National Gardening Day In A Locked-Down World

Covid-19 has struck and nothing is the same. Most people these days would agree with that statement, but it’s not entirely true. Nature has continued on unchanged. There are many people who believe Covid-19 welled up from Nature as a cleansing plague to right all our environmental wrongs. It is hard to establish that as fact as Nature does not have intent – it just does its thing. And what it’s doing now is producing Spring. Spring means it’s gardening time and so we mark National Gardening Day on April 14th.

April here at ARBICO is usually a busy time, but this year is especially busy. People are becoming more and more tuned in to where their food comes from and interested in producing it themselves. The same can be said for growing flowers and other plants simply for their beauty. We are rising to the demand (while maintaining safety protocols) and will continue to serve a need that we fully believe in. We have what you need to get going – seeds, seed starting, soil and more. I encourage anyone who is a beginning gardener to read some of the past blogs on soil before you plant; simply type in “soil” in the search on the blog page. Healthy soil is essential to a healthy garden.

Gardening while social distancing should be a pleasure and not a chore. For many veteran gardeners, being with their plants is their Zen time and being alone there is their preference. This man explains it well. But, for those of you who are unsure, I offer some ways to celebrate National Gardening Day in this unusual time we’re in.

Look into a Garden Club: My mother was a member of a Garden Club and I remember days spent at flower shows, touring magnificent gardens and waiting for those first Spring flowers to pop out. While I may not have fully appreciated everything she showed to us at that time, it ultimately gave me an overall appreciation for the beauty of growing things. Garden Clubs are still as relevant today as they were back then. Rookie gardeners, especially, may find the wealth of information and experience amongst the members extremely helpful. Join up, give them a call or send an email. Here is their website, from which you can find a club near you.

Go to a local nursery/garden center: I want to emphasize local; they are still open and desperately need your business. Spring is when they make the biggest chunk of their money and, like many other businesses, there’s just not enough people showing up. So skip the chaos of big box stores and stroll leisurely through your neighborhood nursery. If you are concerned about running into people; call and ask for their advice on the best time to visit (Here is how one nursery in Winston-Salem, North Carolina is adapting to serve their customers). While you’re there, buy a gift certificate and send it to a lucky someone (new homeowner, avid gardener, or someone who is gardening-curious). A gift card lets them purchase at the proficiency level they are comfortable with and provides some money in the till for the nursery.

Gardening as exercise: If you have been stuck idle at home, your body is probably craving exercise. Gardening is a form of exercise that can be adapted to most anyone’s physical capabilities. You’ll probably hear more from me on this on National Gardening Exercise Day, June 6th. But, for now, I’d like to suggest you get the kids out there digging and playing. Here is a link to a site that is chock-full of ideas for activities. National Gardening Day is the perfect excuse to get them into the yard.

What if you don’t have a yard to garden in? Apartment dwellers don’t despair – there are still ways to get your garden on:

Drummond Castle Gardens, Perthshire, Scotland

Tour gardens remotely: Many of the most famous gardens in the world have virtual tours that allow you to experience them from afar. Get away from the news and Facebook and experience their beauty. See what you’d like to grow or where you’d like to go. Check these out here and here. Share the tours with the kiddos; you could fold the beauty of the gardens into a fun geography lesson with this really cool 3D interactive Earth.

Garden indoors: With the possible exception of large trees, you can grow most anything indoors that grows outdoors. Some plants may be particularly tricky, but there are thousands of options that can easily be adapted to container growing. Or just plant a bunch of cute little plants in quirky planters – your mood and décor will be instantly elevated. And you can order everything you need from the comfort and safety of your home.

Find a community garden, CSA or nonprofit that you can get food from: If you cannot grow your own food, the next best thing is to tap into those people that are growing in your community. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has been around for 25 years, but every year it gains in popularity. With this program you are actively supporting farmers through the growing season. More on how it works here. Community Gardens in your area can be found through a little simple Googling. Look into nonprofits; there are people out there doing fascinating things. For instance, here in Tucson there is a group of refugees that gleans unwanted produce and citrus. More on them here.

No matter who or where you are, I encourage everyone who is able to just go outside and enjoy Nature’s garden on National Gardening Day. Whether you have a national park or a vacant lot in your backyard, there are ecosystems you can enjoy. For me, simply sitting on the balcony and observing the birds gives me that small, but necessary, Nature fix.

And now for a fun little game: What’s your tree sign? I didn’t know, either. But now I know I’m Ivy, the Equalizer. I’ll say that some of it is spot on and some of it is way off, but I will not say which is which. You can play here.


Happy National Gardening Day, everyone!


Submitted by Pam

Preparing To Plant? First, Pick The Right Soil.

As we move through winter and eye the upcoming spring, gardeners everywhere are preparing to plant. But before decisions are made as to where and what to plant, it is important to pick the right soil to plant in. Dirt is not just dirt. Potting soil, topsoil, native soil and garden soil are all different and each has unique and specific properties that make them suitable for different types of growing. Additionally, what you are planning to grow in the soil can color what type of soil you should use.

Types of soil

All soils contain three components: clay, sand and silt. The percentages of each of these can vary widely according to geographical regions and mixes in bags. The first step to knowing what type of soil is optimal for you,  is to determine where and how you are growing. This will help determine whether you need soil that is more of one component than another.

Are you planting in pots? Resist the temptation to use just any soil mix. Soil formulated for container growing provides enough drainage and aeration to allow healthy root growth, whereas denser soils may lead to compaction and water retention. Our recommendations for potting soil are Tank’s Pro Coco-Soil Potting Mix, Tank's Pro-Lite Seeding & Potting Mix and Soil Mender 109 Potting Mix.

Considering a raised bed? You’ll want something a little “heavier” than a potting mix, with a bit more organic matter. Blending potting mix with another pre-mixed soil blend at around a 50/50 ratio should yield close to what you need. Depending on what you’re planning to grow, you may want to tinker with that ratio to meet your plants’ needs. Take a look at our Prococo Coconut Coir Products; you may find just what you want in one of the three formulations.

Should you use topsoil or garden soil? Topsoil is more of a general landscaping tool and can be used for filling out and leveling or conditioning native soil. It should not be used for new plantings. Here is what we have for topsoil. Garden soils are pre-mixed blends that contain added nutrients and other organic matter. Garden soil can be used when planting, but is only intended for in-ground use. For more on the differences and how to choose between them, check out this article.

Do you want to cultivate a garden plot? You’ve already got the native soil in place. But chances are your native soil will need some help to properly support what you’d like to grow. Your first step to figuring this out is to determine  what your native soil consists of, In this article, Home Depot suggests doing a “feel test” as follows:
• Moisten a tablespoon of soil and roll it into a small ball.
• If the soil pack together and is moldable, your soil contains clay.
• If you can form a 2-3” ribbon with your ball of soil, you have a very high clay content.
• If the ribbon falls apart or feels gritty, you have a mix of clay and sand.
• If the soil ball will not hold together regardless of how much water you add, and it feels a little gritty, it’s sandy soil.
Once you know what you have, you'll have a better idea of how to get to where you need to be soil-wise.

 

Yep, that's a bear cub.

Plants can grow in many different  soils, but the trick is to know which ones grow best in what. You can plan your garden by what the soil will support, or build the soil that can handle what you prefer to grow. Succulents, for instance, need good drainage, while flowers prefer lighter soils. How you approach what you cultivate is not important as long as you get to the right soil choice.

In the coming weeks, we will go through the steps to getting the soil ready to plant as we test for pH and add soil amendments.

Submitted by Pam (with Sterling)

In a Garden of April Fools

An Evil Eye Tree - native to Cappadocia, Nevsehir, Turkey

Ah, Spring! – a time for love, bountiful blossom displays and,inevitably, April Fools’ Day. This quasi-holiday has traditional roots in Old World Europe but is now celebrated in places as far-flung as India and Brazil. Although the exact reason for pranking on April 1st have been blurred by history, many possible origin stories point to celebrations of the Vernal Equinox and end-of-winter festivities as far back as the Celts and Romans. Spring planting traditions come into play at this time of year and many people believe that April Fools’ Day speaks to the foolishness of planting in the unpredictable weather of early spring.

Which ones are the Lichops?

A surprising number of pranks and hoaxes have grown out of the gardening and botanical worlds over the years. Perhaps, in part, because there are many plants who are tricksters in their own right. Take the Lithops, for example: Also known as “Living Stones”, these southern African succulents have evolved to look like just another rock in the ground (a “no need to look here” for any herbivore searching for lunch). Then there are the Fooled You Peppers: These fascinating little green gems have the look and flavor of jalapeños without any of the heat. This is a wonderful thing for people like me who cannot handle the heat. I also think there is a juicy prank in here somewhere (like: I’ll bet you I can eat 15 of these jalapeños without stopping” kind of thing). Here is an article from the Smithsonian with more interesting prankster plants and here is a link to my blog from last October about strange plants (who are also mostly fakers).

1957 Spaghetti Harvest in Ticino, Switzerland

As I mentioned before, plants and gardening seem to find their way into April Fools’ pranks quite a bit. One famous example is the 1957 BBC presentation of “Spaghetti - Harvest in Ticino”. In this bit, their news program, Panorama, “reported” on the bumper crop of spaghetti that grew from spaghetti trees due to mild spring weather. A well-known war correspondent narrated the piece with the utmost gravitas, giving it extra credibility. Many people were fooled, of course, and some even tried to book holidays to go see the crop for themselves. This is a perfect example of how something that is clearly absurd can be said with enough sincerity that people will believe it.

Beautiful Maple Trees

In 2005, another legitimate news source, NPR (National Public Radio) perpetrated its own tree-related hoax. As heard on their program All Things Considered, they claimed that Maple trees in New England were exploding and causing serious injuries and even death. According to this fanciful report, the trees were exploding due to a decrease in maple sugar consumption, which meant that the trees were not being tapped and had built up sugar pressure. Apparently, this this hoax has stuck around; here is an article where they are still trying to debunk the myth in 2015. Hear the NPR program here. 

It seems like people these days are willing to believe anything can be hybridized; go on the internet and you can find hundreds, if not thousands, of stories of fantastical hybridized living things. While there are amazing hybrids, the pinana is not one of them. This banana-pineapple hybrid was the 2009 April Fools prank of the British supermarket chain Waitrose. Although it’s not a real fruit hybrid, I think they should get on this and create it for real – it sounds delicious.

Google has even got into the garden hoax business with their 2017 “announcement” of a smart device for your yard – the Google Garden Gnome. The video is really funny – it almost makes me wish this were real.

I have not participated in any April Fools’ pranks since my brother and I decided it was a good idea to interchange the sugar and salt on our kitchen table. Soon after our father sat down for his morning coffee we discovered that it was a really bad idea. That said, after all these years I am willing to present my own botanical hoax, albeit in a halfhearted way - I am going to see if anyone wants to bite on the Evil Eye Tree that I posted at the top of this blog. Would there be someone out there who believes that it really grows evil eye amulets?

If you are an unrepentant prank-puller, here are some ideas for you. I hope that you can find something fun and new to do, but do so cautiously - not everyone will think they are as funny as you do!

Submitted by Pam

Soil Amendments: When You Know Your Soil Needs Something….

The time is rapidly approaching when gardeners have to ask what it’s going to take to build the spring garden they want. Before you can grow plants, you need to grow the soil. There is almost always something that can be done to optimize the soil early in the season for your raised beds, garden plots or container plants. In order to do that, you need to take a good look at what your soil is like before planting. Some good questions to ask are:

• Is it compacted? 
• Is it too acidic or alkaline? 
• Does it have all the nutrients my plants need 
• Has it become hydrophobic? 
• Have I introduced beneficial microorganisms to help me along the way?

All of these are valid questions and should be part of your pre-planting checklist. If you need it, you can find the answers to or help with these questions right in your area. Ask at a local county extension office run by the Department of Agriculture, a Master Gardener (also part of the national extension program), universities and colleges, local gardening clubs or neighborhood nurseries. The expertise of people growing right where you are (especially those prolific ones!) can’t be overestimated.

Another option is a simple soil test. We offer several do-it-yourself options as well as a soil analysis done by professionals. Test kits will take the guesswork out of the soil analysis problem and ease the minds of all but the most worrisome of gardeners.

Once you have an idea of where your soil’s at quality-wise, you’ll know how to proceed. If you don’t need much added to get where you want, it might be time to look at soil amendments instead of fertilizer mixes (which make a stronger punch). There are lots and lots and lots of soil amendments to choose from, here are some popularly used and proven options:
Compost – a great all-round addition to soil. It will revitalize depleted soil by adding organic matter and microbes, which in turn will speed up the decomposition of other organic matter and encourage microbial life to flourish in the amended soil. Our ARBICO Organics™ Compost Plus is also high in nitrogen, if that is what you are looking for.
Humic Acid – The benefits of Humic Acid are very similar to that of compost. The liquid form of Humic Acid, however can be easier to use than compost, especially when working in a small area and for indoor and container plants. The liquid will also get to the roots quicker than compost.
Earthworm Castings – This is an old-time favorite for good reason. Castings are full of the micronutrients and trace minerals that your soil craves. They also breakdown slowly for long-term benefits (and fewer applications) and reduced risk of nutrient burn. While castings do their work in the soil, they are improving the soil structure, which reduces transplant shock and helps to buffer pH. Earthworm Castings contain chitinase, which is a natural compound that helps the plants fight soil-dwelling diseases and pests. 

Bosco verticale, Milan, Italy. Photo by Chris Barablis

Kelp Meal – It’s all about the nutrition when it comes to Kelp Meal. Bursting with amino acids, vitamins and trace minerals, it feeds the soil well to get it healthy. This well-fed soil welcomes organic matter and microbial life and is much better at retaining water.
Minerals – Many people go straight to a mineral to get minerals for their soil. Azomite and Soft Rock Phosphate fall into this category. They are packed with minerals that leach into the soil over time to provide dynamic and long-lasting benefits. In the case of Andesite, your garden may even get an electrical charge!

The bottom line is that nearly any soil (even balcony soil) can use a little amending and with the affordability of most amendments, why not give one a try? Since soil amendments generally work well with others, you can even try a combination.

Submitted by Pam & Sterling

Iron Phosphate - A Better Way To Control Slugs & Snails

What Is It?

Slugs Damage Plant Foliage 

Iron phosphate is a chemical compound commonly used to control slugs and snails in gardens and on farms. Generally sold as granules, it is considered much less toxic to non-target organisms than the leading competition – metaldehyde. Additionally, it is one of only a few molluscicides approved for use in organic growing.

How Does It Work?

When ingested by mollusks, iron phosphate damages digestive tissue. This damage causes slugs and snails to feed more slowly and eventually stop eating, leading to starvation. Iron phosphate has become the go-to slug and snail control for organic gardeners for its ease of use and efficacy. Simply apply it around areas where the slimy guys might be to start getting the most out of your garden instead of feeding it to the slugs.

Sluggo Granular Molluscicide

How Effective Is It?

It is as reliable of a slug/snail treatment as there is on the market. Its easy to use nature and efficient mode of action allows for control without additional inputs from the grower. In addition, iron phosphate tends to stick to soil particles, reducing runoff and unwanted effects on waterways or aquatic life.

Why Use It?

In short, iron phosphate is as effective as anything else out there without the same level of environmental risk. It lets growers limit crop damage and reduce pest numbers quickly and easily while working well with other Integrated Pest Management techniques. If you have pets or children, iron phosphate is the safest bet to control the problem without putting them at risk.

Get Slug & Snail Control For Your Spring Garden

- Contributed by Sterling N.

Prepping Your Spring Garden For Success

1.) Plan Your Garden

Sketch, Plot and Plant

First things first, you should pick seeds and transplants that will do well in your area. There are tons and tons of seed outlets online offering the common, the obscure and the useless. Do your best to match your crops’ preferences with the local climate and the types of soil media at your disposal. In other words, make decisions early on that will make your life easier later on. Browse our full catalog of organic and heirloom seeds here.

Creating a basic sketch of the cultivation area(s) helps to visualize the space prior to planting. This is an easy method to design a space-efficient garden bed, properly space plants and estimate what you’ll need to grow through the year (fertilizers, amendments, beneficial nematodes, etc.). A piece of graph paper can be a gardener’s best friend. The grid pattern makes it easy to plot plantings and pair plants that offer benefits to one another. Examples of this include planting legumes (nitrogen fixers) nearby nitrogen-needy plants like cruciferous vegetables and using aromatic herbs to keep pests away from their favorite plants. Try ARBICO's free Garden Journal to start planning your spring garden.

2.) Build Your Soil

Get Your Hands Dirty!

Soil is the soul of our gardens. It forms the garden’s foundation for the following months (or years). Soil prep starts with knowing what you’re growing and how you want to grow it. You’ll want to think about plant preferences, possible pitfalls, local pests and crop types. Some common soil amendments and additives include the following:

• Earthworm Castings
• Humic Acids
• Biochar
• Phosphorus 
• Wetting Agents/Surfactants

The natural ingredients in organic fertilizers break down over time, freeing up additional nutritional content and making it available to your plants later in the season. This slow release nourishes the plants with what they need when they need it instead of giving them a drink from the firehose. Most of this breakdown also feeds naturally occurring (or introduced) microorganisms helping maintain soil structure and more closely resemble the natural soil biome. 

3.) Place Sticky Traps & Buy A Notebook

Note-Taking Doesn't Stop After School

Often underestimated, sticky traps are a simple and pain-free way to monitor pests in the garden. Yellow traps attract the widest range of insects and are superb for establishing a baseline for ongoing control. They help us spot things early, reduce plant damage and plan for success moving forward in the season. 

Now that the traps are placed, get a notebook and make notes of what gets trapped and when. Pests or beneficials give us insights into what to expect and how to move forward. Keeping a log of information is one of the easiest things to improve our gardening efforts season on season. 

Found a bug, but don’t know what it is? Let us help you ID it!

At the end of the day, gardening should be a fun experiment. You're not going to get it perfect the first time, but consistent improvement is remarkably achievable. Following the steps above should get your garden started on the right foot and move you closer to the eagerly awaited harvest. Gardening gives us a chance to grow with our plants, so let’s take advantage of this spring season for just that!