Advice to a Transplanted Maine Gardener

Awhile ago I put a "Have Gardening Questions?" link on this blog, hoping someone would email me - I get a lot of practice answering random questions at the Master Gardener's office, and I always learn something when I do.  Despite doing this, no one has contacted me, until today. Out of the blue I received an email this morning, asking for loads of gardening advice:

I'm new to Park Circle, having moved here from Maine in September. We finally have our beds made and filled, and yesterday I did a little planting. I'm very excited to try my hand at veggies since there's such a long growing season (compared to Maine!). I do have a few questions, and thought maybe you could help me out.

I'm looking for a nice nursery that sells a variety of gardening supplies and plants. I've been to Abide A While and another place in Mt. Pleasant. They're both lovely but I found one a tad pricey and the other more gifty, if that makes sense. Do you have a favorite?

I have to say that I don't have a favorite garden center. I don't frequent them and most of them seem gifty and pricey to me too. Besides box stores, the other store that came to mind was Hyam's on Folly Road on James Island. You may find them similar to Abide-a-While, however, I got a pair of garden clogs from them that I love. I had to search the internet to find anything similar to those places in our area, and the only other place I found was Hidden Ponds Nursery in Awendaw, north of Mount Pleasant. Their website boasts of their "mile of grand pathways", and for us to "come take a walk in the woods". It sounds like it would be worth the drive just to look around.

 I'm looking to grow potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and asparagus - all things that should be grown from starts or seedlings. Where can I get these?

Oh, if only you had emailed me a month ago!  Around here Clemson Extension recommends planting potatoes in early February, onions in during February as well and asparagus crowns during January and February.  You'll have another chance to grow onions in the fall and it may not be too late to plant asparagus.  It is a perennial so it will grow and produce spears for more than a single year. Because of this, you'll have to devote permanent space in your garden to it.  It is also recommended to let them become established for 2-3 years before beginning to harvest.  Not all is lost - you have until mid-April before planting sweet potatoes.  I've never grown these before, but it looks as if you can buy transplants from a garden center - you may have to call around to see who offers them.  For planting times, see HGIC 1256 Planning a Garden.  That site is my go-to place for information on all things gardening.

As far as where to get these. I have a few suggestions.  For potatoes and onions, I tend to go to feed and seed stores.  They are nearly the only places that carry a large quantity and variety of these.  Other places have had these in the past, like local hardware stores, but I would stick with the feed and seeds.  For my recommendations, click here.  I have talked about other sources in the past.  If you search for "feed and seed" on this blog, you will find those as well.  I used to drool over the seed catalogs every winter, but I've decided that it may be too much choice.  My two favorite feed and seeds have a good selection of seeds that I will continue to buy, unless I need or want something special.

What "pests" am I going to run into? I can already guess squirrels. Anything else i should be looking out for? And do you have recommendations for eradicating them?

My experience has taught me that pests vary greatly by yard.  I had minor problems with leaf-footed squash bugs the last few years, but a friend who lives south of Charleston had tomato hornworm invasion.  A woman called the Master Gardener's office about the "kudzu bug" or bean platispid ravaging a tree of hers.  There is something called "Integrated Pest Management" that some of us try to practice.  It's about preventing problems before they happen.  Chose disease resistant varieties of plants.  Rotate crops to prevent pests and diseases from reaching a critical level.  Cleaning up dead plant material to limit the spread of disease.  Heat and humidity are also problems to be dealt with.  As questions or problems arise, I'll be happy to help.  In the meantime, feel free to check out HGIC 2755 Integrated Pest Management, or their IPM site that I just found.

How do you feel about the quality of the Bees Ferry compost? I filled my beds with this but I'm concerned - pulled out plastic fork tines and shredded plastic bags. It's what I got so I planted, mixing in a little lobster compost we brought with us from Maine.

If anything, I'm a frugal gardener.  I have always gotten compost from the landfill.  In the past it had a lot of plastic in it (see a photo here), but recently the county mandated that paper leaf bags be used instead of plastic and it has eliminated(?) that problem.  It was more of a business decision for them - they are now able to sell larger quantities because of its higher quality  According to extension agent Amy Dabbs, Clemson University "certified the compost from Bees Ferry for use in organic farming operations, a first in the state. (The compost itself cannot be 'certified organic.' That term is reserved for agricultural products consumed by humans.)"  You can read her article here.

Think of compost as a soil amendment, something you add to your soil.  If your beds are all compost, you will be missing key minerals and other nutrients that are in soil, but not available in organic materials.  You can take soil from your yard or buy bags of sterilized garden soil, or even get a truck load of topsoil from local businesses.  I had to explain this to someone at the MG office recently - there are thousands of weeds seeds in any soil, from your yard or brought in.  When you buy garden soil in bags from a garden center, it has probably been sterilized - cooked to kill all the weed seeds and potential pathogens.  The problem is that all the beneficial organisms in the soil were killed as well.  At your first opportunity, you should get a soil test to see what it needs.  It is likely similar to mine, but only after getting your results will you know for sure.  Here's how to do that: How To Get A Soil Test. Another option is to try sheet composting, also known as lasagna gardening.  It is especially good for starting raised beds.  Oregon State University has a good guide to doing it.

Any tips or tricks for having a successful growing season in the south?

I haven't taken a poll, but I know one other person who agrees with me - summer is my least favorite time to garden.  At my house the gardening year starts off in January when I plant peas.  I planted them in February last year and it was too late.  This year I planted them in mid January and I have a feeling it may get too warm for me to get many peas.  I may have to plant them right after Thanksgiving, like I heard another master gardener does.  In February I plant onions and potatoes.  I never know what to do in March.  According to some charts, our last expected frost date is around March 15th, but experience tells me that there is usually a frost the first week of April.  It's also the first best time to sow seeds, like beans, squash and corn, directly in the ground, but watch that frost! Serious gardeners are growing seedlings at this time, to transplant into their garden after the last frost, but since I'm not set up for that, I twiddle my thumbs a little bit right now.

April is when I transplant veggies like squash, tomatoes and peppers, and start a second crop of seeds.  May and June is when it really starts to heat up.  Potatoes are ready by that point and hopefully you've gotten the first fruits of some of your vegetables.  By July it's too hot to do anything - plants won't produce fruit when it's this hot, but you can always dream of cooler weather.  August is when they say to start your cool-season vegetables, but that's the last thing I'm thinking about then.

Once October gets here you can get serious about cool-season crops.  Onions get planted again.  Garlic, for harvest next fall, can be planted.  Broccoli and collards can be transplanted.  Despite a few frosts and freezes, winter is rapidly becoming the best gardening season here - if you like leafy greens and root vegetables, like lettuce, spinach, collards, broccoli, turnips, carrots, and radishes.

Good luck with your garden and, I hope this has given you a dose of what it's like to garden in our part of the world.  If I can help in nay way, please let me know.

Simple DIY Compost Bin

 I've wanted to do a lot more composting around my yard, but didn't know where to start.  Recently I attended a local weekend "gardening school" where I learned about composting.  An easy compost bin made from wire fencing made my day and I wanted to share it:

Take a 10-foot length of wire fencing, about four feet high.  You need something flexible enough to make a cylinder , but sturdy enough to stand on its own.  I recommended welded-wire fencing - make sure it has been "galvanized after welding".  This will prevent the joints from rusting prematurely.  You can get this type of fencing, and others, at home improvement stores and feed stores.  You can also look at the other fencing options they have as well.

Compost piles should be at least three feet wide and three feet high, and no more than five feet in each direction.  A 10-foot length of fencing will make a bin just over three feet wide.  You want it at least three feet tall - that is why I recommend fencing at least three and a half feet tall.

Cut the fencing so that you have a few inches of wire to bend around the other end of the fencing when you make your cylinder.  If you have chosen a more rigid fencing, it will most likely stand on its own.  Don't worry if you are using something less sturdy, like chicken wire - you can use a few t-posts to keep it upright.

 Using these wire bins also makes it easy to turn your compost pile - unhook the wires holding the cylinder together, or just pick it up, and set it next to your pile.  Then use a shovel or garden fork to turn it back into the cylinder.

 Now that you have an easy-to-make compost bin, I hope everyone will be collecting all of their yard waste to use, instead of putting it on the curb...in plastic bags.

Yard Waste Bags

I've been wanting to write about the compost I buy at the landfill for a while now. It's made from the yard waste of the residents of Charleston County, so there are no guarantees about anything. We can hope their piles heat up enough to kill or break down all the bad things like diseases, pests, herbicides, pesticides and weed seeds, but there is one thing that does not break down during the composting process - plastic.

People put their yard waste out for collection in plastic bags. I'm not sure, but the composting process probably begins by taking all of the yard waste and dumping it in a shredder, which puts very small pieces if plastic into the compost. I see it all of the time in the compost that I have gotten from the landfill and I think that has had a negative effect on my feelings about getting compost from them.

I decided this weekend to try something new and use the paper yard waste bags that you can buy at Lowes or Wal-Mart or other stores that sell lawn and garden items. I have two reasons for trying these out. The first one is I refuse to use plastic bags for my yard waste - it's obvious that the plastic is ending up in the compost that they sell. The second reason has more to do with the aesthetics of our landscape than anything else. For nearly four years I've been dumping piles of yard waste near the street every week without bagging it, and the city workers come by and pick it up with a large bucket/scoop loader attached to a dump truck. Over the years, or maybe it happened to very first time, the bucket has scooped up our grass in that one area and I want it back. Instead of complaining to the public works department all the time, I thought I would be proactive. By putting everything in bags, maybe they won't need to use the scoop on my yard waste and will leave any future grass untouched. I've got two full bags on the street now, waiting for pickup in a couple of days - we'll see what happens.

Biding My Time

I bought onions and potatoes last week and I decided I needed to build a few more raised beds to plant them in - quickly. Originally I decided that over the next several days I would buy concrete blocks - I need 16 for a bed and I don't want to load down my car too much - set up the beds over the weekend when I was off and get Robin to pick up Ella from school so I could go get compost after work two or three days next week. I wanted to get everything ready, so I can plant by early-mid February.

I thought that it might be easier if I could get a day off from work next week. I would still work on building the beds, but I would use that one day to make a few trips to the landfill for compost. Work has been a little busy lately and the best I could do for a day off was maybe Tuesday. That meant I had to get the beds laid out this weekend. Well, that's not going to happen now.

It has been raining steadily since last night and the low predicted for tonight is 20 degrees - again on Sunday night - so I'll have to wait until it dries out before I can get out there and work. I've accepted the fact that I have to bide my time until my next day off before I can go get compost and plant. It'll be early-mid February and that's still a good time to get onions and potatoes in the ground.

Recycling Paper

We generate a lot of paper - newspaper and magazine subscriptions, catalogs, Ella's schoolwork, and Robin's decoupage. It eventually it dawned on me that we should recycle as much of this as possible - in order to do this we had to get another bin. Now we're trying to recycle everything paper that is clean - paperboard boxes, toilet tissue rolls, mail. We still use paper plates half the time and I don't think it's a good idea to try to recycle those. If we ever get chickens or do large-scale composting, we'll have a place for them as well as used and greasy paper fast food containers and pizza boxes. It's not very scientific, but in the last couple of months, the amount of paper we recycle has doubled and our trash is probably half of what we usually have.

New Year, New Raised Bed

The past couple of weeks, I've felt very unmotivated to work in the yard. There hasn't been much sun left when I got home from work, and the temperature was starting to drop. When I have been home early, I just haven't felt like going back outside. It's rained some too - enough to make it no fun to work in the mud.

I saw no end in sight, with Ella starting school on Monday - so I had to give myself a big push and tell myself that it was my last best chance to get stuff done. It must have worked, because I got another raised bed almost ready to plant in two afternoons.

Wednesday afternoon, I swung by Lowe's near work and picked up ten cinder blocks. I wasn't sure how many I needed, but they're heavy and I didn't want to load down the car too much. When I got home I discovered I only needed only five more, so I immediately ran to Lowe's near home before traffic got bad. When I got back I laid them out and leveled them. Now they were ready for the compost.

Even though I'm off on New Year's Day, my only chance to get compost from the county landfill was after work on Thursday. I knew it might rain, but as long as it wasn't raining more than a light drizzle, I would still go. When I left work the rain was holding off, so I decided to go. I put plastic down in the back of our hatchback and I was off. When you buy compost by the ton at the landfill, they weigh your vehicle entering and leaving and you pay $10 a ton for the difference. I had been there in the rain before and it wasn't that bad, but today was just extremely muddy. I was having to scoop right on the surface of the pile to get the fluffiest and driest stuff. The deeper I dug, the wetter and more compact it was. It was a slow process - I also suspected that it would weigh more and I'd be paying a little extra because of it.

I loaded the car as full as I dared and then left to be weighed. 520 pounds of compost cost me a whopping $2.60. The landfill and the recycling center sell the same compost for $2 per bag - the bags probably weigh 40 pounds. Going to the landfill may be a little more effort, but it's well worth the price difference.

Once I got home, I backed the car as close to the garden as possible and shoveled it into a wheelbarrow and dumped it into the new raised bed, repeating that process four or five times. So, I'm nearly ready to plant in the new bed - I thought I would plant more lettuce or spinach, but I realized I have only a month before I will need to plant more onions and potatoes, so that bed may sit fallow until February. Our broccoli is close to being over done, so I may pull that out and plant spinach there - we'll see. I've got places to put possibly five more raised beds. As I'm thinking about the warm-season vegetables I want to plant, I may need all of those. I've posted a diagram of my raised beds here.