Gardening in February

Copyright 2012, Jim Long

A mild January has gotten a lot of gardeners thinking about spring planting, even though the likelihood of going through February and March with continuing mild weather is pretty low. Most likely we’ll have the late winter snowstorms the Ozarks is known for. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the current mild weather, either.

Onion plants from Dixondale Farms.

My onions arrived from Dixondale Farms the first week of January they were planted within days. You may recall that last season I had a race between onion plants and onion sets (bulbs). I wanted to see just which method netted the fastest onions. The onion plants won the race by producing good-sized bulbs almost 2 weeks ahead of the sets. Of course I planted only onion plants this year.

So what can one safely plant right now? Onions, certainly because they’re very cold hardy. First plantings of lettuce can be sown now, as well. An old gardener in the town where I grew up in Central Missouri, always scattered her lettuce seed on the south side of her wash house, on top of a snow drift and she always had the first and most productive lettuce of anyone in town.

Potatoes, which I’ve written about before, are always planted in my garden in early February. By Ozarks tradition, peas should be planted by Valentine’s Day and I have mine ready. If you like leeks, you can plant those now. As soon as they’re a couple of inches tall, transplant them into rows, spacing about every 8-10 inches apart.

Larkspur do best when planted in very early spring.

Larkspur, poppies and bachelor’s buttons do well if planted this month. Scratch the soil slightly, scatter the seeds and lightly rake the area and they will come up as the weather warms. I scatter radish seed with the flowers to mark where I planted the flowers and I pull the radishes as they mature.

February is the time to prune grape vines. Don’t prune roses yet, wait until new growth appears in late March, but this month is the time to prune fruit trees. Once trees such as peaches and apples are pruned, you can give them their first spraying of dormant oil to prevent insect problems later.

This is also an excellent time to till the garden. You can till under all the old mulch but more important, the tilling process exposes insect eggs that over-winter in your garden. Grasshopper eggs, larvae of cucumber beetles, cut worms and Japanese beetle grubs, all can be thinned by tilling early. Birds eat some of the eggs and grubs and even better, nights that dip well below freezing will kill the eggs and larvae. Besides, just tilling the garden will get you in the mood for planting.

You will find more gardening information on my other blog: http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com
Happy gardening, even this early!

Add Some Berries to Your Garden

Blackberries begin ripening the first week of June.

There was a time when berry-picking was as ordinary as going to the grocery store is now. Come summer, families drove out into the countryside and picked blackberries along the roadside. People who had wild black raspberries or gooseberries, looked forward to picking fruit for pies, jams and canning. Now the roadsides are mowed and sprayed and most of the berries are gone. Store-bought berries, when available, are expensive and with few exceptions, shipped from South America. So why not grow your own berries?

Reaching into berry vines to pick isn't the painful thing it used to be, now with thornless vines.

The University of Arkansas has been developing hardy, thornless blackberry varieties for several decades and several licensed nurseries grow and sell them. These new strains of blackberries grow two to three times the size of wild ones and don’t carry the disease that many wild blackberries have. Wild blackberries are often deformed or shrivel before fully ripe from a berry disease. These new thornless varieties are resistant to those diseases. The thornless berries are big, the seeds are very small, the flavor is excellent and the vines are completely thornless. Add to that, they’re easy to grow. My favorites are ‘Arapaho’ and ‘Apache,’ both thornless berries that are great tasting.

Smooth vines, no thorns at all means no scratches, no pain when picking.

Both red and black raspberries do well all across the Ozarks region but don’t plant them together. Growers recommend keeping black and red raspberries at least 60 feet apart but both can certainly be grown on the same property. I keep my red raspberries in rows beside the blackberries and the black raspberries off to themselves. My favorite red raspberries are Heritage, which you mow down at the end of the year since they produce berries on new canes, and Lauren, which, for me, produces an early crop and another one in late summer.

Red raspberries produce for a month or more in summer. Some varieties produce 2 crops a year.

I’ve ordered berries from Pence Nurseries in northwest Arkansas many times over the years and they’re always very helpful in making recommendations. Find them here: www.alcasoft.com/pense/ They are a family business and you’ll need to call and leave a message that you want to order. They’re very prompt and will call you back at the end of the day to take your order. They sell grape, tayberry, gooseberries, currants, many varieties of black and red raspberries and several kinds of thornless blackberries.

The Pence family, from their website.

Berries require full to mostly-full sun, average garden soil and will benefit from being on a fence although it’s not necessary. Some, like Heritage red raspberries, often produce a few berries the first year but will produce a full crop the second year. Other berries produce a small crop the second year then are bountiful every year after that. Happy gardening!

Grow your own blackberry pie this year!

Time to Order Onions and Potatoes

Ozarks Gardening

Jim Long

You probably have your garden tools put away and think that planting time is a long way off but seed catalogs are arriving daily and garden planting isn’t far away. If you’ve followed my columns over the past 20 years, you know that I’ll be encouraging onion planting at the end of January. And I’ll start recommending, as I do each year, getting peas in the ground by Valentine’s Day, and potatoes planted before the end of February.

Part of my garden's raised beds.

This is my 32nd year of gardening on my farm and during that time I’ve learned the earlier I plant onions, peas and potatoes, the fewer pests I have and the better those crops do. All three are winter hardy, especially if you apply some loose straw over the bed at the time of planting. My method is to put about 8 inches of loose straw over the entire bed, then I make a row and plant through the straw.

A Dixondale customer with his onions. No, that's not me.

The difficulty I had for many years was finding onions early enough to plant in our mild Ozarks climate. Many seed companies are located in more northerly states and if you order potatoes and onions, they will ship them only,  “ at the proper planting time for your area.” That means they decide when they think you should plant, and if you wait on them, you’ll be planting too late for the Ozarks season.

Red Candy Apple onions.

Over the years I’ve found two companies that are happy to ship my onion plants and seed potatoes at the time I want them, rather than on their whims. The first is Dixondale Farms in Texas; www.dixondalefarms.com. I have found that the Intermediate Day varieties do the best for me. By planting early (late January for me) and planting the Intermediate Day varieties, I have little problem with the onions flowering before the bulbs are made. Also, the earlier you plant, the larger the bulbs will be. Often the varieties you find in grocery or feed stores are just generic onions that may or may not be varieties best suited for the Ozarks region. I order the Intermediate Day Sampler, which includes Candy, Red Candy Apple and Super Star varieties. 

You may also remember last spring I did a test trial, planting both onion sets (bulbs) and  onion plants. I planted at the same time, side by side. The plants produced bulbs faster and I had onions almost 10 days earlier than with the sets.

Potatoes used to be an even bigger problem to find for my early garden. I’ve had seed companies simply refuse to ship my seed potatoes before mid-March, which they deem “correct” for my area. If I plant potatoes that late, I am assured a good crop of potato beetles. Plant early and you avoid those completely! I found Wood Prairie Farm a few years back. Even though they’re located in Maine, they will ship seed potatoes as early as I want. They have a large selection to choose from and I always try to get my seed potatoes shipped the first week of February. Wood Prairie Farm is a family-run farm and they also offer some garden seed as well as maple syrup from their area.

Happy gardening in 2012!