Good Earth Garden; 109

In. You. Use. You. Hi. And welcome back to the good earth garden. Railings organic gardening calendar. This week I'll be concentrating on getting my garden filled out with summer vegetables. In the most western portions of the state. I think I'd wait another week yet it should be safe to plant corn and beans and squash and peppers. All those heat loving crops that remember that transplants will appreciate a little protection from the wind and the

drop in temperatures at night. One trick that works well for small plants is an empty coffee can just cut the bottom out of the can and set it over the plant. The Cam will serve as a windscreen and also adding a little extra heat and if it should threaten to freeze all you have to do is put the lid back on the can. I have some more plant protection ideas for you later in the show when I plant tomatoes but as I promised last week first thing I'd like to do is talk about starting an herb garden. Herbs have become my favorite vegetables. Even if I had only the tiniest garden that's what I grow as much as I enjoy planting fresh vegetables. It's a lot easier to buy fresh vegetables than it is to buy fresh herbs. The subject of growing or is much too broad for me to cover all of once today so I'd like to do. Let's talk about the basic requirements for growing most herbs and that will get you started.

The first thing that most herbs need is full sun a good six to eight hours a day if your garden area isn't that Sunny. Try growing some herbs in pots and using them on a patio or balcony. It take very kindly to container growing. So don't give up if you're covered with trees. The second thing that herbs appreciate is good drainage. If you live in the eastern shore of Southern Maryland you probably have a nice loose sandy soil. That's what herbs like best. I sure don't but what I did was work at about four inches of sand and to be as bad as I was preparing them. That would help the sort of drain more freely. You might remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about preparing raised beds elevating the growing area like that helps the beds drain more freely so you might want to try a raised bed for your herb garden. There really ideally suited for that. The second thing I'm the next thing I want to talk about is the type of swill that herbs need. That's a little different than growing vegetables. Most vegetables like soil are slightly on the acid side but herbs like soil lightly on the alkaline side

or slightly chalky So it's called since most of us and Marilyn have slightly acid soil. You'll probably want to work in some way I'm into your herb beds a safe amount of lime to apply would be three to seven pounds per every 100 square feet. Let me help you zero in on that range a little bit. If your soil is loose and Sandy you need less lime. So stay in the 3 to 5 pounds per 100 square foot range. But if you're so heavy like mine you want to go in the upper part of that range. Five to seven pounds for every 100 square feet. And remember that when you're buying one you want to look for the bag that says ground limestone. That's the agricultural type. And when it comes to fertilizing herbs that's where you get off a little bit easier. The object in growing most herbs. Is to develop the oils in the in the leaves. That's how you get the most flavor and fragrance. The leaves grow to lushly. They won't produce as many oils. Most books they don't put any fertilizer in your beds but I can't do that to my

plants. Let me tell you how I prepare my herb beds. And it always works for me. I'm first preparing the bed addition to the sand that I work in. I put in about an inch layer of compost. That's what I have here on top of these beds now that I'm getting ready to work up. And so I work all this into the beds and then I'm going to raise up these beds and then they'll be and then they'll be able to drain better again. And then the other things that I do is in the fall I mulch the whole bed with leaves and add some extra humus and mineral content to the bats and this spring I just pull the leaves off sprinkle a little lime and I'm all set to go. Now as far as what herbs you want to plant. I saw my cat walking over there she's always getting into my herbs do you like for catnip the best. But as far as what herbs you want to plant that will depend pretty much on that on the types of herb transplants and things that you can get a hold of herbs. I've gotten a lot more popular recently but the bride is still somewhat limited unless you mail order from an herb specialty house for example. But there are a number of local herbs

suppliers here in Maryland to check around. There might be one in your area before you invest in herb plants. A few things I want you to remember. Herbs fall into several different categories as far as their growth cycle is concerned. I want to do now is show you a couple of my favorite herbs and explain what the terms annual perennial and tender perennial mean. I will help you plan your herb garden more successfully. This tray of plants next to me has a couple of different varieties of basil plants. That's a fairly common culinary herb and basil is an annual plant that means that it lives its whole life in just one season. So vendors have to get a lot done in one season and usually grow pretty fast and round about mid-summer. They'll start putting out blossoms just where the seeds will come from unless you want to say the seeds for some reason. It's a good idea to keep the plants pruned back and keep the flowers cut off. That will encourage the plants to form a lot more foliage for you. It's not too late to start Faysal from seed and

the seeds are usually pretty easy to come by. Let me show you some of the varieties that I have here. Is some smaller leaf varieties that are nice for edging. Then there of course for culinary uses the writers have big leaves. That's where you get the most foliage for cooking. It's just kind of lettuce leaf Basil. Woody smell good. And there is a nice purple basil also called overbets which I don't think is as good for cooking but it makes a beautiful Herb vinegar. And of course it adds some color and twist in the garden. To this any number of kinds of bays of plants you can grow. Make a whole bed of them. And the second type of plant I want to talk about is called a perennial plant perennials or long live plants. They'll come back each spring for many many years. This lovage plant here is an example of a perennial that's important to know which plants are perennials because you take care of them a little bit differently. For example you wouldn't want to pull a perennial plant out of your garden in the fall when you're cleaning it up and you certainly would want to lower

over it in the spring when you're getting your garden growing again. So you probably want to put perennial plants in a special place so you remember where they are. Keep in mind that since perennials are going to live a long time they'll usually get fairly large. This lovage plan eventually will be about this tall and this wide. So find out how big of a plant you're buying so that when you plant it you're sure to leave enough space. If you're not familiar with ravage by the way both the leaves and the stems have a nice delicate celery flavor. My favorite way to use them is to cut the stems off when they're larger and they're hollow inside. They make terrific straws for Bloody Marys. So you'll probably want to try growing that. And the third category of plant I want to talk about is called a tender perennial a tender perennial is a perennial which means it would live a long long time. That's a plant that won't tolerate a cold winter like we have here in Maryland a rosemary plant like this one is an example of a tender perennial. The best way to care for tender perennials

is to sink them into a pot in the garden so that you'll be able to lift them out easily in the fall. This is my plant I just pop out of this little plastic container and planted in a bigger pot type of pot that you want to use for this purpose. Be a clay pot not a shiny one. And unglazed clay pot because that's porous and to let moisture pass through. And just think this pot in the ground. And then you have to lift the plant out easily in the fall and use it for a houseplant in the winter. Rosemary doesn't make a nice house plant. It has a really fresh piney smell. But these are just a few of the dozens of herbs that you can grow before you invest in our plants. Take the time to find some basic information about them. That way you'll have a lot more success. You know gardening is an all lot. We need a new need to know a few things before you start in order to make things work well for you. I'm going to mention a few of the books that have helped me out at the end of the show and those will be some guides for you too. I'm going to plant some tomatoes in just a little while. But for right now I could take a breather and see some of the herb plants. I'm going

to plant in this garden and that will give you some ideas of the types that you'd like to grow. I'll see you in just a minute. I'm. Some herbs can be very decorative and draw their household purposes.

Some people even design or gardens with a theme like an all gray garden or herbs to attract bees and hummingbirds. Or even a collection of the Arabs mentioned in the Bible. I've had a lot of fun growing herbs. I look forward to sharing more ideas with you as the season goes along. But now I want to plant some tomatoes. That's America's most popular home vegetable crop but tomatoes haven't always been so common in fact until the early 1900s they were actually considered to be poisonous. That's because tomatoes are in the same family as a plant called nightshade which was known to be poisonous. But around 1820 there was this guy name of Colonel Johnson and he traveled in other countries or people way tomatoes and they didn't die. So he decided to prove to everyone here that they were safe to eat. So one day on the steps of the courthouse in Salem Massachusetts he had a whole basket full. Everybody thought he would die. Of course he didn't. So eventually tomatoes have made their way into the mainstream of American cooking.

He didn't grow up eating ketchup on everything. Now I want to show you some transplants I started. This transplant here. It's one that I started around the end of January. You didn't start yours indoors. It's really too late to start from seed. Tomatoes need a long growing season because they have to get all their crop in before the first frost because they'll go as soon as they get frozen. That's why you need to wait until the soil is warm and the frosting dangers passed before studying them in the garden. You're going to be buying transplants and they give you a few tips on what to look for when you go to the nursery center. One thing to check for is a nice fix them. That will hold up a sturdy plant and the leaves should be fully fully green. I wouldn't go for blossoms or fruit unless the plant was in a very big pot because the plant wouldn't have had the root system to support all that growth. The very worst type of transplant to buy would be a tall spindly one in a little tiny pot to stay away

from that type. And of course whenever you're buying any kind of transplant check on the undersides of the leaves of the plants. Make sure there aren't any insects there. You don't want to bring any extra problems into your garden. Now I'm going to show you how I plant made of transplants to be a little different from the way you've done it in the past. First thing I do of course is prepare the soil for the plants. For every plant I'm going to put in I put in a whole basket full of compost or manure to get into the area where I'm going to plant. If you are short on either of those ingredients you could work in a crop of organic fertilizer. Just mix this in a little bit here. And the next thing I want to do is that about a quarter cup of Epsom salts for each plant.

I just sprinkle this in with the tomatoes. Epsom salts how pre-event a condition. Tomatoes are often subject to early in the season. That's called blossom end rot and it's caused by a fluctuating moisture supply. Here's what happens is the plants make a lot of growth. Now we get hit with one of those hot dry spells that puts a lot of stress on the plants. It's the magnesium in the Epsom salts that helps to regulate this problem. OK I got. A nice spot here for this tomato. And be sure to give your tomatoes plenty of room to plant my tomatoes at least three feet apart. Now I'm ready for this transplant. Going to take it out of my milk container keep the label so I don't forget which one it is. The cat's always getting my label so I usually have pot luck with tomatoes anyway. See this plan already has a nice healthy root system from having transplanted it

several times while it was still in pots. The first thing I would do is pinch off most of the leaves on this plant. This is going to look like mutilation but you know me well enough now. No but I certainly wouldn't her plants. I'm not I'm not trying to make tomato plants. I'm trying to make big sturdy ones it'll grow lots of tomatoes. So I'm going to bury most of this part of the stem that I'm removing the leaves from. Now let me make a space for this plant. I need a quick shape for the root and then a place for the vine to come through. And the reason that I plant tomatoes like this seems to be a little bit deeper. Is that tomatoes have the ability to form roots all along the stem. So this will end up with a plant that has a much sturdier root system and will be able to support lots of tomatoes and having the roots closer to the soil like

this. Helps to keep the plants up near the top of the surface. But the soil is warm it's made us love heat so they'll grow a lot faster with that nice warm swirl around them. And of course I want to give this plan a good drink of water that looks a little sad. But don't worry this plant will straighten itself up. It's going to make a little cushion under there. And a couple of days that a reach for the sun pool itself right up. OK. And Monday. If you're going to steak or tomato plants which a lot of people prefer to do the best time to put the stake in is just when you plan of the plant because that way you know where the roots are. You wait. You might end up shoving that stake

right through the plant. I use about a five foot wooden pole. Just put it in. Near the plant. I wouldn't use a metal pole. Those will get hot. There's lots of different ways the state of mind is of course but this is the simplest way possible. I'll just tie the string on around the plant. Keep tying it as the plant grows. That's one more step to growing tomatoes that will really help them get off to a good start. If I mention tomatoes I really like heat and the cool nights that we'll have for a while yet really set them back but they're really easy to cover while the plants are small. You could use something like a feed bag just put a hole in it and drape it over the plant. Or you can use a milk jug with a hole in it just run it down through your steak. There we go. And over your plant.

It's a good idea to put these protectors on in the late afternoon. There's a little bit of heat where they can build up some heat inside and help the plants get through the night. There's lots of devices that you can buy to protect plants that you can buy to protect plants too. Let me say when I'm experimenting with this year. This funny looking thing is called a wall of water. It's plastic and has fins in it that you fill up with water and the water heats up and that helps hold a lot of heat there in the plants. So it's really kind of a passive solar device. In fact the manufacturer says that these will protect plants is 16 degrees Fahrenheit. So you'd be able to use them in the fall too. These are fairly expensive but they are reusable from season to season. They cost about $2 a piece. I haven't seen them in any local garden stores. But if you look through any gardening magazine you'll see them advertised and you can mail order them. Well all those tips your tomatoes are bound to be off to a good start this year. Tomatoes usually are a very dependable crop in Maryland and there's lots of writers

you'd like. You might like to try the garden counter. Coming up next list some of the varieties that viewers have recommended so I'll tell you in just a minute. Was.

I mentioned I wanted to recommend some books to you to help you get started with earth gardening. I also want to pass along some basic organic gardening references that will help you in some of them to understand the terms I've been mentioning. By the way you don't need to write all this information down right now. We typed up a short bibliography for you that includes the books I'm going to talk about today as well as some of my other favorites. You would like a copy just drop me a line to the address that I'll give at the end of the show. This first book is really my favorite on herbs. It's called Park success with herbs and it's published by Park Sea Company. The best thing about the book is that it has color photographs of both the mature herb as well as the seedling. So if you're starting herbs from seed you'll be able to tell what you've got coming up it has

listings for about 100 different herbs just about any that you could think of growing and get very specific information for growing them as well as lots of recipes for using them in cooking or for making special things like Pope raisin sachets. I really recommend this book. It costs about $10. So you have to consider whether or not you can afford it and more and less expensive version. There's a little handbook here that's put out by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and it's called handbook on herbs the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York has put out a whole bunch of pamphlets on almost any topic in gardening. So if you're writing wait for this book you might ask them to send you a list of their other titles because there might be some others you'd like to have. They have a number of ones on herbs as well as some on vegetables but this little guy is a good basic reference. It only has black and white photos but they're still pretty clear and gives you good information for growing most of the Arabs that you'd want to try. This costs about $3 apiece. So it's a cheaper investment. Now for some organic gardening references I guess the most all

purpose one would have to be this in fact we're pedia of organic gardening that's put out by Rodale Press. Rodel press has been a pioneering company in the whole field of organic gardening. They've put out any number of books on the subject that I think this is their best to date. It has about 2000 listings for anything you could mention from Label work. The Zig-Zag clover any kind of plant you want to look up any kind of food plant because it includes fruits and nuts as well as vegetables or any type of term or just about anything you want to know about organic gardening. You can find in this book and if alphabetize So it's really easy to locate the information. It's a fairly substantial investments and it cost about $25 but I've seen copies in the libraries you might want to try looking there first. Check out some of the other titles where you're in the library and they have a bunch of interesting books on the whole field of organic gardening. Press is also put out for a number of years. A magazine called organic gardening. It's a monthly magazine and you can sometimes pick it up at a

newsstand as well as get it by subscription. The thing I like best about this magazine that has lots of articles written by readers who are always experimenting with new things that I like to try to make lots of the products are very simple to do that don't get so complicated things to make in your garden and different kinds of things to try. Sometimes the advertisements are even interesting if you're having trouble finding some of the organic gardening supplies that I've talked about. So be a good place to get some ideas as to where to look as a classified section too. Sometimes that's helpful. Another book I'd like to recommend. It's called My garden companion. It is a great book if you want to get your kids started in gardening. It's one book that claims to be for beginners. That actually starts at the beginning. I've had a lot of fun reading it because it explains some of the basic concepts and only about gardening like composting and social conditioning but also talks about things like the weather and the moon and how that affects gardening. So this is a great book to get started with. If you're just in the very beginning of things or if you'd

like to get your children started to look for this in the library though since I think it's out of print it's a fairly old book. One last book I can mention this is called the Northern Gardner. It's published by Harold Smith. And they're up in Canada so they've had to deal with a shorter season of grilling. So I think this book will be particularly helpful to those of you in Western Maryland. You don't have as long a growing season as the rest of us. That's a really succinct reference. In addition to both vegetables and herbs has a good index too. This is one that will give you lots of ideas for season extending and getting a jump on the season so you can grow as many vegetables as everybody else in Maryland. Well I'm out of time for now. Don't forget to drop me a line if you'd like a copy that bibliography address will come up in just a minute and I'll be glad to send it to you. I'll look forward to seeing you next time. Until then make it a good read. You have any questions or suggestions you'd like a copy of the bibliography. My address is

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