I have some shocking news: I am not perfect. I’m seriously chagrined to admit that, although I’ve been nurturing my tiny seedlings since January and have dived into the minutiae of seed-warming mats, the best seed-starting mediums, light timing, and seed varieties, I have made a serious and sophomoric error: Until last week, I did not give these poor little guys even a single drop of plant food.

In the past, I used Miracle Grow seed-starting medium, and that comes with built-in plant-food. Recently, though, I’ve become uncomfortable with this product, especially with starting plants that will eventually become food. So this year, I switched to sterile seed-starting medium, but that means my plants have essentially been starving for the past three plus months.

I had noticed in the past few weeks that the tomatoes were looking a bit purplish. I wondered about whether my lights were not full-spectrum enough to be the sole source of light for the plants. Then I wondered if I was shocking them with water that was too cold. When it came time to give a Zapotec seedling to a fellow heirloom tomato junkie, it finally dawned on me (as I drove to deliver the poor little seedling) that these plants needed food.

That night, with no garden centers open for business, I rustled up some Bonsai food and fed the poor little plants. They are already perking up, and now I have a seaweed/fish emulsion cocktail to feed the seedlings going forward. Looks like they’ll need a little feeding every week and a half or so to keep the “purple” ting to the leaves (phosphorous deficiency), or a yellow cast to the leaves coupled with green veining, and/or slow growth (nitrogen deficiency).

Whew, the title of this post alone is enough to make you weary! However, my foray into espaliered fruit trees has taught me that there is not a lot of succinct, yet complete, practical information out there on growing espaliered fruit.

Espalier, as defined by Wikipedia, is “the horticultural technique of training trees through pruning and grafting in order to create formal “two-dimensional” or single plane patterns by the branches of the tree. The technique was popular in the Middle Ages in Europe to produce fruit inside the walls of a typical castle courtyard without interfering with the open space, and to decorate solid walls by such trees planted near them. Evidence exists suggesting that the technique dates back much further, perhaps even to ancient Egypt. The word espalier initially referred to the actual trellis on which the plant was trained to grow, but over time has come to be used to describe the technique.”

This technique both creates a way to produce more fruit in less space and gives the gardener a highly-decorative, but still food-producing, way to use some hard-to use spaces like, in our case, a small spot on the fence between our vegetable garden and compost bins, or a bare patch of wall next to our dog run.

So how to get started? The fruit trees typically used for espalier grow on super-dwarf rootstock. We ordered two super-dwarf apple trees when we placed our fruit tree order from Raintree Nursery this winter: a Liberty and a Striped Gravenstein.

There is quite a detailed discussion of espalier on Mother Earth News, but it’s quite long and I’m going for succinct, so I kept looking. P. Allen Smith has the most succinct step-by-step instructions for espalier. Here are some other tips for growing espaliered fruit trees:

1. Look for young (1-2 year old) stock. A whip (one single branch, i.e. a stick!) or something with very few side-branches is best.
2. Plant the whip or young tree at least 6-8 (but I’d say no more than 12) inches from the wall or structure you’re planning to use to support the tree. You need airflow and room for the trunk to widen as the tree ages, but you also don’t want to have the trunk sticking out and all the branches moving away from it in a big V…you’re going for a 2-dimensional tree here.
3. The most simple form of espalier is typically three horizontal rows of branches, each 18 inches apart with the first row starting 2-3′ off of the ground. There is a great drawing of this in the P. Allen Smith article referenced above, or photos of this simple espalier, as well as the more complex diamond-lattice pattern on SouthernAccents. You can also create a fan shape by training the branches at 45-degree angles instead of horizontal. I found a great diagram of some different espalier designs in a rather unlikely location. I’ve seen quite a range of wire gauges recommended (from 10-15) so I’ll probably shoot for something in the middle to train the branches on.
4. Rodale’s Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening has a long-winded very descriptive explanation of how and when to prune branches that I think will come in handy next year, but for this (first) year with our espaliers, I’m basically planning to choose a strong shoot on either side of the trees to train as the bottom tier of the espalier. It also goes in to what to do if you have one very strong vigorous branch and one weaker one, because of the importance of keeping the espalier balanced in order to get the full effect of the pattern. I have no idea yet to what extent this will be an issue for us, but I’ll keep you posted!
5. Don’t let it fruit the first (or second!) year. I have yet to test my ability to remove fruit from young trees. But since I’ve already been dreaming about the handful of cherries I’m going to get off of my tiny baby cherry tree this year, I’m guessing this may be the hardest part of espalier, at least for someone who is both impatient and in to food production! However, I know that the reason for pruning the fruit is sound–that tree needs to put all its energy into root and branch production, not fruiting! So we’ll see if I can do it.

I don’t want to suggest that espalier fruit trees are easy or low-maintenance, but I do want to suggest that it is possible to do without a degree in horticulture (it better be, because I don’t have one!) and without spending $200 a pop for pre-trained fruit trees. My trees just look like little sticks now, but I will snap some photos as they develop into what I hope will be beautiful and productive fruit trees.

…As I strolled through the Farmer’s Market this morning and watched people in a near-frenzy of tender plant buying, I was reminded of why I chose the title that I did for my most recent gardening article, which appeared in the Rocky Mountain News on April 17: Beware of frost till mid-May. Even I, who religiously plant my tomatoes and peppers in Wall-o-Waters each spring, am only planning to get them out today and plant in them next week. Sure, I’ve done it earlier in past years but something about our recent freak snowstorms after 80 degree days has made me cautious.

Sure, get out and enjoy the warm weather. Even plant some lettuces and some hardy perennials. But keep the tomatoes, petunias, marigolds, and other tender plants indoors where belong for at least another week or so. I know it’s hard to wait (trust me!), but it’s better than the heartbreak of replanting after the next freak storm. Oh yes, there will be at least one more, and it may, as it has in other years, bring not just snow, but hail, freezing rain, or damaging winds….Beware the Ides of May (at least, that’s what they should have said, had they known about May in Colorado).

One of the reasons I love to grow my own food is that it connects me to the Earth and affirms my commitment to environmental stewardship. Another reason is that I love the variety of foods that would otherwise not be available to my family. One thing that I’ve realized during the course of my seed-starting adventures is that I need not limit myself to food production; there are other great things we can produce in the garden besides food.

First, inspired by my pal the Crunchy Domestic Goddess, I have decided to grow some dye plants in hopes of using natural Easter Egg dye next spring. So I’ve started some marigolds (their crushed seeds produce a yellow dye) and Hopi Red Dye Amaranth in the basement, and also hope to start some Hopi Black Dye Sunflowers and bull’s-blood beets in the garden a little later in the season. If anyone else knows of some good heat & drought-tolerant dye plants, please send them my way, as I’m just beginning my research on this.

Second, I’m going to be putting in a larger-than-ever-before cut flower garden. I love having cut flowers in the house and would have them every day all year long if only I didn’t realize where cut flowers come from in the off season. You see, tulips cut in Europe or South America and shipped in refrigerated cars to my local florist just don’t pass my enviro-meter That’s why I have African violets and zygocactus for houseplants and force bulbs just about every year.

Anyhow, the local greenhouse had a 3-for-1 sale going this week and, enchanted as I was by the 80 degree temperatures yesterday, I bought the following seeds for my cut flower garden:

• Heirloom Titan & Sun Samba Sunflowers
• Virginian & Ten Week Bouquet Stock
• Bachelor buttons (both blue & multi-colored!)
• Snapdragons
• Four varieties of Zinnias (I love zinnias!)
• Quinoa (yes, the edible kind is also nice for bouquets!)
• Cleome
• Coreopsis

I also got a free packet of the “Denver Daisy” rudbeckia that Denver Botanic Gardens is giving out in honor of the 150 year anniversary of Denver’s founding. Oh, and I bought “Big Max” pumpkin seeds last week. You know, the kind that grow up to 100 pounds. I’m thinking the kids will enjoy having those growing in their secret garden out behind the sandbox.

As an aside, yesterday’s sunny spring weather was replaced today with 2 inches of snow! Happy May Day, Colorado!

Three days short of four weeks after planting my flat of asparagus, I have surpassed 50% germination rate with 49 seedlings out of 84 planted! They are still tiny, and I admit that I will likely lose some of the tiny, fragile shoots when I transplant them outside and again when I cull the female plants, but I’m still pleased.

I’m up to a whopping two shoots of winecup and the creeping thyme (of which I have planted a full flat and could probably use twice that for xeric groundcover throughout the yard) is coming on strong. The best performers, aubrieta, all the rudbeckia hirtas (black eyed susan, gloriosa daisy, etc.), tomatoes, asters, and some, but not all, of the native grasses, are looking close to needing to go outside and I’ve still got at least three weeks to go before I can do that without protection, although I’ll start hardening off a few things this weekend if the weather holds (it’s been in the 70s!).

I got a bunch of seed garlic and have been sitting here watching it sprout on my counter top because my raised beds were not done. Until today that is…I see garlic planting in my future!

Julie

I had the pleasure of manning the Master Gardener booth at the Lyons Earth Day celebration this weekend and wanted to share a few pointers on sustainable gardening from my handout.

What is Sustainable?

Like zero-emissions, “green,” and zero-footprint, this is yet another term that, while an excellent goal, is not truly attainable on a large scale in Western society. Sustainable means living (and gardening) in a way that does not use more resources than are available per capita. Sure, we may have enough water, oil, and land now, but if we keep consuming at the rate we are at present, our children will not.

So sustainability takes into account environmental impact, as well as social and economic equity (it is not sustainable, for example, to rely on cheap labor coming up from Mexico to keep food prices down!). Water-wise irrigation, natural soil amendments, well-chosen plant varieties, Integrative Pest Management, and reducing inputs (chemical fertilizers, pesticides, trucked-in soil amendments, water, energy), are all a part of sustainable gardening.

Find Local Resources

The best people to talk to about sustainable gardening are other people who are gardening in your particular climate. What is sustainable here in Colorado may not be in Florida, Canada, or England, and the reverse is certainly true! We are truly blessed to live in a place where the environment is a part of the public dialog, but even if you’re in a place where that’s not the case, you can still find information from the local Sierra Club chapter, Cooperative Extension, or garden center to help you on your way.

I’d like to give a special shout-out to some of the folks who also had booths or information at our Earth Day Celebration. You all truly inspired me to do more!

• Urban Oasis Design - This family-run landscaping business does more than add beauty to your landscape. They really think about issues around water-wise gardening, sustainable landscape, and sustainable maintenance. If you need some help transferring a giant blue grass lawn to something a bit more manageable, give David & Lina a call (and tell them I sent you!).
• Boulder County Going Local - These folks might appreciate a little linky love to make up for the emails I keep peppering them with about getting the blogosphere more involved in the local food movement. This organization is a treasure-trove for people who want to grow local, buy local, and eat local!
• Green Heart Institute - After a delightful conversation about the challenges of choosing a greener car, I was able to discuss energy audits and improving home energy efficiency with the people from this organization that can help you live greener! Think about getting that energy audit and supporting this fantastic grass-roots organization.
• Will Shafroth - OK, I know it’s early to jump into the election fray, especially at the Congressional level (Colorado’s primary for this race isn’t even until August, so people are still getting signatures to get on the ballot), but I met a truly remarkable man who is running to fill Mark Udall’s seat in the House of Representatives: Will Shafroth. This is a man who has dedicated his life to conservation, a normal guy from Boulder with two kids and a dream of making the world a cleaner, greener place for his children. He has an uphill battle against some pretty well established career politicians, but I think he can do it!

And of course, I’ve plugged them before and I will plug them again: Colorado State’s Cooperative Extension information is truly amazing.

What else can I do?

The Earth Day committee specifically asked for someone with knowledge of xeriscaping, sustainable landscaping, and composting. This gives you a pretty good idea of some things to consider to make your garden a little more green

I’ve already blogged with a good step-by-step on composting–the fine art of turning food scraps and yard waste into soil–so please take a look. And there is some more technical information available in Fact Sheets 7.212 and 7.007 on the Cooperative Extension web site.

And Xeriscaping is something hugely popular here in Colorado, where the term originated. This is a proven technique for making your yard more water & maintenance efficient using the following seven principles:

1. Planning & Design
2. Soil Improvements (see composting above!)
3. Efficient Irrigation
4. Zoning of Plants
5. Mulches
6. Turf Alternatives
7. Appropriate Maintenance

Denver Water’s page on Xeriscaping is an excellent resource if you’d like to learn more. Also check back here for my adventures in starting seeds of quite a few native (and therefore, by nature, drought tolerant) plants.

Happy Earth Day. Now quit surfing the web and get outside!

Two weeks ago, I posted about starting asparagus from seed. The few resources I found on the matter varied significantly on germination time, so I promised to post here when I knew some more from first-hand experience. I have to say, even with my careful variety selection, seed-warming mat, and meticulous watering (no way were my asparagus seeds going to fall victim to my habit of selecting plants for drought tolerance!), I was totally shocked pleasantly surprised when I walked downstairs to water on Wednesday, a mere 10 days after planting the seed, and found 11 asparagus seedlings.

Although it is early to calculate germination rate (I’m only about halfway into some estimates of germination time, but I had 13% germination at 10 days and now, at 15 days, I’m at 28.5%), I’m feeling very positive about the process. I have to say that I had two trays, one of which had some faster-germinating seed in it, so I had to remove the humidity lid, and that did negatively impact germination. So heat & humidity seem to be the keys here.

For those of you who might scoff at my germination rates, keep in mind that, in addition to oodles of vegetables, I’m starting tons of native plants for my landscape, some of which, like Lewisia (bitterroot), have a germination rate that would be lucky to approach sales tax (4% on the Lewisia meant I got one seedling out of a packet of spendy seeds from Denver Botanic Gardens and I only approached 12.5% on the desert four o’clock). So it’s all relative. I won’t deny that, compared to zucchini, growing asparagus from seed is a fiddly affair. But it is fun if you’re a garden geek like me!

In other news, the stone was delivered for my raised vegetable beds this morning and, if the weather holds, they’ll be finished this week. That means that the plants I have stuffed into every corner of my seed-starting rack (the tender ones) and covering a good portion of my patio (the hardier ones–peas, leeks, sweet peas, lettuces, asparagus crowns, strawberries, a chunk of rhubarb I brought over from our old house, and the rest of the fruit trees that need to be planted where the two–noticably-smaller–piles of mulch are sitting) may actually get out of their pots and into the ground this weekend. It’s official–my fingernails won’t be clean again until October

When I first mentioned that I was going to start Asparagus from seed, TopVeg commented on the difficulty that posed and I found a web site called USA Gardener that claims starting it from seed is downright impossible. A saner person might have heeded the warning, but I took it as a challenge. Could I do it? You know, not just get a few spindly plants, but actually grow some productive asparagus crowns from seed.

So I did a little research, bid on some Mary Washington Asparagus seeds from GroCo on E*Bay, and planted them in seed-starting medium with a clear plastic lid to keep humidity in, placed them on the seed-warming mat under the lights, and crossed my fingers.

Then I started thinking: Why the mystery around starting asparagus from seed?

Why grow asparagus from seed?

Here is my short list of reasons to grow asparagus from seed:

• A well-established asparagus bed can last 20-30 years and yields one of spring’s first and finest vegetables.
• According to trials at University of Minnesota, plants started from seed produce better long-term (although they take an extra year to get established) because they are freshly dug instead of dug, dried, and shipped bare-root.
• It’s much, much cheaper (organic crowns can cost you more than a dollar a piece!).
• You can buy a tasty variety and not worry about whether your crowns will be male or female (more on that later). Even if you pitch all the females, you’re only out pennies (mine were $0.03 per seed once I included shipping) instead of dollars.
• Although recommendations vary, it seems that an asparagus bed for a family of four should have a minimum of 40 plants or, as Rodale recommends for serious asparagus eaters like us, 150 plants. Again, the seed is much more economical for that scale of asparagus bed!

Facts about Asparagus

A Mediterranean plant originally cultivated and eaten by the Greeks, asparagus is a long-lived perennial whose spears are low in calories and high in vitamins A and C. The plants are called “crowns” and each crown is either male or female. The females bear small berry-sized red fruit that can cause weed problems in the garden due to numerous asparagus sprouts. And, as I’ve learned from experience, if you leave the females, birds like to eat the berries and spread them through your yard, leaving you with asparagus in some strange places. The female plants also produce fewer spears because they put so much energy into seed production.

Although there are some new all-male cultivars (including the Jersey Giant crowns I just received from Raintree Nursery), the older varieties, like my Mary Washingtons, will produce both male and female plants. It takes a hand lens and some knowledge of asparagus to identify and weed out the females based on the shape of their flowers (the females have a well-developed pistil with three lobes, while male flowers are larger and longer).

The seeds will germinate best–although at 30 days, time to germination is very, very long– at temperatures around 77 degrees, making my seed-warming mats a good choice for this experiment.

Resources for Asparagus Growing

I got most of the information for this post from Rodale’s All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening and a great article from University of Illinois’s Cooperative Extension. Rodale even had the interesting tip of salting your asparagus crowns (yes, the crowns, not just the harvested spears!!) to improve disease resistance. They recommend adding 2.5 pounds of pickling salt (not iodized table salt!) to the crowns either before spears emerge or sometime around July 4. Sounds like a good thing to trial here at GreenArtz next year!

A Google search of asparagus resources yields a lot of Cooperative Extension web sites that have a lot of the same information, so I recommend looking at the one that applies for your state (find your Cooperative Extension here) just so that it will be tailored to your growing conditions. A few other good resources include:

• The West-Side Gardener has some step-by-step information on starting asparagus from seed (including a slightly shorter time to germination–let’s hope this is right!).
• Farm & Garden has a little bit shorter, sweeter information than some of the Coop. Extensions, including on starting seeds.
• Vanderbilt has actual pictures of asparagus flowers, although they don’t indicate whether they’re male or female (d’oh!).

I guess there just isn’t that much information out there on starting asparagus from seed. Check back here in the future for pictures of asparagus flowers and the real skinny on whether it takes 2 weeks, 3 weeks, or 4 weeks for asparagus to germinate. Oh, and I only planted one seed per tetra-pack, so I should have some numbers on germination rate (at least of this particular variety) in, well, 2, 3, or 4 weeks

What can I say? We just got a puppy, I’m working on a major deadline for work, and I’ve been outside helping the landscapers place rocks and shrubs, all of which needs to happen before any of my seedlings have a hope of seeing real sunlight. So I forgot to water, and fried some penstemons, my Roma tomatoes, some Missouri Evening Primrose, and a couple of Prairie Zinnias, which really bums me out because those have such a low germination rate to begin with that I now have only four. Oh well, live and learn and come up with a more fool-proof (or should I say busy-proof) watering system for next year.

The good news is that everything that survived the mini-drought is now doing really, really well. I moved some tomatoes, peppers, Rudbeckia hirta, hollyhocks, and English lavender up to 3 1/4 inch pots yesterday. And did something I have never before brought myself to do: thinned seedlings. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have room for 24 Zapotec tomatoes, or because my stomach can’t managed a dozen habanero plants, or maybe it’s just because I’m becoming ruthless and selecting the plants with the strongest stems in hopes that they’ll be able to resist the Lyons winds. Either way, I had a fairly good pile of thinned seedlings to go on the compost pile after my work downstairs and that freed up room in the tetra-packs to start the other seeds that have been cold stratifying in the fridge since January.

One small lesson learned (besides setting some sort of reminder to water) is that you can’t give plants like tomatoes the number of hours of light they need (I’ve got them on 16 hours a day right now) and, under those same conditions, grow greens. Yes, it’s true. Despite the fact that my arugula is only an inch tall, it’s sending up the characteristic 4-petaled mustard flower. It would be sort of adorable–garden in extreme miniature–if I wasn’t really hoping to eat those greens. I might have to buy a second timer for the greens next winter, but I’m still trying to calculate return-on-investment before I, um, make more investments

So I’ve finally gotten around to taking some pictures of our edible-landscape-in-progress. You can probably see that we have our work cut out for us since the only plant matter in the yard at present is 4 non-fruiting trees and non-edible (except to goats and puppies!) sod.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like my St. Patrick’s Day peas are going to happen. First, there’s the matter of the landscapers not being done driving heavy equipment across my garden patch (they still have several large boulders to place for us). Second, there’s Mother Nature’s silly sense of humor; it’s currently snowing and the various weather folks are predicting anywhere from 5 to 18 inches.

Even I’m not hardcore enough to go out and plant peas in 18 inches of snow! So instead, I guess we’ll just have to be happy with what we got done this morning, which is leveling and starting to lay out our front yard patio. This little rough set flagstone creation will have creepers like Thyme and maybe even some chamomile planted between the gaps in the stone. It will house two chairs and a small table and allow Matt and I to sit somewhere other than on the front steps when we’re out watching the children ride bikes in the cul-de-sac (or at least it will provide a place to set our drinks where the pup can’t knock them over!).

I guess I’m stuck just dreaming about spring for at least a few more days…