Get that garden started

Are you ready to kick ass in that garden this spring? Because it's time. Sure, it may seem cold and rainy (yay!) and hey spring's still a ways off, but I have news - spring is only 21 days away and, here in the San Francisco Bay Area, our last frost date is only three days away. 

NO, REALLY.

So, get that garden started. 

Get your garden planned, sow your seeds, source your transplants, eat your winter garden to make room for the spring garden and prep, prep, prep the soil, tools and equipment before spring is upon us and you're all, BUT I THOUGHT IT WAS WINTER NOW WHERE WILL I PUT ALL OF THESE TOMATO PLANTS?!

Don't stress though - here's a quick guide from our Test Garden to get you going... 

*Excerpt from our monthly coaching update*

1. Plan your garden 

If you know what you grew last season, then you're halfway to planning your spring garden. And if you didn't grow anything last year or you have a new growing space, the only issue will be deciding between all the different vegetables that you can grow. Which, I'll admit, can be a challenge. 

Don't get distracted! Do the needful!

Build a crop rotation plan 

Start a Garden Tracker 

Plant helpful buddies for your vegetables 

  

If you'd like some help (or a lot of help - that's good, too), book a Kitchen Garden Plan session and we'll plan your garden, give you a design to follow and build your crop rotation plan. No stressing! No worries! Just vegetables, companion plants and badassery. 

2. Start your seeds 

For forever-taking plants that don't like to be sown as seed directly in the garden like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, the time for starting your seeds indoors is dwindling fast - so get them going! 

For faster-growing plants like squash, melons and cucumbers that don't mind a direct sow situation, you have a little time before they have to go into the garden - so now's the time to get your seeds in hand and ready to roll.

For early season, direct sow plants like peas (OH SWEET LITTLE SHELLING PEAS YUM), lettuces and beets that like to do their hard work in the cool weather - now's the time to get them into the garden so that WOO you can start your harvests ASAP.

Want calendar reminders for these things so that you don't forget? Add the Indie Farms Growing Calendar to your Google Calendar view (click the +Google Calendar logo in the bottom right corner). Done and done.

The tomatoes are excited to meet you! They're social like that.

3. Source your transplants
There are lots of sources for garden-ready transplants this spring, but we're partial to the Indie Farms Spring Plant Sale because obviously.

Check out the Official 2014 Indie Farms Plant Sale line up and keep an eye on your coaching update and Facebook for your chance at an invite. We'll have vegetable and herb (culinary and medicinal) transplants and our whole line up of grow-y goodness posted up in the (hopefully bursting) Test Garden for your shopping and chattering enjoyment. Plus surprises! 

4. Close out those winter gardens
I heard something somewhere that once we get past the shortest day of the winter (it was 12/20/13), we gain a rooster's foot of light a day until BOOM it's summer and the sun's high in the sky again, feeding our plants all of the sunlight they can stand. 

Well, regardless of whether that rooster's foot thing is total BS, the rise of the sun in the sky means that it's time to bid farewell to those winter vegetables so you can make space for the spring vegetables in just no time at all.

So - savor those final broccoli sideshoots, tender winter greens, sweet carrots, wispy pungent herbs and crispy cole crops and when the plants start to look spent, withered and just plain done - pull them out, eat them or toss them (don't compost them if there are even the slightest signs of disease or pests) and get on with it, already. 

5. Prep those beds

Once your beds are cleared of winter crops, it's time to treat that soil to a good solid boost. 

Adding a good dose of Gardner & Bloome's Harvest Supreme to each of our beds is our go-to for replenishing our soil after the winter crops have had their way with it.

Once that's mixed in really well, get a soil test kit and see what's doing in that soil with our step-by-step How To for soil testing and organic amending.

Then drag out those garden structures (bean trellises, tomato cages, cucumber and melon fencing, etc) and make sure they're in good order, make sure you're stocked with good organic fertilizer like worm castings or storebought organic fertilizer and get those garden tools ready to rock.

And then you'll be ready to kick the maximum amount of ass in the spring garden. Which is what we're all after, really.

Save some water, already

Look, I know there's rain in the forecast for the week and that we got a day or two of rain this month, but that doesn't mean we can run around spraying it everywhere because WOO THE DROUGHT IS OVER!

It's not. Not by a long shot. 

But we still want to get those warm weather seedlings started and that takes water, so here's how we save water AND start our vegetable, herb and flower seedlings.

Keep in mind though, if I see you wasting water, I will spank your buns. Just fair warning is all.

Meanwhile, here are 10 ways to save water while growing those badass vegetable gardens this year...


*Excerpt from our coaching update*

Pre-planting 

1. Install drip irrigation
This is one of the most effective ways to conserve water AND the best way to water your vegetable plants. Here's an all-in-one kit that will drip irrigate a 75 square foot garden area. Get nuts.

2. Check all of your irrigation/fix  
Already have drip irrigation? You're awesome. Before you plant a thing, go out there and test your system (aka - turn that muther on) for leaks, clogged drip emitters, calcium encrusted manifolds (the big main head that all of your drip lines connect to) and missing bits and pieces that the naughty squirrels made off with during the winter. Then fix it and get to growing, already.

3. Build beds
Whether you construct raised garden beds from boards (just not treated railroad ties, please), concrete blocks, scrap metal or hay bales or just mound up soil a foot or two deep, raised beds help promote drainage, avoid compaction (you won't be as likely to walk on the raised part of the bed) and focus water at your plants' roots rather than indiscriminately *around* the plants.

4. Rain barrels

Have you done this? It's pretty simple to set up and can give you a reserve of water to use for hand watering during dry periods. Like, you know, now. Rain barrels come in a number of sizes, can be set up to catch water from downspouts or just as it falls from the sky. The beauty is that it doesn't *have* to fully rain for moisture to accumulate since dew and moisture accumulate on roofs overnight and will drain right into your barrels, too. 

Planting time 

5. Plant densely 
Sure, there are spacing requirements listed on your seed packets and seedling starts and such, and these are good guidelines for most situations, but when we're in a bind for water, resources and space, these requirements can be overly conservative. Instead, look for the "spread" or "width" size for the plants you're growing and plant to the edges of that area rather than including extra space. 

So, for example, tomato spacing is usually recommended at 30 inches (2 1/2 feet) between plants, but if your tomato plant's spread is 3 1/2 feet (or 1 3/4 feet on center), you can plant your tomato plants at 1 3/4' apart so that when the plants reach maturity, their leaves and branches will touch/overlap a bit and there'll hardly be a flicker of sunshine that hits that soil to dry up any moisture that exists while still allowing for enough air circulation to keep the plants happy.

  

Also, planting in squares rather than rows is a good, dense, way to get more from your space without using more water. 

6. MULCH  

I know I've gone on about mulch before, but let me reiterate for those who were checking their phones at the time (I see you out there) - Mulch. OH MULCH. 

Whether you use straw, plastic, bark, cardboard, straw, newspaper, shade at the soil level (shade is mulch!) - cover the soil around your plants to keep the moisture IN and the water-stealing weeds OUT. 

7. Cover germinating seed beds

Loosely cover germinating seeds with a floating row cover to keep the soil mo-ist enough for the seeds to germinate without risking them drying out. 

8. Start plants indoors

Some plants need a head start so that they'll be ready to take off when our weather agrees with their ideal growing conditions and, by starting these plants indoors you'll conserve water by growing them in small containers that can be watered super efficiently via capillary mats or just hyper focused hand watering. Plants to start indoors include long season vegetables like eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.

Post-planting

9. Water like a pro

Firstly - know what kind of watering condition your different vegetables like and go with that instead of blanket watering everything. Seriously. For instance, tomatoes like infrequent deep watering (think 3 days a week for 10-15 minutes) and lettuce likes consistent shallow watering (think daily or every other day for 5-10 minutes). 

If you can't provide specific watering conditions for each type of vegetable (I get it - we have automatic drip irrigation, too, and lots of different stuff planted together in the Test Garden), follow these four rules that will, generally, appeal to most of your warm weather crops:

1. Water deeply - This encourages deep root development.

2. Water infrequently -This keeps the soil from leaching nutrients below the plants' roots.

3. Water in the morning - This gives the plants a fighting chance of being able to take up the water before it evaporates in the hot sun and gives them the turgidity (upright strength) to power through the hottest parts of the day without flagging (falling the hell over).

4. Water at the roots and not on the leaves -This discourages disease and gets water to where the plant can use it.

10. Water only when the plants need it
Yes, we love our drip irrigation and automatic watering, but when it gets hot and the plants need more water, we don't want to rely on the timer to know when the plants need a drink.

Secret: Timers don't know when the soil's drying up. They only know that IT'S 5:30AM! TURN ON THE WATER!

So, yeah. Before you get all "Oh the timer's got this one." and your plants shrivel up from lack of water, do a quick check to see if they even *need* water at all. And if so, give it to them GOOD.

Otherwise known as poo

I don't know about you guys, but we've been hearing more and more about worm castings, worm casting tea and the amazing benefits of all of it for the garden.

Worm castings, otherwise just known as worm poo, are a pretty magical substance. Think better root structure (which means more robust plants), pest control, soil porosity (like water and nutrients can make it to the roots which have more room to grow and penetrate the soil), organic nutrient delivery, no risk of burning (like you'd have with synthetic fertilizers) and so on.

So given all of those bonuses and the relatively small scale operation required for keeping worms, we decided to try vermicomposting (the fancy word for worm keeping) in the test garden so that we could harvest our own worm castings, make worm casting tea and, you know, take on about 500 new pets without having to relocate to a multi-acre farm site since those don't really exist within the confines of Santa Clara County.

Last weekend we harvested our first full batch of castings from our single worm bin operation and thought we'd show you the goods that will be available for purchase along with our vegetable seedlings later this spring and - if you're considering starting up a worm operation, or you have one going and haven't harvested yet, here's a little step-by-step that should help you on your way to raking in all that poo goodness.

Hey - poo can be good.

How to Harvest Worm Castings

There are actually a few ways to do this, but we're using a method that involves hand sorting. This is good if you have a decent outdoor area with good light and want to hold on to as many worms, their cocoons and castings as possible.

We are greedy, so this is how we do it.

Before you decide to harvest your worms, let them go without their weekly meals for at least a week so that you don't have to sort out too much unprocessed food.

Materials

Plastic sheeting - about 6' square

One 5 gallon bucket
Another container for your separated worms
About one pound of food scraps
Enough shredded newsprint (black and white stuff only, please) to build a 2-4" layer on the bottom of your bin
Water to wet your newsprint
Patience. Oh so much patience.

Harvesting

1. Set up your harvest area with the plastic sheeting, new bedding at the ready, food for the apres-sorting feast back in the bin, a water source and your containers for castings and worms.

Sorting area

Bin - pre-sorting

New bedding all ready to go

2. Turn your worm bin over onto the center of the plastic and sort your worms into many (we had a dozen) pyramidal piles.

Overturned worm bin. Mmmm...

Pyramidal piles with worms racing to the bottom.

3. Wait about 10 minutes so that the worms can all travel to the bottom of the piles (they don't like the light) and then go from one pile to the next scooping off the top of the piles into your castings bucket and the worms into your worm container.

These were some unprocessed snacks that went right back into the bin.

This is a good time to set up your bin anew by putting the bedding material in the bottom of the bin (we used shredded paper and tissue), wetting it until it's the consistency of a damp sponge and setting it near your sorting operation.

About those piles: you can revisit the piles after one pass through to make sure you got all the worms out or just do all of the sorting the first time through.

If you come across any unprocessed food scraps, just chuck them back into the awaiting bin full of new bedding.

This whole corner went back into the bin. Next time we'll hold out on the meals for longer than a week.

4. When you're done sorting (and this can take a while, especially if it's not very bright where you're working and the worms take their sweet time heading for the basement), empty your worms into the new bin, add food to one corner and cover everything (worms and all) with a fresh cover layer of shredded paper.

We sent the worms back with some of their castings, too. To make it homier. Also because it's tedious work otherwise.

Apres-sorting feast.

New cover layer tucking in our wiggly friends.

Add the cover and then stow it away in its safe spot - somewhere shady, cool and protected.

And with those amazing worm castings, you can either spread them on your crops and plants as a side dressing (a few handfuls for every 50 square feet or so) and water them in, or you can make worm casting tea.

Make worm casting tea
In your 5 gallon bucket, add a handful or two of worm castings. Fill the bucket about 3/4 with water and let steep for up to 2 days. Strain the liquid through cheesecloth into a garden sprayer or watering can and use it within 48 hours by spraying directly onto the leaves and soil of your plants.  You can also use the strained castings as a diluted top dressing for the soil.

Channel your inner Native American and waste nothing! Not even poo.

FLIP FLOPS! PEAS! It's early spring, people.

There's spring and then there's early spring.

Early spring is the time to get short season (less than two months, in this case) crops in the ground so that you can start eating from the garden again while you get those warm weather crops all grown up indoors for planting out in early May.

So, you're not going to be planting things like tomatoes and peppers and melons yet, but there's a good deal you *can* plant now that will just bask in the glory of cool temperatures and shorter days.

Think leafy greens, small root vegetables and the great wonder of the early spring garden - peas.

Peas are what I think of when I think of spring. Well, peas and daffodils and my flip flops.

Oh how I long for flip flops, exposed toes and the accumulated new warmth of early spring sun soaking through the foamy soles of those flip flops from the earth below.

But we're talking about peas - sorry.

Peas are easy to grow and love our Zone 9 climate this time of year (Feb-April), so get some going this weekend, plant them outside by St Patrick's Day and get in a harvest before the early part of spring is gone and it's just spring Spring.

Decide what type of peas you want
If you don't want to trellis your peas and you want a faster harvest, go for a dwarf or bush variety like the Sugar Ann Snap Pea. If you are into trellising your peas, the Tall Telephone Garden Pea is what we're growing in the test garden and its long vines will get up to 6' tall.

Choose a variety of pea
Shelling peas are the kind that are removed from the pod and eaten, whereas snap and snow peas are generally eaten pod and all. 

Start your peas
The hard shell of the pea makes germination hard for the tiny little sprout to crack, so take your pea seeds (which are just dried up little peas of yesteryear) and wrap them in a wet paper towel. Let them sit on your kitchen counter (they don't need light) for a week or so, keeping the towel damp, and watch for the first little sprout to poke out.

Plant your peas
Once your pea seeds have germinated, plant them 4-6" apart in your amended garden soil in direct sun with the sprout pointing up. Position your trellis with peas planted at each vertical growing spot and you'll see the seedlings emerge in a week or less.

Harvest your peas
Peas are fast growers and you will see the edible flowers (yes, you can get in an earlyEARLY spring crop by eating the flowers) within a month of planting them out. Harvest your shelling peas for fresh eating when the pod is round, bright green and shiny. Harvest snap and snow peas any time, but do try to get to them before the peas inside of the pods are tight against the pod since they might be bitter or starchy.

Get all that? Good job, you.