn brown and sometimes die. The wrap will help keep the shrubs safe until the growing season starts again. You can either wrap directly around the tree or you can create a wind barrier by driving stakes into the ground and then wrapping the burlap around the stakes. If you directly wrap the tree you need to tie off the burlap with twine, and if you use the windbreak method you need to staple the burlap to the stakes.

With just a small amount of prep work this fall your trees and shrubs will emerge from winter looking great this spring. If you don’t feel comfortable doing your own fall prep, give Organically Green Horticultural Services a call and they can do the job for you!

How to Overwinter Mums

Posted October 13, 2020

Mums are one of the most popular flowers you’ll see this time of year. Hardy mums are carried at almost every box store and farm stand and even supermarkets. Keeping garden mums helps to fill in empty spots left after the growing season has ended and most other flowers have wilted. Along with pansies and asters, mums are the heroes of the fall planting season. They continue to grow well after most other plants have slipped into dormancy and bring much-needed color to your yard.

If you’re the kind of person that doesn’t like to throw away your plants once the winter months arrive you may be wondering how you can help your mums survive the winter.

The easiest way to keep your mum plants alive for next year is to bring the plants indoors. For potted plants this means cutting off the brown foliage and stems about 3–4 inches long above the soil, wrapping the pot, and bringing it inside to an unheated garage or shed. This area should stay between 32 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit so that the plant can stay dormant. If your mum plants are in the ground you can move them to a pot before the ground begins to freeze or heavily mulch the ground around them. Be sure to add some potting soil and organic fertilizers to the pot so that your potted mum has a good start come spring.

In areas that receive slightly warmer weather, including New York, overwintering mums can be done outdoors as well. Heavy mulching can keep the roots from freezing and thawing again during the winter. This mulch can be straw, leaves, or even grass clippings. Remaining frozen during the winter is less damaging to your plant than freezing and thawing over and over. With the warmer winters we have been having this is more and more likely to occur. Your mums can even stay in the ground, provided that you give them enough mulch. Just be sure to cut off the dead stems and bury them in mulch shortly after the first frost.

By following these steps you’ll be able to keep using your mums year after year with the bonus that every year they’ll be bigger and lusher than the year before!

Summer Fruit Tree Pruning

Posted June 1, 2020

Summer pruning of fruit trees is done both to increase next year’s crop and improve this year’s harvest. Most of the time pruning is done in winter when a tree is dormant, so pruning during the growing season may seem counterintuitive, but there are a few reasons to prune during this time of year.

Apples, pears, peaches, apricots, and cherries benefit the most from summer pruning.

Pruning fruit trees in summer controls undesirable growth and water sprouts. By trimming these off and pruning your tree you allow the fruit tree to put more energy into producing fruit than it does into producing branches.

Some stone fruits (apricots, peaches, and cherries) grow quickly, so after harvest, you should cut back about 50% of their new growth.

If you have young fruit trees, be careful to only prune a little bit at a time. The leaves you’re cutting off are your tree’s energy factory and they need them to grow strong. When you do prune, use that opportunity to shape the tree so that you can reach the fruit for eventual harvest. Dwarf fruit trees (which are most of the trees you’ll find in your local garden center) can be trained to grow into a number of shapes.

Finally, pruning your fruit trees allows more light to reach the fruits and will give them more air circulation. This can help deter pests and disease and make larger, sweeter fruit that is easy to reach.

Lawn Weed Control

Posted May 18, 2020

As you look outside at your dormant lawn it’s hard to believe that in just a few weeks the pesky weeds will arrive. When the weather warms and plants wake up the weeds in your lawn wake up too. What most people don’t realize is that one of the best times for weed control is before they even start.

Weed seeds wait for the weather to warm before germinating. The best weed control product to handle this issue is called a pre-emergent herbicide. This type of weed preventer addresses weeds only, leaving lawn grass safely behind to grow. It is one of the best ways to get rid of perennial weeds. Crabgrass preventer is another type of pre-emergent herbicide; however, it can also be applied after weeds are visible. Pre-emergent herbicides are often mixed with lawn fertilizer, making spring lawn care even easier. This allows you to kill weeds at the same time as you feed your lawn.

Other types of weed control are called post-emergence herbicides. These get rid of weeds after they have appeared. This kind of weed control also handles all types of weeds including broadleaf weed species and grassy weed species. These fertilizers can be applied through the entire growing season to kill weeds; both annual weeds and perennial weeds are susceptible to this kind of treatment.

The long and the short of it is that staying on top of weeds with early treatment is easier than tackling a serious problem later in the season. If your lawn has only a few weeds here and there you might consider hand pulling, but once the problem gets too large a weed control product may be your only option. Remember that hand-pulled weeds can grow back and in some cases actually spread the seeds of the very weeds you’re trying to eliminate.

Spring Lawn Care and Pre-Emergent Herbicide

Posted March 2, 2020

Early spring, before the warm season really starts, is a good time to do a special kind of herbicide application known as a pre-emergent herbicide. Pre-emergent herbicide applications help to eliminate weeds before they can grow. Some of the common summer grassy weeds that this treatment can prevent are crabgrass, foxtail, goosegrass, and sandbur.

Once the soil temperature rises it will be the perfect time to apply a weed preventer. The correct temperature means that it should be 55 or above for at least 2 days. Usually, this is at some point between March and April.

For most granules or liquids are the two main methods used to apply pre and post-emergent herbicides. It is vital that the active ingredient reaches into the soil, so if you are using granules you’ll need to water them in. If you’re using a liquid, it will seep in on its own.

It is important to make sure you’re applying pre-emergents before the growing season because once weeds—such as crabgrass, or broadleaf weeds like dandelions, clover, ragweed, and carpetweed—are visible it’s too late and you’ll have to use different treatments such as a post-emergent herbicide weed killer. When using a post-emergent weed killer be careful during application because lawns and decorative plants can be burned or killed by these chemicals.

Apply pre-emergent herbicides in both late summer to early fall as well as early spring because this is when most weeds bloom. These pesticides have an active ingredient which does not stop weed seeds from germinating, but instead keep them from sprouting. This means that the application is best done just when the seeds germinate. This usually happens twice a year. For the fall application wait until temperatures drop to the mid-70’s for three to five days in a row. For some weeds, such as annual bluegrass, multiple applications over consecutive years may be necessary to achieve the level of control you’re looking for.

Pre-emergent herbicide applications will not last through consecutive seasons so it is necessary to apply them each year, twice a year, to get the weed control you want for your lawn.

Starting Seeds Indoors: Bring a Little Bit of Spring Inside During Dark Winter Months!

Posted February 17, 2020

The dark days of winter can be rough. Snow and cold can make almost anyone miss the verdant days of summer. Those of us that spend our spring and summer in the garden can really feel down when there’s nothing to tend to. If you just can’t wait to get your hands in the dirt, starting your seedlings early can give you a taste of the gardening you’re missing.

How to Start:

There are a couple of ways to start seedlings indoors. You can either grow plants from seed or buy seedlings that have already gotten their start indoors at a nursery. Watching seeds germinate can be extremely satisfying and will give you a little bit longer with the plant indoors, though buying pre-started plants is easier and sometimes more reliable.

Before you sow seeds check the date on your seed packet. Seeds have an expiration date and while they may germinate after this date, they will be less likely to do so. Most garden centers sell seeds of all kinds all year long, so you can begin to plant from seed at any time of the year.

To begin starting seeds you should place the seeds in a warm, dark, and moist area, such as between two damp paper towels on a set of plates. Keep them damp, but not soaking wet, and in a few days, you’ll see a root emerging from your seed. Once the root is exposed you can plant this seedling in the seed starting mix. When growing seeds indoors use peat pots to hold the soil, because once the outdoor growing season starts you can just plant them, pots and all, into the soil. This keeps the root systems from becoming damaged.

Keep Them Going:

Once your seeds are planted keep your eyes out for the first sprout they put out. You’ll see a tiny little set of leaves come up, and that will be the start of your new plant. Once you have seedlings growing you’ll want to keep them warm; if you are using natural light place them near a window. In the winter using natural light can become very cold so provide them with bottom heat by using a heat mat. If you are not keeping your seedling by a window consider using a grow light to help it along until spring. You should also make sure you give them plenty of air circulation to ensure that your new plants don’t succumb to fungal infections.

Time to Move:

When it’s time to move your plant outdoors you’ll need to decide whether you want to plant it into a larger pot or directly into the ground. Either way, you’ll need to “harden” the plant—meaning you’ll have to get it used to living outside. To do this, bring it outside for a few hours at a time for a few days. This will prevent shock and sunburn. If you plant in a container make sure it has drainage holes so that you don’t drown the plant. If you’ll be planting in the ground give the plant a little bit of compost to help it along and you’ll be harvesting in no time!

Blog

Prepare Your Garden for Spring

Hay Bale Gardening

Planning a Spring Garden

Winterizing Strawberry Pots

Prepping Shrubs for Winter

How to Overwinter Mums

Summer Fruit Tree Pruning

Lawn Weed Control

Spring Lawn Care and Pre-Emergent Herbicide

Starting Seeds Indoors: Bring a Little Bit of Spring Inside During Dark Winter Months!

How to Start:

Keep Them Going:

Time to Move:

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