Planting the Winter Garden/Thoughts on Water

We had a brief respite from the smoke this weekend and were able to get all of the north garden planted for winter. This involved taking out all of the tomatoes and peppers, amending the soil, doing a little aeration of the soil, replacing the drip lines, and planting seeds. The north garden will be home to brassicas and greens, this year. I’ve decided to skip Brussels Sprouts, as I never have much luck with them. But all the other usual suspects are in, and we’ll enjoy eating them early next year. Greens will be available to eat all winter, which we love.

The next job is to cover the hoops with row cover, to keep the birds and the cabbage white butterflies OUT!

I had mulched the tomatoes and peppers heavily with organic rice straw, and one benefit of that was that the soil level was still very much as it looked in April - still level with the top of the raised beds. I thought that was interesting. Another benefit of the straw is that I was able to move it from the beds to the chicken run, and now they have a new layer of carbon to scratch through and soil with their droppings.

In the south garden, Tom took out the beans and cucumbers and I took out the pumpkins and some cover crops. Now we have snap and shelling peas planted, which might crop before cold weather - we’ll just have to see. I’m a little early on my winter planting this year, so I’m not sure how everything will behave.

Our seed garlic will be arriving tomorrow, so I also prepared a bed for that. However, I had forgotten that we had a water issue that needed investigating. We noticed some extremely wet places in between raised beds last May, and Tom dug down to see if there was a leak in the irrigation, and didn’t find anything. We dialed down the amount of water going to those beds and decided to watch it this summer, since I had already planted the summer garden. That seemed to solve the problem, except for one very wet place in between two of the beds. So Tom dug a bunch of holes again today to see if there was a leak. Surprisingly, there wasn’t. And yet we see water seeping out the bottom of the sides of two raised beds! Tom thinks maybe the lower levels of the soil are so compacted that the water is dripping down to that level and then running off. This sounds possible to me. We are on heavy clay, and though we amend the soils each year with all kinds of organic matter, it takes a long time to change the tilth of soil. I also practice no-dig methods, which ensure that soil life is not disturbed, and in theory should actually improve the soil’s texture, but it could be that I need to add more organic matter down lower in the beds, next to the hard pan. So that’s what I’ll do.

This whole issue spurred us to discuss our watering habits more generally. Watering is kind of a crap shoot. In the summer, our plants seem SO dry and tired, and the soil seems dusty and dry, no matter how much we water. And we water a LOT. We are using a lot of resources. The general rule (and this is so general, it’s almost silly) is that plants in the ground (not containers, not raised beds) need an inch of water a week. Well, in a place that rains, that’s easy to calculate; but we have no rain nine months out of the year. So the soil is never soaked, and it is never sodden in the summer months - it is bone dry. Add to that very low humidity in the air (10% humidity is quite usual here in the summer months), and very hot temps (often over 100), and that means the plants are transpiring like crazy. And, we grow most of our crops in raised beds, which tend to stay drier anyway.

We did a whole bunch of calculations and we converted an inch of water to gallons per week, and even when we set the drips for 10 minutes a day, we’re still giving the garden more than two inches a week. You’d think that would be enough, more than enough! But in the summer heat we often drip for 15 minutes a day and the plants are still wilting and sad looking. They produce, though. So I suppose they are getting just enough. But honestly, I am just guessing.

We want to be good stewards of water, here in our dry dry dry West. And yet, we also don’t want all of our hard work go to waste - we want the plants to thrive. Growing at home is still a better use of water than buying fruit and veg from the market, so in the big scheme of things, we are conserving. It just feels bad to be using so much water. If we had a lawn, would we even think twice? Most people don’t.

Well, one thing we can certainly do is make sure that we don’t have any runoff like we did this past Spring. So, organic matter to the rescue! We are also thinking of buying a soil moisture meter, so we can start to really determine how the water is behaving deep in the soil.

Random Thoughts

This is Camp Okizu in 2007, our beloved cancer camp in Berry Creek, CA. We started going to camp as a family in 2004, and both Adam and Rin have attended by themselves every summer since they were eight. Adam has been a counselor for two years now, this past summer online, which was challenging but very rewarding for him. Okizu provides camp free of charge for children with cancer and their families. We love it there.

Okizu was badly burned this past week, in a massive fire that had been burning since our first terrible heatwave in August, but was fanned and spread by the high winds we had during our most recent terrible heatwave, a week ago. Berry Creek was one of the communities that was hardest hit, with a wave of fire that bore down so quickly that many people simply could not escape.

Here’s how the lodge looks now.

image credit: Sacramento Bee

We will do everything we can to help Okizu rebuild.

The smoke is still quite bad here in California, but we are hoping it will move out this week. Unfortunately we need wind to move it, and wind isn’t so great either, in terms of fire. Oregon is having a hell of a time right now, and our hearts are with everyone involved there. There are fires burning up and down the west coast and the western third of the country.

Fire has been much on our minds, but classes and work and life do continue despite it.

The day after Labor Day, a professor of mine read aloud an excellent poem, which I thought you might enjoy as much as I did. It’s called “Worker” and was written by the poet laureate of Berkeley, who also happens to be my professor’s neighbor.

“He who works with his hands is a laborer,

He who works with his hands & his head

is a craftsman, he who works with his hands

& his head and his heart is an artist,

so you said, brother Francis.

Were you then an artist, brother,

rebuilding St. Damian & the chapel

Our Lady Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula?

I do not know man or woman who works

only with the hands without the head

weighed down as it be or without heart

though it be bitter & hurting.

It is unjust circumstances that separate

the hands from the head & the heart.

Laborers, crafts-folk, artists

we are all workers —

we earn our bread & put

bread, & wine, on the tables.

If poverty there be it is no fault of ours;

the Earth is generous when it does not fall

into the hands of the greedy.

If there is baptism of water & blood

so also there is of sweat.
”

— Rafael Gonzales

As we drove down highway 101 from San Jose to San Luis Obispo on the 4th to drop Adam off at college, we drove through the beautiful salad bowl that is that particular valley in California. But the bowl was filled with smoke, and we were in a terrible heatwave, and the migrant workers, covered head to toe in flannel to ward off the rays of the sun, and masked because of Covid, were bent over harvesting cauliflower and romaine, working for pennies. That is definitely a baptism of sweat. I hope our future world honors labor, hard labor, essential workers, more than it does now.

Finally, here are a series of videos for you, which are part of my Environmental Justice module in one of my classes. Each one is inspiring - some are easy to watch and very entertaining, and some are hard to watch and may make you feel uncomfortable. Personally I learned from each one and thought you might be interested too.

Today we realized our family has been sheltering in place for six months.

I still haven’t torn out the summer garden. I keep meaning to, but every weekend carries its own challenges; one weekend it’s 110 degrees, the next the air quality is so bad that we have to stay inside with doors and windows shut. On Labor Day, it was 111 degrees here. Two days later it was 68 because the smoke had blocked so much sun. It’s been a hell of a ride.

No Words

the car this morning

smoke layer

10:30 am in our living room

orange glow

dining room, 10:30 am

looking north

Just a couple words: We are ok - the nearest fire to us is 44 miles away. But a lot of people are not ok, clearly. Our hearts are heavy for our home state and for the entire west coast.

Reader Question - Cover Crops

Did you know that you can email me directly if you go to the ‘contact me’ page on this website? I would absolutely LOVE to answer any question you have, and if I can’t answer it, I’ll be honest about that, too. It’s all too obvious that I am running out of things to write about. When I was taking Horticulture classes, I was always learning something new about gardening, or trying experiments out in the lab, and I had lots of information to share. Then I swerved briefly into more general science classes, which still had some good, relatable info. But now I’m fully into my upper division courses, which are all for my Environmental Studies degree and include boring things like data collection and carrying capacities and population control and clean energy. Well, they aren’t boring to me, but they certainly aren’t the focus of this blog, and aren’t as fun to read about as bugs and vegetables and flowers. So I really appreciate questions! They give me a chance to write about fun things and to question my knowledge and opinions of them and of course, that way we can all learn together, which is my favorite thing of all.

This morning I got a wonderful email from a reader named Jill, who lives not far from me: “ I sadly lost most of my garden due to the heatwave and an irrigation issue. I’m looking at cover crops and know nothing about the subject. Do you have any tips or links to places you buy the seeds from. Maybe some simple do’s and dont’s? “ Thank you Jill! Thank you for reading the blog and thank you for this question and thank you for your faith that I can answer it!

Buckwheat, a summer cover crop in warm climates

Cover crops can seem intimidating and confusing, so let’s start from the beginning. What is a cover crop? The simple answer is that a cover crop can be anything you want it to be. The Oxford Dictionary definition is “any crop grown for the protection and enrichment of the soil.” Farmers tend to use specific plants to satisfy specific requirements, which can be very important, especially if you want to grow without inputs i.e. chemical fertilizers. Some plants provide nitrogen, some phosphorus; others attract beneficial insects, and still others provide biomass for feeding animals. Some are grown during the summer, and some are grown during the winter. Some are grown after a specific cash crop, to replenish certain nutrients.

If you’re a farmer, and you’re making a living growing and selling your crops, you’re going to want to know a lot more details about cover crops and how they can be used to save you money. But if you’re a regular home gardener, your needs are different. You want something to improve the soil, attract beneficial insects, look pretty, and feed your compost pile when it’s done growing. Maybe you want to avoid buying soil amendments this year (they’re going to be hard to find, considering how many people are gardening for the first time). Maybe you don’t like the structure of your soil, and you want to improve its water-holding capacities. Maybe you like birds, and you want to feed insects that will in turn become food for the birds. These are all fine reasons to grow a cover crop.

The thing that is most important is that you have a living root in the ground at all times. Now, if you live in upstate NY, you know that eventually that root will likely die, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be, and maybe even you time a crop so that it winter-kills and you don’t have to cut it down yourself. If you live in California, however, you can grow different cover crops at different times of the year, year-round. Having a living root in the ground is what improves your soil. The plant harvests sunlight, makes sugars, and pumps those sugars down into the roots and into the soil. This attracts microbiota, tiny creatures that feed on the sugars that the plant provides. In turn, they poop, providing micro-manure to the soil, and they burrow, improving air flow to the roots, and they die, recycling nutrients, and they move a ton of soil, making it rich and crumbly and perfect. If there’s no root in the soil feeding the microbes, then they move on or die off (or become very, very sluggish, waiting for the next influx of food). It’s not the plant that is feeding the soil, it’s the animals that are feeding the soil - the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes - the primary and secondary consumers. When you spread manure or compost on the soil, it doesn’t feed the plant - it feeds the soil life, which in turn form these associations with the plant roots and provide the nutrients the plant needs to thrive.

image credit: center for food safety

So if you look at it this way, any plant can be a cover crop. No matter what kind of plant it is, it is going to continuously pump sugars into the soil and feed soil life, therefore improving your growing medium.

However, some plants need a lot of nutrients. If you’re planning a summer garden full of squash or melons, for instance, you might want a high nutrient load in the soil before you plant them. Why not grow a crop that will also add specific nutrients to the soil? Here is a handy chart, provided by the Organic Growers School, to help you determine which crop you need at which time.

image credit: the Organic Growers School

Don’t worry too much about the seeding rate. I just spread it on thickly, and that does the trick.

I’ve grown many different specific cover crops, and I tend to stick to two - crimson clover in the winter, and buckwheat in the summer. Some years I don’t use them at all. Some years I plant them intercropped with other plants that I am using for food. Some years I grow them alone in specific beds. They’re both great, but both require cutting and removing before they set seed (at least here in CA), or else they will seed everywhere (which is not the worst thing in the word). I’ve also done several mixes, especially in summer, that combine many species to provide many different nutrients. This is actually proving to be best for the soil, generally. If a living root in the ground is good for the soil life, then a wide diversity of roots in the ground would naturally be even better. I’ve also grown winter wheat and oats, which provided me with the best variety of beneficial insects I’ve ever seen in my garden. Long grass is apparently second only to a pond for attracting wildlife, and we saw that firsthand.

Many seed houses sell cover crops, but the best place I’ve found is Walnut Creek Seeds in Walnut Creek, Ohio (I know, it’s a coincidence that my town is also named Walnut Creek). They’re super-friendly, the farmer (Dave Brandt) has pivoted his business from growing corn and soy to growing cover crops, and he is also involved in a lot of research with the NRCS to show how cover crops can save money for traditional farmers, improving crops, soil, water levels, and erosion. Their prices are incredibly reasonable. They also sell specific gardening mixes for the home grower. I’ve used both the summer and the winter mix, and can vouch for them. Mr. Brandt is also one of the first conventional farmers to help develop special seeding equipment to enable farmers to plant their cash crop directly into the residue from a cover crop. He has a lot of videos on his website, and I think they are fascinating. (I have also ordered phacelia from them, by the pound, for early spring seeding in my pollinator gardens. The bees go crazy for it.)

If you’re interested in how soil can be a huge catalyst to improving our planet (and some history on how it’s disappearance has contributed to societal failure), an excellent book is Growing a Revolution: Bringing our Soil Back to Life, by David R. Montgomery. If you’re looking for a nice film to help you understand these concepts, look for Symphony of the Soil, which came out years ago and is still one of the best films about soil I’ve ever seen. For a crash course on soil health and how cover crops can be used to improve your land, you can’t do better than Living Web Farms’ series with Roy Archuleta and Dave Brandt - these videos will blow your mind.

If I were Jill, and my garden had been decimated by heat and smoke (mine is pretty sad too, sister!), and if I wasn’t planning on winter food crops, and I wanted to improve the soil, I would plant buckwheat right now. It’ll grow and flower quickly in our late summer/early autumn heat; it’s quite a pretty plant, with lovely tiny white flowers. Around late October or early November, I would cut it down and lay it on top of the soil where it grew. This will provide cover for the soil over the winter. (Studies have shown that it’s better for the soil if you just lay the residue on the top, rather than turning it under.) Or, you can add that residue to your compost pile. I would then plant either a winter mix of grain, clover, peas, and radish (or the mix Dave sells) right into those same beds, and let it grow a bit before the real winter hits us. When it begins to warm up again in January/February, that cover will take off and grow like mad, and you can let it go until you are ready to cut it down and plant your spring crops. This will do wonders for your soil, and you will also be feeding pollinators: Both now, with the buckwheat, when it’s hot and crispy outside and there’s not a lot to eat, and early in spring, when the bugs are emerging from their winter dens and need nutrition, pronto.

Do any of you use cover crops regularly? What’s your experience with them? Do you have any tips for Jill (and the rest of us)? If so, please leave a comment down below. Good luck, Jill! Let me know if you have any more questions.

August Arrangement

All bets are off this summer; nothing in my garden (or my life) is behaving the way it should.

But the zinnias? They never disappoint. Late August is here, and so are the zinnias, God bless them.

Along with cosmos and tithonia, zinnias are a stalwart presence in the late summer garden. They will bloom until the first frost, making a haven of nectar and pollen for the pollinators.