Category: Gardening

My entire farm plan revolves around one thing that has just begun falling from the trees: leaves.  Autumn leaves that coat yards and sidewalks in November, and are generally seen as trash by many people, are the key to soil fertility and weed control on my farm. 

Yes, my woods are full of leaves, but I don’t retrieve them from my woods.  That’s a lot of work.  Instead, my crew of teenage boys and I traverse the older, tree-lined, neighborhoods of Blythewood and pick up bags of leaves which we bring back to the farm to spread on the pathways.  I understand: if you live on a ½ acre lot and have several mature oak trees, they will drop more leaves than you could possibly manage, and I really appreciate your work of gathering them into bags for me to take back to the farm.

Although I appreciate your leaves, consider saving them for your garden.  Pile them deep instead of mulch on beds or pathways or pile them up and allow them to decompose.  We put out hundreds of bags of leaves on the pathways in my farm last winter, and now they have almost all vanished into the soil.  When I mow down crops, the leaves are further pulverized, and of course our feet on the pathways pack them down also. 

They do blow around a bit, so I don’t put them out until the seedlings I plant in the fall are large enough to peek out around the leaves.  The rain from a cold winter drizzle is an ideal way to encourage them to stay in place.  Ideally, I apply 8-10 inches of leaves per path. 

Leaves placed on top of the soil will only improve it.  Do not, however, apply freshly-fallen leaves to soil and work them into the soil.  Soil organisms will spend their energy digesting the leaves, which will tie up the nitrogen and prevent it from reaching your plants.  However, if you apply the leaves this fall and till them into the soil next fall, they will be sufficiently degraded so that they add organic matter and improve the soil.

For several years, I achieved self-sufficiency in garlic and I did not buy any from the grocery store.  Somehow, after I began flower farming, I lost my garlic and have been buying it from the grocery store for the past few years, but this year, I have ordered one pound of garlic bulbs to plant.

When the bulbs arrive, I will break them into individual cloves.  I generally also soak them for about 30 minutes in a mixture of cheap vodka and fish emulsion to kill pathogens that might cause the bulbs to rot and to give them a little boost of nutrients before I plant them. 

Constantly wet soil will kill garlic more quickly than anything else, so make sure water doesn’t stand in your chosen bed over the winter.  Raised beds are ideal, but this does not mean you have to build something expensive out of wood.  Just shovel some soil up from the area surrounding the bed and create a raised area 4-6 inches tall. 

Garlic needs full sun and the best, most nutrient-rich soil you can provide. Add compost and all-purpose fertilizer to your planting space. 

Plant the garlic cloves, pointed end up, about 6 inches apart in all directions and about 2-3 inches deep.  Water them if rain is not expected soon or if the soil is dry, but generally they do not need any more attention in our climate.  I cover my garlic beds with a layer of fallen leaves or straw that is several inches thick, and I leave them alone for the winter.

Some types of garlic produce “scapes,” which are the flowers of the garlic.  These are great as a spring treat.  Break them off so the garlic bulb puts its energy into producing a large bulb instead of making seeds and use them like onions or garlic when you cook.

In June, when the green leaves of the plant begin to look tired, reach into the soil around the stem and try to figure out if the bulbs are large enough.  You should be able to see or feel individual cloves.  Don’t leave the bulbs in the ground until the tops are completely dry because the bulb will break apart while in the soil.

Pull them out on a warm, dry, morning and leave them in the sun for a few hours.  Let them cure outdoors in a space safe from rain for a few weeks until the stalks are completely dry and crunchy.  Don’t remove the stalks from the bulbs before they dry naturally because you might damage the bulb and cause rot. 

If you want to try to grow garlic, visit Grow Your Garden with Sal at 113 Hilltop Drive, Columbia to buy bulbs and other plants and seeds for the fall garden.  Sal also has a website, www.growyourgardenwithsal.com with plenty of vegetable gardening information. When you visit One Hubcap Farm, you will notice that I am mowing down beds of flowers as they finish blooming and I am preparing to plant flowers that will bloom in the spring. 

The tomatoes I set out into the garden in June are finished.  Our weather has been unkind to all plants this year, and tomatoes are among the least tolerant of crazy weather.  I fertilized them, I watered them consistently, and I planted them where they should be happy.  I probably also planted them too closely together and I also did not stake them properly. 

Many of their skins stretched and split after the drought and then the monsoon weather we had.  Various munching caterpillars attacked them.  And I even had a visiting bunny that munched on a few.  Next year, I will spread out the plants and stake them properly.  That should help to keep them out of bunny-range.  I’ll work harder to scout for caterpillars, and I’ll spray the plants regularly with Bt, which is an organic pesticide that only attacks caterpillars.  Some things, like the weather, I  cannot change. 

It’s time to think about planting the fall vegetable garden and about managing the garden during the fall and the winter.  Fall vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, collards, broccoli, beets, onions, and carrots can be sown now and over the next month or two.  The cabbage moth will be busy laying eggs on any brassicas, so watch out for the caterpillars.  The best way to protect them is with a floating row cover held up on hoops, which prevents the moths from laying eggs on the plants. 

On the farm, I have finished setting out all the plants that will bloom in the fall.  A buckwheat cover crop grows on most of the beds in which I will plant the spring blooming flowers.  Other beds have blooming flowers that I planted back in June in them.  As they finish blooming I will mow them down, place a tarp over them to kill the plants, and prepare to sow the spring blooming flowers. 

The farm is never finished.  I am always planning for the next season, and I encourage you to do the same in your garden.  You may come to pick your own flowers or select a bouquet at the farm stand just about every weekend on Fridays and Saturdays from 9-6 this fall.  Please sign up for our emails at http://www.onehubcapfarm.com for the latest information.  I send out a brief note about once a week towards the middle of the week to let you know what’s happening on the farm.  One Hubcap Farm is located at 1236 Muller Road, Blythewood (about 4 minutes from I 77).

I do major plantings of flowers approximately five times a year.  On my farm, I sow seeds in January, March, May, July, and October.  Some of these are sown indoors and some are sown in the field.  I have to plan to make sure I have a space to put the seeds or plants when it is time.  The May flowers have gone into the beds where you might have picked snapdragons or larkspur a month or two ago.

Once a plant starts to look diseased or bedraggled, it’s time to tear it out and put in new plants.  I plant zinnias three times, and I could plant them at least a couple more times, if I wanted, for continuous bloom all summer.  These guidelines also apply to vegetables. 

The tomato plants I started from seed on April 23 are healthy plants that are covered with green tomatoes that are just about ready to ripen as I publish this on July 31. They never suffered from exposure to the cold since I waited to start the seed until the weather was warm and, although I was expecting them to be ready to can in July, it looks like they will be ready in August for canning. I wanted them to be ready to can in July when flower sales stop and I have time to can tomatoes instead of in early June when I am the busiest selling flowers…instead I’ll be sending children back to school and canning tomatoes and selling flowers. Such is farming.

To decide how long a plant needs to bloom or produce a vegetable, consult the seed packet.  I will use tomato seeds as an example.  The packet will indicate the number of “days to maturity,” which I count from the day I sow the seed, and my tomatoes are 72 days to maturity.  June 23 would be 60 days from the day I sowed the seed, and so they are on track to produce within the 72-day time frame. 

This date isn’t exact and does vary according to the temperatures outside, whether the plants received adequate water and fertilizer, whether or not they were properly hardened off before they were planted, and other factors that make gardening both challenging and interesting!  If we look at the 72-day example, we can look ahead and see that we have at least 90 days or more until our first frost, and so it might be worth a try to grow some more tomato plants this season in South Carolina. These are general guidelines from which you can begin experimenting. 

Daylength and outside temperatures impact plant growth; I am still experimenting to find out just how late into the fall I can sow some seeds for them to produce during the shorter days of fall.  No one seems to want 8-inch-tall flowers which I will get if I plant some of them too late. If the summer garden has been taken over by weeds and you are as hot and as tired as I am, mow it, cover the soil with a tarp or large pieces of cardboard, and work on planning for the fall garden of collards, broccoli, and lettuce.