Last week's planting guide was more appropriate for the southwest than our Central California climate. So here, for your reading pleasure, is a planting guide for August for Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. This information comes from a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources publication entitled "Vegetable Garden Planting Guide for Santa Cruz County."

Crop	Selected Varieties	Seeds or Transplants?
Artichoke	Green Globe	Transplants
Basil	Genovese, Lemon, Red Opal, Siam Queen	Seeds
Beets	Detroit Dark Red, Chioggia, Golden, Little Ball	Seeds
Broccoli	Green Goliath, Packman, Premium Crop, Waltham	Transplants
Cabbage	Early Jersey Wakefield, Express Red, Savoy	Transplants
Carrots	Chantenay, Nantes Types	Seeds
Cauliflower	Snowball Types	Transplants
Edible Flowers	Calendula, Johnny Jump Ups, Nasturtiums	Seeds
Endive	Batavian, Curled Types	Seeds
Kohlrabi	Early Purple Vienna, Early White Vienna	Seeds
Leeks	American Flag, Titan	Seeds
Lettuce - Leaf	Black Seeded Simpson, Little Gem, Mesclun, Salad Bowl	Seeds

 

Crop	Selected Varieties	Seeds or Transplants?
Mustard	Mizuna, Others	Seeds
Parsnips	Hollow Crown	Seeds
Peas, Garden	Maestro, Lincoln	Seeds
Peas, Snap	Sugar Snap, Sugar Ann	Seeds
Radishes	Cherry Belle, French Breakfast, White Globe	Seeds
Spinach	Bloomsdale, Melody, Popeye	Seeds
Squash - Summer	Scallop, Yellow, Zucchini	Seeds
Swiss Chard	Bright Lights, Fordhook Giant, Rhubarb	Seeds
Turnips	Purple Top White Globe	Seeds

 

Visit the California Garden Web for basic vegetable gardening information including planning your garden, preparing for planting, caring for your vegetable crops, and much much more! Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!

We're revisiting a post from a few years ago by PaulMcCollum. Thanks, Paul! Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!

To all the lovely people,

Here are the recommendations from Mother Earth News of what to plant in our region for the month of August. I am preparing my cabbage bed now for transplanting cabbage starts in about three weeks. Write me if you have any garden questions. 

Paul

Top Crops for the Southwest Region: Here are the Top Ten crops for the Southwest region, followed by other recommended crops, as rated in our National Survey of Most Productive Garden Crops. (The criteria for selection include ease of culture, efficient use of garden space and time, ease of storage and desirability at the table.) The recommended crops are sorted by plant family to help you plan rotations so that the same plant families are not grown consecutively in the same area, as much as possible.

Top 10 Crops: Southwest Region 1. Potato 2. Garlic 3. Cherry tomato 4. Bulb onion 5. Slicing tomato 6. Carrot 7. Summer squash 8. Snow/snap pea 9. Paste tomato 10. Sweet peppers

Other Highly Recommended Crops: Cabbage family:  Kale, kohlrabi  Cucumber family:  Cucumber, pumpkin, winter squash  Leafy greens:  Arugula, chard, Chinese cabbage, mache, lettuce, pac choi, spinach  Legumes:  Dry soup beans, edamame, fava bean, snap beans, snow/snap and shell peas, Southern peas Root crops:  Beet, radish, rutabaga, shallot, sunchoke, sweet potato  Tomato family:  Eggplant, peppers (all types), tomatillo Miscellaneous: Bulb fennel, leek, okra, rhubarb, scallions

We have a FREE class coming up about straw bale and hugelkulture gardening. Visit our website to read more about the class and sign up to reserve your space!

Straw bale gardening is a container gardening technique that allows productive herb, flower and vegetable gardens even for people with the worst soil conditions. It involves conditioning straw bales, the kind used for large animal bedding you get at the feed store, to make them soft and semi decomposed for direct planting. 

Benefits – As mentioned, straw bale gardens are for people with very poor soil and over time, the bale itself can improve the soil beneath it. It's a good method for people with limited mobility or difficulty bending over and it's much less labor intensive than turning soil. As with all container gardening, it's good for renters or people with limited yard space. Harvesting is easy—harvest potatoes by knocking over the bale at the end of the season. There's virtually no weeding required with straw bale gardening and straw bales are inexpensive, about $7-12 each. You can build a raised bed with 4 bales, fill the center with planting mix and plant in the soil as well as the straw.

How To

Day 1 - Place the bale

When you go shopping make sure you get a STRAW bale and not a HAY bale. Straw is a stalk, usually a waste product of a grain crop, that's used as bedding for barnyard animals. I prefer rice straw if I can get it but other straw works just as well. Hay—typically alfalfa or a grass—is used as animal feed and may contain seeds.

Choose a clear sunny spot and cover the soil with cardboard, weed cloth or wood chips to suppress weeds around the bale. Position the bale narrow side up so the strings hold the bale together over time. Check both narrow sides—one side the straw will be folded over, one side will be cut. Place with the cut side up to draw moisture better. Sometimes the most challenging part can be getting straw bales home from the feed store; you may need to enlist the aid of a friend with a truck or large trunk space to get them home and arranged where you want them. Some feed stores deliver. A hand truck is very helpful for moving the ~75 lb. bales around the yard.

Day 1-14 - Condition the bale

Day 1-3 You need the bale to begin to decompose before planting which will begin as soon as water hits it. Water the bale thoroughly for 3 days (or wait for rain to do that for you).

Day 4-10 For the next 6 days continue watering daily and add some liquid or soluble nitrogen fertilizer to aid decomposition. I sprinkle blood meal on top, fish emulsion or chicken manure tea. There's no prescribed amount of fertilizer to add but for reference, I use about 1 cup of blood meal per bale on day 4 and another ½ cup on day 7.

Day 10- 14 Continue watering the bale daily. The process of decomposition produces heat, like hot compost, so wait until the internal temperature of the bale is ambient temperature. You can use a compost thermometer for this or just dig in with your hand.

The speed of this conditioning stage will take longer if you are relying on rainfall to do all the watering, especially in California. The process takes 10-14 days if water is supplied consistently, otherwise, you'll be looking for the straw to darken in color and be yielding and easy to dig into from the top with a trowel. You may see mushrooms sprout from the bale; this is a normal part of decomposition. You can remove the mushrooms or leave them be.

Planting

Most plants do well in straw bales unless they are so tall they fall over and pull the bale apart. Last summer I had a bumper harvest of basil and hot peppers. You can grow tall or vining plants like peas, beans, corn and tomatoes if you build a trellis from them over the bale. Metal fence posts at either end with wire strung between make an easy growing trellis. I arrange my bales in a square and fill the center with potting soil then plant root crops in the center (daikon, garlic, shallots, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, etc.) and leaf and cole crops in the bales along the edges.

How to plant in straw

Use a trowel to remove straw to form a hole that is as deep as the root ball of your plant. Place the plant in the hole and add some quality potting soil around it for stability. Mulch the top with some of the straw you removed and water well. You can do successive plantings and as time passes, you'll find the straw becomes easier and softer to dig into as the bale decomposes.

Maintenance

It's essential to fertilize regularly since straw doesn't contain all the nutrients good soil does. I usually mix an organic all-purpose fertilizer powder with the potting soil when I plant. I supplement with liquid fertilizer over the growing season. Once the bales are fully saturated through conditioning you will be amazed at how well they retain water. Keep them watered either by overhead hand watering or drip line. I hand water and even in the peak of summer heat I only watered 2-3 times a week. Never let the bales fully dry out or all is lost.

Lifespan of a hay bale garden

Over time your hay bale will get shorter and shorter as it decomposes. You can do successive plantings 3-4 seasons in a row until your bale is little more than a mound. At that point you may dig the spent straw into the moist, softened soil below to begin an in-ground garden bed or use the straw as mulch in other parts of the garden and start a new bale. Straw bale gardening is a great way to replace a lawn with a veggie garden!

To learn more about straw bale gardening and hugelkulture, sign up for our FREE workshop on July 22nd here! 

Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!

A Daily Practice

I make it a daily practice to walk the garden and check-in on the plants. With each hot day that passes, I find that there is always something new that surfaces. The birds come to land on the branches of the fig tree, while others land in the avocado tree and settle into the bottle brush. Pollinators buzz throughout, feasting on all that abounds. Evidence of their presence is visible through the various plants that signify transition. Faded blossoms begin to drop, and in their place seeds begin to expand and form. Being a witness to this process always fills me with a great sense of wonder and awe. 

A Precious Gift

Two years ago, we received 10 fava beans from our dear friends. The seeds originated from the Sacred Valley region of Peru where they were hand-selected for a distinct spiral pattern on the seed coat. Starting with just a few seeds, we decided to grow this plant out in our urban garden in Midtown Santa Cruz. After successful plantings, I gently gathered these the dried pods of the newly formed fava beans. 

I began by removing the fava beans from their seedpods. I then separated the seeds with the distinct spiral pattern from the ones with solid seed coats. I will save the seeds with the patterned seed coat for future plantings, and utilize the seeds with the plain seed coats for food. 

Selecting Seed Adapted to Our Bioregion

The spicy mustard greens that generously fed us over the late winter and spring season have also since gone to seed. I harvested the seed heads and set them to dry on a large repurposed bed sheet. When fully dry, I will gently stomp on these seedpods, and sift them through fine screens to separate the seed from the chaff. The plants that did particularly well in our bioregion are the ones that we save. Over time, seed that is hand-selected in a place can become well adapted to the environmental conditions of that specific location. There are many features to save seed for, including taste, size, texture, color, drought resistance, disease resistance and overall health.

How I Save my Seeds

After gathering seed, I begin by sifting out any unnecessary plant matter. I compost any remaining plant matter, leaving only the winnowed seed for storage. This helps maintain integrity of the seed, as seeds stored with excess plant matter have a shorter shelf life and have a greater tendency to rot. Depending on the seed I am saving, I make use of a series of seed sifting screens, or winnow the seeds using wind (or my breath) and a basket. 

When dry and ready, you can begin storing your seed. Seed is well kept in a glass jar. Be sure to label each jar with the name of the plant, the date in which you collected the seed, and the location the seed was collected from. Keep in mind that seeds are living! It is best to store your seeds in a cool, dry, dark/shady space away from sunlight. 

Final Thoughts...

From repeated observation, we note that from one seed comes many. When I have an abundance, I love to share bio-regionally adapted seeds with neighbors and friends, knowing they may be more empowered to grow their own food, medicine, or tend to native plant habitats, all while providing a sanctuary for the many diverse pollinators of our region and world.

Have you inherited any seeds with an interesting story? What is blooming or going to seed in your garden at this time? To read more about saving vegetables seeds, check out this blog post.

Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!