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Ask Avis Your Gardening Questions!

Garden Design, Garden Reflections, Native Plants, Pest control organically, Plant information, Soil and Amendments, Tools 11 Responses »

May 032013

Mixed lettuce varieties

by Avis Licht

I’m starting a new feature on my blog as a result of popular demand. Whatever your reason, it’s going to be easy to send me your gardening questions and get a quick answer. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll direct you to a good source.

ASK TODAY!

Honey bee in the borage.

Here’s chance for all of you far flung fans to ask me questions about gardening. No question is too simple. Gardening is a wonderful, yet perplexing activity. Why something works once and then the next time it’s a total bust can be frustrating.

Nature will have her way, but there are methods that work to ensure success in the garden. After 40 years with my hands in the dirt, I’ve probably made as many mistakes as you could imagine, but trust me, I haven’t given up yet. And you can be the beneficiary of my experience.

Ask a question in the comment section below and I’ll get back to you pronto.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours in the joy of gardening,

Avis

Winter Gardening Tasks in the Edible Landscape

Plant information, Soil and Amendments No Responses »

Jan 082013

by Avis Licht

Strawberries with frost

In the middle of a cold and wet winter day it’s hard to think about what needs doing in the garden. But there are a few items on the to do list that will give your garden a jump on the spring rush.

Be sure to take a walk around the garden and check for erosion from rainy day run off. We’ve had some amazingly strong downpours this year that caused some unwanted waterfalls. Read these posts to correct drainage problems. Sometimes there’s just too much water at once and you have to clean up after the fact. Take a look at my veggie garden: (click to enlarge)

: The creek behind our house in full runoff mode

: Flooded path and bed – Too much and too fast

: My veggie garden as waterfall heaven

: Water coming under fence and over the raised bed

: Another view of our creek

Protect tender garden plants by covering them on frosty nights. You can use row covers, sheets, blankets or plastic.Succulents, citrus, bougainvillea and fuchsias are among the frost-sensitive plants. Use stakes to keep material from touching foliage and remove the coverings when temperatures rise the next day.

: This is what you want

: This is what you have to prune

: Dormant canes, waiting for spring

Many deciduous trees, shrubs and vines can be pruned now. Do not prune spring-blooming plants until after they bloom. Consult a pruning guide that lists optimum pruning times for different species.

: Kale can survive heavy frost

: Chard is another great plant for winter

: California poppy with frost

: Strawberries can handle some frost

: Don’t leave your gloves out on frosty days – cold!

Order seeds for your spring and summer garden. Read these posts I wrote on catalog offerings and seeds choices. Be sure to order my e book : The Spring Garden Made Easy. It will help you get your garden going in Spring. It’s only $4.99 and you can download it right now!

: Sowing seeds with children

: Read lots of catalogs. They are full of information

: Seeds packets will have directions on them.

It’s perfect timing to plant those hardy perennials during this season of rain and plant dormancy. It’s important to get down to your local nurseries to check out their stock of bare root fruit trees, soft fruit, and more. Think asparagus, artichoke, rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries, pomegranate and all those great fruit trees. Just don’t work the soil when it is too wet.

It won’t be long before the spring garden starts to grow.

Container Planting – How to Grow Carrots

Container planting, Ornamental/edible plants, Plant information No Responses »

Nov 102012

by Avis Licht -

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Beautiful, delicious carrots from a container planting

People who live in urban areas or in apartments often think they can’t grow food. But using planters can be a fun and easy way to grow certain crops. Containers have their challenges, particularly because of limited soil and need for careful watering and fertilizing. On the up side, you can put them in small places, in the right light conditions and keep the bugs away. For more on container growing, read this post.

A confession – for two years I haven’t been able to grow any carrots, though I’ve sowed a whole lot of seeds. I prepare the bed carefully, rake and smooth it. Sow it. Water it. Watch and wait. Sure enough the seeds germinate, I give a victorious shout. The next day I come out and all the seedlings are gone. Some ravenous sow bugs, earwigs, slugs, snails or combination of any or all of the above have managed to decimate my crop. For gardening beginners, this could be very discouraging, especially if an experienced gardener can’t seem to have success.

See those carrots in the photo? Those are mine. I grew them. In a container! Here’s how:

1. Get a pot: clay, wood, plastic or cloth – doesn’t matter. For carrots, the pot should be 10 -12 inches deep.

A cloth container – use and put it away when you don’t need it. These cloth pots are easy to transport, easy to store: a real plus in urban areas. Find them at this site: Smart Pots.

2. Fill container with planting medium

A mix of seed starting medium and worm compost.

3. Keep seed moist to germinate, keep pot watered, but not soggy. Thin seedlings: 1/2 -1 inch apart.

2 months after sowing, carrots have filled in container and are ready for harvesting

When harvesting, gently separate the greens and look for the largest carrots . Pull them out carefully, making sure not to disturb the neighboring carrots. It wouldn’t hurt to give them a little water after harvesting to settle the roots.

In a 3 gallon size pot (like the one on the left) I will harvest more than 50 small carrots. They are were incredibly sweet and I had NO bug problems.

Be sure to read more about container planting in this post. Sign up for an email subscription to this blog so you won’t miss a post.

Even on tiny decks you can grow fun food. Not only herbs and flowers, but greens, salads and much more.

What to do with Green Tomatoes – A Tasty Solution

Plant information, Recipes 1 Response »

Nov 052012

by Avis Licht

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A quick way to use those end of season unripe green tomatoes.

At the end of the summer we’re always left with a bunch of unripe tomatoes. The nights are cold, it rains, the plants start to rot. It seems like such a shame to lose those tomatoes. I was looking around the internet and found a number of yummy recipes for green tomatoes.

This recipe is a combination of several good ones. If you have left over sweet peppers you can use them and then add a little cayenne to the recipe to spice it up or down, just the way you like it.

Follow the pictures for each step and the recipe is written out at the bottom of the post.

Be sure to sign up for my blog in the subscription tab at the left. Put in your email and you’ll receive a notice of my blogs the day I write them. Here’s one on growing tomatoes.

Get your ingredients together to mix with olive oil, salt and a dash of sugar in a medium bowl.

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Chop green tomatoes, onions, peppers and garlic in chunks.

Mix ingredients in bowl before roasting

2. Toss tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic with olive oil, salt and sugar in a bowl.

3. Roast in 350 deg oven for about 30 minutes until soft.

4. Chop your vegetables into small pieces.

Chopped into small pieces

5.Put these veggies into the bowl with avocados, lime juice, salt, chopped cilantro and cumin. Mix well.

Combine ingredients and add sprig of parsley or cilantro.

There you have it. 40 minutes and you’ve got yourself an incredible dish. Make it spicy hot or not, as you like it. A great way to use those green tomatoes and you don’t even have to fry them!

Here it is:

4 medium green tomatoes
2 small red peppers (hot or not)
1 onion – peeled and chunked
3 – 4 cloves pressed garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
dash salt
sprinkle of sugar
2 avocados
juice from a lime
a little more salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
chopped cilantro – 1/4 cup

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. Chop tomatoes, onion and pepper and toss with olive oil, salt and sugar.

2. Spread on lined baking tray. Roast for 30 – 35 minutes until softened.

3. Chop vegetables into small pieces.

4. In bowl, smash the avocados, salt, lime juice and mix with chopped vegetables. Add the cilantro and cumin. Taste for flavor.

5. Enjoy as dip with chips or raw vegetables. My family took care of that bowl in no time.

4 Important Fall Tips For Your Edible Landscape

Composting Made Easy, Plant information, Sheet Mulching No Responses »

Oct 302012

Fava beans make a wonderful winter cover crop

by Avis Licht

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Whether you plant edible crops for the winter or not, there are a few things you can do to keep your garden healthy and protected for the winter.

Clean up under your fruit trees and mulch with compost

1. Clean out the old beds and if you have room, be sure to compost your old foliage. There are a lot of nutrients in those plants that came out of your ground and you can put those nutrients back into the soil. Composting is an important part of garden health.

Fava beans make a wonderful winter cover crop

2. Plant cover crops to protect the soil from erosion and add nutrients as well as humus to the soil. Fava beans and bell beans can be sown even in cold, wet weather.

3. Sheet mulch to cover large areas to improve the soil, get rid of weeds and prepare for future planting without having to dig the soil. Sound too good to be true? Well it really works. Here’s an article about sheet mulching in my own back yard.

Mulching around plants

4. Mulch the soil around plants. This is one of the most important things you can do in the winter to protect the soil from erosion, hold moisture, protect roots from extreme weather and add nutrient. There are many types of mulch. Leaves, straw, wood chips, compost, and manure are some of the most common and easiest to use. As with everything else in the garden, there’s always lots to learn. Different mulches work better in different conditions. Check out my article on best mulching practices.

Frost on fallen leaves

How to Plant a Seedling for Best Results in Your Edible Landscape

Ornamental/edible plants, Plant information, Soil and Amendments No Responses »

Oct 192012

by Avis Licht

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In Northern California where I live, we can grow many crops over the winter. I’m getting my seedlings in for the Fall and Winter garden. In this slide show I’m planting lettuce seedlings. I’ll show you how to gently pry to roots apart and plant them to reduce shock.

Getting the soil ready is an important part of growing healthy plants. In my book The Spring Garden Made Easy, I set forth a simple, straightforward guide to planting that you can use in any season. Check it out!

Water in gently to settle the roots and get the plants going.

Using a group of seedlings

Gently break apart in half

Firm in gently around the leaves

Open hole and let roots dangle straight down into opening

IMGP5732

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Take a clump of seedlings

Gently break apart in half

Open hole and let roots dangle straight down into opening

Firm in gently around the leaves

Water in gently to settle the roots and get the plants going.

After they are planted you need to make sure they don’t dry out. Check the soil for moisture if it doesn’t rain. Just looking at the surface of the soil doesn’t tell you if it’s moist underneath. Check with a trowel down a few inches. If it’s dry at 2 inches or if the plants are wilting, be sure to water them.

You can find out more about extending your season in this article on row covers.

Fall into Winter – Changing Seasons in Your Edible Landscape

Ornamental/edible plants, Plant information No Responses »

Oct 082012

by Avis Licht

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Bring in the harvest from summer to make room for winter crops

The changing seasons in the garden can leave us with mixed feelings . The end of the summer season means that we need to clear the beds for the winter garden while it’s still warm enough to plant. The regret is that we have to take out plants that are still producing.

I still have tomatoes, but they are ripening verrrry slowly due to the cold evenings and shorter days. Sadly, I’ll be pulling them out. You can bring in the green tomatoes and they will ripen, though not as perfectly as they did on the vine in the middle of summer.

Even cherry tomatoes are slow to ripen in the Fall.

Happily, this will make room for my winter crops, like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce. I’ll be writing about what to grow for winter and how to do it. Be sure to subscribe to my blog so that you can get updates every time I write.

At the Indian Valley College Farm and Garden, the students were busy pulling out the summer crops like cucumbers, beans and squash to make room for the cool weather crops. They were making wonderful piles of compost. Layering greens, dry material, manure and water. Nothing goes to waste in the garden. We may loose a few cucumbers, but gain a lot of compost.

Starting the compost pile.

Take the plants that are done producing and start your compost!

In areas that you won’t be putting in food crops, be sure to cover the ground with cover crops to enhance fertility and protect the soil. Use fava beans, bell beans, vetch, clover and buckwheat.

Large seeded plants like beans and peas can go directly into the soil.

How to Preserve Apples from your Edible Landscape

Ornamental/edible plants, Plant information, Recipes No Responses »

Sep 212012

We love our apples, but they come in all at once. Here are some ways to preserve those apples.

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by Avis Licht

Fruit trees are one of the easiest ways to incorporate edible plants into an ornamental landscape. They flower, they fruit, they’re relatively easy to take care of, they provide shade and beauty BUT they give all their fruit at one time. One of the biggest complaints I have from my clients is that they don’t want to deal with all the fruit that falls. Here are a few really easy ways to preserve your harvest. It’s so worth it.

Choose apples carefully for storage: no cuts, bruises or bites.

1. The easiest: Cull your fruit for perfect apples that have no worms, cuts, bruises or bites. These fruits will last for months in a cool, dark place. It’s important to make sure they are perfect or else they will start to rot and cause other apples to go bad.

2. Cut your apples and make applesauce: This is a good way to use “imperfect” fruit. Cut your apples into slices and remove any bad parts. I leave on the skins. I add a little fresh lemon juice which adds flavor and keeps the apples from turning brown. In this batch I used a little Rose water for flavor. Add a couple of tablespoons water and cook on simmer until the apples are chunky. Store in the refrigerator up to a week. It is divine.

Use only a few tablespoons of water and put on simmer until cooked into a chunky sauce. Put in the refrigerator and it will last a week.

You can find this in Mediterranean food markets.

3. Freeze your fruit: Put a little lemon juice into your bowl of cut fruit and stir it around. Put fruit into ziploc bags and throw them into the freezer. They’ll be ready for pie, sauce or smoothies any time. I wrote a post last Fall on freezing. You can read about it here.

4. Dehydrating fruit: This takes a little more time, but can offer some really tasty treats for later on. This dehydrator is not expensive and is small enough to store when not in use.

A small scale dehydrator can be used for many fruits and vegetables.

I use fresh lemon juice and mix it with water. Using a sharp knife I cut the apple in half and remove the core. Slice in 1/4″ layers. Laying the fruit in a shallow dish I put the fruit and lemon juice mixture together. This keeps the fruit from turning dark and gives it a great flavor.

Juice some lemons and mix with a little water.

Cut in 1/4 inch slices and dip in lemon juice

Lay out in trays and let the machine do its thing. Mine took overnight to get most of the moisture out.

Lay out sliced apples.

When done they should be flexible and leathery, but not watery. Let them cool and put them in ziploc bags in the fridge for storage. They are really sweet and make a delicious snack for kids.

Check your dehydrator periodically to make sure the apples are drying evenly.

5. Share, share and share some more. Bring your extra fruit and veggies to your local food bank. They’ll love you and love the food.

Tomatoes – Sweet and Getting Sweeter – When to Pick the Perfect Tomato

Plant information 1 Response »

Aug 282012

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by Avis Licht

There is something very interesting about the green shoulder on this tomato.

It’s often hard to find a ripe, delicious tomato in the store. For that reason, tomatoes are one of the most popular plants to grow in the home vegetable garden. Tomatoes for large scale agriculture have been bred to have tough skins and are picked unripe in order to ship them in large containers without getting squished. These tomatoes have nothing in common with an old fashioned, well grown tomato, picked ripe.

This blog is not about how to grow a tomato, of which there are many varieties and can be grown in many locales. That’s for another day. What I will talk about is the meaning of the surprise markings on many heirloom tomatoes.

We usually think about ripe tomatoes in terms of red. Green means not ripe. WRONG! The green shoulder on a tomato influences the amount of sugar in the ripe fruit. If green shoulders don’t sound familiar, that’s because most commercial tomatoes don’t have them anymore. The dark green parts have more chloroplasts, which turn sunlight into sugars. Scientists think that increases the amount of sugar in the tomato by about twenty percent. You can read more about it in this article from UC Davis Food and Science Department.

Tomatoes come in many colors and shapes. They have different flavors as well. It’s worth growing your own.

Watch your tomatoes as they grow, and when they start turning color, whatever color they’re supposed to be, pick them while they’re still a little firm. If possible hold back on the irrigation before harvesting. It makes them sweeter.

There is a little section near the top of the tomato. Pick it at that section and leave the cap on. The tomato will keep better and you won’t be as likely to rip off the whole branch.

There’s so much to learn about growing the healthiest and best tasting fruit and vegetables, but the most important part is to just start! Let me know what your favorite tomato varieties are.

When to Harvest String Beans in Your Edible Landscape

Plant information No Responses »

Aug 232012

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by Avis Licht

String beans and cherry tomatoes are ripe and ready to harvest

As if it isn’t hard enough to grow your food, you also have to figure out when to harvest it. This may not seem like such a hard thing to do, but there is a big difference in taste and nutritional value when you harvest at the correct time.

It is not always obvious when to pick your veggies. Here are some tips.

BEANS

Green Beans, whether bush or pole beans are harvested the same. This green bean is long and slender. It has not started to puff out where the bean seed will be forming.

Slim, yet juicy, this bean is ready to eat.

Once the bean starts getting rounded, it will be tough to eat and not taste as good. The bumps mean that seed is forming and the plant is getting ready to reproduce. Check out this photo of the beans side by side.

The beans on the left will be tender and juicy. The ones on the right have started to form bean seed and will be tough.

From this cross section you can see that the bean on the left has not started to form its seed and is tender. The bean on the right will be quite tough. I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. Once beans start to produce, they come on fast and furious and it can be hard to keep up with the picking. It’s a lot like a treasure hunt. Keep lifting those leaves up and look for your ripe beans.

One reason I really like people to harvest at the right time, is that the taste is so much sweeter. Kids, in particular are really sensitive to taste and sweetness and we want them to LOVE their veggies. Come back and find out about tomatoes. There is some very interesting information I bet you don’t know.

There is something about the green shoulder on this tomato. Come back to find out what it is.

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