From: Cerena Childress, Green Bean Connection <cerena@astrologicalnow.com>
Subject: May 2020 Green Bean Connection, Santa Barbara Community Gardens
Date: May 1, 2020 at 8:09:17 AM PDT
To: <DL-ReMoore@Cox.net>
Reply-To: Cerena Childress, Green Bean Connection <cerena@astrologicalnow.com>

Cerena writes to help new gardeners get started, remind experienced gardeners to plant at the best times, inspire us to try new techniques!  Being outdoors gardening is healthy for our bodies and spirits, provides the most nutritious organic veggies right on your table with no food miles at all! 	Email not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser 	

	

 Green Bean Connection 
Happy May Day, Cinco de Mayo & Mother's Day!
 
May 2020! Radiant Flowers and Tasty Veggies!
 
The Magic of Melons ~ Cantaloupe, Honeydew!
Pollination: Honeybees, Squash Bees & Bumblebees!
Mulching ~ Why, When, With What, How Much?!
Start Growing Your Own Organic Food!
Veggie Gardening for NO $ at All!

Upcoming Gardener Events! Santa Barbara Botanic Garden Native Plant Sale, Santa Barbara Garden Club annual plant sale, 50th EARTH DAY! The International Permaculture Conference in Argentina November 2020!

Dear Community Gardeners, Garden Friends,
 
It's especially important to keep our gardens going now for fresh organic food and it's a great place to get grounded, stay calm! Keep a safe distance but tell people you love them. It makes a difference. Get some fresh air and sunshine, watch your plants grow, plant some new ones! What you do now affects your summer crop returns! I love you ALL. 

Special note re our nurseries and COVID-19: Please check online or call ahead to see their current status. http://www.lasumida.com/   http://www.terrasol-gardencenter.com/  https://www.acehardware.com/

A HUGE THANK YOU to Pamela & David! Pamela Newman-Drager and her hero hubby David have again grown and donated plants to Rancheria Community Garden! They invested in containers, labels, potting soil, added fat worms, bought special seeds at the Santa Rosa National Heirloom Exposition, and given a lot of their time loving and tending the seedlings! This is their 4th year to gift us and so many gardeners are blessed with unique heirlooms, and some special hybrids like breeder Brad Gates' Pink Boar Tomato!  

►►► Those of you who won't be renewing your plot would you consider giving it up now? If this works for you, call the office ASAP! May is a terrific month to plant summer heat lovers, and it would be wonderful if new gardeners could get started right away! Thanks!

Mother's Day is May 10! Here are some wonderful ideas for green and loving gifts! You can even start some seeds for her/him now! Click here!

Veggies and Flowers, Birds & Bees! Please enjoy these splendidly colorful April images at Rancheria Community Garden! You may get some ideas for those Mother's Day prezzies! Happy gardening! 

If you or a friend would enjoy gardening at a community garden, please join us! May is a super month for planting summer heat lovers! A 10X20 spot is only $67/year + first year $20 clean up deposit! YES! Go directly to the Westside Community Center, 423 W. Victoria St and speak with Christie Rojo. Open weekdays 10 to 4, to sign up, closed noon to 1. We will be delighted to meet you, share friendship, the great outdoors, and garden craft!

﻿
Across-the-Plot Gardening Tips  
 
May 2020! Radiant Flowers & Tasty Veggies!

Are you having fun?! Does your garden make you this happy?! PLANT MORE! 

Coolish April temps delayed bell pepper plantings...until we had three quite hot days of 80-90s temps at the very last of April then a set of warm enough days! Night temps are now faithfully above 55°.  Sweet peppers need nighttime temps that are steadily above 55°F, some say 60, and soil temps above 65°F. April 28 8 AM soil temps at Rancheria Community Garden were 65 to 70, from wet to dry plots, in the sun. Get out your soil thermometer and check the soil temp where you garden! If planted too soon, sometimes plants miss their natural sequence of production, and never produce. Best to replant if you suspect this is happening. See Best Planting Temps Per Veggie! 
May, June Planting Timing    MAY is time for cantaloupe, sweet bell peppers, pumpkins and squash! Wait until the soil has warmed to 70°F before planting squash and melons. Many wait until May, some even June, for warmer drier soil, to plant tomatoes to avoid soil fungi. Some gardeners wait until JUNE to plant okra. Okra really likes heat and grows quickly when happy. Choose faster maturing varieties for coastal SoCal. If YOU anticipate a HOT summer, plant a tad earlier, but be prepared to deal with it if summer is overcast as often is the case after all.  Long beans are spectacular and love heat. Late May, June is the best time to start them. They grow quickly from seed. They will last longer than other beans, hitting their stride toward the end of summer. Certain varieties of them don't get mildew either! Their unique flavor keeps your table interesting.   While we are waiting for the right temps, do soil preps that are still needed. Weed out plants that won't help your summer lovers. Make your soil fluffy with water holding compost, only 5 to 10%, while also adding tasty well aged manure! Add worm castings to areas that will be seeded. Castings improve germination, germination is sooner, seedlings healthier!  Plant another round of your favorite heat lovers! Might be eggplant, limas, peppers and pumpkins! Transplant or seed different varieties of beans, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, peppers, squash, and tomatoes than you planted before! Sow and/or transplant asparagus, beets, carrots, celery, chard, herbs, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, heat-tolerant leaf lettuce, summer-maturing onions, parsley, peanuts, rhubarb and spinach! Add white potatoes and radish with zucchini, radishes with cukes to repel cuke beetles, and with eggplant to repel flea beetles. Add fillers and littles under bigger plants as living mulch! Put some color in your choices! Plant RED table onions, fancy lettuces! Tips for super Successful Transplanting!
Choose heat and drought tolerant varieties when you can. For example, why wait when it gets HOT and your tomato stops setting fruit?! Get heat tolerant varieties the heat doesn't bother! Heat tolerant tomatoes keep right on producing when temps get up to and above 85! Rattlesnake beans are a winner! They produce in up to 100 degree weather! They have a slightly nutty flavor. You do have to keep watch and pick almost daily because they get long and plump quickly - and are still tender!   Problem temps for tomatoes:  High daytime temperatures (above 85 F) High Nighttime Temperatures (above 70 F) Low Nighttime Temperatures (below 55 F)   Check out this nifty page of heat tolerant tomato varieties at Bonnie Plants! If your plant is not heat tolerant, wait. When things cool down, it will start making flowers and setting fruit again. See also Tomatoes are the Fireworks of Your Summer Garden! 
Time for heat and leaf tip burn resistant, bolt-resistant lettuces of all kinds! Sierra, Nevada, Jericho, Black Seeded Simpson are some. Green Star wins the beauty award!   Tomatoes! Heirlooms are particularly susceptible to the wilts, Fusarium and Verticillium. Instead, get varieties that have VFN or VF on the tag at the nursery. The V is for Verticillium, the F Fusarium wilt, N nematodes. Ace, Early Girl, Champion, Celebrity, are some that are wilt resistant/tolerant. In Santa Barbara, a low water table area, consider getting only indeterminates. In the Mother Earth News tomato survey, they found gardeners chose heirlooms over hybrids if their soil is wilt/blight free. Otherwise, the longer the gardener has gardened, they more they chose wilt resistant toms if their soil has fungi. La Sumida has the largest tomato selection in the Santa Barbara area! They are currently open by appt! See Special Planting and growing tips for your Tomatoes and Cucumbers! If you are interested in the Indigo family of tomatoes, in the Santa Barbara area, Terra Sol and La Sumida both have them this year! 
Once you have these strong varieties installed particular maintenance will keep them healthy longer.
	•	Remove any leaves that will touch the ground if weighted with rain, dew or by watering. 
	•	Remove infected leaves the curl the length of the leaf or get brown spots. 
	•	Lay down a loose 1" deep straw mulch blanket to allow air circulation and the soil to dry. No friendly fungi habitat. The most important purpose of this mulch is to keep your plant's leaves from being water splashed or in contact with soil, which is the main way they get fungi/blight diseases.
	•	When the straw gets flat and tired, remove (don't compost) and replace. 
   Flowers or veggies that are great companion plants for your tomatoes!
Companion Plants! Always be thinking what goes near, around, under, with, what enhances your plant's growth and protects it from damaging insects and diseases, or feeds your soil! Keep the biodiversity rolling! Plant pest deterring plants first so they will be up and working when you put in your seeds or transplants! If you forget, you can always add your companions later.
	•	Alyssum is a great old fashioned pretty border plant, an understory living mulch. And WHITE Alyssum repels the cabbage butterfly.
	•	Basil repels several unwanted insects, is great near tomatoes but not in the basin with the tom. The tom needs less water. Plant the Basil beside the tom basin. The deeper tomato roots will get water used to water the Basil!
	•	Beans, Cukes, Dill, Radish Combo! Cukes and Beans are great on the trellis, one high, one low. Dill to go with pickling cukes. Radishes to deter Cucumber beetles.
	•	WHITE Potatoes with Zucchini & Cukes to repel squash bugs.
	•	Radish with eggplant, cukes & zukes as trap plants for flea beetles and to repel cucumber beetles.
	•	Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!
	•	Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips! Plant with tomatoes and asparagus.
	•	Chamomile is a love! Pretty, great tea, known as the “plant doctor,” chamomile has been known to revive and revitalize plants growing near it. That's especially good to know for plants that are susceptible to diseases. Plant it by plants that are wilts susceptible, like your tomatoes & cucumbers .
	•	Cosmos is for pollinators! More at SFGate
	•	Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents!
	•	Lettuce and carrots make a great understory below larger plants like peppers, eggplant. They act as living mulch! Leave a little open space to lightly dig in some compost or manure later in the season. If you already have enough lettuce and carrots, scatter a living mulch, soil feeding legume seed mix under those plants. At the end of the season you can turn it all under - aka Green Manure. Or remove the larger plants, open up spots in the living mulch and put in winter/summer plants! See much more - Living Mulch/Green Manure!
Now is the time watering becomes critical!   
SEEDS need to be kept moist. If they dry they die and you either replant or if you don't have time, just go get transplants. Of course, the advantage of seeds is you have a lot more variety choices than what you can get at the nursery if you aren't too late in the season to get them if you don't have any more... Always purchase extra seed for accidents and incidents, ie birds or insects.  TRANSPLANTS need to be kept moist the first few days until they acclimate to their new home. Gentle watering. I water once, then go back and do the whole area again, giving the first watering a chance to soak down. Flooding is not necessarily a good choice. Soil needs oxygen, and plants can literally drown.   THE SCHEDULE What schedule, LOL?! It all depends on the weather. In our area there are hot days, cool days, overcast days, not often windy. But very hot and windy together might mean watering twice a day, whereas cool and overcast might mean an inch of water a week could be just fine. Water beans, cukes, lettuces and short rooted varieties of strawberries more frequently - 2 to 3 times a week, daily in very hot or windy weather. Poke your finger in the ground after rains to see just how deep the water soaked in. Use your shovel and wedge a spot open to see if the soil is moist deeper.   Most plants need to be kept moist. Kept moist. Dry crusty soil keeps your soil from breathing. Compost, mulch and planting living mulch are all good answers. Compost has excellent water holding capacity. Work it in gently around the dripline of your plant so as to damage as few roots as possible. Maybe only do one or two sides of your plants so all the feeder roots are not destroyed. It will set your production back if your plant has to regrow them. Mulch only if your soil temps are up to par. Otherwise, wait, so the mulch doesn't keep your soil cool.  Living mulch has two advantages over dead mulch like bark or straw. 1) Living mulch can be an edible understory of small plants I call Littles. Their shade keeps the soil cool and moist. On balance they need water too, so you might use a wee bit of more water, but you also get 2 crops in the same space! 2) Living mulch can be soil feeding legumes under your bigger plants. They too shade and keep your soil moist and looser. In Santa Barbara a good choice can be White Clover. Get bulk seed at Island Seed & Feed.   The plant that does well with straw is cucumbers! It keeps the fruits clean and soil free, and, drum roll, might slow cucumber beetle movement from one plant to another! Plus, it is great shelter for wolf spiders, daddy long legs and other predators. The more spidies the more healthy your garden!
The first plant you mulch is any over summering Brassica - broccoli, kale. They like cool soil, so pile it on good and deep, 4 to 6 inches, or plant a dense understory of living mulch that won't be harvested, or if you do harvest, cover that spot with straw ASAP! Peppers are quite the reverse, the last plants you mulch. They like soil temps above 65. Mulch keeps the soil cooler, so use your soil thermometer to see if the mulch is cooling it too much for your peppers.

Pumpkins, melons and winter squash may do much better with NO mulch at all! They all need heat. Rather than trellis these crops, up in the air is cooler, leave them on the ground where it's good and hot. You might even put in a straw bale windbreak for them if you have the room. Put the bales on their sides in a U shape that opens to the hottest time of day sun! Put reflective pie tins under fruits, or mulch under the fruits to keep them clean and above ground insect level.
Furrows and basins are perfect for water capture, just like the SW indigenous peoples did with their waffle gardens. The water collects at the bottom, the drying wind goes over the berms. You can raise your tomato and cucumber basins onto the tops of your mounds so there is better drainage and your soil dries somewhat. For plants that are not wilt fungi vulnerable, dig your basins and furrows down, less work because no berms are needed too be made. Let the normal soil level be the 'berm' for the wind to blow over.   Sprinkle and pat on Mycorrhiza fungi right on the roots of your transplants when you put them in the ground. It increases uptake of nutrients, water, and phosphorus that helps roots and flowers grow and develop. Ask for it bulk at Island Seed & Feed in Goleta. The exception is winter plants in the Brassica family - Broccoli, Kales. They don't interact with mycorrhiza.  Save water by using a long water wand to water under your plants, not the foliage. Use one with different settings so you use only what your plant needs, and an easy to use shut off valve so you use water only when you need to.  Garlic, bulb onions, and shallots naturally begin to dry this month. When the foliage begins to dry it's time to STOP watering them. Dry outer layers needed for long storage will form on the bulbs. When about half of the foliage slumps to the ground, bend the rest to initiate this maturing. The bulbs will be ready for harvest when the foliage is thoroughly dry and crisp.
Natural Disease & Pest Prevention!
	1.	Be wise and pick the right plant varieties for your temps and conditions! Get heat tolerant, bolt resistant, drought tolerant, disease tolerant/resistant. If you are just starting, just start! You will learn as you go. Our climate is changing, so we are all adjusting and plants will be being hybridized, and hybridize naturally, for new climates. We can get varieties from other areas that are already used to conditions we will be having. Together we will do this. Locally, save seeds from plants that do the best with the heat and share some of those seeds at the Seed Swap and with other gardeners.
	2.	Think biodiversity! Plant companion plants that repel pests, enhance each other's growth so they are strong and pest and disease resistant. Mix it up! Less planting in rows, more understories and intermingling. Split up groups so pests won't go from one plant to the next, and the next. Allow enough room for air space between, no leaves of mature plants touching each other. That breaks up micro pest and disease habitats. 
	3.	Make top notch soil!
	4.	In planting holes - Add worm castings for your plants' excellent health. 25% is best; 10% will do if that's all you got.  - Add a tad more tasty properly aged manure mixes where manure lovers like peppers will be planted. - Add non-fat powdered milk for immediate immune system support at planting time  - Put in a finely ground bone meal for 2 months later uptake when your plant gets to flowering time.  - Add Jamaican guano high in P, Phosphorus, at planting time. It helps your plants continue to bloom LATE in the season! Its NPK ratio is 1-10-0.2, takes 4 months to become available to your plants. Other guanos don't have this particular NPK ratio. - Add an eency tad of coffee grounds (a 1/2 of a %) if you have wilts in your soil  - Sprinkle mycorrhizae fungi directly on transplant roots, all but Brassicas, at planting time to increase their uptake of nutrients and water. - Use acidic compost in strawberry patches and work in a little where you will be planting celery and string beans.
	5.	Immediately drench your transplants, foliar feed, with a non-fat powdered milk, baking soda, aspirin, soap mix to jazz up their immune systems. Specially give your peppers an Epsom salt and soap mix bath for a taste of sulfur. More details and all the recipes.
	6.	Maintenance! Keep your plants strong while they are working hard! Be ready to do a little cultivating composts and manures in during the season (called sidedressing), or adding fish/kelp emulsion mixes if you don't have predator pests like skunks! Some sites say with good starting soil you shouldn't need to amend during the season. Your plants will tell you if they do need more food. Maybe your soil wasn't perfect. Maybe your plant has phenomenal production and gotten hungry. When production slows down, decide if you want more. Feed your plant a bit and see what happens.
	7.	Keep your plants watered and vibrant, but not so much as to make their leaves soft and inviting to munching insect pests like aphids.
	8.	Trap gophers immediately if you are able.
	9.	Harvest promptly. Insects and diseases can signal when plants/fruits are softening and losing strength as they age. Insects are nature's cleaner uppers, and they and disease organisms are hungry! If leaves are yellowing or not looking up to par, remove them. Whiteflies are attracted to yellow. 
	10.	Prevention A frustrating typical spring disease is Powdery mildew. It's common on late peas, Curly Leaf kales, broccoli, cucumbers and zucchini. Plant leaving plenty of space for air circulation. Apply your baking soda mix. Drench under and upper sides of the foliage of young plants to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day if transplanting. A super combo is 1 regular Aspirin dissolved, a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can. Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains. Not only is prevention so much better than after mildew has set in, but this mix stimulates your plant's growth! See Aspirin Solution.
The usual May culprits!
	•	Cucumber Beetles get in cucumber, squash and melon blossoms. They aren't picky. They are yellow greenish with black stripes or dots about the size and shape of a Ladybug. They are cute but are the very worst garden pest. They carry bacterial diseases and viruses from plant to plant, such as bacterial wilt and mosaic virus, deadly to cukes. Radish repels them, is a champion plant, a hero of the garden! Plant enough radish for you to eat and to let others just grow, be there permanently or at least until the beetles are done, gone. IPM data Straw mulch recommended.  
	•	Squash Bugs like your Zucchini and other squash, cucumber and melons. Plant radish and WHITE potatoes amongst them to repel the bugs. Let some of the radish grow full height, eat the others as usual! You will get three crops instead of just one! IPM info  
	•	Flea Beetles look like large black fleas and do hop mightily! They seem harmless enough, make tiny little holes in the leaves of eggplant, potatoes, arugula. But, those tiny holes add up. As the beetles suck out the juice of your plant they disrupt your plant's flow of nutrients, open the leaves to disease, your plant is in a constant state of recovery, there is little production. Your plant looks dryish, lacks vitality. The trap plant for them, one that they like best, is radish! Thank goodness radish grow fast! Better yet, plant it ahead of time, or ASAP when you put seeds and transplants in.  IPM notes  
	•	Whiteflies do the honeydew thing like aphids do, leaving a nasty sticky black sooty mold or white fibers all over your plant's leaves. The honeydew attracts ants, which interfere with the activities of Whitefly natural enemies. They are hard to get rid of, so keep a close watch on the undersides of leaves, especially if you see little white insects flying away when you jostle your plant. Whiteflies develop rapidly in warm weather, in many parts of California, and they breed all year. Prevent dusty conditions. Keep ants out of your plants. Hose them away immediately. Calendula is a trap plant for whiteflies. See more
   Now is the time to be thinking of soil prep for the future! Gather and dry good wood now for trial Hugelkultur composting at the end of summer, early fall! Woods that work best are alders, apple, aspen, birch, cottonwood, maple, oak, poplar, willow (make sure it is dead or it will sprout). Hugelkultur can be a simple huge pile or an elegant graceful design like this one. Could be right in your front yard! See more!  Plant Bee Food, Herbs and Flowers! Sow or transplant basil, borage, chervil, chamomile, chives, cilantro, comfrey, dill, fennel, lavender, marjoram, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, savory, tarragon, and thyme. Comfrey, mint and oregano are invasive. Remove the bottom of a 5 gal container, sink it where you want your plant and plant in it. That contains the roots where you want them. Mint can jump ship, so keep a constant eye on it! Be mindful where you plant your herbs... Mediterranean herbs from southern France, like lavender, marjoram, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme, do well in hot summer sun and poor but well-drained soil with minimal fertilizer. On the other hand, soft herbs like basil, chives, coriander (cilantro), and parsley thrive in richer soil with more frequent watering. Wise planting puts chives by your broccoli, kale, but away from peas if you are still growing some. Cilantro, a carrot family workhorse, discourages harmful insects such as aphids, potato beetles and spider mites, attracts beneficial insects when in bloom. Dill is a natural right next to the cucumbers since you will use the dill if you make pickles. They mature about the same time.  Let some of your arugula, carrots, lettuces, cilantro bloom! Bees, and insect eating birds and beneficial insects love them and you will get some seeds - some for the birds, some for you, some to take to the seed swap! Grow beauty - cosmos, marigold, white sweet alyssum - all benefit your garden in their own way! See Stripes of Wildflowers! Here are some special considerations - Courting Solitary Bees!
To plant a seed is to believe in tomorrow. Audrey Hepburn, born May 4, 1929
Oh, and please see more about Tomatoes in February's Newsletter!  Updated annually

Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!  The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara's community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!  Feeling inspired? Get the word out! Sharing is caring ~                 SUBSCRIBE!    Friend on Facebook!   Green Bean Connection Blog   
 Back to top

 The Magic of Melons ~ Cantaloupe, Honeydew 
   May is for cantaloupes unless April has been cold. Then it's happily for all melons!  Melons are total beauty queens! Their outsides are marvelous, no two alike! You can grow minis to monsters! The insides are beautiful colors! If you couldn't see in color, their tastes would make up for it! Textures are plentiful! Some of them slither, others crunch! Warm and drizzly down your chin at the garden, ice cold on a hot afternoon, they brighten your breakfast! Fruit salsa on gourmet bread! You can cut them in a thousand ways, from cubes to balls, slices, astonishing intricate veggie art! They can be eaten with your fingers, put in smoothies, as part of creamy ambrosia. Sprinkle with spices, toss with mint. Add coconut or walnuts!   Besides all these delightful features, Melons are good for you!  CANTALOUPE (American) – 100% of Vitamin A, and 24% of Vitamin C    It ranks as the 7th highest fruit in Potassium  HONEYDEW – 53% of Vitamin C
Your first consideration about growing melons is that they are going to take up a fair amount of space depending on what varieties you choose. You can grow mini plants, melons, in containers with a small trellis. You can put minis right in the ground. Or you can grow regular supermarket sizes, or larger, if you have the space. If you want to plant something to make an area more productive, but for now don't want to do a regular garden of many plants and all that tending, just put in the vine plants, melons, pumpkins, butternuts, or large leaved plants like zucchini. So your questions are why am I growing melons, what is the return per square foot and is it worth it to me?  Melons, like pumpkins, need heat! Melons are native to Africa, and the trick to getting the best-quality fruit in cooler climates is to duplicate the continent's hot sun and sandy soil as best you can. Light, fluffy soils warm faster than do clay ones, and melons love loose, well-drained soil! Amend with compost or leaf mold. Ideally, you would wait to sow seed until the soil has warmed to 65/70°F before planting squash and melons. Right now at Rancheria Community Garden in Santa Barbara we have that! Get out your soil thermometer and check the soil temp where you garden! Start seedlings indoors to get the soonest start, but don't start the seedlings too soon! They grow quickly!   You in cooler coastal areas really need the heat. Naked unmulched soil heated by hot sun does the job! No trellises for you. It's several degrees cooler up in the air. Put your melons in an area where they are sheltered or there is a windbreak so they get good and hot! Remember the tricks about windbreaks. A porous windbreak works best.     Use clear or black plastic to heat up the ground. They absorb heat, warm the soil early, conserve moisture, control weeds, keep some pests and diseases away, and make harvesting a whole lot easier and cleaner. Or, use black landscape cloth instead of black plastic! The cloth allows the soil to breathe and water to pass through. Combine that with spun polyester row covers over transplants to give them a fast start. They increase the temperature by 5 to 8 degrees, and conserve moisture. Spun polyester is also handy because you can water straight through it. Or you can use a clear plastic film over seeds or young plants to generate more heat, and late melons can be ripened under plastic, too. Row covers must be removed when plants start to bloom so pollinating insects can reach the flowers.  If you choose the black plastic, lay it over the future melon garden in late winter to start warming the soil. Weigh down the edges so it doesn't take flight. When you are ready to plant, make five-inch, x-line cuts at least four feet apart on 6 to 8 foot centers depending on the size of the melon you are growing - if you are growing several plants in rows. If you commingle edibles and ornamentals, allow at least three feet in all directions around the cut-plastic x. Pull the plastic back and create a hill of soil amended with lots of organic matter. Put a tall stake where the center of the basin is so you can water at your melons' roots. Make your hill and basin big enough to accommodate feeder roots to the dripline of the main area of the roots.  Green plastic film mulch For your consideration, green mulch is to melons, cucumbers, peppers, pumpkins and squash what red is to tomatoes. According to reports of research trials in the Northeast and Oregon, cooler areas, it stimulates earlier and heavier yields of fruits. One person reported the green film was very thin. As a deterrent to weeds, it didn't come close to black plastic. And at the end of the season it wasn't reusable, so they had to discard it. Maybe things have changed since then or it comes in different weights.  If you have super good heat, keep your melons off the ground with thick mulch and even then, put them up on sturdy upside down containers, like reflective aluminum pie tins. You want them out of the munching bug and soil diseases zone. They will color up more evenly, consistently, and you can save space, if grown on trellises, making little slings to hold the fruits up. But if your area doesn't get super hot, on the ground is better than up on a cooling wind exposed trellis.   If you mulch, put a stake where the center of the planting basin is so when you water, the water goes where the central roots are. Save water by not watering the rest of the area that doesn't need it and that would cool the ground. Make your basin large enough that tiny lateral feeder roots get water too. Melons like to be kept moist.  Fabulous varieties!  In cooler coastal areas consider growing mini melons that don't take as long to mature, or early melons, container varieties, that mature in 85 days or less. Consider growing spicy sweet Green Nutmeg, which has been around more than 150 years. Jenny Lind is another green-fleshed cantaloupe that weighs about a pound, 70 days. Early varieties have smaller compact foliage. Vines and the distance between leaves (nodes) are shorter than larger, long-season melons. They flower early and have smaller fruits.  Heat and drought tolerant varieties per Southern Exposure Seed Exchange are:  Melons: Top Mark, Sweet Passion, and Kansas all have extra disease and/or pest tolerances. Edisto 47 is particularly recommended for hot, humid summers where fungal disease is an issue. Missouri Gold produces well through droughty conditions. If you live in SoCal coastal foothills, plant away. If you are in the cooler beach areas, if you think we will have a HOT summer, take a chance, plant if you have room! It's recommended to wait until May to plant cantaloupe.
Watermelon: Crimson Sweet and Strawberry watermelon are good choices where heat and humidity make fungal diseases a problem.
**A clever strategy for instant succession planting, if you have space, is to plant melons that mature at different times. Growing small fast maturing melons AND late large melons = 2 harvests!   Soil  Slightly acid light, sandy loam with a pH between 6.0 and 6.5 is preferred. You might guess melons are very heavy feeders, they are making a lot of plant and a large fruit! Before planting, add in a little extra compost, and leaf mold, some well rotted manure, cow manure if you can get it. Put bonemeal in at planting time so it will decompose for uptake by when your plant starts to flower! Also add Jamaican bat guano at planting time. Jamaican takes 4 months to decompose for uptake, helps your plants continue to bloom late in the season! It is high in P - phosphorus (blooms) 1-10-0.2.  Plant! Seed soaking and presprouting definitely speed up germination! Plant three to five seeds two inches apart and about one inch deep. Keep them moist and watch them grow! Once the vines have two sets of true leaves, thin out the smaller or weaker vines, leaving the two strongest to grow on.  Male flowers come first so they can pollinate the females when they arrive! Not to worry if you don't get fruit set at first. 
Valuable Companions  At the same time you plant your melons, put in radish, marigold, maybe nasturtium to repel Cucumber and flea beetles, squash bugs. Nasturtium can harbor snails, so you are warned....
Water! You are going to see a lot of recommendations to plant on mounds. Here in Santa Barbara CA when we are in drought conditions or you need to save water, I recommend to plant in basins like the Zuni desert waffle gardens technique. You don't need to make berms, just dig a basin lower than the surrounding soil. All the water goes to your plant, less is lost to evaporative wind across the top of a mound, less water is needed. Stake the center of your basin so you know where to water once the leaves get big and cover the area. If in a cooler coastal area, your plant is sheltered from cooling wind, produces more in the heat.   Melons need plenty of water to support quick vine growth in early summer! The rule of thumb is a minimum of 1-inch of water a week, 2 inches is likely better. If you use plastic mulch, it will retain moisture so check the soil under the plastic to see when watering is really required. Once the first fruit ripens, stop all watering. Too much water at ripening time dilutes the fruit’s sugars and ruins the sweet flavor. The melons don’t need the water because they develop a deep root system soon after they start to flower.
Sidedressing  Melons are a lot of plant and hungry! Fertilize every two to three weeks, using an organic all-purpose 5-5-5 fertilizer. In the root zone, put some spade fork holes around your plant. Add several inches of compost to root areas monthly. Water it in and it's like giving your plant compost tea as the water and compost drizzle down in the holes! Especially sidedress melons when blooming starts and every 6 weeks after. 
Diseases
	•	Fungus diseases, include Alternaria leaf spot, Powdery mildew, anthracnose, and downy mildew. Water melons in the morning, ideally at soil level, and only at the root area. Wi want its leaves to dry before evening, preventing fungal diseases.
	•	Apply the Mildew mix! As soon as your little plants are up about 3" or you put transplants in the ground, mix a heaping tablespoon of Baking Soda, 1/4 cup non-fat powdered milk, 1 regular aspirin, 1 teaspoon liquid dish soap in a watering can. Apply foliarly, both under and on top of leaves. The main ingredient is the bicarbonate of soda! It makes the leaf surface alkaline and this inhibits the germination of fungal spores. Baking soda prevents and reduces Powdery Mildew, and many other diseases on veggies, roses, and other plants! It kills PM within minutes. It can be used on roses every 3 to 4 days, but do your veggie plants every 5 to 10 days, or after significant rains, as the plant grows, because these new plant tissues are not yet protected by your fungicide. See more details!  
	•	To prevent powdery mildew, spray the leaves with wettable sulphur during late summer when the nights begin to cool down. 
	•	At the first sign of disease, remove infected parts; remove and discard the mulch around the plant and replace it with fresh, clean mulch. 
Pests  Spun polyester row covers are excellent for controlling cucumber beetles and vine borers. Vine borers are the worst melon pest in some states, but not in California. Check the IPM at the ag university nearest to your location. Though it may be written with squash in mind, just think melon, another cucurbit, as you read it. Remember, row covers must be removed when plants start to bloom so pollinating insects can reach the flowers. Once the row covers are removed, sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the leaves to protect the plants from cucumber beetles. Plant Radish with eggplant, cukes & zukes, and melons to repel wilt-carrying spotted or striped cucumber beetles. Eat some of the radishes, but leave others to grow full size. Plant your radish before you plant your susceptible plants so the radish will be up when you put your susceptible plants in.   Maturity, When and How to Harvest  Harvesting your cantaloupe at the right time is important!   Unlike other fruits, melons, cantaloupe don't get sweeter once off the vine. Color and texture may change, but the taste won't. When the skin color changes from green to gold, keep watch. When a crack forms at the junction of the melon and where the stem attaches, just pressure from your thumb should loosen it to harvest. It 'slips' from the vine. Don't wait, take it then! If the melon falls off the vine on its own, it has likely become overripe, and both the taste and texture will be distorted as a result.  On very hot days melons can over ripen on the vine, giving them a waterlogged appearance. Most summer melons are fragrant when ripe. Sniff the skin, especially the blossom end. If you smell the flavor of the melon (the senses of smell and taste are interrelated), it is ripe for the picking.   Honeydew, Crenshaw, and other winter melons are ready to harvest when they turn completely white or yellow, and the blossom end is slightly soft to touch. Since they do not slip, cut the melons from the vine. They will continue to ripen for several days at room temperature once they are picked.  The sweetest and most flavorful melons are those picked ripe from the vine and eaten right away. They may not be icy cold, but the fresh flavor and perfume more than make up for the temperature difference. Go ahead, open a melon and eat it right in the garden—without utensils—and let the sweet nectar run down your chin. That’s the true taste of summer!  Poor Flavor? It may be the weather: cloudy during ripening, too hot, too much or too little water, it rained a lot before harvest, or a combination of factors.    Saving Seeds is easy! When you save and store seeds, you help to continue the genetic line of plant varieties, leading to greater biodiversity in garden plants and preventing extinction of different varieties. A word to the wise! Like other cucurbits, melons easily crossbreed, so allow plenty of space between different types or cultivars. To be completely safe from any accidental cross-pollination, keep them away from other melons or family members including cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins. Baker Creek Heirlooms says: To ensure pure seed, isolate different melon varieties by 1⁄2 mile or try caging and hand pollinating.
	•	Pick melons for seed saving when the tendril nearest the melon is completely dried, then store the harvested melon intact for another 3 weeks before removing and cleaning the seeds. Scoop out the seeds, put them into a wire mesh sieve, then with running water over the seeds rub them gently against the mesh, using it to loosen and remove the stringy fibers. The final test: Healthy seeds will sink to the bottom of a bowl of water, while dead seeds and most of the pulp will float. Get your seeds as clean as possible to keep them from sticking to whatever surface you dry them on.  
	•	Drain them in a strainer. Pat the bottom of the strainer with a cloth towel to pull extra water from the seeds after they have drained. Spread them on a piece of glass or a shiny ceramic plate to dry (they will stick to paper, even waxed paper). Place the glass or ceramic plate in a cool, dry shady spot for several days. After the seeds are dry, they can be carefully removed from the glass or plate and final-dried before being stored in jars.  
	•	Dry seeds well to avoid mildew. Fluctuation in temperature or moisture levels of stored seeds lowers their longevity significantly. Prevent insect infestations by adding diatomaceous earth, it's non toxic, to the stored seeds in their jars. Add a few pinches to the seeds in a bowl and gently stir to thoroughly cover each seed.  
	•	Your seeds will be viable up to 5 years if stored in a cool dry place, however, the shorter the storage time, the better. Date and Name your seed jar.
All melons are flavorful enough on their own, yet you can enhance them with a sprinkle of ginger or salt. A squirt of lemon or lime juice will bring out the melon’s sweetness.  A popular treat offered by Los Angeles push cart vendors is fresh fruit sprinkled with salt, chili powder and a squeeze of fresh lime juice! it makes a quick, healthy snack or a vibrant side for a barbecue! 
Mexican Fruit Salad with Chili Powder
   Choose 1, 2, 3 or more fruits and/or vegetables—here are some that work well:
	•	mango
	•	pineapple
	•	watermelon
	•	cantaloupe or other melon
	•	cucumber or fresh pickles 
	•	jicama
lime juice chili powder  salt, to taste or not at all! If you use salt, assemble your salad at the last minute—the salt begins leeching juice from the fruit right away.  May your life be sweet and spicy, and melon juice drizzle down your chin!  Last updated 4.24.20
Back to top

 Pollination: Honeybees, Squash Bees & Bumblebees!
   North Carolina's state insect is the Honeybee! The California beauty, Dogface butterfly, Zerene eurydice, another pollinator, was designated the official State Insect in 1972.  First, per Gardening Jones, Pennsylvania master gardener, there is a surprising number of veggie garden plants that need no pollination at all!   • All leafy greens • Brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi • Below ground root veggies and tubers such as carrots, parsnips, salsify, potatoes, sweet potatoes, horseradish • Ground level root veggies such as beets, turnips, rutabagas • Most legumes including peas and beans • Corn—like other wind pollinated veggies, giving them a little shake helps distribute the pollen. • Herbs • Celery • Onions and leeks • Parthenocarpic hybrids do not need to be pollinated and will not produce a viable seed, either. They are good for growing in greenhouses or where the availability of pollinators is limited. Parthenocarpic cucumbers must be grown in greenhouses to exclude bees because pollination causes their cucumbers to become misshapen and bitter.  The veggies listed above will all grow by themselves when planted from seed. And this is quite a list!  To the other extreme, these veggies need pollinators all the time! • Cucumbers • Melons and watermelons • Berries ~ blueberries, strawberries • Tree fruits  Melons and cucumbers can be hand-pollinated, but it is a somewhat cumbersome task. In the case of blueberries you also need some cross-pollination. This is easy to do just by planting two different varieties.  Squash Bees are Specialists!  Honeybees don't help cucumbers, melons, squash, and their relatives, because the male flowers bloom before the honeybee is active in the morning. Honeybees fly from female flower to female flower later in the day, carrying no cucurbit pollen, but competing with Squash Bees for the nectar. Squash bees, are our little heroes! They fly earlier than honeybees, when the male flowers are blooming! See more about them by USDA's Jim Cane.     Squash bees, Peponapis pruinosa, are solitary, native insects that specialize in pollinating cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins and gourds - curcurbits, and have only one generation per year. This male is outside a Coyote Gourd blossom.   Squash bees are bigger than Honeybees and collect pollen in the hairs on their legs! Here they are compared so you will know and protect Squash Bees when you see them! They don't sting ~ if a bee is found sleeping inside a squash flower, it is a male and therefore harmless, because male bees cannot sting.     Plants that need our help to pollinate are:  • Squashes, both winter and summer types—by hand • Tomatoes—by hand or wind • Eggplant—by hand or wind • Peppers, both Hot and Sweet—by hand or wind  Squashes, with their rather large male and female flowers, are easy enough to hand pollinate. Just remember to get as much pollen on the female plant as you can. The more there is, the better the chances the fruit will develop well. POLLINATION is Vital & Easy to Do!  Wind-pollinated veggies, such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, are fertilized by the beating of Bumblebees’ and other insects’ wings, called BUZZ POLLINATION! About 11 AM, when the anthers (they hold the pollen) are most open, you can likewise give the plants a little shake, or a sharp rap on the cage they are in or on the stem where the flowers are. Or hand pollinate using a small paintbrush or cotton swab. In the greenhouse you can help these veggies simply by adding a fan to move the pollen.  Tomatoes and other Solanaceae will produce without bees or human help, just less...  Bumble Bees are like no other, Buzz Pollinators!  Honey bees don’t pollinate tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant or blueberries, but bumble bees DO! They do what is called buzz pollination, sonication! And, Bumblebees fly earlier in spring and bring in our first spring crops! And they don't sting!     Please click on the image or here to see the video!  More about Bumble bees! Excerpts and summaries from Sue Rosenthal’s 2014 post at Bay Nature plus notes by me.   They don't make honey or colonies that can be carried from field to field, but because of their Buzz Pollination, they are especially effective pollinators! The anthers (male reproductive organs) of some flowers have only small pores the pollen is released from. Sometimes wind or visits from insects shake out some pollen, but the amounts are small. Also, many of these flowers do not produce nectar, so honeybees ignore them anyway.
Bumblebees, actively collect and eat not just nectar but also protein-rich pollen. And a bumblebee can cause a flower to discharge a visible cloud of pollen through buzz pollination. The bumblebee grasps the flower with its legs or mouthparts and vibrates its flight muscles very rapidly without moving its wings. This vibration shakes electrostatically charged pollen out of the anthers, and the pollen is attracted to the bumblebee’s oppositely charged body hairs. The bumblebee later grooms the pollen from its body into pollen-carrying structures on its back legs for transport to its nest.
Sometimes bumblebees employ buzz pollination on flowers that don’t require it, for example, California poppies. This may release the already accessible pollen more quickly and efficiently. They also use the energy of buzz pollination for other purposes, for example, compacting soil in their underground burrows (bumblebees don’t build hives like honeybees) or moving a pebble or other obstacle.
Honeybees cannot perform buzz pollination (so far, only a few kinds bees are known to do it), and therefore they cannot pollinate some important crops and wild plants. In fact, commercially-grown greenhouse tomatoes were traditionally pollinated by handheld electric vibrators with names like “Electric Bee” or “Pollinator II.”
Although discovered relatively recently, buzz pollination is no secret. Buzz-pollinating bumblebees make a distinctive, middle-C buzz, which is noticeably higher pitched than the buzz of flight. No special equipment is needed to hear the sound of buzz pollination, just listen for a distinctive middle-C “raspberry” next time you find a plant buzzing with bumblebees.  Honey Bees and Native Pollinators such as native bees, butterflies, flies, moths, beetles, and bats improve, or supplement, pollination for most plants they visit. Now here's a little kicker! Honeybees aren't particularly efficient pollinators. They don’t always flit enough between male and female, and that's the whole idea of pollination! But they do better when they are disturbed by a wild bee wanting to mate. The Honeybee flits off to another plant and pollination goes up to 5 times as when there are no wild bees! Hooray for wild bees! UC Berkeley study   Best is to Plant that year round bee habitat for all your bees! Grow plenty of their all seasons flower favorites, their favorite colors. Grow a Pollinator Meadow at Home in Your Veg Garden! Here and there, let a carrot, daucus carota, celery, cilantro, arugula, or radish grow out to bloom. Make homes for your solitary native bees! Grow a Bee Garden!  Your plants love bee kisses!  Last updated 4.24.20
Back to Top 

 Mulching ~ Why, When, With What, How Much?!
 
Mulch is what covers the soil. Compost goes in the soil and feeds it.
According to Texas A&M University, a well-mulched garden can yield 50% more vegetables than an unmulched garden space! Mulching brings soil organisms to enrich the top of your soil, where the plant's feeder roots are! And, oh, yay, prevents light germinating hungry weed seeds from sprouting! Less time weeding! Healthy soil suppresses diseases! In addition to that, mulching cools your soil, keeps plant roots functioning optimally when it's hot, keeps moisture in. Even only a two-to-four inch layer of mulch decreases evaporation from the soil by 70 percent or more! Water well before applying your mulch, or you will insulate dry soil rather than moist soil. Mulch prevents erosion, keeps your crop clean above the soil and above the soil predator zone, and in the long-term, if biodegradable, feeds your soil! Gardeners.com says 'University field tests have shown that mulch can increase (or decrease) yields by as much as 30 percent.' Either way, 30% or 50% on the plus side is a significant amount!   I used to be a total indiscriminate mulcher, covered my whole veggie garden. I’ve adjusted my coastal SoCal mulch thinking to match the plant and the season! Here are important considerations about mulching that make a difference!  If you are north you mulch in winter and maybe summer depending on how hot things are where you live. In cold, cold winters, you use mulch like a blanket to keep the soil as warm as possible, maybe prevent it from freezing, extend your season, keep plants from freezing. And maybe it will all freeze anyway!
In SoCal, south, in our 'winter' rainy season, pull mulch away to let the sun warm the soil, reduce moist slug and snail habitat, let soil dry so fungi die, to remove pest habitat. Gardeners generally start mulching late April, May, in summer for sure, unless you are super coastal cool, or your garden is shaded. Then you mulch a little later, if at all. Mulching for us is to keep the soil cooler, keep it moist/use less water, keep roots from burning or drying out, reduce weeds.   The first plant you mulch in spring, well before May, is any Brassica - broccoli, kale - that you will be over summering. Brassicas like cool soil, so pile your mulch on good and deep, 4 to 6"! Sweet Peppers are quite the reverse, the last plants you mulch. They like soil temps above 65. Mulch keeps the soil cooler, so use your soil thermometer to see if your soil is up to that happy 65 yet. Mulch may be too cooling for your peppers, slowing their growth.  Beans and plants that have short roots that need to stay moist, you mulch. Strawberries get big pretty quickly and self mulch pretty soon though you could mulch them just enough to keep the berries clean and above the ground level predator zone. Chard likes moist and much cooler, so mulch. Zucchini, doesn’t care. They are a huge leaved plant, greedy sun lovers, that are self mulching.  Some like it HOT! Fact is, some veggies/fruits do better with no mulch at all! If you are coastal SoCal, in the marine layer zone, your mulch, or composting in place, may be slowing things down a lot more than you realize. The biggest most abundant melons I’ve ever seen grown at cool & coastal Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden were on bare hot dry soil in a plot that had a lower soil level than most of the other plots. The perimeter boards diverted any wind right over the top of the area, the soil got hot! It was like an oven! So, let it be bare! No mulch under melons, your winter squash, pumpkins except under the fruits to keep them off the ground up from insect predators, clean. Clearly, no mulch, more heat, equals more water needed. Water leaches the soil nutrients away, so you will need to feed, sidedress, those plants during the season.   Don't trellis your melons or fruits that need heat. It's cooler up on that trellis where most any breeze lowers the temps. Do put up a low wind barrier – straw bales, a perimeter of densely foliated plants, a big downed log, be creative. Let your peppers and jicama get hot! Eggplant is a Mediterranean heat lover! Okra is full sun Southern hot happy plant! Winter squash needs a full hot season to get their full growth and develop that protective hard shell.
Mulch can be many different materials as you can see in the image above. Keep them an inch away from your plant's stem to avoid rot and fungal problems. Be garden smart! When possible, use an organic degradable mulch that feeds your soil too! 
Biodegradable, soil building!
	•	Straw is one of the simplest, fastest, easiest to use, readily available – some feed stores will let you sweep it up for free! It allows air circulation, water to get through. Apply 4" deep or more, enough to keep the light from getting through to light germinating weed seeds, or if you want your soil to stay quite cool and damp underneath. Be sure it is the seed free kind!!!  1" Deep is good where you want no splash, like on lettuce, or to avoid soil splash on fungi susceptible leaves of tomatoes and cucumbers. Straw is the best choice for them because it allows air to circulate, letting the soil dry and the fungi die! For cucumbers, research shows straw might slow cucumber beetle movement from one plant to another! Plus, it is great shelter for wolf spiders, daddy long legs and other predators, helping predator conservation. The more spidies, the healthier your garden! More about successfully growing Tomatoes!  It's important to remove, throw away, not compost, tired mulch from under disease susceptible plants like tomatoes and cucumbers, then replace with fresh uninfected straw. Keeping it moist creates habitat the fungi do well in. If you keep forgetting to replace it, just remove it entirely and let that soil dry. As best you can, remove any soil-touching drooping leaves like religion!  
	•	Grass clippings need to be dried before use so they don't form an impervious slimy mat. Spread them out, run a rake through them a few times. 24 hours and you're in business. Once they are brown, the Nitrogen is gone, so they are no longer food, just mulch. Be sure no herbicides have been used on the grass.
	•	Pine needles, deep downed leaves gathered after a windstorm. Use only leaves that have been aged at least nine months. This allows the growth-inhibiting phenols to be leached out. Run over the leaves with a mower or stomp them in a bag to break them down so they will be at soil level, available to the soil, and not blow away. See more! Know that pine needles can make your soil acidic over time.
	•	A thick layer of compost is often used as mulch though when it is used it is usually covered with straw to keep it from totally drying out, off gassing Nitrogen, nutrients lost. Why waste any of it? Dig it into the soil.
	•	Simple chop and drop! As you are gardening, have your clippers handy to cut up discarded disease and seed and pest free green waste. It can be mulch, or pull back your mulch, chop in your stuff, pull your mulch back over to cover it. If you have time, use your spade fork to put holes in the soil. Insert the fork, rock it back and forth a bit. Spread very well-aged manures. Cover with your chop and drop to compost in place. It acts as mulch while they decompose. When you water, it’s like compost or manure tea to the ground underneath. If you don’t like the look of that, cover it with some pretty purchased undyed mulch you like. Let it feed your soil.
	•	LIVING MULCH, SELF MULCHING is triple productive! It mulches, provides companion plant advantages, and is a crop all at the same time! Closely planted beets, carrots, garden purslane, radish, strawberries, turnips act as living mulch to themselves and when used as an understory they are living mulch for the bigger plants too! The dense canopy their leaves make lets little light in, keeps things moist. Thin them out as they get larger. Eat the tasty tinys! Put plants like these, on the sunny side, around the bases of larger plants. Two crops from the same space!
	•	Living Mulch Legume soil feeding understory! Aka cover crop, green manure! Fling a legume seed mix about under your taller plants, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, kale and let it grow. As some of the plants die, the Nitrogen nodules they form on their roots become available to your soil. At the end of the season you can turn it under for a super feed - add some manure if you wish, but not much is needed. OR, you can clear back spots to plant more large plants of the next season! Just slice in a hole through the legume roots, pop in your plant and you're off! FREE except for the cost of the seeds! In SoCal White Clover is a good choice under summer plants. Be sure to plant companion plants that help your plants before you plant the plant you want to be helped. Add the Clover to fill in; it grows quickly and isn't too tall.
	•	Sawdust, Shavings, Wood bark/chips from disease and pesticide free trees. Ask a trustworthy arborist to deliver chips only from healthy trees. Specify the size of chips you want. They save dump fees. If you are growing organically avoid dyed materials. Generally chips and bark, called perpetual mulches, are used for pathways rather than on veggie beds.  What you don't see in the image at top is large bark chips. Yes, larger pieces decompose more slowly, and use up Nitrogen as they decompose. This is not so good in a veggie garden since that decomp uses the Nitrogen veggies need. Same problem when we do continuous sheet composting/lasagna gardening. The process takes N from the soil; our plants may not thrive the first year or so until a soil base is established unless you use a good bit of compost in your planting holes. If you are using chips from your local arborist, know that oaks have tannins, and eucalyptus and tea trees have aromatic oils that inhibit plant growth. Be careful how you use those chips, even in your landscaping, especially if you want to introduce veggies among your ornamentals. Check to see what is in bagged commercial mulches, how they have been processed and if they are dyed.   Redwood fiber is acidic, good for shade plants, but you need acidic compost IN the soil for acid loving plants - strawberries, celery, beans. Please use redwood fiber as a last resort. Please save our beautiful trees. They take a long time to grow.  
	•	If you are using found manures as mulch, check if animals have been fed hormones, eat pesticide sprayed hays, or pesticides have been sprayed on the manures to reduce flies. It is much safer to get nursery bought bagged manures from a reputable nursery and a reputable brand. 
	•	Cardboard or simple overlapped sheets of newspaper...about 6 will do the job of suppressing light germinating seeds.
	•	 
	•	Untreated Boards as mulch! Your strawberries like slightly acidic soil, and acidic mulch – redwood or pine needles. Also, you can lay down boards between mini rows of strawberries to keep the soil moist under the boards, the soil between the rows that the berry roots have access to. It’s a variation on pallet gardening. The advantages of using boards are you can space or remove your boards so you can easily access the soil to weed or add amendments, you can add or remove boards to make a bigger or smaller patch, you can make the boards the length you need or want, space them as needed per the plant. Planting between boards can be used for lots of other plants too if you won’t be planting an understory! As for your strawberries, they leaf out and get bigger, and in addition to the boards, they become living mulch for themselves!  
	•	Grow your own organic mulch! Comfrey is a great choice! It is a plant with long roots that bring up nutrients from deep in the soil. It has abundant large leaves, and you can spread them about by your tomatoes and peppers. Chop and drop covered with another kind of mulch lets more of the comfrey goodness to permeate your soil. Comfrey has lovely blue flowers for pollinators, other beneficial insects, and hummingbirds. It's best use, however, is as a compost nutrient and speeder upper! Turn in a few chopped leaves! 
   Not Biodegradable but still good!
	•	Gravel, Rocks of a size and color that pleases you, though this would be easier to use for permanent landscaping rather than veggies that change seasonally. But if it's all you have...it works. If you live in a windy or desert area, your garden is on a slope, rocks might be best. Rocks were used in Zuni, Hopi and Navajo waffle gardens.  
	•	Plastic. It works, a lot of commercial growers use it, but it doesn't feed your soil. There are reasons to use different colors for specific crops, ie red works best with tomatoes! In an urban yard garden there might not be enough of that crop to warrant its use. You must put in a drip system underneath it; rainwater can't get into the soil. It might work best in a windy area, on a hillside, where other mulch would be blown or washed away. Be careful with it because it is also used in the solarization process to heat the soil to kill weeds, read also the roots of your plants.  The biggest negative is it also kills beneficial soil organisms like worms. If it works for your situation, secure it with garden staples.
Other than rocks, too much mulch would be hard to do. Too little doesn't do the job. Replenish thinning late summer mulch. Deep mulch really protects the soil and brings soil organisms to the surface where the mulch layer meets the earth. Worms thrive in moist cool soil. Deep mulch feeds the soil and decomposes within the pile too.
If you are going to mulch, do it justice. Put on 4 to 6 inches minimum. Less than that may be cheaper and pretty, but simply makes great habitat for those little grass and weed seeds! Mulch makes moist soil, where a rich multitude of soil organisms can thrive, including great fat vigorous earthworms if you keep your soil wet enough! You see them, you know your soil is well aerated, doing great!  COMPOSTING IN PLACE  One of the nifty tricks of using deeply mulched areas is to build soil right where you need it! Tuck kitchen waste out of sight under your mulch, where you will plant next or simply to feed the soil there! Sprinkle with a little healthy soil if you have some to spare. That inoculates your pile with soil organisms; pour on some compost tea to add some more! Throw on some red wriggler surface feeder worms. Grow yarrow or Russian comfrey (Syphytum x uplandicum) for leaves to put down first, then add your kitchen stuff. Comfrey speeds decomposition. What you put under your mulch will compost quickly, no smells, feeds your soil excellently! If you keep doing it in one place, a nice raised bed will be built there with little effort! 
 
Deepest mulch can act like a compost pile that heats up. It can extend your growing season. By installing it early you may be able to plant earlier. You don’t have to wait to plant! Just make an opening, add finished compost, amendments of your choice, and plant! There are two schools of thinking about fall mulch. 1) As fall cools, mulch keeps the soil insulated, warmer longer, extending your fall growing as well! 2) Or, late summer, as cooling starts, you may find removing mulch is better so the soil is again warmed by the Sun. Get out your soil thermometer and test it for yourself and let me know, please!
Mulching is double good on slopes and hillsides. Make your rock lined water-slowing ‘S’ terrace walk ways snaking along down the hillside. Cover your berms well and deeply to prevent erosion and to hold moisture when there are drying winds. Use a mulch that won’t blow away or be sure to cover it with plastic or netting and anchor it in windy areas - biodegradable anchor stakes and 'extra tall' stakes are available. Carolyn Csanyi has some clever ideas on how to keep your mulch on a slope. Plant fruit trees, your veggies on the sunny side under them, on the uphill side of your berms. Make your terrace wide enough so you don’t degrade the berms by walking on them when you harvest.  Keep your Mulch topped! Cover bare spots and replenish where your mulch is getting thin. 4 -6" is a good depth. Preferably use light colored mulches, like straw, that reflect the sunlight. If your mulch has meshed into a tight layer, use a watering spike so water gets to the roots of your plants or make holes with your spade fork. Insert it, rock it back and forth, water. Straw, rather than a meshing mulch, is better for your veggies.   Remove and trash mulch where plants have had pests or disease; replace with clean mulch. Do NOT compost it or put it in green waste for city pickup. In general, remove overwintering pest habitat – old straw, weeds and piles of debris.   Any organic mulch will decompose. It really becomes sheet composting or composting in place! An 18" deep pile becomes about 9" high in 3 days to a week depending on temps, how wet it is, what kinds and sizes of pieces are used! Such a grand deep pile of mulch can easily become a super nutritious raised bed!
A variation of that is to first plant green manure, a legume and oat mix, let it grow, cut it down at first bloom, chop into pieces, let it sit on top 3 weeks, turn under, then cover that with deep mulch and let it be. If you have them, add some surface feeding worms, red wigglers. Your soil is fed, soil organisms are enriching it, excellent soil structure is being created. In a warm SoCal 'winter' you can do this anytime. The whole process can take 3.5 months depending on which plants you choose to grow. See more!  End of Season   Soil resting and restoration! At the end of summer, depending on the type of materials you used, and if your soil has no disease fungi, the mulch was not under a plant that had pest infestations or disease, you can rest and feed that area of your soil by simply digging your old mulch in. Cover that area with a good deep layer of new mulch, or put on layers of materials and compost in place! Let the soil organisms party out. Leave it alone until your next planting time. It will become living vigorous nutritious soil!  It there have been pests or disease, trash that mulch, literally. Again, Do NOT compost it or put it in green waste for city pickup. In general, remove overwintering pest habitat – old straw, weeds and piles of debris. 
So, you see, there are times to mulch and times not to mulch. Using less saves money, saves work. Using it well gives you a better crop!
Mulch is magic when done right! Enjoy that 30 to 50% increased yield!  Last Updated 4.28.2020
Back to top

Start Growing Your Own Organic Food!
   Self Mulching Delicious Summer Edible Landscaping!  In view of COVID -19, many of you want to start growing organic food right at your own doorstep! Here are some great tips to get you going!  Fast Plants to Grow Indoors or Out! Clearly, you need that food soonest! Fast has a very different meaning when you are talking about growing veggies! Here is a mini list of days to maturity to give you the idea:
	•	Arugula | Rocket | 20-40 days
	•	Beets | 40-70 days | tops and roots, harvest when small
	•	Broccoli Raab/Rapini/Rabi | 40-60 days| leaves and tops are edible
	•	Kale | 30-65 days | the baby greens are much more tender than mature kale
	•	Leaf lettuce | 40-60 days
	•	Mesclun Greens | 30-45 days 
	•	Onion greens | 40-50 days | grow micro-onion greens, baby bulbs, or onion stalks
	•	Peas | 50-60 days | pea shoots are sweet and delicious! (Winter in SoCal)
	•	Radishes | 21-30 days | Radish tops are mild and add nice flavor to salads
	•	Spinach | 30-55 days
	•	Swiss Chard | 30-60 days
	•	Turnips | 35-50 days | Leaves and root are edible
Of course these timings vary per location and climate! In SoCal we have more leeway and many crops can be grown year round. However, if you are in the desert, a lot of community gardens close for the summer - just too hot. With careful management and lighting, you could do indoor container gardening. Try a walapini, a dug out earth shelter greenhouse! It's cool in summer, warm in winter!  Greenhousing is an art! In super cold winter areas others of you may also need to rely on indoor container gardening and installing lighting, and well insulated greenhouses. For ideas and tips:  Greenhouses – the Six Weeks Advantage!   Heating Greenhouses Without Electricity!  If growing your own is too daunting, do support your local CSA, Community Supported Agriculture! Many are organic and you can ask if they deliver. Many do, especially now. You might start with this post on Santa Barbara County CSAs! I didn't see a date for the post, so some of the info may be out of date, but you get the idea. Also great places to support are the Santa Barbara area Farmer Markets!  Combining supporting CSAs and Farmer Markets AND your own gardening will give you the best of the best while you are learning! Farmer Markets are a great place to ask your very local gardening questions! First, ask where their farm is! It might be in a different climate or a town or even further away. Sometimes there are Master Gardener question tables at Farmer Markets! Sign up for their events or get on their email list!  CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE YOU START  There will be water expenses.  Full Sun really is best. Shade is slow, disappointing, plants can just fail.  
 
There are plenty of places to grow veggies once you have decided to give it a go! 
	•	- At home indoors or out, wherever there is the most sun. You might replace part of your lawn if it is the sunniest location or comingle veggies and landscape plants - edible landscaping!
	•	- In a Greenhouse, on the roof!
	•	- Share space with a neighbor
	•	- Start a container garden in your home, on your patio, your balcony, porch - best directions are East, South, West facing. 
	•	- Join a Community Garden. Some of them have waiting lists, so get on the list ASAP. You can always refuse a plot if you change your mind or have found other garden space by the time your name comes up.
If you have little space, go Vertical! Use trellises and cages, pallets on their sides, fences, hanging baskets, towers, strawberry pots, shelves, the roof! Vertical Gardening, a Natural Urban Choice!  Vertical Veggie Garden in a 55 Gallon ‘Drum!’  Gardeners start their plants from seed, just like their parents and grandparents did, or go to the local nursery and get transplants! Transplants are the fastest choice; seeds get you varieties not available at nurseries. Be a little careful at box stores because they don't always sell plants in season for your locality or part of town. For example, Santa Barbara has cooler beach front properties and hot, dry foothills properties that can be hot in day, cold at night, desert like!  Seeds can be planted at the same time you install transplants to get you a continuous supply for your table. Read the seed packets carefully before you purchase them, and if you buy them, again at planting time! Buy from reputable seed houses, preferably organic. Be sure they are appropriate to your location at the time you would like to plant them. Ask around. Talk with your neighbors, local nursery people knowledgeable about veggies.  You may think heirlooms are the virtuous way to go. It depends on the plant, your location, the condition of your soil. If you are unsure, go with hybrids. Nothing wrong with hybrids. Some of them are well bred, have set a high standard, and worth the money! Here are mind opening surveys that were conducted by Mother Earth News on Tomatoes & the Most Productive Garden Crops! They concluded: 'Many respondents declared an “heirlooms only” stance on tomatoes, especially in climates that are kind to tomatoes. Disease-resistant hybrids won more favor in stressful growing situations. Additionally, our survey showed that interest in better disease resistance increases with years of tomato-growing experience.'
When you are getting started, there is no need to immediately make compost or hunt for manure. You can buy it inexpensively, safely processed, in convenient bags at the nursery! Once you get your plants growing you can add composting to your talents, find SAFE manure sources.   
 
 SELECTING YOUR PLANTS!  Best if you like that plant or you will not treat it as well or even somehow neglect to harvest it. But it is a good choice to select some plants others in your household like even if you don't!   Think of Nutrition. Though you may not like a particular good-for-you plant in the most popular ways, see if there might be a way you could fix it that you would enjoy. I'm not a kale fan, but I eat it happily added to soups and stews! I like shredded beets and their greens stir fried!   Smart choices may involve choosing plants high in production per square foot! SoCal in Summer: Zucchini, Green Beans on a trellis, Fordhook Giant Chard, Kale, Tomatoes. In winter, kales and broccoli with greens planted underneath, elegant Chard, and colorful carrots thrive with trellised peas.      Quickest to Harvest! The fastest are radishes, lettuces, arugula, spinach, greens of all kinds, chard. Beets and turnips are two for one crops - you can eat the greens and the roots!  For soonest production select mini varieties, like baby carrots, small beets or cucumbers, eggplants, cherry tomatoes. Select bush varieties of beans and tomatoes. They mature more quickly. At the same time plant pole and vining indeterminate tomato varieties for all season production to follow.  
 
 GARDEN DESIGN  If you need a lot of food in a small space then Companion Planting is the number one technique and makes terrific sense! You can combine helping plants and herbs for greater health and output. See more Herbs to support your garden.  Here is a super summer companion list! 
	•	Alyssum is a great old fashioned pretty border plant, an understory living mulch. And WHITE Alyssum repels the cabbage butterfly.
	•	Basil repels several unwanted insects, is great near tomatoes but not in the basin with the tom. The tom needs less water. Plant the Basil beside the tom basin. The deeper tomato roots will get water used to water the Basil!
	•	Beans, Cukes, Dill, Radish Combo! Cukes and Beans are great on the trellis, one high, one low. Dill to go with pickling cukes. Radishes to deter Cucumber beetles.
	•	WHITE Potatoes with Zucchini & Cukes to repel squash bugs.
	•	Radish with eggplant, cukes & zukes as trap plants for flea beetles and to repel cucumber beetles.
	•	Carrots love being with cilantro and chamomile, and chamomile improves the flavor of any neighboring herb!
	•	Calendula traps aphids, whiteflies, and thrips!
	•	Chamomile is a love! Pretty, great tea, known as the “plant doctor,” chamomile has been known to revive and revitalize plants growing near it. That's especially good to know for plants that are susceptible to diseases. Plant it by plants that are wilts susceptible, like your tomatoes & cucumbers .
	•	Cosmos is for pollinators! More at SFGate
	•	Marigolds are brilliant and called the workhorse of pest deterrents!
	•	Lettuce and carrots make a great understory below larger plants - in summer peppers, eggplant, in winter below Broccoli and Kales. They act as living mulch! Leave a little open space to lightly dig in some compost or manure later in the season. If you already have enough lettuce and carrots, scatter a living mulch, soil feeding legume seed mix under those plants. At the end of the season you can turn it all under - aka Green Manure. Or remove the larger plants, open up spots in the living mulch and put in winter/summer plants! See much more - Living Mulch/Green Manure!
Tasty Winter Companions!

- Brassicas! That’s biggies like our broccoli, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, Brussels sprouts.
	•	Cilantro makes brocs grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener! 
	•	It is said lettuces repel cabbage moths. Install transplants on the sunny side under big plants. As the plants get bigger remove a few lower leaves if needed to let sun in; put a few between cabbages.
	•	Aphids and whitefly love Kale, and other Brassicas, so along with that Cilantro, plant garlic and chives among your Brassicas! Remove yellowing Brassica lower leaves that attract whiteflies.
	•	Though this is a pseudo companion idea, research has shown there are less aphids when you alternately plant different varieties of brocs together!  
- Peas and Carrots, NO onions, onion family, within several feet. Onions stunt peas. Carrots enhance peas!!!

Garden Layout is Totally Individual Choice! Other than planting tall to the back, short to the front, so everyone gets sun, the sky's the limit! Get some terrific ideas here!  Summer  Winter

For continuous harvests, sow or transplant your favorites or the fastest-growing crops every two weeks. That's called succession planting. Adjust that as you find out what works for you and that plant, you and your family, your soil, sun/shade and temps!

Congratulations on your new venture! Happy Gardening!
Back to top  

 Veggie Gardening for NO $ at All!   
Pick a space that thrills you! Backyard, front yard, street strip, a cheerful sunny spot where you can put a bench or a comfortable outdoor chair. Put your garden near a water source.
Tools – A shovel and trowel will get you started! A pitchfork is handy for turning compost. Check Craigslist free page, see if a neighbor or friends have extras they are not using. Or post on Nextdoor.com!
If you want raised beds, they can be simple frameless mounds, or frame them with reused lumber, logs, a natural stone border, cement blocks, use old kiddie swimming pools – get creative!
Prepare your soil! The least work is making a mound on the ground! It starts with twigs, straw (not hay), stuff that allows air flow. Then, compost in place! Layer on green wet stuff, dry brown stuff, 1 wet to 2 to 3 dry ratio. The smaller the bits the faster the decomposition. This is the same as sheet composting, literally making soil in place, often called lasagna gardening. Same, same. If you have a raised bed system, build your ‘pile’ right in the bed! No digging, no moving compost! Greens might be your neighbor’s grass clippings. Your straw might come from your local feed store; usually they will let you sweep it up for free! During the fall, after pumpkin events, outdoor events or displays, straw bales are often given away for the taking! These already-starting-to-decompose bales are perfect for gardening! If you get really adventurous, check out Hugelkultur! See Composting Methods, Make it Your Way!
Scout for free manures. Check Craig’s list, free items. Make sure no pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers have been used, stalls not sprayed to kill flies, and animals not fed hormones and the animals themselves are healthy. All you need are trash cans or buckets or big strong trash bags to carry stuff in. If you don’t have a car, do small loads on/by bus, or invite a friend who has a car/van/truck on an adventure with you; repay them with some of your harvest!
If you don’t have a yard area, containers are kosher! Any container will do as long as it has drainage holes in the bottom, or along the side if you are setting up a self-watering system. It can be a 5 gallon bucket to a lovely 1/2 wine barrel! Anything that will hold soil will do! Hang it on the fence, the balcony railing, the wall. Grow plants in the window!  Get up on the roof (be sure that is safe for the weight including when watered)!
Get thee to the Foodbank for free seeds! Seeds there that are donated by local gardeners are adapted to our local climate niche! Seed Swaps are terrific! Some seed houses, like Baker Creek Heirlooms don’t charge shipping!
Great good stuff from your organic grocery store! Eat some, use the rest in your garden! Get fava, lentil and beans seeds by the pound, unradiated potatoes for slips and eyes, mini onions for onion sets. Tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers for seeds. Excellent seeds from the farmer's best plants!
Scout for trellising materials for your winter peas and summer beans. Peas have small tendrils, so wire type materials work well for them, or a string system. Old tomato cages will do if that’s all you have available. Beans don’t have tendrils, so any trellis will do.
Get free mulch for pathways at the Transfer Station, or call your local arborist for free delivery of chipped trees. Ask for the kind of tree you want and size of chips you want.  Tell them it is for a veggie garden and you want disease, pesticide and herbicide free materials. They are happy to save the dump fee. Be there when they are to deliver so you be sure you get what you asked for.
Check Craigslist free page or Nextdoor.com for garden goodies and plant giveaways. Be sure the goods are clean and the plants are disease and pest free. When in doubt, don’t.  Learn how to do Cut & Come Again! You can do that with almost all greens crops! Rather than cutting the plant down, like the whole head of lettuce or a stalk of celery, harvest the outer leaves/stalks while they are young, tender and in good shape!! Let more grow from the center, harvest again! You don't need as many plants and you don't need to keep buying seeds or continually replant.
	•	Be careful with beet and turnip greens. Leave enough for the plant to produce the bulb! 
	•	Cut bunch onions/leeks about 2" above the soil; they will grow back! If conditions are right, Spring onions will grow more around the parent plant! 
	•	Keep peas and beans harvested so the plant doesn't quit producing! 
	•	After cutting the main head off broccoli, let the side shoots grow to form many small heads on all sides of the stem!
	•	MSU's Gretchen Voyle says fennel may have several small plants growing around its green, bulbous base where it comes out of the ground. Remove the big one and let the small ones grow larger.
	•	I also like this that she says! 'It is similar to planting a big row of beets and thinning them so the remaining beets can grow bigger. Instead of throwing away the thinned ones like some gardeners do, wash and cook them for greens and tiny beets. Oh, let’s call that “double-duty cuties” and make it new and fun, too.' 
Trouble?! One of the simplest ways to prevent trouble is to use companion planting. See Beginner Tips for the summer and winter lists! The companion plant is usually also edible! For Mildew, a common disease, use this home remedy mix for prevention – see Pest/Disease Free, Well Fed Veggies! If you do run into trouble, there are many homemade remedies you can make with what you already have at home. An important one is for Wilts diseases: Wilts & Cucumber Beetles, Tomatoes & Cukes!
Canning, drying, freezing and storage extend your rewards! Unless you have a windfall gift, there are the initial expenses of cans and cooking gear, a drying machine maybe. You can sun dry some veggies and fruits. Dry your herbs for seasonings! Give as gifts! Freezing requires secure storage bags. In cool country, growing winter squashes is a no brainer for nutritious long lasting cold season food! Store winter squashes and sweet potatoes in clear storage containers under your bed! The containers are a one time expense unless you have some around. Other than that, you are supplied for a time to come at no further cost.
Save seeds to keep it going! Save some for seasonings, like cilantro/coriander! And if you have extra, please give some back to the Foodbank seed library or share at the next Seed Swap. There are many who will be grateful.
If you go to your local nursery and can’t help yourself, remember, that $3 tomato plant will make pounds and pounds of tomatoes over a season!  A $2.99  6 pack of kale or chard will feed a family all year long! A few strawberry plants will produce tons of delicious berries for your breakfasts or healthy snacking!  Frugal Gardening is literally its own reward!
Last updated 4.23.2020
Back to top  

﻿
Upcoming Gardener Events!
Plan your green future, meet wonderful people, enrich your life, live more sustainably! Check out these opportunities!  Walk, bus or bike to events as possible! Heal the land, heal yourself!

Many of us will miss these Canceled Events...  Santa Barbara Botanic Garden 2020 Spring Native Plant Sale has been postponed. They hope to reschedule at a later date. The Garden Growers Nursery is currently closed. We plan to reopen with expanded plant inventory as soon as we are able.

Santa Barbara City College 19th Annual Plant Sale
Santa Barbara Garden Club was founded in 1940 and for more than 30 years awarded scholarships to support local students. Please make a donation to the Club as you can.

The 11th International Permaculture Day is May 3 in 2020, the first Sunday in May! There are no events shown, so please celebrate your own way and make it special! 
https://permacultureday.org/about-international-permaculture-day/

The May 9 Quail Springs Farm Tour will be Virtual! It is a marvelous learning event as much as a tour! Please Register, Suggested Donation: $5 – $15 much appreciated.
https://www.quailsprings.org/programs/permaculture/farm-tour/

Fairview Gardens SUMMER CAMP Sessions begin June 8, 2020. Register Now - these are prized classes! We'll see how that goes!
https://fairviewgardens.org/programs/

 

International Permaculture Convergence (IPC14) will be in Argentina in 2020
Children, Youth and Regenerative Education
November 28th to December 4th 2020
Be Part of the Change! The Convergence will be hosted by Ná Lu’um Institute. Here is a glimpse of what the whole permaculture community can expect - please see this page and video or their Facebook link.

I know this is an early announcement, but you may need this much time for planning, getting funding for you or your group to go, or to be a presenter! Permaculture is not just about plants, but very much about people as well, our interactions. I do so hope you can go!

Blessings for ALL you do!

Feeling inspired? Get the word out! Sharing is caring ~

  *|SHARE:Facebook,Google,Twitter,Linkedin,Digg,MySpace,StumbleUpon,YahooMyWeb|*
 
Back to top

Leave a wild place, untouched, in your garden! It’s the place the faeries and elves, the little people can hang out. When you are down on your hands and knees, they will whisper what to do. All of a sudden an idea pops in your mind….
 
Cerena

In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love. – Baha’U’Uah
"Earth turns to Gold in the hands of the Wise" Rumi

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. - Masanobu Fukuoka

Cerena Childress, Plot 11 
Rancheria Community Garden
Santa Barbara CA

Also see the Green Bean Connection BLOG! 
Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!  The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is.

	
Feeling inspired? Sharing is caring! Get the word out! 

   Friend on Facebook!    Green Bean Connection Blog     SUBSCRIBE! 			
Copyright © 2020 AstrologicalNow.com, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website.

Our mailing address is:
AstrologicalNow.com
607 Kentia
Apt 1
Santa Barbara, Ca 93101

Add us to your address book

unsubscribe from this list

 			

	

This email was sent to DL-ReMoore@Cox.net 
why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 
AstrologicalNow.com · 607 Kentia · Apt 1 · Santa Barbara, Ca 93101 · USA