There are good reasons to plant turnips even if they aren't on your list of vavorite vegies.

Turnips will almost never be the answer to the question of  “What is your favorite vegetable?” so maybe the title of this article should be “Cover Crop Plantin’ Time in the Mid South”  but it just doesn’t have the same alliteration thing going on.  BTW, it’s the last week of August, and a few harbingers of fall are already apparent – goldenrod in bloom for example.

Anyway, your summer garden is looking disgraceful (you know it is) and it’s high time to put all of those disease and weed ridden plants out of their misery before you get a visit from the homeowners association.  Hopefully you are planning to grow a fall garden, but even so  some amount of ground  is probably going to be vacant once you tidy up – which is where cover crops come in.  Any good cover crop will suppress weeds, prevent erosion, improve the fertility / organic content of your soil, and in some cases even put food on your table.  One of the main things that cover crops do is to absorb soil nutrients into their tissues as they grow so that they don’t leach away during the rainy winter.  But (to me) the main reason to plant cover crops is that they save work, because all of those advantages are gained with no more effort than it takes to sprinkle a few seeds on the newly bared ground.

The most popular fall / winter cover crops in my area are: Turnips, Crimson Clover, and Annual Rye.  They are area favs for good reasons, and they all have their unique advantages.  Rye probably does the best job of suppressing weeds, and adds lots of organic matter to the soil when you work it in early next spring.  Crimson clover adds nitrogen in addition to organic matter.  Turnips main claim to fame is the fact that they also yield food – all winter long in some cases.  Ask around (at a farmers co-op for example) to find out what works best in your area.

Whichever cover crop you choose to sow buy your seed by the pound (at a farmers co-op or or Real Garden Center) unless your garden is awfully small a little paper packet isn’t going to be enough seed.  Anyway, a pound of turnip seed should only cost 3 dollars or so, will last just about forever in the freezer, and contains enough seed to plant the entire state of Rhode Island – it’s one of those things that you should just keep on hand.  If you keep them in an empty shaker bottle such as spices comes in it will be very convenient to just sprinkle about – a good tip for all kinds of salad green seeds.

The other thing you should do with any of these crops is to completely ignore the planting dirrections.  One of those little packets will tell you that you need to plant turnips 1/2″ deep in loose fertile  soil which has been enriched with lots of organic mater – which is true if you are hoping to win a ribbon at the fair, but for the purpose of a cover crop just sow your seed thickly (thin later with a hoe if you want to harvest roots)  on top of the ground after you have pulled the old plants and weeds.  You do need to use a rake or cultivating fork to break up any crust that you might have, and you will probably want to rake it out just to be neat – but that’s all.  The main thing is to throw those seeds down and everything else will take care of itself.  If you water one time after sowing the seeds you will probably see sprouts in 3-4 days.

But, you say “I’m planning on mulching/tilling/fertilizing/planting something else long before those cover crops will be done.”  Don’t worry about it – when the weather cools off and  you get ready to do any of those things just do it  – until then your cover crop will be improving your garden for you, and if you don’t get around to those things until next year it will look like you planned it that way.

This is one of the best times of the year to work in your garden – get out there!

A 24 square ft garden like this can grow a remarkable amount of food and is easy to build and take care of.

Once you have all of the materials gathered up you really can set up a square ft garden like this in about an hour.  As you probably already know “Square Foot Gardening” is a method promoted by Mel Bartholomew.  Basically you grow in a permanent raised bed full of highly enriched soil which is divided into blocks which are 1 foot square – each block is intensively managed and cultivated.  It is an especially effective method for small areas and people who are new to gardening – there is no need whatsoever for roto-tillers or any other expensive equipment.

The bed in this article does not yet have a square foot grid so according to Mr. Bartholomew it isn’t quite a square ft garden.  I guess that will be up to the owner (My Daughter Sharon) who has been reading the book.  Anyway here are the simple steps to building a Square Foot Garden.

The frame for this bed is made out of regular SPF grade construction studs – not pressure treated – and should last 3-5 years before it rots and has to be replaced.  In my opinion treated lumber should not be used to construct garden beds, because of the chance that it will leach nastiness into the soil which could either harm your plants or end up in your food.

For this project we used:

• 6 – 2 x 4 x 92 5/8″ studs
• 4 wooden stakes about 14″ long (made out of scraps of 1 x2)
• 16 – 3 1/2″  screws
• 10 – 1 1/2″ screws
• Some newspapers
• 2.8 cubic foot bale of peat moss
• 2.8 cubic foot bag of vermiculite
• 40 gallons of screened yard compost
• about 5 pounds of rabbit poo

Start out by cutting two of your studs up into 36″ pieces, and then screw them together – Put the 36″ end pieces between the long side boards so that the inside width of the bed is 36″ .  You could go all OCD here and carefully measure, mark, pre-drill, and counter-sink each hole if you like, but consider 2 things first:

1. You ain’t buildin’ a piano.
2. It will rot it a few short years.

So, do whatever makes you happy.

Screw the frame together with 2 long screws in each corner.

Once you’ve put all of the boards together so that you have two rectangular frames, stack them on top of each other and screw them together.  You can make this easier and neater by first drilling a 3/8″ (more or less – it isn’t critical) hole about 1/4″ deep at all of the locations where you want to angle screw the two frames together.

You can improvise pocket screws by drilling a small hole straight in...

Then drive screws downward at an angle through the side of the holes you drilled in the previous step.  This is an improvised pocket screw – it’s just as fast and strong as a “real” pocket screw, but without the expensive pocket jig.  It also looks almost as good if you’re careful.  I used about 10 of these to hold the 2 frames together.

Angle the screws in like this...

I call this an improvised pocket screw.

Once you have the frame completely assembled place it where you want the finished garden to be – pick a place that is in full sun, near the kitchen, and also near a water supply if at all possible.  A level spot with good soil would be awesome but not really essential.

The spot for this bed had lots of grass growing on it so I used a weedeater to cut it as short as possible – I suppose you could skip this step if you wanted.  Now drive a wooden stake in each corner.  Since our spot isn’t level I leveled the bed by raising the frame and screwing it to the stakes.  If your site is level you can skip this step.

Level the square foot garden by screwing the frame to stakes driven in the corners.

I filled the worst of the gaps between the frame and the ground by screwing scraps of chip board to the inside of the frame.  The gap can be dammed up from the outside with soil, grass clippings, or mulch once the bed is finished.

Once the frame is leveled and secured to your satisfaction cover the bottom with several layers (at least 3-4) of newspaper or cardboard,  Then wet it down so that it mats down good.  Lap the newspaper up the sides a bit.  The newspaper will help to kill the grass and keep it from growing up through the bed, but will very quickly decompose.

Cover the bottom with wet newpapers to help kill the grass.

Now start adding the soil mix.  If you choose to mix it in the bed like we did don’t just dump all of the materials  in a lump – spread them out in layers and it will make it much easier to mix.  By the way, I can’t think of a single reason not to mix in the actual bed and several reasons why you should.  Anyway, we started with a layer of compost…

The compost inspector is my Grandson - he's been a raised bed gardener since he was a little kid.

Spread that out, then add half of the peat moss…

Half of the vermiculite…

and so forth until you use up all of the soil ingredients.

Add the soil ingredients in layers.

Now simply use a hoe or tilling fork to mix it all thoroughly together – with just a little care it isn’t hard to avoid tearing up the newspaper.

Thoroughly mix the soil ingredients right inside of the raised bed.

When you’re finished give it all a good watering and wait a day or two before setting out any plants to allow all of the ingredients to absorb the water.  If you have seeds you want to sow there is no reason not to go ahead and do that immediately.

Needless to say you could use different materials and build the bed a different size.  I like 3 foot wide beds because you can reach all the way across without running laps around the bed – the length of the bed is as much a product of the previously used materials that were available as anything.  If I had 10 or 12 foot materials I would probably build beds that size unless there is some compelling reason not to.  Of course you could also build a bed that is only 2′ x 2′ if you want, but at some point you might just want to get a big flower pot.

Even so, the 3′ x 8′ size that we did use is pretty handy because one bag each of vermiculite and peat moss worked out well to fill it – along with our home made compost.  It would also be easy to construct a cold frame or poly tunnel to cover a bed this size.

Of course you could use any number of materials to formulate your soil mix – which is essentially home made potting soil.

So, you’re just a simple afternoon project away from being a square foot gardener.  If you haven’t already tried it, you should .

Happy gardening.

When this harmless lizard grows up he will lose that beautiful blue color, and be a rather plain looking 5 lined Skink.

I imagine it was a shock to be uncovered like that in the middle of March, but I put him back in a safe spot after taking his picture.

Lizards like this Juvenile Five Lined Skink (sounds like something from “Harry Potter” doesn’t it) are extremely beneficial and other than the single rare exception of the Gila Monster (found only in the desert South West of North America) are completely harmless to humans.  That also goes for the vast majority of snakes.  Please don’t kill them just because you were taught to be afraid of things with scales.

During warm weather reptile metabolisms soar and lizards and small snakes eat vast numbers of insects while doing exactly zero dammage to you or your garden.  Larger snakes also eat rodents.  Our most common large snakes here in central Tennessee – the king snakes – also eat other snakes including poisonous species.

Five Lined Skinks grow to about 5 or 6 inches in length and live 5 years more or less if they aren’t eaten by a hawk, other bird, or domestic cat.  The females lay a clutch of eggs late in the spring in decaying organic matter (such as compost) and guard the nest until the eggs hatch.  Newborns look just like the one in the picture above, but are only around 2 inches long.  When they grow up they lose the blue coloration, and males turn red around the jaw and throat. In older adults the stripes will also fade away leaving a rather bland brown lizard with the glory of youth only a fond memory.

If they aren’t cold lizards in general are very hard to catch – being wary and fast.  If caught, skinks can shed their tale which wiggles about distractingly while the rest of the lizard makes a break for it.  If they escape with their life they will grow a new tail – although it’s usually kind of stumpy looking.

Lizards are interesting, beneficial, harmless, and usually too small to make a helping – so please leave them in peace when you find one.

This plastic tunnel is being used inside of the greenhouse to protect tender plants against a late hard freeze - very effectively I might add.

A simple plastic tunnel like this can serve as a cold frame to grow salad greens  all winter long, to grow out tomatoes and other tender plants, to extend the season for an early Spring start or a late Fall harvest, or even as a screen house to keep birds off of your strawberries or vine borer moths off of your squashes.  You can also use one of these to dry out water logged beds and warm up the soil so that you can begin planting  in early Spring. These devices are so useful, cheap, easy, and quick to build that everyone should have at least one – it’s almost as good as having your own polytunnel greenhouse.

materials for plastic tunnel row cover

Materials:

• 5-5′ lengths of 3/4″ (inside diameter) polyethylene water pipe
• 10 – 1/2″ x 1/2″ x 14″ wooden stakes
• 1 – 12′ x 6′ x 4 mil clear plastic sheet
• 4 – 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ x 8′ wood strips
• staples and nails.

As usual you can (and should) substitute materials that you have available on hand.  You can use anything for stakes that are strong enough to drive into the ground and will slip inside of the rib pipes. You can use a broom stick, piece of pipe or any long thin objects for the poles, and you can fasten the plastic skin to the poles with duct tape instead of staples.  Clearly almost any kind of bendable pipe can be used for the ribs, but here’s a tip – contractors or plumbers are likely to have a scrap collection of one kind of plastic pipe or another that comes in coils that they will either give away or sell incredibly cheap – just ask.  In the worst case, you can usually buy cut lengths at the home improvement or hardware store.

This design is also great for hardening off. The cover can be opened or closed in about a minute by one person. The whole thing can be moved to a new location and set up in 15 minutes.

Start by cutting your parts to size – this tunnel will cover an area that is from about 2 – 3  feet wide and the black pipe for the ribs are 5′ long, and the plastic is about a foot and a half wider – you can roll up any excess plastic on the poles so it is better for it to be too wide than too narrow.  In this case I made the poles shorter than the plastic so that the excess could be used to close up the ends, but you could also make the poles the same length as the plastic and use rectangles of plywood or other sheet lumber to close up the ends.  Use your imagination.

Once you have your parts cut to size fasten the poles to each long edge of the plastic sheet.  I used staples to do this, and then rolled the plastic around one piece of wood and fastened another strip to it so that the plastic is sandwiched between the wood pieces.  If you are just using tape, then you will want to wrap the plastic around the pole and tape the plastic sheet back to itself forming a tube with the pole inside – tip: construction tape (duct or housewrap tape) sticks very well to plastic, and not very well to wood – don’t try to tape to the wood other than as a temporary measure.

Once you have that done, roll the plastic up around one of the staves until you are ready to deploy it.

The ribs just slip over the stakes - you can probably get by with ribs that are much further apart than this if you want.

In the garden, simply drive the stakes into the ground where you want them, and slip the pipes for the ribs over them.  Since my ribs are made out of coiled pipe they already have the right shape, if you used straight sections of pipe you might need to use something more robust than 1/2″ wooden stakes to hold against the tension of the polytunnel ribs.

Now just roll your plastic out over the ribs and there you have it.  If you experience a lot of wind you might need to weight down the plastic a bit, but under normal conditions the wooden pole will probably do the trick.  When you need to get into the pollytunnel you just lift a pole and lay it over the top – almost as easy as a regular cold frame, but a lot easier to build or move.

Now would be a good time to build one!

Before farmers had the option of battling pests and diseases by applying petroleum based poisons to crops or tampering with genetic designs they worked out sustainable systems to manage  insects and pathogens by rotating crops.

The concept of crop rotation is simple – don’t plant the same thing in the same place year after year.  Most crop rotation plans  call for you to plant a crop in the same  place only every three or more years, and include a fallow year in the schedule.  Fallow means that no cultivation takes place during that period, although the land was often used to pasture livestock during the fallow year.

Crop rotation prevents the build up of disease and pests by denying species specific  organisms the hosts that they need to live and reproduce over multiple years.  It makes sense that during a year of cultivating potatoes, that potato problems – potato beetles, and late blight for example – would leave their eggs and spores in the soil, just waiting for you to plant potatoes next year.  You can imagine what an unsustainable problem this can result in if you farm hundreds of acres of potatoes on the same land year after year.

Fortunately the home gardener is usually growing a variety of crops instead of the same one over and over and isn’t at the mercy of the commodities market when deciding what to plant where. If you are an organic gardener then crop rotation along with feeding the soil, companion planting, and other sustainable methods can allow you to maintain a balance between the beneficial and non-beneficial organisms  in your garden so that losses are kept to a reasonable level.

Simple Crop Rotation

Crop rotation also helps to manage soil fertility – legumes add nitrogen to the soil, heavy feeders like tomatoes use lots of nitrogen – so you see that your plants can actually help to feed each other.

So – Don’t plant the tomatoes in the same place as last year – Simple.  Right?  Not quite that simple actually.  The thing is that tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, peppers, and eggplants are in the same plant family, and should be treated as one thing when planning your crop rotation. So, don’t plant any of those in the same place that any of the others occupied previously in the rotation schedule.  This takes some planning to pull off effectively. If you haven’t already, you should start a garden record – go ahead and write down whatever you can recall from years past.

A list of some common garden plant relationships:

• Leguminosae: Legumes – bean, pea, peanut, clover
• Solanaceae: tomato, eggplant, pepper, potato, husk tomato, tobacco
• Brassiceae: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, broccoli raab, pak choi, mustard, kohlrabi, Brussels sprout, turnip, radish, rutabaga, collard
• Cucurbitaceae: Cucurbits – cucumber, squash, pumpkin, melon, watermelon, gourd
• Umbelliferae: carrot, parsley, celery, parsnip, dill, fennel, coriander, Queen Anne’s lace
• Liliaceae: Lilly – asparagus, garlic, onion, leek, shallot, chives, ornamental lillies
• Chenopodiaceae: beet, Swiss chard, spinach, lamb’s quarter, amaranth, purslane
• Asteraceae: chicory, endive, salsify, dandelion, lettuce, sunflower, marigold, Jerusalem and globe artichoke.

Being aware of these relationships will help you to work out a system of management that works for you in your garden.  A 3 (or 7) year rotation that includes a fallow year may or may not be doable for you, but if you do the best that you can with the resources that you have you should be able to produce more without having to spray poison on your families food.

Recommended additional reading:

Edible Landscaping with Charlie Nardozzi :: National Gardening Association.