Category: Homegrown Paleo

9/5 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

9/4/2018

Burpees! Everyone's favorite:-) You won't be jumping onto a plate today.

Homegrown Paleo
Worms: little garbage eaters!

I have a confession to make. I have been letting worms eat my kitchen garbage for 15 years now. Much of my kitchen waste is turned into an amazingly nutrient-rich amendment for all of my plants courtesy of hundreds of hungry red wigglers that produce worm compost.
Worm composting is very simple, and Halloween is a great time to start. Kids love it, and will really get a kick out of feeding their jack-o-lantern innards to a pile of wriggling Eisenia foetida!
All you need for worm composting is a bin, brandling or red wriggler worms, bedding, and food scraps. The system is quite simple, takes up very little space, and can be kept inside or outside. When it is working properly, there is no smell, and it produces valuable “worm tea” and “vermicompost.”
Worm tea is the liquid byproduct of the worms. It is loaded with beneficial microbes and nutrients, and can be used instead of store-bought liquid fertilizer. I use it for my houseplants, and they thrive on it. Vermicompost is the solid byproduct of the worms and microbial decomposition. It is high in nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and many other nutrients required by plants. I use it to amend my garden soil. My friends and family are astounded at the productivity of my vegetable garden, and I owe it all to my worms!
Worm bins can be homemade or purchased. Constructing your own bin is cheap, and a fun project for the entire family. You can find excellent construction plans online. Commercial bins are more expensive, but are specifically built for the special needs of the worms.
No matter how you acquire your bin, make sure it is large enough to hold your kitchen scraps. Worms need 1 square foot of space to process 1 pound of food waste. A bin that is 2 feet wide by 3 feet long and 8 inches to 12 inches deep should be adequate for a family of four. One pound of worms is sufficient to process the weekly kitchen waste generated by a family of four.
The kitchen waste worms love most are coffee grounds and unbleached filters, vegetable peelings, leafy greens, pasta leftovers, crushed eggshells, and any other fruit or vegetable scraps. Don’t put too many scraps in the bin at one time, or the worms won’t be able to keep up, and your bin will begin to smell. Also, don’t feed your worms meat scraps, bones, or large amounts of fats. Every time you feed your worms, cover the scraps with shredded paper, straw, sawdust or peat moss. This provides their bedding, and helps absorb moisture.
Worms can’t tolerate extreme temperatures. In the summer, I keep my worm bin on the north side of my house where it’s shady and cool. In the winter, I move the bin into my garage. My garage is not insulated, so I wrap the bin in insulating foam, making sure to keep the vents uncovered.
Worm composting is an easy way to reduce the amount of garbage you send to the landfill, while providing your plants with rich compost. And, you can compost year-round, without making trips outside to the compost pile in the cold!
This is a reprint of an article I wrote when I was the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For more specific gardening and horticulture advice be sure to visit your local Cooperative Extension office.

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8/29 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

8/28/2018

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Joaquin, James and Red Feather row hard during our April Festivus Games.

Homegrown Paleo - Compost Happens

I love it when people seek my advice on how to establish a landscape or garden. It gives me the opportunity to help at the ground level and advise them on proper soil preparation. My advice? Add compost.
Technically speaking, composting is a process that results in a product called humus. This happens through the microbial decomposition of organic material into a nutrient-rich and fertile soil amendment. Not only does compost provide innumerable benefits to your plants and landscape, it’s also free to make and reduces the amount of green waste sent to the local landfill.
Many people have the misconception that composting is messy, smelly and attracts vermin. This is not true. When done correctly, composting is easy and results in vigorous plants and bountiful garden crops. It is probably the most valuable thing you can do for your yard.
The basic compost recipe is equal parts of green material and brown material, plus a little soil, water and air. Green material includes fresh organic waste, such as grass clippings, deadheaded flowers and kitchen scraps. Brown material is dried or dead organic waste, such as fallen leaves, dried grass, pruned wood, shredded newspaper or cardboard. Never add meat scraps, pet waste, weeds with seeds, or diseased materials to your compost pile. All materials you add should be less than 2 inches in size so that it will break down quickly.
Select a location for your compost pile that is tucked away somewhere in your yard, or simply build it where you eventually want to build your garden. Make sure the area you select gets about six hours of sunlight each day. You can heap all of the material together in a loose pile, construct a simple bin, or purchase a commercially made compost bin.
Once you have found a place for your composting venture, it’s time to pile up your green and brown materials. It should be at least 3 feet to 4 feet square. About every foot, add an inch or two of soil, which will supply microbes to decompose the organic matter. Add water as you go. The microbes need water and air in order to get to work, so keep the compost pile wet, but not soggy. It should be about as damp as a wrung-out sponge. If it is too wet, the process will switch from aerobic to anaerobic decomposition, and the pile WILL smell.
Air is the final ingredient and is added to the recipe by turning your pile. Let the pile sit for about two days and then check the temperature. You can poke your hand into the middle of the pile, or use a thermometer. Once the internal temperature is about 160 F, it is time to turn it. This will aerate the pile, but decrease the temperature. Continue to monitor the heat, and turn the pile again when it reaches 160 F. If you continue turning the pile every time it heats back up to 160 F, you should have usable humus in about two or three weeks. It is important to not add any new materials if you are actively turning your pile.
Alternatively, you can just leave the pile sit, and not turn it. The composting will still take place, but much more passively. It will take more time – sometime up to a year – but will not require as much effort by you. Either way, you will enjoy seeing your plants thrive as your compost does its magic in your soil.
This is a reprint of an article I wrote when I was the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For more specific gardening and horticulture advice be sure to visit your local Cooperative Extension office.

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8/22 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

8/21/2018

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Meg runs in the snow. Winter is coming.

Homegrown Paleo
What's Vexing your Veggies?

You carefully prepare your vegetable garden, working in compost, starting seeds indoors, and transplanting after the last frost. Then, it never fails. Your plants drop their flowers, get strange dark spots or mysterious white splotches, or are attacked by miniscule insects. Don’t worry. You can manage these common summer vegetable problems by using “integrated pest management (IPM).” IPM is a sustainable, science-based approach to pest management that identifies and reduces the risks from pests using a variety of methods tailored to the problem.
The selective use of pesticides makes IPM different from organic gardening. However, one IPM tenet is to always use the least toxic methods first.
The least toxic methods are actually preventative measures. Rotating crops, buying disease-free plants, providing proper irrigation, and taking good care or your plants are the least expensive and least toxic ways to enjoy a healthy garden.
Once your garden is planted and growing, IPM requires that you determine your tolerance threshold for pests and problems in your garden. In other words, can you live with the loss of two tomato plants, but draw the line at losing three? Can you live with a few squash bugs but think a dozen is unacceptable? These are the types of questions we often ask folks who come to our office for answers to their gardening problems.
Monitoring and identification is the key to successful IPM. I enjoy taking my morning cup of coffee out to my garden, and walking around to see what’s happening. I am always surprised at how much I learn from quietly observing my plants. I’m delighted to see a new bud here or a beneficial insect there. Once you become familiar with your garden, you will quickly notice when things are off kilter.
Many clients come to us lamenting that their plants died suddenly or overnight. However, this is rarely the case. Most plants exhibit several signs or symptoms well before their demise, but we fail to notice them. Regularly observing your plants will enable you to spot potential problems as they arise.
Catching problems at the onset allows us to use the least toxic (and often least expensive) method of control. If you see an insect, or condition you don’t recognize, such as a curled or mottled leaf, you can collect it and bring it to your local Cooperative Extension office. We will identify it and recommend control methods. Often we find that visitors have been spraying a variety of chemicals to control a problem, only to discover that the problem is easily managed by simply spraying water. Properly identifying your problems will save you time and money, and help protect the health of your family and our environment.
Only after you have identified a problem is it time to consider which IPM control methods to use. IPM control methods can be physical, cultural, biological or chemical. The most effective IPM programs use a combination of these techniques to control problems.
Physical control
Physical controls include hand picking, fencing out, pruning, or any other technique that physically prevents a pest from taking up residence on your plants.
Cultural control
Cultural control is essentially growing and cultivating the plant according to its specific needs, modifying the habitat as necessary. Often, these needs are detailed on seed packets or plant tags, in catalogs, or in reference books. Your local Cooperative Extension also has information on proper cultural care for growing many vegetables in our area.
Biological control
Biological control is using a living organism to control your problem by eating it or damaging it. Beneficial insects, such as lady bird beetles, praying mantises, or green lacewings, are introduced to prey on the nonbeneficial insects. The eggs or larval forms of the predacious insects are commonly sold in nurseries and garden centers.
Chemical control
The final method of control is using chemicals. The precise and careful use of pesticides sometimes may be the only way to control a problem, especially if the problem has already gotten out of hand.
So, how can you use IPM to solve some common summer veggie vexations? Here are a few common problems and ways you can solve them using IPM. These problems are often brought on by high temperatures, low humidity, or wide temperature fluctuations – conditions we often experience in Montana during August.
Blossom drop
We get calls every summer from people who are mystified because their tomatoes have dropped all of their blossoms. This problem occurs when the temperature drops below 55 F at night, or rises above 90 F during the day. However, uneven watering, low humidity, unusually heavy fruit set, or nitrogen irregularities can also cause blossoms to drop. While you can’t do much to change the weather, there are some steps you can take to help your plants hang on to those blossoms. To increase nighttime temperatures, you can cover your tomatoes with a lightweight floating row cover at night, or use “walls of water” to insulate around each plant. These are easy to use and available at local nurseries. Most importantly, make sure you water regularly, thin fruit, and apply an organic mulch to regulate soil temperature and fertility.
Spider mites
Spider mites thrive in the hottest days of summer. They will turn your veggie plants into a dry crispy mess if you don’t control them. Since spider mites like it hot and dry, control them by altering their environment to make it cool and humid. Increase the humidity and lower surrounding temperatures by hosing or misting plants during the heat of the day.
Powdery mildew
If your vegetables are covered with a strange white or grey residue, you may have powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is a fungus that prefers hot, dry conditions. This is confusing to many people since we tend to associate “mildew” with warm, humid conditions. To control powdery mildew, remove the affected plant parts, increase air circulation by thinning and selective pruning, and increase the humidity by misting your plants. Regular watering and keeping the soil moist will also help reduce the infection.
As you develop your IPM program, you will discover that many of your veggie vexations are easily solved with good horticultural practices, a little common sense, and getting to know the cycles and rhythms of your garden.
This is a reprint of an article I wrote when I was the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For more specific gardening and horticulture advice be sure to visit your local Cooperative Extension office. MSU Extension has an Urban IPM program that can help you solve your yard and garden problems: http://urbanipm.montana.edu/urban.html

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8/15 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

8/14/2018

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Ashley and Nanook both do what they do best:-)

Homegrown Paleo
The Garden's Second Season

I love summer, but the bounty of summer fruits and vegetables never lasts quite long enough. If you also bemoan the end of the summer garden, now is the time to plant seeds for a second-season garden. Many spring-planted cool-season crops, such as leafy greens, carrots, beets, and radishes, can be sown now for fall harvest.
It may seem strange to be thinking about planting cool-season crops at the height of summer veggie production. But, with a little effort now, you will be rewarded with green salads and savory root veggies well into fall. You also won’t have to deal with the onslaught of annual weeds, insects, and environmental stresses that tax us all earlier in the year.
Before you sow any seeds, however, you should revitalize your garden soil. It can dry out and get crusty in the late summer sun, impeding seed germination. Break up soil crusts with a hoe or hand cultivator and work in a few inches of compost, being careful not to disturb any other plants that may already be growing in the garden. Vegetables like rich garden soil that is high in organic matter and holds moisture.
Freshly sown seeds need a moist seedbed and cool soil temperatures to germinate. They also need to be protected from the intense summer sun. Directly sowing seeds in the dappled shade of your summer veggies protects them so that they can germinate. Starting these seeds now, in the protection of summer veggies, will ensure that they have a good root system established before the first frost occurs.
You can also start seeds indoors or on a shaded patio. If your only option is to sow seeds in the direct sun, be sure to provide shade until the daytime temperatures average in the low 80s. Sow the seeds in the evening, in moist soil, so that they have an entire night to adjust to being outdoors. Press them into the soil and cover them so that they are at a depth of about three times the diameter of the seed.
Make sure your seedbed stays evenly moist until your seeds germinate. If you’re sowing into an existing bed that isn’t irrigated every day, you will need to provide supplemental water. Mist or lightly spray the area to avoid disturbing the seeds.
Finally, mulch your plants to help regulate soil temperatures and provide additional protection after the first frost. Root crops, such as carrots, beets, turnips, and onions, benefit from mulching before a hard frost. If we have a mild winter, root crops that are heavily mulched can continue to be harvested.
Here is a list of cool-season crops that you can plant now for a second-season harvest in the Gallatin Valley.
Beets
Radish
Kale
Lettuce
Bitter greens
Parsley
Cilantro
This is a reprint of an article I wrote when I was the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For more specific gardening and horticulture advice be sure to visit your local Cooperative Extension office.

MSU Extension Planting Guide

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9/5 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo
Worms: little garbage eaters!

8/29 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo - Compost Happens

8/22 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo
What's Vexing your Veggies?

8/15 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo
The Garden's Second Season

MSU Extension Planting Guide

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9/5 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown PaleoWorms: little garbage eaters!

8/29 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo - Compost Happens

8/22 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo​What's Vexing your Veggies?

8/15 Wednesday - Homegrown Paleo

Homegrown Paleo​The Garden's Second Season

MSU Extension Planting Guide

Special Events

Categories

Archives

Homegrown Paleo
Worms: little garbage eaters!

Homegrown Paleo
What's Vexing your Veggies?

Homegrown Paleo
The Garden's Second Season