Bulbs, Bulbs and More Bulbs

September and October are the months to plant bulbs for the spring. So, over the last few weeks I've been slowly planting the ones I've been storing in the garage since mid-june.

Last year, I planted a bunch of Tulips and Daffodils willy nilly throughout the various beds in my yard. That was a mistake come summer, when I realized that they were seriously in the way of a bunch of perrenials and bushes I wanted to put in. We're talking about paper grocery bags full of daffodils and paper lunch sacks full of tulips bulbs.

The trick to storing bulbs if you're the anal type that likes to dig them up in the early summer is to keep them in a cool, dark place that provides plenty of ventilation and protection from rodents. So, once the bulbs were dug up, I sorted them and left them on the garage floor for a few days. Then I cleaned off the dried-up outer layer of dirt and put them inside large paper grocery bags, which then went inside big plastic totes (but left the lids off), which then went inside these big storage cases with doors we have. Voila! Cool, dark, well ventilated and protected from rodents!

Now that it's time to plant, I've been prepping plots to plant the bulbs in, with the idea that I'll plant annuals in the same locations once the bulbs go dormant. Supposedly (according to Cisco Morris) tulips are twitchy about getting watered while they're dormant in that the water will make them split into a bunch of little bulb-lets which will not grow large enough to bloom the following year. I'll probably experiment and dig up half of them and leave the other half in to see what happens. Ideally I'd like to not have to dig them up at all, but that may not be possible.

When prepping the soil and planting the bulbs I've worked in one bag of Cedar Grove Compost and one cup of blood meal to about eight inches over about 5 square feet. Once everything is in the ground I'm going to apply about half a cup of fish emulsion to each 5 square foot plot. Next spring I'll top dress with some more blood meal and fish emulsion.

The Future Is Drying Up (NY Times)

An excellent article about water management issues in the SW.

Garlic and Gladiolas

I finished planting my garlic yesterday. Yes, common tradition is that you plant your garlic on or around Columbus Day. This will be my third attempt at growing the plant, and I think I will finally be successful.

For the first attempt, I assumed garlic was like many other plants, and you put the cloves in the ground in the spring. Boy, that was the wrong move. For the second attempt, I planted the garlic in January. That was still too late in the year to result in sizable cloves, though at least I did get cloves of some kind.

So, I figure the third time is the charm. I planted four rows of Oregon Blue Softneck from Hood River Garlic. It may come as a surprise, but they're an organic garlic farm in Hood River, Oregon. I planted four rows of Elephant Garlic, with about 1/3 of the seed cloves being the undersized and undifferentiated bulbs from my second attempt last year and the other 2/3 being from some seed cloves I picked up during the Farm Day trip to Fall City Farms.

I amended the bed with blood meal, fish meal and gypsum. Why gypsum? Well, the blossom rot that occurred in some of the tomatoes I planted in the plot indicated that the soil was deficient in calcium. Gypsum will help to provide calcium without changing the pH of the soil.

I also dug up my gladiolas. In the windstorm. Yes, I'm that dedicated. Actually, the wind was kind of nice, when it wasn't whipping up clouds of dust and blowing them in my face. I won't be planting these gladiolas again, since their growing cycle doesn't really work with the rest of my landscaping plan. Too bad though. Apparently I'm good at growing the buggers. The bulbs (or is it a corm?) came out HUGE.

Organic Gardening Vs. Vegans : Showdown at Noon?

It's that time of year when I'm digging up beds, amending soil and planting for next year. I've been experimenting with organic fertilizers, stuff like blood meal, bone meal and fish emulsion and meal.

As I'm working the animal product based organic fertilizers into the soil, it occurs to me that it would be really really hard for a Vegan to farm organically. Most organic fertilizers are based on rendered animal products. Even manure is an animal product, and if a Vegan can't eat milk or eggs or wear wool, why would they be able to use cow waste to fertilize soil?

I suppose a vegan could rely exclusively on crop rotation, compost and plant based fertilizers (there are a few) but that would be very difficult and would require a fair amount of land. They pretty much couldn't grow vegetables in their back yard, I'd imagine, unless they planned on letting their backyard garden lie fallow every other year.

It's odd, considering that I would classify most Vegans as environmentalist types, that Veganism may actually be somewhat at odds with sustainable agricultural practices. It's something that probably warrants a little research and more thought.

Of course, if you cornered me and asked me what I really thought, I'd tell you that my personal philosophy is that the ideal is a little from column A and a little from column B. And I'm definitely NOT a vegan, or a vegetarian for that matter.