Rose Garden Mulch for tropical south - compost as mulch?
Kimberly Wendt (Florida Z. 10b)
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Kimberly Wendt (Florida Z. 10b)
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compost or mulch
Comments (31)Pam, To some extent, the W-M stores here have always had the plants and bulbs that can be planted in cool weather on store shelves in January, but it used to be at the end of January. Now they start popping up just as soon as they can clear one aisle or half an aisle of Christmas merchandise. I usually notice them them in the stores shortly after New Year's Day. At first it is a couple of things. I think this year the first things they had were glads, daylily roots and cannas. Since cannas overwinter in the ground here, I'm not surprised to see them in the stores but I wouldn't plant cannas into cold wet ground when we still are having nighttime lows in the teens and twenties. There's a difference in how much cold an established canna can endure underground versus a new one that's not hardened off. Keep in mind, though, that I generally shop at Wal-Mart 20 miles to my south in Gainesville, TX, and less frequently at Wal-Mart 25 miles to my north in Ardmore, OK. It does make a bit of a difference. With most cool-season gardening products, the Gainesville store can be 2 to 4 weeks ahead of the Ardmore store. I suspect Gainesville's supplies are shipped more on a schedule for Dallas-Fort Worth and Ardmore's might be shipped more on a schedule similar to OKC's. Already, the home depot in Gainesville has containerized fruit trees and they were unloading their seed displays and gardening stuff when Tim and I were in their on Tuesday buying a roll of field fencing for the new garden out back. I expect that if I pop in there today or tomorrow, they'll have everything out on the shelves like Wal-Mart does. I usually find about half my seed potatoes at Wal-Mart and the other half at Tractor Supply Company. TSC usually has some of the varieties recommended for OK, like Norkota, that other stores don't. Sometimes Lowe's or Home Depot has some potato varieties that are not on the list of recommended varieties, not that there's anything wrong with that. Pretty much any potato variety I've planted here has done well as long as I planted it early enough to beat the heat. Sometimes you just have to ignore the zones. Sure, we are zone 7 but we are an erratic zone 7. We have occasional days when the high temps hit the 80s in February and March and the 90s in April, but still might have an occasional freezing night in late April or early May. In 2007 we had pretty decent weather in winter and spring and a lot of folks in my area planted early. By early April I had tomato plants and pepper plants that were 1-2' tall and some of the tomato plants already had fruit. Then came the big cold spell that brought us snow, sleet and two weeks of very cold temperatures. As I recall, from around April 6th through the 17th or 18th we had a lot of freezing nights. Our Mesonet station mostly recorded temps right at or right above freezing, but I am in a microclimate that consistently goes a good bit colder in spring, and I think we were in the upper 20s and low 30s for most of that period. My tomatoes already were caged so there was no easy way to cover them. In the two days before the cold spell hit, I built temporary, hastily-thrown together hoop houses (and sorry-looking things they were too) over 7 raised beds that were 4' wide x 35' long, most of which were filled with tomato cages 6' tall. I put 5-gallon buckets of water in them to serve as solar collectors, putting one bucket in between every two tomato plants, and I just worked like a maniac to get a little hoop house over each individual bed. I used clear 4 mm and 6mm plastic, a boat tarp, any every other bit of plastic I could scrape up and saved all my plantings, but it took a ridiculous amount of effort. I also mulched them heavily with straw and hay right before I put the plastic covers over the beds. Last year I planted my tomato plants at the exact same time as I had in 2007 and barely had to cover them with row cover at all--maybe on 2 or 3 nights, and it ended up not freezing or frosting on those nights but I had covered them out of an abundance of caution, and largely because of my memories of 2007 and 2008, which also was warm very early in the late but then had a killing freeze/hard frost the first week in May. So, you never know what to expect here in January-May because anything can happen, and it usually does. June through August are easy to predict....hot, sunny, dry. The small amount of offerings the stores have here in January quickly become a flood. Within a week or two of the first appearance of live plant material on the shelves, the display that had filled the endcap of a row that first week suddenly fills an aisle or two, with seed potatoes, onion sets, shallots, asparagus roots, bareroot strawberries, many more types of flower corms, tubers, roots, etc. Each week there's more and more. By late February, you'd think it was late April from the looks of the shelves in the gardening section. Prior to 2009, I had to drive to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to find the early tomato plants from Bonnie Plants to put into containers in mid- to late-February. Then, in 2010 some of the stores closer to us---as close as Denton---got the plants in during the first week in February. Even for the D-FW area, that really is too early. Stores can make it work if they remember to take the plants inside at night if temps will drop low enough that floating row cover won't save them from freezing. The year that Cowboys Stadium hosted the Super Bowl, which I think was 2010, we had snow arrive after many stores had those early tomato plants and every single store left them outside in the snow and let them freeze. What were they thinking? If a retailer is going to carry warm-season transplants in February, they'd better be prepared to carry them inside if snow or sub-freezing temps are forecast. Some stores do use row covers, but the row covers won't protect them on bitterly cold nights. In 2011 the Wal-Mart in Gainesville had tiny tomato plants inside the store the last week in January, but I was worried they weren't big enough and would need to be hardened off so still drove to Grapevine or Southlake, TX, to get the larger Bonnie Plants tomatoes in 5" peat pots because they were larger and were hardened off. It seems to me that ever since more and more people began veggie gardening around 2008-2009, the stores push harder and harder to get transplants into the stores earlier and earlier. I am not sure how good of an idea that is. It irritates me enough to see swimsuits in stores in January or February or winter coats in August, but plants just cannot be safely pushed too far ahead of their natural season. Experienced gardeners may buy a few things very early but they know how much cold remains in a typical year, and they know to shelter and protect early plantings. I always am concerned that new gardeners will think that if the plants are in the stores then they can be planted in the ground now, which isn't necessarily true. On Monday or Tuesday when we were in Gainesville, not only did the W-M store have the bulbs and stuff inside, they had bundles of onion plants outside, and transplants of winter veggies and a few herbs that I wouldn't even think of putting in the ground now. Our weather see-saws back and forth so much that sometimes it is hard to decide when it is safe to plant. Yesterday it was 67 degrees and sunny here and just as gorgeous of a January day as you dare hope for. Overnight it dropped to 26 degrees and we woke up to heavy fog at our house. I feel like I had a spring day followed by a winter night and early morning. Yet, today likely will be as nice as yesterday and then a cold front comes through and tomorrow our high temp will be 20 degrees lower than today's. I'll use onions as an example of how variable planting dates can be. I have found onion plants in a store in Fort Worth as early as January 1st, bought some, brought them home and planted them and got a great harvest from them even though I put them in the ground a good 6 weeks early. In other years, I have planted between 2 and 6 weeks late because it was very cold here and very wet and I still have lost the onion plants to the combination of cold, wet soil and cold nighttime lows. It is impossible to do anything other than guess when to plant because you have no idea what the weather will do after you plant. Right now is a good time to do soil prep, which is good for me, because I'm working on a new garden area out back of the barn-style garage. I have wanted to enlarge the veggie garden by making a new garden in this space since 2010, but 2010 was too snowy, wet and cold, and 2011 and 2012 were drought-plagued. You cannot break ground if it is as hard as concrete. So, having had recent rains but not in flooding amounts, the soil is soft enough to work but only ever-so-slightly damp, not wet. I hope to work out there every day this week. With no rain in the 7-day forecast, it seems likely I'll get my wish. I also hope to get the big garden ready to plant this week. Then it is just a matter of watching the temperatures and deciding when it feels safe to plant. I may start some seeds inside this week. I need to go a little more research and see what the models are showing for February. Yesterday someone on Wunderground mentioned models showing some very warm temperatures in February, which made my heart sing. I just wish that I could be sure that March wouldn't turn back freezing cold again. Dawn...See MoreCompost mulch questions
Comments (8)Despite various opinions to the contrary, ANY kind of organic mulch will help the situation, some better than others. I personally prefer using compost for this purpose because A) it has a better visual aesthetic for my purposes; B) it offers faster and more complete nutrient delivery than most other choices; and C) there are no problems associated with the compost becoming incorporated into the soil, either intentionally or accidentally. The same cannot be said of wood-based mulches. I've never found compost to form a crust or be water repelling in any sense and it has a greater water retentive ability than most chip-type mulches. It does make a much more accommodating seed bed for weed seeds that may blow in however, even if it does work well to suppress existing weed seeds. Compost is not as long lasting as wood-based mulches and that can be a plus or a minus, depending on how you look at it. Since I like a 'freshly applied' look, I generally apply twice a year. 2-3 inches is generally considered adequate for any mulch type and this is often reduced for certain shallowly rooted plants that prefer a freer oxygen exchange. Avoid piling up around trunks or woody stems. Reapplying the same amount with each application may not be necessary - apply only enough to achieve the intended depth. No dispute on removing the landscape fabric -- it seldom achieves the desired intent very successfully and it is a PITA to work around....or through :-) Hardiness of various plants is highly variable depending on their specific location, exposure and general well-being before entering the winter months. Ensuring they are unstressed and in the best health manageable before encountering cold weather will certainly improve their chances coming out on the other side of the season in good condition. I would not necessarily recommend one pull and replace all plants that suffered damage this past winter unless they are indeed dead. Often, winter cold damage is limited to only foliar issues and tip dieback that can successfully be addressed by some careful pruning....See MoreUsing Compost as Mulch
Comments (14)Last year a good reliable soil test done by Michigan State University cost $13.00 per sample and is a good investment. Along with that soil test these simple soil tests might also be of some help. 1) Soil test for organic matter. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. For example, a good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top. 2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains’ too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up. 3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart. 4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell, to a point. Too much organic matter can be bad as well. 5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy....See MoreNew garden, newbie gardener, drip irrigation, mulching...
Comments (11)Thanks for the feedback, lazy_gardens! Don't worry I won't strip the forests down if I do gather some from there. I've got an old cabin that I've been working on for *years* and the grounds around it really need clearing. Also, a clear-cut down the road has a lot of waste (don't they always!) that I could gather some from and wouldn't make a dent in it. We'll see... :) I was thinking that cutting the 50' rows in half with a path *was* creating a shortcut to the other side of the rows. ;) The idea of a stepping stone mid-25' row might work, though. Thanks for the idea! As for the irrigation line... I'm figuring on having two lines going down each bed hoping that will be enough. If that's not enough I can add another line. What I'm torn between is whether to go with poly-tubing drip-line or to go with drip-tape. They both have their pros and cons. The tape would need to be replaced more often but it is much less expensive and replacing it would put all new emitters into play. But, the durability of the tubing is attractive, too. It appears that the 1/2" tubing has a much longer run/flow to it than the 1/4" tubing does. It seems the 1/2" would be stiffer and a bit more trouble to position but probably(?) more durable and is capable of longer runs. Looking at the quantity of tape/tubing I figure I need 400' to run two lines per bed. The package that I linked to at Berry Hill has 1000' of tape which would give me a "spare" application of lines plus a couple of hundred feet for repairs/additions. But, I certainly don't need a SFG size kit...it will have to be a sizable one. Paths...I've thought of the cardboard and pinestraw....seems until the cardboard gets good and wet that might be a slippery surface. :) But, I may end up going that route. I'm also thinking of trying some Dutch clover between a few rows and see if that works out...our heat might do it in, though, during the middle of summer. Deer... Well, I tilled an "apron" around the garden proper yesterday...a DMZ to combat the bahia that will inevitably attempt invasions. Overnight the deer had to check that fresh ground out. I'm afraid that the row covers would simply be an amusement for the deer...something to scratch their ears while they dine on fresh veggies. I think I'm going to need a physical barrier for them...8' fence. Or, maybe a shorter double electric fence. On a bright note...I started pressure canning meat last year...I've done beef, chicken, and pork. It might be getting time to try deer. ;) Ed...See MoreBenT (NorCal 9B Sunset 14)
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