Top 5 Online Vegetable Seed Companies

   I’ve bought a lot of seed packs on the Internet. Actually, I’ve bought them all on the Internet. Local garden centers simply do not have a wide enough selection to suit my tastes. What varieties they do carry are usually boring and/or not suitable for the local growing region.

  I’ve had a lot of experience with different online vendors, and have had both very good and very bad experiences. There are a lot of them out there so hopefully I can help you avoid some nasty experiences by giving out my favorites.

5th Heirloom Acres Seed

  I rank this one 5th since I have actually had some very bad experiences with them, but the pros (or in this case the ‘pro’) far outweigh the cons.

 A family-run business, Heirloom Acres (as the name suggests) sells non-hybrids exclusively. They have a decent range of varieties, but nearly all of them can be found easily elsewhere.

   My first order with these guys got off on a bad foot. Half my order was backordered and the rest took insanely long to arrive. I had to call twice to remind them to ship it.

   I was happy with the seeds when they finally did arrive, so I wrote the whole thing off to an honest slip-up. I know how confusing shipping can be.

   My second order was fine but the third had a similar problem with a garden tool that they were supposed to have in stock that simply took way to long to show up at my door. Also, in this order one of my seed packets was treated with chemicals, which I don’t like to use.

  Normally, I would immediately quit doing business with such a company, but these guys have one huge pro that outweighs the cons for me. They are really, really, cheap. Seriously cheap.

  A packet of tomato seed on their site normally runs 95 cents. An ounce of squash seed runs $1.75. Compare this to 2.75 for a tomato seed packet or as much as $7.00 an ounce for squash elsewhere. I’ve always been told that you get what you pay for, so I was a tad anxious about the quality, but these seeds all germinated fine and were the varieties advertised.

 I would consider buying seeds from Heirloom Acres as long as you have time for a lengthy shipping period. I’m an eternal cheapskate, so I still order a lot of my seeds from them, especially brassicas and other cool weather crops. They used to carry some cool Sweet Potato varieties that I loved, but apparently they’re gone from the website now.

 4^th Tomato Growers Supply Company

  Tomato Growers Supply Company is an amazing source of tomato seeds. The best out there, bar none. Selling only Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplants, they offer over 500 varieties! Including some really wacky stuff like Micro-Tom, the world’s smallest tomato plant- growing to about 8 inches tall.

   I’ve absolutely never had a problem here at all, aside from the fact that they’re a bit stingy on the seed count. If the packet says 30 seeds, then by golly you’re getting 30 seeds and not one over. However, they’ve always sent me a free packet or two along with my order which has helped me find some really neat varieties I wouldn’t have tried otherwise. Like “Haiwaiian Pineapple“, a deep yellow beefsteak heirloom.

  The pepper selection is good, but features mostly hybrids. I’m an open-pollinated kinda guy, but some of these hybrids are pretty fun. Like a purple habanero pepper. I’m not overly impressed with their eggplant selection. Although they are one of the few places (maybe the only?) I could find “Listada de Gandia”- a gorgeous purple and white striped eggplant.

 3^rd Bountiful Gardens.org

 Bountiful Gardens is an offshoot of one of my favorite organizations- Ecology Action. They’re a group that does great things for sustainable agriculture all around the world and is headed up by the author of “How To Grow More Vegetables…” one the greatest garden books ever.

  While their selection is far from limitless, they feature a slew of great varieties you can’t find most places. Not only standard vegetables, but also less common edible plants like Strawberry Spinach and Leaf Amaranth. They also have a lot of interesting cover crops like Austrian Field Pea and Blue Lupine.

   All their seeds are untreated, and most are Organic or grown Biodynamically. Not one hybrid on this site, every thing is open pollinated. These guys are supremely committed to doing everything in an environmentally sustainable way.

 2nd  Johnny’s Selected Seeds

  A very high quality source of seeds. They ship lightning fast and always keep their site updated. Their catalog is very well put together and they have a slew of stuff. However, they’re a bit too pricey for a guy like me. Dunno about you, but I wince at paying four dollars for a packet of tomato seeds. They have a wide variety of herbs as well as strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Their branded garden tools are some of the best around. I love my Johnny’s Broadfork.

   Expensive or not, these guys have been around a long time and are as much a household word among vegetable gardeners as Burpee’s is.

 1st….

  Are you ready for my absolute favorite seed source? Ready? Really ready? Alrighty it’s..

 Baker Creek Seeds!

   I think (although I’m not sure) I bought my absolute first pack of seed from Baker Creek. The varieties they carry are simply awesome. Like me, they seem to have a taste for the wild and crazy. It was from them I discovered Bitter Melon, Cassabanna, Naranjilla, Jelly Melon, Malabar Spinach, Tigger Melon, “Trail of Tears” Bean, and several of my favorite eggplant varieties. In fact, they may just about have the best eggplant collection ever.

  They also have more watermelon varieties than I’ve ever found on a single site (almost 60!), including some of my all time favorites like “Abu Dabi” and “Black Diamond”. Sporting over 21 okra varieties and 84 melon cultivars is no small feat either. Spend some time looking around their online catalog. You’ll end up buying something fo’ sho’ The site also sports a handy seed calculator to determine how much seed you need to buy for the amount of space you have.

 Everything they carry is non-hybrid, and none of it is treated. They ship quickly and frequently include freebies and helpful growing guides. Great people.

So yeah… 

 I’ve ordered so many times from these different companies they all seem like old friends. I actually feel guilt when I don’t include them in my year seed purchasing plans. How dumb is that?

Make A Garden Map

  I love garden planning. I think most gardeners probably do. There’s nothing more exciting then thumbing through the beautiful pictures in seed catalogs and deciding which ones will grace your own garden. At times I think I even fool myself, whilst purveying the catalogs, into thinking that my veggies will look as good as the pictures. Deep down I know they won’t. They never do, but that doesn’t stop the feelings of anticipation that this year everything will go right.

 Not only is planning fun, it’ also very crucial to a successful vegetable garden. Crop rotation, for instance, is hard to do if you’re relying on your memory for what to plant next. Can you really remember every plant you’ve planted in every spot of the garden for the past four years? Of course not. Don’t pretend you do because you don’t. Ha.

Your garden will never reach it’s full potential if you don’t plan for it. Read that again, it’s important.

 One of the best things you can use to help plan your garden is a Garden Map. It allows you to experiment and move your planned plantings around without actually having to dig anything up. This will allow you to get everything you need to plant and where you need to plant it in your head before you go out there and screw everything up. It eliminates the “I wish I would have put the [insert plant] over here.” or “I wish I had planted less cucumbers and more tomatoes.” It will also help you keep track of what varieties are placed where, in case you don’t have plant tags or your plant tags mysteriously disappear like they so often do (ever notice that?).

   I like to have one map for each season (since I garden all four seasons most years).  I used to keep the current and “next up” map taped to the wall behind my desk where I can see it and am able to refer to it often. Now I just keep an icon on my desktop to the file. The map has to-scale drawings of my whole garden and lists inside each bed what vegetable plant and variety I am growing there or want to grow there, the date I planted it or the date I am going to plant it, and whatever notes I can fit.

  I make all my maps at one time (using December of the previous year), so I’ll know exactly what I going to plant and when I’m going to plant it for the next 4 seasons. Takes a load off your mind, let me tell you.

 Make The Map

 Making a map is simple and you probably don’t need me to tell you how, being the smart cookie that you are, but you basically need two things-

1.    Measurements of you garden beds/rows/plots

2.    A medium for drawing a map (computer program, graph paper, whatever) 

 Measurments for my garden is easy. All my beds are 4×25ft long with two foot rows in between. The exceptions are my herb garden, which is a 14ft circle, and a little grouping of 8 3×15ft beds for my perennial vegetables.

   If your garden is more artistic than mine, then measuring it may be more difficult. Anyway, it’s not rocket science and things on your map don’t have to be perfectly proportioned, it’s just nice if they are. If you garden in rows, measuring the layout is very easy.

  Once you have all the measurements, lengths, width, and space between beds/rows and garden areas, write them down on a piece of paper and head to your desk or computer to work it all out!

   I personally like keeping all my garden notes, maps, plans, seed starting log on my computer- since I’m on it so much and I find it much easier to organize little icons then real sheets of paper that bend and tear and give me paper cuts.

Draw By Hand

    If you must draw it by hand, however, get yourself a pad of graph paper and a pen and work it all out. Make each block on the grid a certain length. The bigger the better to still fit on the sheet. You’re going to be writing and scratching out and re-writing all over this map. Make copies.

 Using PlanGarden

 The penultimate garden mapping tool is Plangarden. It’s a paid subscription web-based garden planning software. The subscription is $20 a year ($12/year for 3 years). I have the three year subscription, and absoletly love this program. I don’t always have internet access, so that can be a bummer.   The features are pretty cool, however, with all kinds of options for bed sizes and shapes, vegetable selectors, harvest log, and field notes. It also has fun social networking aspects through the website, where you can view and comment on other’s gardens. The most exciting thing about this software is that the developers seem to be forever adding new features in updates, which won’t cost you any extra if you subscribe. Already a good product, it will likely get even better as time goes on. On the other than, it may be a bit too complex for everyone and the features overkill. Also, it really doesn’t allow you to make maps for future seasons, and there’s a few obvious features it should have but doesn’t, like the ability to search for notes relating to a specific vegetable.

   As far as I’m aware, this is really the only viable vegetable garden planning software around. Everything else I’ve tried sucks. If you know of other good garden planning software, let me know and I’ll give it a whirl.

Using Inkscape

 Another good option is a drawing program. I find the free, open source program Inkscape to work well for this. I save one file of my basic garden layout for a template and then make new files from it for each of my four season  maps. I use the text feature to write in the vegetable I’m placing in different areas and for entering the date and use the color codes for various purposes known only to me. It’s simplicity itself and it gets the job done. Similar drawing programs work well also, just be sure your program has a grid feature. I think they pretty much all do.

 So if you don’t already have a garden plan map, I hope this post encourages you to do so. You will find it makes youe life much simpler and it really doesn’t take that much effort.

The Ultimate Tool for Measuring Plant Health

  I should preface this post with the disclaimer “Serious and Geeky Gardeners Only” as only the most obsessed among us would desire such a garden tool as this. It ain’t yo’ mama’s three prong cultivator.

  A refractometer is very likely the best instrument available to measure the health of your plants. Refractometers are used in a multitude of fields ranging from medical to scientific, to beekeeping.  They are most often used to measure the dissolved solids (sucrose, for instance) in a liquid substance- the Brix reading. On the surface this seems like it would have no application whatsoever to gardening, but it can be quite a powerful tool to let you know just what’s going on with your plant. It can also give you clues into the nutritional value of your produce.

  For gardeners, in the simplest of terms, a refractometer will tell you if your plant has watery cells. Watery cells are bad. Bad watery cells! You want your plants to have lots of dissolved solids like sugar.  A high Brix reading means your plant has a higher carbohydrate level than a plant with a low Brix reading. 

  This is helpful in monitoring the health of your garden crop. Think of the Brix scale as a measurement of a plant’s immune system. A plant with a low Brix reading is more susceptible to disease and even insect damage. By monitoring the Brix, you can identify and correct problems before they become problems.

   For instance, if you regularly test your tomato plants with a refractometer, you may notice a steadily declining Brix reading. You can takes steps to raise it mid-season, by side-dressing or foliar spraying to bring the Brix back up again before it translates into a serious problem.

   It’s also helpful as a guide to measure the progress of your soil’s health and your elite skills as a gardener. If your tomato plants have a Brix reading of 6 and the next year have a reading of 8, you can pat yourself on the back for being so flippin’ cool. On the other hand, if last year your Brix was 9 and this year it’s 7, you will be able to ask yourself “What was I doing then that I’m not doing now?”

 Of course, everything has it’s limitations and drawbacks and refractometers definitely have their fair share. In very small gardens, it’s not practical to test very often. Testing is done by squeezing sap from parts of the plant- leaves, stem, etc. If you only have two tomato plants, the amount of plant material you’d need to collect would hurt the plant if done regularly. If you have twenty tomato plants, then it’s much easier to spread the damage around so no one plant is affected from loss of it’s parts. Capesh?  You have to have enough plants to take an average sample from.

 How to Use a Refractometer in the Garden

 A Refractometer is pretty simple to use, depending on your model. I have a traditional portable refractometer I bought from GrowOrganic.com. Digital refractometers are also available for a higher price, but this one works fine. It consists of a prism, a focusing eyepiece, and a plate over the prism that smooths the liquid across the prism. The reading goes up to 32 on the Brix scale, which is plenty for agricultural use.

They can be pricey. I bought mine for around 90 bucks. If you find a source for a similar refractometer at a lower price, please let me know. For me, I think it was worth the investment.

 The liquid extracted from the plant is dropped onto the prism and the plate is shut, making sure the liquid covers the entire area of the prism. You then point the plate towards the sun and look through the eyepiece..you’ll see something like this, but with more numbers.

                                                                    Am I not a great artist?

 You then read the number where the two colors meet and that’s your Brix reading! Nothing to it, right? Note it down in you garden journal,clean of the prism off with a soft, damp cloth and your done!

Extracting Sap

 The difficult part is actually getting the sap out of the plant. Try as you may using household devices, there’s no substitute for a sap press (expensive) or a modified pair of vice grips like the ones sold at GrowOrganic (not so expensive). Even with these tools it takes practice. Practice with weeds until you get the sap squeezing thing down so you don’t defoliate all the plants in your garden.

•   The Brix number in and of itself isn’t as important as how it compares to the previous number. Although there are guides as to what Brix level is good for such and such a veggie,  many different variables can change the Brix. Such as the area of the plant the reading was taken from.
•   Be Consistent! Make sure you take from the same plant parts each time or you may get wildly different readings. If you take a sample from the lower leaves, always take a sample from the lower leaves. If you take a sample from stems near the top, always take them there.
•   It’s helpful to graph out your results. It’s also fun. Take your seasonal or multi year data and graph your improvement over time. You’ll also start to make connections on what causes jumps in Brix readings.
•   Be sure to follow all the calibration instructions that come with your refractometer before using it!

I encourage you to give this thing a try if you have a little extra Christmas cash laying around. Or perhaps give one as a Christmas gift to a beloved gardener!

Food Gardens, Vegetable Gardens, How About War Gardens?

  I know a lot of people think Google’s book scanning project is the apex of all evil, but one good thing has come out of it at least. And that’s the scanning of an out-of-print pamphlet from 1918 by the National War Garden Commission. 

I wonder whatever happened to the National War Garden Commission. I rather doubt it’s still around.

All the same, pretty cool to look at if you’re into ironic nostalgia (and who isn’t, right?)

War Vegetable Gardening

Bring the Tropics to your Garden- Grow Cassabanana!

Every so often, even I, your ever-talented host, fail.

 One of those occasions happened this year with a plant I was really excited about and intended to write a comprehensive article on growing it. This plant was Cassabanana, Sicana odorifera.

 It’s not a banana at all, but it’s still quite tropical and nearly unheard of in the United States. It’san herbaceous perennial vine, but can be grown as an annual….where? I’m not sure. The information on the plant is so sketchy, it’s very hard to find any kind of information on it. All I know is several copy-and-paste garden websites listed it as a perennial in the tropics and an annual in “most climates.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

 The fruit is long and cylindrical. Think overgrown cucumber, with a very tough skin and what is said to be a lovely aromatic smell. In fact, many people  use the long-lasting fruit to freshen the smell of a room.

  The fruit is either cooked prematurely like squash (which I wasn’t interested in since I was drowning in squash of all kinds this year), or allowed to ripen and used fresh, in drinks, pies, or preserves. It’s said to have a sweet tropical flavor. Again, whatever that’s supposed to mean

Growing Cassabanana

 My own experimentations lead me to believe you stand an okay chance trying to grow this sucker down to USDA Zone 6. It thrives in hot summer weather, and for me, didn’t do much till summer arrived. Afterwards it needs a lengthy ripening time before frost. Because of this, I would nominate this plant for starting indoors early.

 The vine may be too long and cumbersome for very small gardens. It needs a lot of sprawl space or a tall trellis. It’s said to grow up to fifty feet, but mine sure didn’t. My trellis was short, but I let it grow up and down on it, resulting in a jumbled mess that at least kept the fruit off the ground.

 Seed is not too difficult to come by, several tropical-oriented companies offer seed for sale. My seed germinated very poorly- about 20%. It could have just been old seed, since most members of the gourd family germinate in no time flat. 20% equaled two seedlings, which for the amount of space the plant takes up, was no less than I needed. I was still a little bummed. I paid for ten seed, I wanted ten plants.

 Nothing but trouble thereafter. While transplanting the very slow growing seedlings, I half cracked the stem of one plant. Ouch. This one actually survived but was set back for some time.

  It grew slowly to start, until the heat kicked in. Then it took off. It didn’t produce very many female flowers, but all of them set fruit.

 The fruit grew splendidly into a rather large cylindrical shape. It began changing color from green to yellow. Then from yellow to purple-ish. What followed was a week of solid rain, and the fruit all split open. Bugs quickly found their way inside and ruined whatever might have been edible.

 Fruit was still setting, so I hadn’t lost all hope, but then came an infestation of squash bugs, that killed many of the flowers before I vacummed them all up (more on vacumming pests in a future post).  Afterwards, fruit was still setting, but the ripening period for this fruit is so long that none of them made it till frost. I was so disgusted I didn’t even bother harvesting the immature fruit for cooking. I wanted ripe cassabanana, and I won’t be completely happy till I get it.

 Bottom line? It didn’t work out so well for me, but that’s no reason for you not to give it a try. Up to USDA Aone 6, at least. I’ll be giving these guys another go-round next year. Let’s hope for better things!

Garlic for Pest Control- It’s not just for vampires!

  Garlic is an amazing vegetable. Can you imagine cooking without garlic? Would anything be worth eating? Garlic’s unique flavor is a must in countless dishes throughout the culinary spectrum (Except in cakes. That would be nasty).

 Garlic’s myriad of health benefits also make it a popular dietary supplement. But did you know it can also be used in the garden?

Garlic is a mild, but effective, pest deterrent (it’s a people deterrent too, if you eat it raw) and also has fungicidal properties. A garlic spray can be bought made easily at home.

 The problem with garlic spray is, while being natural and organic, it isn’t as powerful as the likes of rotenone or pyrethrum. Both of which are used more widely used in large scale organic agriculture.

 This really isn’t much of a problem, though, as rotenone and pyrethrum are non-selective and can be very damaging to beneficial insects. Garlic is also non-selective, but it’s lack of strength won’t totally obliterate your garden life. Nor, however, will it faze an infestation of most major garden pests.

 Which brings us to the use for which garlic really shines- as a preventative spray. Spraying garlic every ten days or so on crops that you have historically had pest problems with can be very helpful as a part of your IPM (integrated pest management- more on that another day) program. Then, if all else fails, you can bring in the big guns like rotenone.

 The same goes for plants that you have had fungus problems with in the past. I have problems with wilt in young pepper plants, for instance. Spraying the leaves and soaking the soil with garlic spray before the problem shows up can be helpful.

 Don’t go crazy and spray your whole garden. Focus on crops that you have trouble with or think you may have trouble with. If you never have any pests attack your cucumbers, for instance, then don’t use a preventative spray on them. Frequent garlic spraying of your entire garden can have bad ecological effects. As with all pest control solutions, organic or not, use with caution.

A few tips-

• As with all foliar applications, don’t spray right before rain or during the heat of the day. Or else your hard work will evaporate or wash away.
• Don’t spray garlic right before harvest! This should be obvious, but give your plants at least a couple of weeks before harvest with no spraying. Unless you like garlic flavored lettuce.
• Don’t spray on plants that are already diseased or dying. That’s akin to shooting a rhino with a BB gun.
• You may want to think twice about showing visitors around your garden immediately after spraying…

•   MOST IMPORTANT- As with all pest control measures, keep a careful eye on your garden after spraying. If you notice ladybugs and bees are disappearing, or anything else unusual is going on- STOP!

Grow a Piece of Ancient History- Plant a Ginkgo Tree!

 As you may have noticed, I get excited easily over edible plants and trees. To date, however, no member of the plant kingdom gets me quite as thrilled as the beautiful, unique, and yes, edible Ginkgo Biloba, or Maidenhair tree.

   Ginkgo is an old tree.  Do a Google search for “Ginkgo biloba living fossil” and you get a boat-load of results. It’s widely believed to have been around for well over 200 million years! In fact, it is the only species in it’s genus that is still around today.

   Ginkgo was used widely in ancient times in Asia for it’s seed, which is called a ginkgo nut, despite the fact that it isn’t a nut at all. The nut is sweet and flavorful and still highly valued in Chinese cuisine. Although when eaten in large quantities it can be toxic.

  You’ve probably seen ginkgo capsules at health food or drug stores. The powdered leaves used in these supplements have gained popularity for a wide variety of claims, ranging from easing tinnitus to improving blood flow to it’s most popular use- improving short term memory.

 The scientific community has apparently taken some interest in the plant and several studies have been published supporting and contradicting these claims. However, several studies did come to the conclusion that in some instances taking ginkgo supplements can dramatically improve attention in healthy people. How can you know for sure? Start taking it. If it works for you- great! Some people swear by it, others think it’s a sham.

 Growing Ginkgo

  Ginkgo is one tough tree. Taking a peek at this link should quell all doubts on that front. If an atomic bomb blast won’t kill it, I rather doubt I could kill it either. You can grow it in your yard fairly easily. It requires very little care aside from average water requirements. It’s also pretty cold hardy, taking temperatures down to -30 degrees F.

  You won’t have to worry about replacing it in the years to come either, some individual trees are believed to be 1,500 years old! People will be enjoying your beautiful ginkgo tree for generations.

 Ginkgo is also unique in the fact that it’s trees are either male or female. If you get seedlings, you won’t know which gender you have until they start producing in 10 years or so. If you’re growing it for the leaf it doesn’t matter, but if you want the collect and eat the seed you will need one of each gender. For this, you will have to buy named grafted trees that are identifiably male or female. Grafted trees produce much quicker- under five years.

 A quick warning about the seed- If left on the ground they will rot and stink. And I mean stink bad. The last thing you want is a smelly garden, and while it might be a good way to get back at your neighbors for that noisy dog, you’d have to put up with it as well. So if you grow it for the seed, be sure to collect and use all of them (they can be frozen), or dispose of the excess some other way (they produce over 30lbs on a mature tree).

 Ginkgo is a great ornamental tree. The unique fan shaped leaves are very interesting, especially in the fall when they blaze into bright yellow in a breathtaking display. It grows to a height from 30’ to some trees measuring over 120’! So it’s a big guy.

 Ginkgo is starting to become more popular in garden centers, but you may want to shop online for the grafted varieties you want. Onegreenworld.com has a good male selection and a few great nut-producing females. If the nuts aren’t important to you, seedlings are readily available. One Green World also has a great little booklet about growing and using this awesome tree.

Grow Blackberries in Your Garden!

  Blackberries are yummy. Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t like blackberries? Probably not. I certainly haven’t met any and wouldn’t trust them if I did.

  Blackberries are very easy to grow and can be grown almost anywhere. Add this to the fact that they taste as scrumptious as they do, and they makes for an impressive addition to the home garden.

 Blackberries can be hard to find in grocery stores. Due their very short shelf life they have defied attempts at large scale commercial cultivation. The berries that do end up at the store are usually lacking in flavor and appearance. For a taste that money truly cannot buy, you have to grow these jewls yourself. If you pick wild berries, you’ll quickly grow to love the large size and great flavor of the cultivated strains.

If you live in the South, fall is the perfect time to plant blackberries. For everyone else, you can start getting your soil ready for spring planting now.

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Calcium- The Forgotten Plant Nutrient

  In the arena of gardening, I have little doubt that the nutrient Calcium feels a tad underappreciated. Besides being the fifth most abundant constituent in the earth’s crust, plants use (by weight) more calcium than any other nutrient in the ground. It’s critical for cell division. Plants are big into cell division, especially fast growing species like tomatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and many other vegetables. Despite all this, calcium is rather ignored in the NPK world that we live in.

  Every plant needs calcium, however, and lots of it.

  To quote Agronomist Dr. Arden Anderson,:

    “It [calcium] is the foundation of all biological systems and is the component that gives the living cell its capacitor characteristic via it’s place in the cell membrane. Without the proper capacitor characteristic, the cell’s communication system functions poorly, resulting in cell degeneration, disease, and eventual death.”

  Ok, so that was a little over the top for me, but any paragraph that ends with the words ‘eventual death’ deserves careful consideration.

Garden Problems Associated with Calcium

 Lack of calcium in the soil shows up in many ways. Blossom-end rot in tomatoes is calcium related. As are bitter pit in apples and cavity spots in carrots. Many sorts of fruit deformation can usually be tracked back to calcium deficiency. Some other things to look out for are Necrosis of young leaves, short brown roots, increase in fungus problems, weak stems and just general stunted growth. Basically general garden suckage.

  All this stuff is really bad, but most often the result of limited available calcium is just lack of full potential. Most soils have the calcium required to avoid the terrible problems mentioned above, but obtaining that optimum level can really help your garden out.

 Calcium and pH

  pH does not indicate level of calcium availability. Read that again. This is probably one of the biggest gardening and farming myths in the universe.

 While it is true that most acid soils have lower available calcium than most alkaline soils, pH is about the hydrogen ion concentration. The idea that it’s an indicator of calcium availability is just, well, not true. In fact, as ph rises, calcium becomes less soluble. Added calcium (in some forms) can certainly move the ph scale higher, but so can a boat load of other cations like magnesium and potassium. Excesses of these nutrients can actually reduce calcium uptake in plants while still raising the ph.  So just forget about pH for the moment, k?  Seriously.

Adding Calcium to Your Soil

 So how does one figure out whether one needs calcium in their soil or not? A soil test of course! Try to get a fleshed out soil test with % Base Saturation values. While no ideal range exists for all soils and all situations, I’d wager that if your %Ca is less than 40%, than you want to add some. If you don’t get CEC and Base Saturation stuff on your soil test, have a talk with your county agent or local farmer to see if calcium is generally lacking in your area’s soil as total soil calcium is not a good measure of much of anything without the Base Saturation values. If you have no idea what CEC and all that junk is, talk to your county agent for a lot longer then you planned or wait for a post on the subject right here at Growing Groceries.

 One thing you must realize is that calcium and magnesium especially have a very close relationship. When one goes up it reduces the availability of the other. Plants need both of these so it’s more important that they are at the ideal ratio rather then having the ideal volume of one at the expensive of the other. if you have a Calcium/magnesium ratio of over 5:1 (five parts calcium to one magnesium) then likely you’ll experience magnesium deficiency, so don’t overdo it.

 If you’re like me, you view soil testing as a bother and don’t want to have to number crunch calcium/magnesium ratios and such. In this case the best way to add calcium to your garden is compost. Most compost is relatively rich in calcium and you can make sure of that by adding lime or eggshells to your pile. Since compost is relatively balanced, you don’t have to worry about over applying calcium and screwing things up.  Another no-worries approach to adding calcium is to find an Organic calcium foliar spray that you can spray directly on the plants. This is also a good way to test your calcium availability math-free. Spray a few plants throughout the season and leave a few others alone and see if you can spot a difference.

 If you want to add a calcium source directly to your soil, here’s a list of some of the more common Organic sources

• Limestone- Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3). This is the most common form of calcium found in garden centers. Unless you have very low magnesium levels, do NOT use dolomitic lime, as it contains around 6% magnesium. Calcitic Lime is best. However, Calcium Carbonate will raise pH. So if you already have a high ph, stay away from lime.

• Gypsum- Calcium Sulfate. Gypsum, for reasons I don’t really understand but hear repeated all the time, will not raise soil pH like lime will. This is a great source of calium for those with high pH and low calcium availability.

• Bonemeal- Bonemeal is a great, if a tad expensive, organic fertilizer that contains nitrogen and phosphorus as well as 18% calcium with a negligible pH effect.

• Soft Rock Phosphate- Great stuff. 35% calcium as well as an amazing phosphorus source that’s highly soluble (unlike bonemeal)

• Aragonite- Calcium Carbonate. Seashells. ‘Nuff said.

• Wood Ashes- Have a wood stove? Wood ashes make a great fertilizer for acid soils. Use like lime, but double the amount. Wood Ashes are about 45% calcium carbonate. It also contains a nice little bit of potassium

  Always remember to follow the directions on the bag when applying any fertilizer, organic or not.

Save Money And The Environment With A Compost Pile!

Today we have a guest post from Mandy at GardenMandy.com

Introduction To Composting

  Composting is the decomposition of organic matter, such as vegetables, manure or once living things.   Decomposition is performed mostly by bacteria.  There is home composting and industrial composting.  Though the process is basically the same between the two, the techniques will differ.  Composting itself is a fantastic additive to houseplants and offers extra nutrition to gardens.  It is an excellent natural way to recycle kitchen waste and to reduce the amount of garbage sent to public landfills. 

 Composting is not a new innovation, recently conceived in a laboratory somewhere.  As you walk through any forest, you will see the natural process of composting taking place every day.  The process starts when leaves and twigs fall to the ground, build layers on top of each other and begin decaying.  The roots of trees and other plant life then feeds off the decaying layers, as it is returned into the soil.  Composting itself is extremely easy and natural.  Early human races made piles of food wastes, as a way to rid themselves of their garbage.  What they discovered was these piles became habitats for seeds that were unintentionally and then intentionally planted there. 

 Composting today can start the same way, on the most basic level.  Simply make a pile of unwanted biological material, somewhere in your backyard.  You can also build a composting bin by using unwanted wood, such as wood pallets or recycled wood.  There are also commercial composting bins you can purchase.  But why go to the trouble of shopping for a bin, when keeping it simple is the most fun and least costly?

How Compost Helps The Earth

 Composting is a fantastic way of reducing the amount of waste sent to public landfills.  Landfills have been known to produce high amounts of greenhouse gases. These gases do not remain contained in landfills, but escape into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases are no longer equated with the common sources of  planes, cars, and manufacturing plants. 

 So how does it differ, if biological waste decomposes at a landfill or is used at your home, as a source of a compost pile? When biodegradable materials decay at landfills, a mixture of greenhouse gases are produced and over half of the gases produced are methane based.  At home, the source of the compost decays with oxygen.  When the compost decays, carbon dioxide is produced rather than the more potent methane.  When you compost at home, rather than send these materials to a public landfill, greenhouse gases are then reduced. 

 So what are good materials for composting?  It is not as simple as just saying anything with a carbon or nitrogen base.  Common elements for composting include leaves, sawdust and wood chips, paper, cardboard, manure, fruits, vegetable (yes, even if it’s just their peels), teabags, egg shells and grass cuttings.  Even if you decide not to consider the toxins spewing into the atmosphere from landfills as a reason to compost, at least consider the money you will save, by using natural compost to feed your lawn and garden rather than buying the synthetic commercial brands.