Fertilizer Safety by Joyce D'Agostino

I recently received a call on the Master Gardener hotline from a consumer in Jefferson County who wanted to know which fertilizer that we could recommend to him that was “pet safe”. He planned to use fertilizer on his lawn and garden in the future and wanted to be sure that his pets would not be harmed should they be exposed to the fertilizer when it was applied.

While the Master Gardeners do not typically endorse or promote a specific product, my first suggestion to him was to be sure that he bought his fertilizer from a reputable source and carefully read the label.  Some consumers may not be aware that the label information on products like fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides are actually legal statements. The companies that make these products are obligated to outline on their label the components of their product, how it should be used and any safety guidelines that the person must use to handle and apply their product. In addition it should tell what to do if a person or animal is exposed to their product.

  The label should include the name of the manufacturer and the contact information so consumers can call their customer service department with questions or concerns. If there is no label information that supplies all of these important details, it should be avoided.

Even some products that are organic in nature could be toxic if used in the improper levels or for the wrong application.   All of the information must be carefully reviewed and considered before making your choice.

Taking the time to research the products that are available, read labels, contact the manufacturer with questions or ask for guidance from a reliable garden center will help you choose the product that is both safe and effective.

Cover Crops by Amanda Dowdy

Its a safe bet that those veggie plots and annual beds have worked hard this year, and even if they haven't, it may be a good idea to give them some TLC! The Autumn harvest brings many chores, but this one may prove to be so beneficial, you'll be happy to add it to your clean up routine. Cover crops, or green manure, are grasses or legumes like winter rye, crimson clover and hairy vetch, that can be planted in early spring or fall. 

 

Winter Rye in Raised Bed

Higher altitudes should plant sooner as some varieties will winter kill faster than others, yet others like winter rye may show growth throughout the winter season. These crops protect the soil from erosion and suppress weed growth. Also tilling the crop into the earth in spring improves the soil structure and may fix extra nitrogen.  Its a small step that has a great payoff, so start thinking about next year's bounty and give your garden a boost! Check out Plant Talk 1607 and 1616 as well as some great literature out there. Good luck and happy harvesting!

Here's another couple of links.
http://www.specialtycrops.colostate.edu/rmsofp/green_manure.htm
http://cmg.colostate.edu/gardennotes/244.pdf

Green Manuring By Grace Olson

    Once when I was in early high school my mother asked me to take my old Toyota pickup and drive to a local dairy farmer to buy some manure for her garden. I dutifully chugged over to the quiet farm, where the owner’s teenage son helped me load several tractor buckets full of fresh, steaming slop into my truck bed. I puttered on home and began shoveling it out onto her beautifully maintained plot, eyes watering with the stench and wondering how anyone could stand using the stuff. A half-hour later, my mother came home, took one breath of the chaos ensuing in her yard, and explained to me in some very heated language all about the term “composted.” In the end, her garden recovered and we now laugh about how that was some really “green manure.”


    Fortunately, the term’s actual meaning is far more beneficial to the Front Range home gardener. In effect, using a green manure means growing your own fertilizer and compost. You take a cover crop, usually a grass or legume seed broadcast over a soil surface, let it grow a while, and then till it under a month or so before planting your garden. The tilled-in plant material adds fertility and soil structure to your garden plot. For most of Jefferson County, mid-September is the perfect time to begin a fall-planted cover crop for spring till.

Hairy Vetch

    Choose a rye/hairy vetch or rye/Austrian winter pea mix so the crop will overwinter in Colorado. Mix with a rhizobium listed on the bag and broadcast over your garden. (Rates can be found in Table 3 of Garden Notes 244, click here). You may choose to cover the seed with bird netting or less than one inch of straw to ensure germination, and water often to keep the soil slightly moist until the crop is established.

    The seed will grow all winter while you feast on last season’s harvest, sip hot tea by the fire, and order new seeds for the spring’s planting. 

    One month before you plan to fill the area with your vegetables or flowers, till the cover crop under, thereby turning it into your very own green manure. You can get a motorized tiller or use a spade, depending on the size of your garden. Waiting one month allows the plant material to decompose properly before your seedlings enter and compete for soil oxygen. Its nitrogen is released into the soil and its slime, mucus and fungal mycelia glue soil particles together to improve the tilth.

    Whether you are wrapping up your harvest and can afford the space to cover your entire garden plot, or you wish to fill the area left by your broccoli or tomatoes, a green manure crop will benefit your garden. And, even if you ask your inexperienced teenager to help you, there is a lot less room for error than that other kind.

    For more information, read Colorado State University Extension’s Garden Notes 244. http://cmg.colostate.edu/gardennotes/244.pdf

Herbicide Carryover: From Digestive Tract to Your Garden

Herbicide Carryover Injury

Considering getting manure from your local farmer for your garden?  Dear gardener, you might want to be cautious about this!

Dr. Tony Koski, CSU Extension Turf Specialist, recently informed staff about an excellent publication from North Carolina on the topic of herbicide carryover. 

North Carolina State University received reports from organic farmers and home gardeners of damage to vegetables following application of aged and composted horse and cattle manure to the soil. The symptoms exhibited on the crops are twisted, cupped, and elongated leaves; misshapen fruit; reduced yield; death of young plants; and poor seed germination. They found that one source of this crop injury is the presence of certain herbicides in manure and compost. With so many folks using composts and manures to improve soil, there have been increasing cases of contaminated amendments.  Unfortunately certain herbicides can pass through the digestive tract of grazing animals and into their manure.  Some straw products can contain herbicide residues used to manage weeds growing in the crop. 

Read more about the problem, recommendations and how to conduct a bioassay – a test for determining if that manure you’re going to buy from a local farmer is such a good idea!  Read the report here: Herbicide Carryover Injury

Caution on Compost . . . Can It Be Too Much of a Good Thing? by Patti O'Neal

Amend, amend, and amend.  It is the mantra we all chant when managing our Colorado soils.  We here at CSU are constantly recommending that you add organic materials to your soils to improve water and nutrient holding capacity if you garden in sandy, gravelly or decomposed granite soils and to improve soil structure, drainage and filtration of water and nutrients in clay soils.  Improving the soil is still important for good plant growth and production of fruit and flowers.

But can you have too much of a good thing?  Much is being made, and justifiably so, of phosphates these days and their adverse effect on our groundwater supplies.  As a result many states are adopting laws to prevent the addition of phosphates to many products for household and outdoor use.
It is very likely that one day we will see the content of our fertilizers change as a result of these laws, and hopefully the labeling of our compost products so we know what we are getting.

Photo University of Minnesota

 First of all, let’s clarify what landscape soils on the Front Range do, for the most part, contain. Though varied in textures, our soils have a good mineral and plant available nutrient content.  Plant available nitrogen and iron are the only properties that we lack sufficient quantities of.  With that said, let’s look at the results of a recent study performed at CSU through the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture and the Soil, Water and Plant Testing Laboratory.  The study used randomly selected bagged compost products which were analyzed for plant based nutrients.  Here are some of the significant results of the study and recommendations for how we should use them.

NOTE:  The results of this study do not reflect either an endorsement or a condemnation of any particular product.

*Chemical properties of a given product may vary from bag to bag, both within a season and from year to year.  The analysis represents just a “snap shot” in time, and do not represent a definitive assessment of any particular product.
*Composted manure products tend to be very salty, and often contain high concentrations of plant available nutrients.
*Nearly all the products analyzed, both plant and animal based contained 2-15 times more plant-available phosphorous and 3 to 110 times more plant available potassium, than are needed for good plant growth.
*Plant available nitrogen contents were highly variable in the products analyzed.  Some contained nitrogen in nearly entirely organic form and contained little if any plant available nitrogen while others contained very high to excessive plant available nitrogen in ammonium and nitrate forms.

The moral of the story is that you may be doing something you believe to be wonderful for your soil, when in fact, you are not.  You may believe you are gardening completely organically, when in fact, you are not.

Oh great, you say?  So now what am I supposed to do?   The good news is that there are several things you can do.

*First, be conservative in the amount of organic amendment you apply.
No more than 2-3” of plant based compost mixed into the top 6-8” of soil or 1” of manure based compost worked into 8” of soil (especially if the salinity of the product is not known).
*Leach an organic product before use to help lower salinity.
*Use mulch as directed to conserve organic matter by lessening irrigation needed.  The more you conserve, the less you need to add in subsequent years.
*Try using green manure instead (cover crops like buckwheat, winter rye or vetch) to improve the organic matter in areas where it is practical to do so like the vegetable garden. 
*Make sure that there is a certified organic seal on any organic product that you purchase to insure that the contents are genuinely organic. 

Probably the single best thing you can do is to make your own homemade plant based compost.  This way you are assured of what goes in and what will come out.  Amendments are a good thing if used with discretion.  Until the labels are legally mandated, use caution and good sense for best results.

Put Your Garden to Bed and Tend the Soil!

"Autumn is always bittersweet for gardeners: We celebrate the end of weeding while simultaneously mourning the end of the harvest."

Joel Reich, CSU Extension Agent tells us how to put our gardens to bed.  And in the process, we can make a more fertile garden.  Read this!

Impact of Soil on Veggie Gardening by Gardener Cumax

Applewood Community Garden (32nd Ave. and I-70 in background)

It's been a week since the start of Fall weather, which started Saturday, August 14 with the cool weather. It was cool enough to start turning my tomatoes red. The recent warm up hasn't altered the rate of ripening.I've been the busiest I've ever been gardening this year. The seedlings kept me busy from March to June. Then gardening and yardwork kept me busier from June to even now. I've wanted to stop and write down my observations, some things I've learned this season as it happened but decided that each time I watered I would spend that time observing and memorizing what I've learned and see if those still apply throughout the season.

2 squash plants compete and produce copious amounts of fruit.

What I learned this year can be summed up in one sentence: soil, sun, water and timing are everything.

The "Right plant, right place" foundations to me are:

Soil (place)
Sun (place)
Water (place)
Timing (plant/place)
 
Soil
One of the eye-opening experiences this year was seeing how extremely  well my seedlings have done in other people's gardens. The Applewood  Community Garden is where many of my seedlings took root.
 
At the Applewood Open House on July 28th I was blown away at just how  vigorous this beautiful veggie garden is doing. One customer  "complained" at how big her pink banana squashes were. I couldn't  believe it myself. Her mid-May transplanted seedlings were 20" long,  fat 8" diameter monsters lurking under the huge green leaves. They  
appeared to be 6 to 8 weeks older than mine. Everything was so green  and healthy looking, unlike mine.
 

 A nice sized Galeux d'Eyesines winter squash.

It confirmed my suspicions about the soil quality we have at our  garden: poor! It's why this year I changed my soil fertility tactics:  I can't compost fast enough to improve the soil structure. So parts of  the garden were sown as is. Other parts had 10" replaced with  FoxFarms' Happy Frog. Containers veggies were grown exclusively with Happy Frog.
 
Squash in my poor soil routinely wilted. Squash in Happy Frog never  wilted. Lesson: fertile soil has excellent soil structure. The 2 top  attributes are greatly improved moisture retention, and breathability.  Squash leaves in Happy Frog exhibited small patches of powdery mildew on the tops of the leaves. This is due to overhead watering from hose.  Rain doesn't cause this "salt". But my poor clay soil? Same old same old powdery mildew all over.
 
With moisture retention it is not necessary to water as much. Veggies  require a lot of water. With excellent soil structure it won't stress  your plants because even though the top is dry, the root area is  moist. Overwatering does not have a negative impact; the plants  actually thrived with "too much water" because its root were still  able to breathe.

Two neat tricks: the homemade concrete mesh makes a superb tomato trellis, and even better watermelon cage

 Soil Fertility In Poor Soil Conditions

My other tactic has been to fertilize all of my veggies and plants  with Neptune's Fish Fertilizer. If you use seaweed extract or fish  emulsion you will not have results. I don't know why that is but since  the Denver metro area used to be the ocean floor, maybe the soil  really misses the fish.
 At any rate, I've been fertilizing the heavy feeders (squash and  tomatoes) twice a weeek, and all other plants once a week. The results  couldn't be better. My 6-7' range sunflowers are 8-9' and about to  flower. My squash and tomatoes have done very well. As of August 20 my  tomatoes are 6' high and sending out enough blossoms to attract some  of the bees away from the Russian Sage that they prefer going nuts  over. All plants are very happy and vigorous. This brand of fish fertilizer is the best fertilizer I've used so far.  I used it inside with great results also, but only once as my sweetie  doesn't like having the house smell of fish. Good thing we don't have a cat.

My next blog entry will be about sun. Here's all you need to know: morning sun is what veggies need most.

Garden smarts: pantyhose helps support the weight of the watermelon, and also discourages theft because this doesn't look like something you would want to eat. Applewood has been hit by theft. At first they suspected raccoons, but they usually leave evidence by consuming on the spot.

Gardening Tips: Healthy Soil

Here's a great article about building healthy soil in the Intermountain West. It's different here than in other parts of the country.

Gardening Tips: Healthy Soil | Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine

New to Colorado? Five Gardening Tips for Success by Donna Duffy

Welcome to Colorado! Regardless where you came from, you are likely to find gardening in Colorado different from your home state – both rewarding and challenging. Following are five tips to help you get started on the right foot.

1.    Get familiar with your soil. Colorado has 30-40 different classes of soil, and soils can vary immensely even in the same neighborhood. Before you start planting, take time to get a soil test. Colorado State University will analyze your soil sample for pH, soluble salts, organic matter, nitrate nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, iron, copper, manganese, lime and soil texture. The report will include suggestions that relate your results to fertilizer and soil management. There is a cost for this service, but in the long run, it will save you time and money as you create your landscape. Check out the following website for information about soil testing: http://www.soiltestinglab.colostate.edu/

2.    Once you know about your soil, be prepared to amend it. Soil amendment is a challenge in our semiarid, highly alkaline, heavy clay soils. Adding too much organic matter all at once can lead to the accumulation of natural, soluble salts. A better strategy is to slowly, over a period of years, add small amounts of organic amendments to the soil. Here are some other DOs and DON’Ts. DO: use organic mulches in addition to adding organic matter and minimize soil compaction by adding walkways in garden areas. DON’T: do unnecessary rototilling - it breaks up the soil structure; don’t use unnecessary pesticides; and don’t use plastic mulch.

3.    Pay attention to the microclimates in your yard. A microclimate is a variation of the climate within a localized area, like your yard. Walk around and make note of your different microclimates. Sunny south and west sides will be warmest. The east side of the house is cooler, and may be protected from wind. The north side of the house will be the shadiest, coolest and generally most damp. Dappled shade under trees will support plants that will burn in direct sunlight. Understanding your microclimates will help you put the right plant in the right place.

4.    Manage your turf wisely. Generally speaking, each time you water the lawn, apply enough water to moisten as much of the root zone as possible. With most soils, do not apply all the necessary water in a short period of time. It is typically most effective to apply only a portion of the water, then switch to another sprinkler to water another section of the lawn. This allows water to soak into the soil rather than run off. An hour or so later, apply the rest of the water. Aerating the lawn in the spring and fall will help reduce thatch and compaction. When it comes to mowing, the preferred mowing height for all Colorado species is 2.5 to 3 inches. Mow the turf often enough so no more than 1/3 of the grass height is removed at any single mowing. A great resource is CSU’s Fact Sheet on Lawn Care: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07202.html

5. Go native! Taking a walk in Colorado's plains, foothills or mountains will bring you face-to-face with the diversity of native plants in our area. For the home garden, select native plants that fit most closely with your elevation, soil, sun and water conditions (remember your microclimates!). Most native plants do well with non-native companion plants to produce continuous bloom from spring to fall. For starters, you could consider these easy-to-grow natives: Rocky Mountain penstemon, prairie coneflower, desert goldenrod, and blue flax. Some native shrubs include Apache plume, rabbitbrush, potentilla, and western sandcherry (photo below). Check out CSU’s Master Gardener home page for extensive information about native plants, shrubs and trees: http://www.cmg.colostate.edu/

Let the Lowly Radish Till Your Soil

I know what you are thinking, dear gardener.  You are thinking, "I am sick of tilling the soil".  Well help is on the way:  try this.

Soil Interface by Gardener Cumax

Years ago someone thought it would be a great idea to put down plastic mulch and then cover it with river rocks and dirt. Eventually this soil interface was 8" below the ground level. I'm not sure what the goal of this was because if it was for weed blocking, that failed. They all do because weeds have a powerful urge to reach the sunshine. I've seen bindweed roots go straight up 24". They were an easy pull though. This deeper plastic mulch was in a different category of futility and aggravation. First I had to shovel out heavy river rocks in order to get down to the plastic. Then I had to carefully and forcefully pull that up. There was no way to get all the rocks off of it beforehand. Is it any surprise that the plastic was littered with root holes? And that those roots were only from weeds? Never underestimate the power of weed roots. the first photo is the soil/plastic interface from the plastic side. This is the very bottom of the plastic. See how those rots are spreading all over? These are mostly bindweed and crab grass roots. In the second photo, look down and right of the shovel blade. There's a smooth area where the plastic used to be. There are some roots there. They're probably pretty weak but I'll bet you anything that right now, a day after, that they are growing like nuts. Free from plastic at last. Speaking of growing like nuts, dandelions do. I mowed the lawn and 24 hours later I had dandelion flower stalks ranging from 2-5" with most of them in the 4-5" range.

Double Digging With a Bout of Stomach Flu by Gardener Cumax

I got back into double digging. I needed two spots of yard dug out because I need sunny places. A huge silver maple blocks my garden for the first half of the day and where I dug is where the maple doesn't block it. I had a small area last year for squash. The dead grass was killed with leaves. I left those leaves on there from November to the first of May. I left it uncovered for 2 weeks to see if the grass would rejuvenate. It didn't, so on with the dig. I was dreading this dig for some reason but it went super smooth. It took me 30 minutes max to grid the grass cuts, dig them and make a small retaining wall with the grass chunks. I got this idea from visiting another gardener who tore out 1,000 sq ft of grass and made walls raised bed gardens from them. That seemed like an excellent idea to me. It takes less labor to move the grass chunks and since it's clay, it's pretty heavy and will eventually compact into its own little retaining wall. Then I got into the double-dig itself. I don't have pictures of this because if I stop, I'm going to take a rest and not really get back into the flow of it. It took an hour to dig it. Those white bags are top soil and composted manure from Ace Hardware. Since I've double dug this out, I need to amend the soil. This is a one time thing for both the digging and amendment. I did it last year to my main garden plot. One time amendment is only possible if you compost. Remember this: feed the soil if you want to feed your plants. Unless one has a compost in place throughout the year, your garden might not do so well in its second and subsequent years because most plants take nutrients out of the soil. These nutrients need to be replaced. You can learn more about gardening from the JeffCo Master Gardener's program. It's a great course with great people.