Saturday, November 4th, noon to 3pm
We grew 75 pounds of sugar pie pumpkins to share with our garden community. If there are more people than pumpkins, we'll have a raffle, but I hope that by giving out one per family we should have enough. The wood fired pizza oven will be hot and supplies for make-your-own pizzas available + delicious food that everyone brings (that's you)! RSVP by November 1-thanks!!
Garden resource Day- Saturday November 4th, 10am-noon
While I'm at the Ft. Scott garden getting ready to host the pizza party, the truck will be there with compost. Please come by if you want some to add to your garden. If you haven't been there before, the garden is at the end of Wisser Court- enter by 1330 Kobbe and take the 2nd road on the left (it's gravel and goes past a few garages). Vehicular entry will be closed at noon for the pizza party.
Looking ahead to December: Saturday December 9th, 10am- noon winter wreath making at the Native Plant Nursery. More details in future posts.
Hey everyone! This is Taylor (Jean’s gardening intern)
kicking off a series of informational gardening posts with an exciting look
into soil health. Healthy soil= healthy plants: providing your plants with soil
rich in organic matter helps them to grow faster, resist pests and diseases,
and yield a larger crop.
The soil in your raised beds should have a healthy
combination of sand, silt, and clay (a “loam” soil) as your bed has been
prepared specifically with a loam and compost mixture. A good way to check your
soil is to do a simple jar test. I’ve included an image that gives you
instructions on how to conduct a jar test below. I just pulled the image off
the internet but it actually gives really great instructions!
Once you’ve
identified what your soil is composed of, you can start assessing what
amendments or organic fertilizers (if any) are necessary. Compost is a great
amendment to consistently add to your raised bed because it actively builds up
soil health while slowly releasing many nutrients to your plants over time. Mixing
4-8 inches of compost into your raised bed before planting would be a great
idea if you think that your soil is nutrient-depleted. Also a 1-3 inch layer of
compost would be good to add to your raised bed a few times a year as a
top-dressing. HOWEVER it is important to remember that compost is an amendment
to build up soil health and NOT a fertilizer.
Your plants need a healthy balance of NPK (as well as other
minerals) in order to thrive and yield a bountiful harvest! Only fertilizers
can provide your plants with fast acting doses of NPK. NPK=nitrogen,
phosphorus, and potassium.
*Nitrogen helps with
leaf growth, phosphorus with root growth, and potassium with flower/fruit
growth.*
It’s important to remember that too much of one element of
NPK and not enough of the others could be a serious limiting factor for your
plants. Too much nitrogen (without enough phosphorus and potassium) could cause
your plant to grow too many leaves while limiting flower/fruit growth. This
could pose a problem for fruiting crops (such as tomato or strawberry plants),
but might actually be helpful when growing leaf vegetables like lettuce, chard,
and spinach. It’s important to cater to your plants needs especially if you
want to get the most from your harvest. Adding organic fertilizers that are
rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium is the best way to immediately
provide your plants with the nutrients they are missing. I’ll most likely be
writing a post about organic fertilizers in a few weeks so stay tuned!
That’s all I’ve got for soil health! Email me if you have
any specific questions- tjais@presidiotrust.org
(Next time I’ll be writing about microclimates
woohoo!) -Taylor
