The Garden Beet

Garden Project Newsletter

Feeding our community since 1972

Tools & Techniques: Cover Crops Compost Demystified

Vegetable of the Month: Garlic Potatoes

Kid’s Corner: All That Summer Squash

Number 4

September 2015

Tools and Techniques Cover Crops

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ne of the easiest and most affordable ways to improve the soil in your garden is to plant a cover crop, commonly called green manure. “Cover crops, what do they cover?” you may ask. Well, cover crops cover the soil during idle periods, which is often late fall or winter but some add it into crop rotation in the summer. In nature, we very rarely see bare soil. Growing a cover crop is a way we can follow nature’s wise lead.

Why Cover Crop?

Crimson Clover

Cover cropping is a fabulous way to keep your garden soil healthy and vibrant! Some of the many benefits of cover crops are recycling and supplying nutrients, protecting soil from runoff and erosion, keeping weeds at bay and adding organic matter. When green manure crops are cut and turned under they add organic matter which keeps beneficial microorganisms and fungi happy. When our friends, soil dwelling microorganisms, eat organic matter, nutrients are released back into the soil in a form that is usable by plants. They can be quite attractive to boot!

Common cover crops belong to one of three groups. Common cover crops belong to one of three groups: 1. grains and grasses 2. legumes 3. broad leaf plants Legume crops hosts a bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen and make it available for future crops so you don’t need as much fertilizer next year. Choosing a cover crop or mix of cover crop depends on which benefits you wish to achieve. If you are a Garden Project garden recipient you were given a fall cover crop blend that includes Crimson Austrian Winter Peas, Vetch, Winter Rye Clover, Austrian Field Pea and Hairy Vetch. These crops are all legumes, which benefit from being treated with seed inoculant for best nitrogen fixation. Timing is important. This mix should be sown no later than early September in Bellingham. Some of the seeds in this mix won’t germinate in colder temperatures.

Tools and Techniques How do you plant a cover crop? First, clear out your garden bed and send your plant mater to the compost pile. Next, loosen up the soil and smooth. Afterwards, throw even handfuls of a cover crop seed onto your soil (this is called broadcast seeding). For the final touch, lightly rake soil on top to provide the seeds for some protection from birds that like the seed as a tasty treat. Cover seeds at least ¼” deep but do not fret, not all the seeds will be covered. There is no need to fertilize before cover cropping. Keep the garden bed moist until germination. It’s likely the rains will come as the crop is getting established, so you won’t have to water much. If planted in the fall, the seeds will sprout and grow slowly through the winter. When the spring comes, there will be more plant growth.

What happens in the spring? 3 weeks before you’re ready to start your veggie garden in the spring (and the ground is workable, not too wet), chop up the cover crop into small pieces and turn the plant matter in to the soil. Check the plot once a week and re-chop and bury any spots where it may have started to grow again. The longer you wait to turn the crop under the more green growth you will have but it may be more challenging to chop up and work in.

Visit the links below for a more in depth description of various cover crops and how to manage them. They are great fact sheets from Washington State University Extention. Cover Crops for Home Gardeners West of the Cascade: http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS111E/FS111E.pdf Methods for Successsful Cover Crop Management in Your Home Garden: http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS119E/FS119E.pdf

Love your garden = Love your soil. So cover crop & get ‘er done!

Tools and Techniques Compost Demystified by

Cassie Castrejon

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omposting is one of the best activities that you can accomplish when it comes to gardening. It’s sustainability in action and is a cost-effective way to improve soil. In essence, gardening is the act of cultivating healthy living soil and growing fresh produce follows. Transforming your waste into a rich resource for the garden is so rewarding. I hope to demystify composting and direct you to great educational resources to help you in your gardening journey.

What is Compost? The natural breaking-down cycle creates compost. The decay process is aided by awesome tiny microbes and insects that live in the soil. The main characters cast in the composting act include worms, bacteria, fungi, beetles, ants, spiders, flies and maggots. Each character has their specific job in the grand scheme of breaking down the organic matter. A proud composter

Why Compost? When you compost, your kitchen and yard waste is made into a valuable resource for your garden. Compost has numerous benefits for the soil. Beneficial plant nutrients are replenished and soil structure is improved when you add compost to the garden. It also improves water retention or drainage depending on the type of soil that you have. It also can weaken and deteriorate pollutants. Compost is a soil amendment and can be used as a mulch. Compost is almost too good to be true! There are many composting methods, all following some basic science and guidelines. Some further research on Main components of the composting process composting will allow you to put a personal flare on the glorious activity of creating what some call brown gold. To begin, you should choose the compost method of your fancy. Seattle Tilth is a fabulous resource to learn about a variety of methods. To find articles on how to make your own bin system, free standing piles, worm bins and homemade food scrap digesters, as well as compost troubleshooting and the low-down on compost pile ingredients, visit this link: http://seattletilth.org/learn/resources-1/compost. If you have any questions in your composting quest, give Seattle Tilth Garden Hotline a call at (206) 633-0224.

Tools and Techniques How to Compost? Next, designate an area in your yard for composting that can be just a pile on the ground. But if you build or purchase a compost bin, it will help keep pests out. The ideal dimensions for a compost bin are 3 x 3 x 3 feet. Then, begin to collect your organic materials. Yard debris is great and you can use grass clippings, flowers, plant leaves and even weeds, as long as you remove seed heads or roots of spreading plants like ivy, morning glory, quack grass and buttercup. Also, avoid any insect-infested or diseased plants or those treated with herbicide. Kitchen scraps are an important compost material: use fruits, veggies, coffee grounds, grains and shredded paper. Be wise about how you store your kitchen scraps to avoid pest problems. Farm animal manure (such as horse, cow or chicken) is an excellent nutrient-dense material for the compost. You should not compost pet feces, fish, meat, dairy or bone scraps.

Open composting pile

There is a bit more to learn about composting, so read up about the various methods and choose the one for you. A word of caution: the carbon/nitrogen ratio may sound foreign but it’s pretty simple. Some examples of carbon or “greens” “browns” “browns” include dried leaves, shredded paper and straw, while nitrogen or “greens” include various plant matter, kitchen scraps and manure. Basically, a balanced diet is key for the compost pile, as is moisture. It should be moist like a wrung-out sponge (not dry and not overly wet). My goal here is to demystify composting. Remember, there are many enthusiastic composters out there who are available to help you along the way: Garden Project staff and mentors, Master Gardeners, Seattle Tilth Garden Hotline, to name a few. Go forth and begin your composting endeavors!

Homemade wire compost bin

Homemade double-sided wooden compost bin

vegetable of the month Garlic

by Ayesha

Brookshier

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h a t first comes to mind when you think of a garden? Is it planting seeds in spring? Is it a lush bed of mature plants bursting with a bountiful harvest in summer? What about winter gardening…or does this sound completely backward? There are many vegetables that are well adapted to growing through the winter in our maritime northwest climate. Garlic is just one of many vegetables that can be grown through the winter and harvested the following summer. A member of the Allium family of plants, which also includes onions, chives and leeks, there are many different types of garlic, but the two primary types are softneck and hardneck. As with summer gardening, every winter gardening vegetable requires different growing conditions, such as planting times, water, nutrition, spacing and general care.

Garlic Planting Tips In the Pacific Northwest, garlic should be planted in September-October and then harvested in early July the next summer. This means that garlic needs about 9 months to fully mature. Therefore, you must think ahead to next year’s summer garden and plan to leave the garlic in place until harvesting time. To prepare your planting space, take out and compost the current summer garden plants that are finished for the season. Then, lightly mix in about 1” of composted manure into the planting space to replenish nutrients used by the summer crops. Garlic should be planted after the warm summer temperatures are gone and cooler night temperatures have begun. Cooler temperatures encourage the garlic bulbs to grow strong roots downward with little top green growth at first. Strong roots will enable the garlic to grow better bulbs and withstand cold winter temperatures.

Select disease-free garlic to ensure germination and healthy growth. I recommend purchasing separated organic cloves from a garden center or a whole organic bulb from a natural food store. Each clove planted will grow into an entire new large bulb! Softneck garlic truly has a soft neck when it’s ready to harvest and has 10-12 cloves of different sizes. Hardneck garlic has a hard/rigid neck at harvest time and has 5-6 large cloves of the same size. Additionally, hardneck garlic tends to have a stronger flavor. When planting garlic cloves, leave the “skin” on, plant individual cloves 3” deep and space 6” apart and place in the soil with the pointy end upward, the root end downward. Doing a little math, this means you can fit a lot of garlic into a pretty small space. As with most other vegetable crops, applying a mulch of straw, dried leaves or grass clippings around and on top of the garlic will help control soil temperature and moisture. Without mulch during the winter, the hard rains will pound the garden soil, leach nutrients and cause erosion. Within 6-8 weeks of planting, you’ll start to see green tips emerge from the soil. Through the winter the green top growth will continue to get taller, and by early spring plant growth will increase even faster. If you’ve chosen to grow other winter vegetables, mulch around these plants as well. If you have empty space in your garden, it’s recommended that you apply mulch over bare soil or plant a cover crop in September-October. A cover crop has many advantages, which include replenishing nutrients to soil, preventing erosion and suppressing weeds.

vegetable of the month Like other bulbs, garlic needs a little more phosphorus than other vegetables. Applying an organic fertilizer, such as Bonemeal, in early spring will encourage strong bulb growth. If you have any composted manure you can apply a small amount (1/2”) as a top dressing around the base of the plants instead. Once the spring weather warms and less rain fall is available to the plants, garlic needs a little water, but a once a week good soaking is best. Garlic doesn’t like to be consistently moist as the bulbs grow larger. Don’t be afraid to inspect the size of the bulbs in the ground by digging down with a finger – just like you might do with a carrot.

Garlic Olive Oil (for dipping or dressing)

Harvesting & Storing

Now comes the fun part… there are many different harvesting methods with garlic. First, if you would like to have “green” garlic you can harvest the plant in early spring like you would a green onion where the bulb of the garlic in ground isn’t mature. With green garlic, the entire Ingredients plant can be chopped up 1 cup extra virgin olive oil and used for cooking, such as in a stir fry or soup. 4-5 medium garlic cloves, Second, between May peeled & minced and June, each plant will send up a “scape,” which is actually a flower Method bloom stock in the center of the plant. Garlic scapes 1. Peel and mince garlic. Spread evenly on cookie look somewhat like the curly-Q sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 of a pig’s tail. Scapes can be cut off minutes. Stir frequently to prevent burning. and are delicious to eat. Also, by cutting off the scapes, you’re communicating to the plant that it needs to send its energy toward growing a larger bulb in the ground, 2. Add roasted garlic to olive oil and let set for at least 1 hour. instead of flowering. To harvest a fully mature garlic bulb use a garden spade and gently pry the entire plant out of the ground. Gently shake off the dirt and hang the whole plants in a dry shady place to “cure” for 2 weeks. Curing allows the outer skin of the bulb to develop, which protects the inside cloves and also intensifies the garlic flavor. Once curing is done, gently brush off any remaining dried soil, prune off most of the loose roots on the bottom of the bulb, then hang clusters of garlic plants (with stems attached) in a cool, dry and dark location to prevent sprouting. Bulbs stored this way can typically be used for 6-9 months.

Note: Garlic must be cooked before added to olive oil. If raw garlic is added to oil, Botulism will grow, which is a toxic bacteria that thrives in environments where oxygen is not present (such as oil). Cooking garlic kills this bacteria.

Optional Garlic olive oil can be used for dipping bread, spreading over already roasted vegetables or as a salad dressing. Minced garlic can be strained out of oil and garlic used to make fresh garlic bread. Oil can then still be used for dipping or as a salad dressing.

vegetable of the month One Potato, Two Potato... by Shannon Allegra Fox

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his spring I cleared a blackberry patch and planted a diversity of potatoes in the rich soil. Sown in the crisp early spring were 5 varieties. I delighted each time I looked at the thriving plants, and I took great joy in seeing the pretty lil’ tater blossoms. Potatoes get a bad rap for not being the most nutritious; however, they have lots of potassium, vitamins C and B, copper, iron and protein.

How to Harvest? I kept a hawk eye on the local potato farmers every move for the last 4 months. It’s finally time to harvest! First, let the plant’s leaves die back, then cut them off and dig the potatoes up with your pitchfork or shovel. Just be careful not to dig into the potatoes themselves (this will inevitably happen - just eat those first since they will not store well). You can also use a hand trowel and be on your hands and knees. It may take a little longer but it’s just another excuse to get down and dirty! Kids and adults love digging them up, since every tater is a buried treasure!

Simple Storing of Your Potatoes... 1. Inspect all potatoes for soft spots, sprouts and mold. Only perfect potatoes are suitable for long-term storage. 2. Place the potatoes in a cardboard box, paper bag or mesh bag to ensure good ventilation. 3. Store in a cool, dry and dark place (50-60° is the ideal temperature range). 4. Check on your potatoes regularly, and remove any that are soft, shriveled or sprouted. In the early spring, before the last frost, plant your seed potatoes, which can often be found at your extension office, food bank, local farmer or garden nursery.

What are Seed Potatoes? The term “seed potato” can be a little misleading. Although potatoes do set seed, they do not grow true to seed. To get the variety of potato you want, you need to grow part of the actual potato, which is called vegetative propagation. These pieces of potato are referred to as seed potatoes.

vegetable of the month Selecting Seed Potatoes Because potatoes are grown with vegetative propagation, any diseases from the prior year will be carried over. That’s why it is so important to use disease free seed potatoes and that means certified seed potatoes, rather than supermarket potatoes. Any potatoes that have soft spots, cracks or bruises or signs of rotting should be discarded. Start with the healthiest, strongest seed potatoes, to avoid problems and guarantee a good harvest.

So What Exactly Do You Plant? You do not need to plant a whole, intact potato. Seed potatoes can be cut into pieces, as long as the pieces have at least 1 eye each. An “eye” is a bud that grows into a new plant. If you’ve ever kept your potatoes in the cabinet too long, you’ve probably seen them sprout. Just remember when it’s time to plant a healthy potato crop, you must properly prepare the soil before planting. Potatoes thrive in a loose, well-drained, slightly acidic soil (pH 5 - 6). So you see, even a novice like me can grow a potato garden in a square foot plot, upright in a hay bale, in creative salvaged materials like a washing machine colander (you can often find these at Appliance Depot) or in two 20 foot rows. Planting a variety means cultural diversity in the garden and helps with disease resistance. Taters are a fun addition to the garden and easily be grown outside of your raised bed.

vegetable of the month Roasted Root Vegetables with Orange Maple Glaze Recipe Serves 4

Ingredients 1 carrot 1 parsnip 1 beet 1 potato or sweet potato 1 yam 2 oranges (or orange juice) 1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup (or honey) salt garlic cloves herbs of choice (try rosemary, thyme, parsley) Add in rutabaga, turnip, celery, fennel, and/or onions. Omit any of the veggies listed above that you don’t like. Cater the dish to your particular taste.

Method 1. Preheat your oven to 400˚. 2. Wash and peel the vegetables. 3. Cut them into 1-2 inch pieces.

4. Place them in a bowl. If you are doing beets, place those separately in another smaller bowl. 5. Juice one half of one of the oranges (or use some orange juice) and whisk in the olive oil. 6. Take one tablespoon of this mixture and drizzle it over the beets and mix to coat. 7. Pour the rest of the mixture over the other vegetables. Toss to coat.

8. If you are doing beets, place the cubed beets in a separate parchment-lined baking sheet. This will ensure that the rest of your veggies won’t get stained. Skip this step if you don’t mind the stain of beets on the other veggies. 9. Place the rest of the cut vegetables in a separate parchment-lined baking sheet. 10. Sprinkle both pans with salt and herbs. 11. Bake for 30 minutes or until tender when stuck with a fork. 12. Juice the remaining orange and a half and put the juice into a small heavy pot with the maple syrup. 13. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook on low till the sauce thickens, stirring it every now and then. 14. Mix the beets with the other vegetables and pour the glaze over everything.

Serve immediately. Bon Appetite!

Kid’s Corner

All That Summer Squash!

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by Allie Bishop Pasquier

n abundant garden is a beautiful thing! Around this time of year, many people find that they ended up with a bit more summer squash than they expected. And you may be thinking about how to cope with it! Donating extra food to the Food Bank or giving it to your neighbors is a wonderful option, but what about that squash you’re keeping for yourself? People usually picture zucchini when they think of summer squash. It is a bit more common than yellow squash, or the smaller patty pan squashes. Zucchini is high in potassium and vitamin C, so it is a great food to pack into as many meals as you can in late summer. Growing up, the zucchini at my house was always boiled, then seasoned with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. Now I like to use zucchini in more creative ways: sautéed, baked into something sweet, or grated raw into a salad. Cooking should be fun, so this month, we’re sharing something a bit different: Zucchini-Crusted Pizza!

I first made this in college while I was cooking my way through my very first cookbook, Mollie Katzen’s, The Moosewood Cookbook. All of the recipes highlight vegetables, grains, and other whole foods. This is an adapted version of Mollie’s pizza. Have fun!

Ingredients: olive oil & cornmeal for the pan 2 medium zucchini, grated (about 2 cups) 2 eggs, beaten ¼ cup flour ½ cup grated Mozzarella cheese ½ cup grated Parmesan cheese 1 TBSP olive oil

Directions: 1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Brush a sheet pan with olive oil and sprinkle some cornmeal onto the pan, concentrating the cornmeal mostly onto a 10-inch circle in the middle of the pan. 2. Combine all of the other ingredients in a bowl and mix well. 3. Press the mixture into a circle on the prepared pan. It should be about 10 inches in diameter. Be sure that it is packed together well! Brush it with a touch more olive oil. 4. Bake for 15 minutes, then rotate the pan. Bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the top is golden brown. 5. Remove from the oven and loosen the crust with a spatula. Add your toppings of choice (maybe more veggies from the garden!) and then put it back in the oven for about 10 minutes, when the toppings are heated through. You can also make your own frozen pizzas for nights when your family is busy by letting the baked crust cool down, adding toppings, then freezing the whole pizza. When you want to cook it, just preheat the oven and pop the whole thing in until it is heated through.