GP: Let us grow legally and safely

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 7-1-15

Honorable Mayor, Council, and Manager:

          Today, I planted my first legal crop of marijuana.  It means a lot to me to be able to grow it legally.  Tomorrow it could be illegal.  Please don’t make me and many others continue to grow it illegally by demanding that we grow it in our houses.  We don’t have the money for lights or room in our houses.  We have been growing it outdoors or in greenhouses for years now with no problem but thieves.

          Police in Portland are telling people to grow discretely, and not let anyone know, because of thieves.  But in my case, secrecy is futile; I am a well-known pot activist and gardener.  People will assume that I am growing it.

          Pot thievery became more obvious after medical marijuana was passed, but it was happening all along.  Thieves were fairly safe from arrest, though not from retaliation, because pot was illegal.  Pot growers and smokers rarely reported thieves, being punished for growing or possessing it if they did.  That changed with thefts of medical pot, as growers and patients claimed protection of the law when they were targeted by thieves.

          Growing pot under Measure 91, people who are stolen from are quite likely to call the cops.  It won’t be so safe to steal.  But if you pass this ordinance, many of us will be growing illegally and will be subject to fines and confiscation if we report thefts.

We will still be in danger from police, and will be in more danger from thieves.  Those who obey your ordinance will be subject to home invasion robberies, not just backyard sneaks.  People could get killed.

Josephine County voters voted down Measure 91 by only 2 votes: 17,313 to 17,311.  If I had voted for it, it would have been a tie.  It appears that half of the county, and probably half the city, favor home pot growing.

You want to pass a city public safety sales tax in November.  But if you pass this ordinance, you will push away a large minority of voters, the silent majority of those that voted down the county levy.  People who can’t safely call the cops generally don’t vote to fund the cops.  Many more don’t vote at all, they are so alienated.  Please kill this ordinance and allow us to grow cannabis legally, safely, and cheaply, to defeat the black market, the real enemy of law and order.  We might then trust you enough to vote for your tax.

         

July 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Buy better tomato and pepper starts

Tomato warmed with rocks and pepper in 4 x 8 sand and rocks a week after planting, May 2014: they doubled in size quickly

Tomatoes and peppers are most easily grown from starts, though volunteer tomatoes can sometimes beat even the best planted starts for fast growth.  But if you want big plants that produce a lot of fruit, you need to plant small plants, and never buy a plant that is blooming in its pot.

          A plant that is blooming in its pot has gotten the signal from roots hitting the edge of the pot, wrapping around and touching other roots, that it is not going to get any bigger and it’s time to flower and make seed.  Fast growth stops and flowering and fruit growth begin.  A plant with fruit in a pot will grow hardly at all.

          The larger the pot you buy, the more the roots have been deformed by a succession of pots.  Seeds are not planted straight into large pots; they are planted in small pots and transplanted into larger pots, often starting with less than a cubic inch.  The smaller the plant you put in the ground, the less its roots have been distorted.  Six packs grow better than 4” pots and 4” grow better than 6” pots.  But larger “pony packs” are better than smaller 6-paks.  The potting soil in any pot should be light and loose, without excessive perlite or pumice.

          It is rare to find a 6” pot of tomatoes that is not already blooming, and sometimes it’s hard to find 4” pots not blooming.  This goes double for peppers; it is best to buy them in 6-paks, and look carefully for buds.  Six-packs of tomatoes usually are not blooming, but beware of plants too big for their pots.

          There is no point in rushing the season.  Your plants won’t grow until the soil is warm.   Don’t plant deeper than needed to cover the roots.  If you are choosing plants that are not root-bound, you don’t need to grow roots from the stem for good growth.  The deeper you plant, the colder the soil is beneath the roots.  Laying them down to bury the lower stem just puts the top growth closer to the pill bugs that eat plants in cold soil.  You can pre-warm the soil by covering it with 4 x 8 sand and placing larger rocks around the plants.

Watermelon and peppers grown in 4x8, corn and sunflower in leaves, 2014

          It’s best to wait until May to buy tomato and pepper starts in Grants Pass.  This year, it may be safe to be an April fool, and plant tomatoes in April, as spring weather has been consistently a month ahead of schedule and tomatoes are volunteering.  But we have had a week of cold showers and frost, and we won’t be safe from frost until May.  And yet, we already have 6” pot tomatoes appearing in the markets, which make good money from April fools having to replant because the soil was too cold and the bugs ate their cold-stressed plants.

         

April 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Grow Big Blueberries in Southern Oregon

We are coming into the season for buying young blueberry plants in the market or by mail, though the prime planting season in our area is late fall.  Still, you can plant them into the ground in the spring and expect them to grow well if you provide the right conditions.   

You can also plant a #1potted plant or mail-order bare root into a larger pot and let them grow twice as large over the summer before planting in the fall.  BiMart has #1 potted blueberries in the spring, some of which are Southern Rabbiteye, which are semi-evergreen, turn colors in the winter, and take our hot summers better than Northern varieties, but they don’t tell you which are which.  OneGreenWorld.com is a nursery near Molalla that sells both Southern and Northern varieties, where you can find out which ones are Southern varieties online.  Buying local is always better if they are available, as you’ll get larger plants at a lower price.

          They don’t like to be planted into plain soil, unless it is exceedingly light and rich, like potting soil.  Rather than planting them in the ground, it is better to set the plant on top of the ground and surround it with enough compost to surround and cover the roots.  Young blueberries grow a sponge of roots only 4-6 inches deep in their pots, putting down a deep taproot only after 4-5 years.  Four to six inches is a great depth for spreading compost to make rich, light soil after it is worked in by worms.  Unlike other shrubs and perennials, blueberries roots will sink into the soil as the compost is worked in by worms; other potted plants will sit on top of the soil as the compost is worked in, and be left high and dry.

          Cover that compost with coarse mulch like ¾” nugget bark, walk-on fir, or pine needles, to keep it from drying out and keep the roots cool and moist.  2 inches of leaves in the fall are probably the best mulch to maintain organic matter in the soil, but I like to scatter our copious coffee and tea grounds into the bark after the leaves are eaten.  It is vital to not let the soil be exposed to sun.  Bark protects it when the leaves have been pulled into the soil.

Southern Oregon has hot, dry summers, not the best conditions for growing blueberries, which like their heads in the sun and their roots cool and moist, but don’t like a lot of heat or dryness.  Indeed, most garden plants prefer a little less heat and a lot more humidity than we have here. 

          The key to getting fast growth and big berries is keeping a mister running nearby through the heat of the summer, particularly from blooming to after harvest.  24/7 is best, as it simulates coastal fog.  It does not cause fungal infections, and helps plants grow over a wide area of the garden.

Last year, an incident showed how vital this is.  A customer turned off one mister for a week near an isolated plant that had been producing big, tasty berries.  The remaining berries all stopped growing and immediately ripened, producing little berries that were not juicy and flavorful.      

                               

February 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Don’t till; mulch and plant in it

 Late spring, tomato planted in leaves with rocks for warmth; pepper foreground, planted in leaves, compost and 4 x 8 top mulch with rocks for more warmth and predator shelter; 4 x 8 path between 

This is the season when people start thinking about tilling their vegetable garden areas, but it is too wet to work the soil.  It’s a good time to start building mulch beds that you can immediately plant seeds and starts in.  You can do this anywhere you grow other plants as well; vegetables don’t need to grow in their own mini-farm in your yard; they just need good sun.  They can be worked into your landscape.

          Another good reason to mulch rather than tilling in compost is that tilling brings weed seeds to the surface where they can grow; kills many earthworms and soil predators; and mixes air into the soil that decomposes organic matter faster, causing nutrient loss from leaching and evaporation.  Letting worms work in nutritious mulch captures its nutrients in worm castings that release nutrients slowly and have lighter, better texture than uneaten soil, while coarse top mulch provides a home for predators like ground beetles, centipedes, and soldier beetles while protecting soil.

Fall: a compost pile of layered leaves and garden plants, about 2 feet high, built for growing watermelons, a small yellow Red Hot Poker on one side, a large growing area behind, about 8" deep in leaves.

 February: the pile has settled about 6 inches.

February: compost is added to speed decomposition.  The compost will be covered with 4 x 8 sand before planting the watermelons, with large rocks in the center to plant the seeds around.  Naked leaves will keep weed seeds from landing and sprouting around the watermelons.

        You can build beds with leaves, mainly available in the fall, a foot of which will grow huge vegetables.  For winter vegetables and small seeds, you can put an inch of compost on top, covered with an inch of coarse mulch like pine needles or shredded or nugget.  Scatter small seeds on the surface and plant starts and large seeds into the leaves.  Compost keeps the leaves wet and provides nutrients to help them rot faster; coarse mulch keeps it from drying out.  You can plant summer starts and large seeds into leaves alone for best weed control, as dry surface leaves make a poor seed bed for weeds.  This is just one reason why leaves make the best mulch for maintenance.

A potato popping up in February

          Leaves being not so available in spring, you can build beds with straight compost.  Six inches is equivalent to a foot of leaves and is ready to grow plants right away.  Two inches is good for ornamental shrubs and flowers.  This compost also needs to be protected from sun by coarse mulch, which is also needed for shelter by predators that keep pests under control.

          Paths also have to be mulched, to keep weeds from growing.  Like the beds, weeds have to be pulled when they grow anyways.  2 inches of coarse mulch like wood chips, chipped trimmings, or coarse bark can keep weeds down for a year and has to be renewed yearly.  An inch of 4 x 8 sand, river sand sifted to 1/4-1/8 inch, can be weeded with a hula hoe (AKA stirrup  hoe or scuffle hoe) when the weeds are small, and the weeds raked up, saving bending for each weed.  It is cleaner than organic mulch paths, easily blowing clean, while raking sifts dirt to below the sand.  It's also good for mulching over compost, heating the soil for fast growth.

          Beds made of leaves or mulch will spread into the paths from feet and birds and squirrels seeking food unless they are edged with something solid.  Cobble rock about 6 inches high, can be laid in curving lines for beauty and smooth lines of travel, end to end.  Brick can be used, but is more exacting to lay.  Wood lends itself only to straight lines and eventually falls apart.

February 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Follow @AnRycke on Twitter; GP Gardener on Facebook; check out GPgardener.com for blogs

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Bitter Cress and Groundsel are already seeding

Groundsel and bitter cress, blooming together

Bitter cress and groundsel are blooming and groundsel is seeding all over our valley about 2 months early, in January, indeed, before Christmas.  They usually start seeding in March.  You won’t get a better chance to eliminate them from your yard than the next few weeks—though a few plants can sprout and bloom all summer, right up to late fall. 

Young bitter cress, close up, abut 2 inches wide

While bitter cress is blooming, it is relatively easy to see by its tiny white four-petal flowers, though the smallest plants are not obvious; some are as tiny as a half-inch wide and 1.5 inches tall, fully seeded out.  The largest are 6” wide across the basal leaves with numerous stalks up to 18 inches tall seeded out.  They are easiest to pull when they have started to develop seed pods.

Just before they bloom, the larger plants are good to eat as a hot, bitter mustard green.  They are small, but softer and juicier than most mustards, good in a salad.  But don’t let them seed out; they are a nuisance.

Seeded bitter cress, popped out and ugly.

They become a nearly invisible green mist when all the flowers are finished, but as they turn yellow and dry, they become an eyesore, and pop their seeds up to three feet in all directions at the slightest disturbance of the pods.  By this time, seed control is impossible; all one can do is pull the dry stalks and resolve to do better next year. 

Groundsel, blooming and seeding in a ditch

Groundsel is also blooming right now, quickly blowing out and spreading to your neighbors’ yards or from them.  It is a miniature wild lettuce and not pretty, up to a foot tall, with squared-off leaves; the flowers are yellow, do not open fully, bending over while they are in bloom, straightening as they make seed.  It is the first blowing weed of the season, blooming in yards and empty lots all over town.  It’s often easy to pull, but like other wild lettuce, sticks hard in hard ground.  Cutting it under its crown, in the soil beneath where the leaves grow, will kill it.

Dandelions are also blooming and seeding about 2 months early.  A famous gardener once said that if dandelions were rare and hard to grow, they would be a prized flower.  Their dead-heads don’t even look bad, and they can be tasty greens before they bloom—but once buds even start to form in the base, they turn quite bitter. 

Dandelions are equally hard to pull before and after blooming:  not easy at all unless your soil is loose from generous mulching with compost or leaves.  With big perennial tap roots like these, it’s best to stick a shovel in next to the root, loosen, and pull. 

Gardening is growing plants where you want them to grow, not where they happen to land.  Many a pretty flower or edible plant shows itself to be a weed unless kept under tight control, and that goes double for flowers that cast their seeds to the wind.

Revised Jan-Feb 2015 issue, online at GardenGrantsPass.blogspot.com and at the Mail Center, 305 NE 6^th

Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener          541-955-9040        rycke@gardener.com

Recent temperature extremes support global drying

12/16/14

The Oregonian prints summaries of Earthweek every Friday.  Last week, the headline was "Quickening Extremes:" "The number of outbreaks of extreme heat and cold around the world during the past three decades increased more rapidly than the rate of global warming, which scientists say is fueling the trend."

One suspects that the scientists involved are all climate scientists who have long bought into trace-gas warming alarmism.  Weathermen and physicists know that dryness brings on extremes of temperature, as Arizona's desert illustrates: cold nights and hot days in summer; colder nights and days in winter; and cooler days and warmer nights during the humid summer monsoon season.

One cannot find any article on Oregonlive.com unless it is written by their writer.  So I looked it up on Earthweek: http://www.earthweek.com/2014/ew141212/ew141212a.html.  It has a lot more information than the Oregonian brief.  But their page does not allow one to copy and paste.

It continues, "Researchers at the UK's University of East Anglia looked at temperature records from 1883 to 2013 before coming to the conclusion.

"They found that the occurrence of unusually cold periods had been increasing at a faster rate than heat waves until 30 years ago."

"But the trend reversed in 1983, when extreme heat events became more frequent."

"Temperatures were also found to be more variable in the Northern Hemisphere than the Southern Hemisphere, mainly because there is less landmass south of the Equator to make weather systems more complex."

This fits with the increase in modern irrigation from 1883 to 1983, which was about the time the water-saving no-lawn movement began, followed by water price hikes in cities to save water, regardless of local supplies and conditions.  In Grants Pass, overpricing has been too successful, with seemingly half the town going dry in summer.  

I was part of the anti-lawn movement until a few years ago, simply because I hate mowing.  But as a professional gardener for the last 14 years, I have come to realize that replacing lawn with ground covers, shrubs, flowers, especially edibles does not save any water over lawn, as most plants and all vegetables need an inch of water per week, just like lawn.  

Lawns and hedges are also easier for most people to maintain, as it takes little knowledge to water deep, give everything a haircut, and to weed out everything but lawn grasses.  But with high water prices, many have simply stopped watering and weeding.  They can't afford to water, and no one likes to maintain ugly, so they ignore the yard and its weeds and play indoors.  

Since they can't garden without water, the poor are not learning how to garden, and paid gardeners are scarce.  Our Food Bank rents farmland from the City to supply the poor, and gets middle class volunteers to weed it.  The poor used to supply the Food Bank with excess vegetables and enter their best produce in the Fair.  Produce entries in the Fair are pitifully few these days, spread out thinly through a huge building.

A bit over a year ago, after reading this article in Science News on irrigation from Central California farms increasing monsoon rains in the Four Corners area and water in the Colorado River, I did a study of weather in Grants Pass from 1983 to 2013, and wrote this blog post.  

It shows that midsummer monthly high temps dropped slightly from 1993 to 2003, and then rose a lot from 2003-2013.  In the same two decades, midsummer rainfall dropped by 0.9 inches per decade, and July and August high rainfall events were lower than those in June and September.  In the first decade, when we were nearly all watering, July and August rainstorms were bigger than in June and September, which fit with my memories of frequent wet summer thunderstorms when I lived here between 1985 and 1987.  

When this area was first settled by white people, it was called the Agate Desert.  It takes a lot of irrigation to grow food here.

Sprinkler irrigation cools, humidifies, and reduces weather extremes.  Less irrigation can only do the reverse, especially with high temperatures.  Drip contributes some humidity through transpiration from plants, but not like throwing water in the air and all over the plants.  The effects are seen the most in the interior of the continents, far from the moderating humidity of the ocean.

 



 at the U.K.’s University of East Anglia looked at temperature records from 1881 to 2013 before coming to the conclusion.

They found that the occurrence of unusually cold periods had been increasing at a faster rate than heat waves until 30 years ago.

But the trend reversed beginning in 1983, with extreme heat events becoming more frequent.hers at the U.K.’s University of East Anglia looked at temperature records from 1881 to 2013 before coming to the conclusion.

They found that the occurrence of unusually cold periods had been increasing at a faster rate than heat waves until 30 years ago.

But the trend reversed beginning in 1983, with extreme heat events becoming more frequent.

Leave leaves on your lawn

Just enough leaves on a lawn to stop weeds but not good grass

People are way too afraid of leaves on lawns.  Perennial grass is stronger than you might think.  A pile of leaves will leave a hole in a lawn.  Two inches or more will allow grass to grow through only here and there.  But a few layers will not stop perennial grasses from jumping right up in the spring.  They have enough food in their roots to push through light layers of leaves.  Leaves keep the soil warmer than no leaves and make it more fertile as the worms eat them through the winter, so grasses grow stronger in the spring.

Leaves not only feed soil and keep it warmer to grow grass better, but they stop small seeds like crabgrass; annual rye; Bermuda grass, nut sedge; dandelions; wild lettuce; and groundsel, the first of the wind-blown weeds to bloom in the spring, by keeping sun off the soil.  They also stop mosses, which like these weeds, need sun on bare soil to germinate.  Large annual grass seeds, like cheat and foxtails, can push through a few layers of leaves and need to be pulled.  You can tell them from perennial grass sprouts by their color, which is a lighter green with wider blades than perennial grass, or by their seed stalks later in the spring.  Crab grass, which sprouts in late spring, are very fat even when very short, and are best pulled small.

The weakest perennial grass is probably perennial rye sod, which most lawns on new construction are built with.  It is not a true sod grass; it is a clumping grass held together by plastic net.  Its roots are short for cutting off its clay soil base and transplanting, so it only lasts about 5 years before being invaded by stronger grasses.  Clumping grasses don’t spread by rhizomes, underground stems, but depend on reseeding to refill bare spots that form when clumps die, so it pays to reseed it in the fall before allowing leaves to cover, or rake it into the leaves in spring.  Its seeds are large enough to push through a few layers of leaves when they are ready to grow.  Perennial rye seed grows deeper roots than rye sod, and can create a stronger lawn as the sod grass dies out if it is reseeded yearly. 

Perennial grasses prefer to grow longer north of California, as the sun is lower and they need to be taller to catch the sunlight.  Two inches tall is good in summer, but 3-4 inches is better in winter.  Not cutting grass too short in summer or winter also helps keep sun off soil to prevent weeds and moss. 

A mulching mower can break up the leaves and help them to lie heavy enough between the grasses to keep small weed seeds from sprouting, but whole leaves will not stop the good grass from growing from roots or seed if they are not too thick.