Don’t forget about the free Garlic Growing Workshop planned for Monday, August 28! Veteran community garden garlic grower and MU Extension specialist Dhruba Dhakal will have lots of tips for planting, harvest and storage. As you think about your fall garden and the end of the season, planting some garlic makes great use of a portion of your garden plot over the winter!
Garlic Production Workshop Monday, August 28 6 p.m. Columbia Public Library, Friends Room 100 W. Broadway, Columbia, MO 65201
Have you tried growing garlic in your garden yet? It’s an easy, fall-planted crop that usually has great success in our area. The Community Garden Coalition is sponsoring a free workshop with an expert in garlic growing. Dhruba Dhakal is an MU Extension specialist AND a longtime community gardener who has grown many, many a head of garlic in his plot at Ash St. garden.
Mark your calendar for August 28 and join us for this free workshop for community gardeners or anyone who’d like to learn!
Garlic Production Workshop Monday, August 28 6 p.m. Columbia Public Library, Friends Room 100 W. Broadway, Columbia, MO 65201
If you can’t make it to the workshop, check out this how-to post from a former CGC board member: Gearing Up for Garlic. This workshop is part of our celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Community Garden Coalition. Thank you for your continued interest and support!
As of our mission to help community gardeners, this year we’ve been focusing on educational opportunities. We’ve offered several workshops with other partners as part of our 40th anniversary celebrations. We also want to let you know about the following free or low-cost classes offered by University Extension presenters to help you deal with drought in your garden, learn how to store your harvest and improve your compost pile.
Check out the following offerings and follow the links to register. Another composting workshop is being planned in early August at our Unite4Health garden, so stay tuned for more information!
Workshop on Drought Management in Garden Plants
Wednesday, July 12, 6-8 p.m. 1012 N. Highway UU, Columbia, MO 65203 Cost: FREE Register at this link.
In this workshop, horticulture producers and gardeners will learn about the effect of drought and heat on garden plants. They will also learn about how to minimize the drought effect in the garden plants in the workshop.
Home Food Preservation – Harvesting and Storing Fresh Produce
Friday, July 21, 12-1:30 p.m. 2nd floor, 105 E Ash Street, Columbia, MO 65203 OR Live via Zoom Cost: $20 Register at this link. (Registration closes Tuesday, July 18 at 11 p.m.)
This course will look at current standards for harvesting and storing fresh produce as well as hands-on preparation of a seasonal recipe. Participants may either attend in-person or online via Zoom. Participants who attend online must be able to pick-up a grocery bag of food to be prepared from the MU Family Impact Center in Columbia, MO.
Composting Workshop
Monday, July 24, 6-8 p.m. 1012 N. Highway UU, Columbia, MO 65203 Cost: FREE Register at this link.
Participants will learn about benefits of compost in the soil, source of composting materials, good materials, and materials to avoid during composting. The speaker will talk about the greens and browns materials used during composting. Participants will learn about methods of composting, site selection for compost pile and compost testing in this program.
Winter may be ending but there’s no Spring Thaw this year!
Well, gardeners, we are sorry to say it, but, due to pandemic restrictions, we were not able to hold our annual community gardening kick-off event this year. The Spring Thaw, CGC’s biggest annual event has been going on for as long as anyone on the board can remember. (We got lucky last year, as it was held mere weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down began.)
Typically, at the Spring Thaw, newcomers are able to get connected to a new garden, returning gardeners get organized with their garden leaders for the new season, and gardeners are able to pick up seeds and how-to information. In the absence of this event, we have packaged and distributed seeds directly to garden leaders. In addition, if you haven’t told your garden leader that you want to continue gardening with us, please let them know immediately as there may be others waiting for plots! And, finally, if you or someone you know would like to start gardening at a community garden, you can request a space via this short form and we will do our best to find a plot for you!
As you get started with your garden, here are some opportunities and resources for learning more about how to grow your favorite veggies.
The final session of the Mid-MO Expo is happening today (Saturday, March 13) online. For just a $6 fee, you can learn about “Dealing with Nuisance Wildlife.” Arrangements can also be made to view the recorded session on “Invasive Plant Identification and Removal.” Register here.
The Unite4Health community garden is planning to host a workshop later this spring with a soil scientist to discuss organic gardening and increasing beneficial microbes. Details to be announced soon.
For a more in-depth learning option, MU Extension is offering the online course “The Beginning Gardener-Getting Started with Vegetables 2021” through April 17 for a $40 fee. Details and registration here.
The Spring Thaw has always been a fun time for all, and we are sorry to miss seeing all your excited, smiling faces this year!
I love fresh green beans, but most of the ones I find at the store look nowhere near “fresh.” Plus, fresh, commercially-grown, non-organic green beans did not pass Consumer Reports’ recent pesticide residue tests (Consumer Reports, “Stop Eating Pesticides,” August 27, 2020). They recommend eating organic green beans. So here’s an idea for you gardeners out there.
At my house, we plant green beans every spring in either April or May depending on the weather forecasts. We harvest LOTS of beans throughout the summer until they start to decline in early August. At that time, we either rip those plants out and replant, or, if we have the space, we plant a couple new 8-foot rows of bush beans, wait a week and plant another couple of rows. By mid-September, we start getting beautiful, damage-free beans, since most of the insect pests of beans are waning in numbers. This year, we’ve been picking about a half-pound a day for weeks. Yesterday we had a full pound, and that was just from two of the 8-foot rows! Not bad for October! This is a great way to get a second crop from areas of your garden that may not be producing much anymore. Although I missed the boat this year, I have also had success planting Sugar Ann peas for the fall. Both crops work with bacteria to fix nitrogen in your soil.
So as you start to plan for next year, here’s what I suggest: don’t plant all your bean seeds in the spring. Hold back a few, and give this a try. You may be happily surprised with a nice harvest of fresh green beans before those cold winter days and frozen vegetables become the norm.
Have you ever noticed that as you grow older you start to like foods that you thought you didn’t like at all? I sure have! One vegetable that I really didn’t like in my youth has gradually become a favorite of mine. What vegetable is it? Sweet potato!
Sweet potatoes are related to the morning glory vine, and if you see some flowers on yours late in the season you will recognize the similarity. They are only distantly related to common potatoes and not at all related to true “yams.” They are believed to have originated in central or southern America and Columbus appears to have been the first to bring them to Europe (Wikipedia). By the time European colonists came to what is now the U.S., sweet potatoes were already a part of their gardening plans.
The reason I started growing them was curiousity. I had a little extra garden space, and my neighbor had some extra “slips.” Sweet potato slips are the rooted shoots from the tubers that are used to start a new crop. The CGC offers slips to gardeners during the warm season plant distribution each spring. I did some quick reading on how to plant them and stuck them in. A nice mounded trough full of sandy compost is ideal. No need for any chemicals in Mid-Missouri, plus they like hot, dry weather! By late summer, the vines had attempted to cover everything in and around the garden, including my husband’s truck! But any hassle they caused they made up for at harvest. From year to year my production has varied, but I have harvested as much as 160 pounds of tubers from four slips! Imagine getting that kind of production when there’s no grocery store to tide you through the winter. No wonder this crop has spread all over the world!
Author with her personal record 12 pound sweet potato.
There is a trick to storing all that bounty. Sweet potatoes must be “cured” before storing. Curing not only improves storage (I still have one ready to eat from 2018), but also makes them sweeter and higher in nutrients. If you doubt this, try eating one straight out of the garden, make a mental note of how sweet it is, and then compare that to a cured potato one month later. In commercial production, tubers are stored in large buildings at 85-90 degrees (F) and about 90% humidity for anywhere from 5 days to 2 weeks. Unfortunately, that’s not so easy to replicate around here in the fall.
Here’s what I do. For one thing, NEVER let frost touch your vines. Sweet potatoes are a tropical plant, and frost encourages them to quickly rot. Starting in late September, I keep a close eye on the weather forecast. What I’m watching for is a late hot spell. A day or two before it hits, we cut off all the vines (the leaves can be eaten). Then when it’s at least 80 degrees, we dig them up and let them sit all day in the shade of other garden plants. Next we gently knock off the dirt (do not wash them), and either place them in a shaded hot place outside or, if necessary, move them into the hottest room of our house, making sure they are shaded. I doubt I have ever met the humidity requirements, but like I said I still have an 11-month old sweet potato to eat, so I must be doing something right. When I feel like they’ve cured long enough, I move them down into the basement. Cured tubers keep best at about 60 degrees in the dark.
So, what’s the best way to eat a sweet potato? For me, baked and then mashed with butter, brown sugar and fresh grated ginger — I actually converted a previous sweet potato hater with that fresh ginger addition. They are also good diced and roasted with a little olive oil and salt, or made into sweet potato fries. My neighbor who started me down this road makes them into black bean and diced sweet potato quesadillas for the kids at her daycare. Apparently they love them! And since sweet potatoes are chock full of beta carotene and vitamin A, nutrients that are lacking in many American’s diets, why not give them a try?
For additional information on growing sweet potatoes here are some handy links:
Prepared by guest contributor Samuel Garrett McKee with assistance from David Neely and Margaret Rossano. Garrett is a garden leader of the Circus-Lyons Community Garden.
Cover crops have become increasingly popular in the past several years, seeing use from large-scale producers down to mid- and small-scale operations. Originating in pre-industrial times, cover crops have been an organic and sustainable, tried-and-true, method of using naturally occurring cycles to benefit soils for hundreds of years. The benefits are clearly seen once implemented, even at the community garden plot scale (10×10 ft, for example). At the Circus-Lyons Community Garden, we have been using cover crops for the past two years with solid results.
Essentially, when a garden plot would otherwise be unused, we “cover” that soil with a special crop of plants, the purpose of which is to feed the soil, rather than to feed the gardeners. Several weeks before you want to use that plot again for annual planting, the crop is cut down and the plant matter incorporated back into the soil. Fall is a great time to start implementing a cover crop at your garden. Read on for more information and detailed advice.
Feb. 3, 2019. Cover crop planted in late October, cereal rye, Austrian winter peas and crimson clover. Established before coldest weather hit, overwintering well even with a real winter. It’s merely waiting for longer warmer days and will likely be a foot tall by April 1.
The amount of information on cover crops can be daunting when you first begin the research, however, clarity can be found by thinking of cover-cropping as reminiscent of natural cycles. Central Missouri was once home to native tall-grass prairie ecosystems: perennial grasslands that harvest sunlight during the growing season and put the resulting carbon into plant tissue, which is in turn harvested by grazing animals or consumed by wildfire, thus promoting plant competition and further unimpeded growth and diversification. This cycle was carried on without human intervention, adding yearly inputs to the soil.
Typically, gardeners and farmers plant annual crops during a growing season, fertilize with off-site inputs, harvest, remove any residue of the crop, and then consider things finished. This leaves our soil more or less bare during the winter season, opening up invasion opportunities for weeds as well as the potential for erosion. This system is not reliably found in the natural world where there is continuousbiological activity in the soil, year-round. This is what cover crops aim to fulfill.
Jan. 28, 2017. Cereal rye and crimson clover cover crop with soil probe showing the color you’re looking for!
Effective cover-cropping imitates a prairie system in that it provides more overall diversity and duration of biological activity to a plot. It can also stabilize soil; armor against weedy species and erosion; improve water capture/infiltration into subsoil; and improve the soil’s physical, chemical and biological makeup. Many resources exist for guidance on the matter, however, I will speak for what has worked for us at the plot level in our community garden.
Species Selection
Species used are many and again can be daunting to the beginner. I tend to think about them in botanical terms; grasses (graminaceae), forbs (many families, but you can think of them mainly as flowers), legumes (fabaceae).
Grasses
Species include cereal rye, oats, annual ryegrass, winter wheat and sorghum.
Pros:
Grasses are competitive against weeds (including Bermuda grass!), they
establish quickly and reliably, and they can be harvested for grain,
mulch or hay, or even grazed. Grasses scavenge soil nutrients that would
otherwise leach out or be taken up by weeds. Also, they are usually
very winter hardy, easy to plant in fall and inexpensive. Species
include cereal rye, oats, annual ryegrass, winter wheat and sorghum.
Cons: Grasses can easily out-compete forbs or legumes planted alongside them, detracting from overall benefits of diverse cover crop plantings. Cereal rye, upon termination, suppresses weeds and/or seed germination allelopathically in the soil, meaning that compounds released by the rye as it is killed will stifle germination of other species for a short period. A solution to this minor issue would be to allow two to three weeks of inactivity between termination and the next planting.
April 23, 2018. Cereal rye, crimson clover, winter wheat adjacent to hand tilled, just terminated cover crop
Forbs
Species include radishes, turnips, buckwheat, and sunflowers.
Pros: Forbs usually have deeper root systems that scavenge/capture nutrients in the topsoil that are unavailable to many crops. The, provide bloom and beauty, and some can be harvested for seeds or flowers, or they can be grazed.
Cons: They are sometimes slower growing or difficult to get established, and they sometimes cost more.
Legumes
Species include clovers, vetches, winter peas, black-eyed peas (cowpeas).
Pros: Legumes sequester nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available to plants in the rhizosphere (rooting zone). They provide beauty and blooms for pollinators, and can be grazed or harvested for hay/mulch.
Cons: They are they usually slower to establish than grass, and the seed should be inoculated prior to planting. Red clover is a perennial and will persist when not desired, and vetches are semi-aggressive invaders into both urban and wild environments.
Fall Cover Crops
After the summer garden crops have played out and freezing temperatures are on the horizon, you should be thinking of cover cropping by October through mid-November. The trick is to get the crop established and at least 4- to 6-inches tall before the harsh temperatures set in. Species that work well at this time include Austrian winter peas, crimson clover, cereal rye, winter wheat, and oats. Doing a two to four species mixture seems to work well, as each year is different and having multiple species to fill in unexpected gaps is ideal. Cereal rye, crimson clover and winter peas have been a good combo for us at Circus-Lyon garden.
Late Winter/Early Spring Cover Crops
Similar species as work in the fall will also work from late February through March and even into early April. Snap peas could be viable for this outcome, as well, since they are a legume. We’ve even had seed sown in January warm spells that germinates in early March and grows vigorously all throughout spring.
Summer Cover Crops
After a spring crop is harvested, you can plan to seed a cover crop into an otherwise fallow plot. Species which work well for this would be buckwheat, mustard greens, annual sorghum, black eyed peas or anything which can handle heat, sunshine and long growing days. Buckwheat puts out a long taproot, bringing otherwise unavailable nutrients up into your plot’s topsoil as well as providing much-needed blooms for pollinators. However, if left to go to seed, buckwheat will seed your plot in many little individuals that will compete with desired crops when given the opportunity! Cowpeas (or Black-eyed peas) are a great legume choice for summer.
Aug. 5, 2017 Buckwheat establishment following sweet corn.
Terminating Your Cover Crop
Cover crops must be “terminated” once the time rolls around for planting of desired food crops. Many ways exist to do this, but I will detail the way which has worked for us. First we mow or weed-eat the cover crop about two to three weeks prior to our desired planting date. We let the residue of the cover crop sit for several days after mowing, then turn it by hand into the soil using a shovel or a tiller. Small plots are best done by hand. Be sure to break up the clods and root systems while turning it over, and try to get dead plant matter buried. This provides food for earthworms and countless other micro biota in the soil to consume and make available for your soon-to-follow food crops. Some warmer season cover crops, such as oats or buckwheat, will self-terminate, or winterkill, when exposed to cold temperatures. This is also a convenient time to incorporate compost into the soil to feed the incoming crop.
March 30, 2018. Mowed cover crop adjacent to mowed, then tilled cover crop.
Optionally, legumes and forbs can be allowed to flower before you terminate them, which provides blooms for native pollinators and honey bees (crimson clover is worth growing for the flower alone!). Buckwheat seed can be harvested easily enough by hand and used the following year, or ground into gluten-free flower. Cowpeas and snap peas can be harvested for consumption.
A good cover crop is a species that “behaves” in an agricultural setting, meaning it doesn’t escape or become invasive, is an annual, doesn’t persist after termination, and is consistent in establishing and flowering like any other crop. A cover crop’s ability to suppress weeds is perhaps its most powerful feature, as the ideal period after termination to planting is a very short window, excluding many undesirable weed species otherwise abundant in our community gardens.
Summary
In summary, cover crops provide a suite of benefits to your garden plot including improving soil structure, fertility, water holding capacity and overall diversity; weed suppression; carbon sequestration; soil conservation; and supporting earthworms, pollinators and wildlife habitat. We have ordered cover crop seed through Wilson’s Garden Center or picked up larger custom amounts from Bourn Feed and Supply Inc., both located here in Columbia.
Another wonderful benefit you will notice immediately is the aesthetic beauty the verdant, lush cover crops provide during otherwise dreary times of year. As the great conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote,
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
Cover crops can help community gardeners accomplish this simple yet powerful truth.
This year, the City of Columbia is raising water rates during the summer months to encourage water conservation. This may impact community gardens to a great extent. The Community Garden Coalition and others have worked with the City to successfully create an exemption to protect some community gardens from the highest water rate tier.
Regardless, we all want to make the best use of the water we use and not waste it. Following are some tips for efficient and effective use of water.
Most plants need about an inch of water a week. In very hot and windy weather, they may need two inches of water in a week. Raised beds will need more water than regular garden plots.
It is best for the plants to water deeply once or twice a week. This will encourage the roots to move deeper into the ground and will make more efficient use of the water in the soil. When you are starting seeds, it will be necessary to keep the soil moist, so you may need to apply water more than once a week until the plants are established.
Many of our soils in central Missouri are high in clay content. Adding organic matter will benefit plants and also increase the water holding capacity, making better use of water. Compost is one of the best ways to add organic matter.
Applying water to the base of plants will make the best use of water. Ideally soaker hoses or drip irrigation is the most efficient, but that is not practical in most of our community gardens. Directing water to the base of plants will help in water conservation. It will also keep water off the leaves of plants and reduce the chances of diseases.
Watering in the morning is better than watering in the evening as leaves of plants will have a chance to dry off during the day and will reduce disease development.
Mulching plants will help conserve water. Leaves and grass clippings and straw make good mulch and can be turned into the soil in the fall to improve organic matter. The Community Garden Coalition provides some straw during the season. (Ask your garden leader if you don’t know how to obtain straw.)
To make watering easier, group plants that require the most water together. These include lettuce, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers and cabbage. Group plants that require less water together. These include beans and corn.
At some gardens, there have been times where water was left on all night, soaking the garden plot and running onto other plots. This is very wasteful and we hope you will make an effort to see that this doesn’t happen at your garden. If you find water left on and unattended, it’s best to turn it off.
Water is essential for plant growth. The CGC and garden leaders want you to be successful in growing your garden and encourage you to use the amount of water needed for plant growth. Following proper watering techniques will result in the best plant growth and production.
Prepared by guest contributor Don Day with assistance from members of the Community Garden Coalition board of directors. Don is a garden leader of the Broadway Christian Church Community Garden
Does it look like a tiny shotgun has blasted the leaves of your eggplant? (See Figure 1 for an example.) Chances are you have a flea beetle infestation. First of all, don’t worry, “flea” beetles only bite plants! These are not like the fleas on your dog or cat. That’s a whole different order of insects. These are very small (1/10 inch) leaf-feeding beetles that are called “flea” beetles due to their large hind legs which enable them to jump much like fleas (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Eggplant with flea beetle damage. Photo, Ali Eminov [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]
Figure 2. Adult flea beetle
There are several species found in Missouri but the only species I see regularly is all black. Depending on the species, they may feed on cruciferous vegetables, spinach, turnips, radishes, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, beans or eggplant. The good news is that the adults die off in July. The bad news is, they can have two generations per year, meaning they can come back for your fall crops. Generally speaking I ignore flea beetles and their damage except when it comes to young seedlings. (Mature plants can usually sustain a bit of flea beetle damage to leaves and still provide fruit.)
For years, flea beetles have severely damaged my eggplant transplants. If I’m lucky, a couple plants survive, and, by late summer, I finally have plants that are large enough to produce. I have tried row covers to no avail. The problem here is that the adults overwinter in your soil and leaf litter. Despite clearing the plant debris from my garden in the fall there are still plenty of hungry adult flea beetles just waiting in the soil for some tender eggplant leaves.
Last year I tried an experiment. Since I only grow four eggplant every year, I went out and purchased some hard plastic domed frost guards. Eggplant are notoriously cold sensitive, so why not? In addition, I thought they might act as a physical barrier to hungry flea beetles. I figured if I found any beetles under the dome, I would shoo them off and quickly replace it since flea beetles jump when startled. In practice, I never needed to do this as the domes worked quite well. After a week I checked and the transplants were hole-free. To test my experiment, I uncovered one of my eggplants. Three days later, when I went out to compare it to the still-covered plants, I found that the unprotected plant was COVERED with flea beetles and feeding holes. The domes worked!
FRGD Frost Guards from Gardener’s Edge
Then, in an effort to save my sacrificial eggplant, I tried spraying it with organic neem oil. WOW! Another real find! It took several sprays, but apparently the flea beetles think it tastes as bad as it smells! They either died or left. My eggplant grew up, became highly productive, and I ended up with a freezer full of tasty ratatouille which my sweet husband enjoys.*
While I think I’ve cracked the code on safe ways to control flea beetles, there are some good suggestions on the websites listed below for other earth-friendly ways to lessen flea beetle damage:
I am! No, you won’t ever find me at the casino. I’m talking about gardening! I think most of us who garden have a touch of the gambler in us. How else can you explain the leap of faith we take every year when we put our seeds or baby transplants out in the wild world dreaming of luscious produce to come? Sometimes things go well and some not so well. That’s just part of life.
Well, today I want to encourage the wildest gamblers out there to take a chance on REALLY early spring lettuce. You know how all the seed packages say to plant your lettuce from mid-March to mid-May? I think they’re missing the boat!
I followed those recommendations for years and what always happened was that as my lettuce finally started to head up it became bitter! The bitterness used to start around mid-June but I’ve had it happen as early as mid-May when temperatures are unusually warm. As a crazed, baby lettuce aficionado this is most frustrating.
Then about 15 years ago I was reading some book (?) where an old woman from the Ozarks said to put your lettuce seed out as soon as the snow melted. This seemed like insanity, but, again, I’ve got a gambling streak. I tried it. Yes, I ran out with a cloth sheet to protect it a few times. But I was eating beautiful baby lettuce salads by the end of March! Needless to say, I’ve been doing this ever since.
When exactly do I take this risk? It varies with the weather and snow. Looking back in my garden diary (yes, you really should keep one) the first planting has been as early as January 5th but probably averages around January 25th. Have I lost my lettuce? Maybe once, but most varieties of lettuce can survive temperatures as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Since lettuce seed is somewhat viable for up to 6 years I usually use old seed from a previous year, so if it is lost I won’t feel quite as bad. Sometimes, when the cravings are severe I’ve been known to start lettuce seeds inside in January and plunk the plants out in early February. Again, it’s a gamble but what an incredible payoff if you succeed! Take a chance!
Community Garden Coalition 