(Lori Adams, who owns Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden and is a frequent vendor at the Sitka Farmers Market, will be writing a regular garden column in the Daily Sitka Sentinel this summer. The Sentinel is allowing us to reprint the columns on this site after they first appear in the newspaper. This column appeared on Page 4 of the Wednesday, May 2, 2012, edition of the Daily Sitka Sentinel.)

GARDENING IN SITKA

By Lori Adams

EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNED ABOUT PLANTING CARROTS

The carrots that are grown in Sitka are the best I have ever tasted. They are so sweet that they are more like candy than a vegetable. They are probably the single most popular item grown at the Down To Earth U-Pick Garden.

Kids love to try to judge the size of the carrot by brushing aside the dirt and looking at the tops. I never get tired of the look of joy and amazement on their faces after they finally make their selection, pull one up and get a look at their prize.

Carrots grow in fairly poor soil, don’t take up a lot of space and provide a lot of poundage per square foot. To get your bed ready for carrots, be sure the soil is not heavily fertilized. Carrots do not like a lot of nitrogen. It makes them grow beautiful, luscious tops and small, hairy roots.

It’s best to amend the bed with a small amount of organic material, like broken down leaves from last fall and then, right before planting the seeds bury starfish or amend with purchased bone meal. It’s good to add sand to the soil if you can get it. Next you should sift out any gravel or sticks that could cause the carrots to become crooked or split. I grow only Nantes varieties because they are shorter with blunt ends and do not taper. This shape is best because most of my beds are not deep enough for long carrots and my soil is not sandy enough for skinny carrots to be pulled out without breaking.

I used to just sprinkle the seeds on top of the soil and lightly rake them in, but I had bare spots and spots that were too thick, so I recently purchased a seeder. It is an expensive tool, but it’s important that every square inch of my garden is utilized to its full potential. With a seeder you use fewer seeds, the spacing is more consistent and you can predict where your seedlings are going to grow, which makes it easier to weed. Carrots should be spaced about two inches apart.

Carrot seeds take a long time to germinate, so be sure to water regularly. Don’t let the surface of the soil dry out. Because the soil is bare of vegetation for so long, it is important to cover the entire bed with row cover to discourage cats from using it as a litter box. Another drawback of having bare soil for that amount of time is that weed seeds are given free range to sprout. My carrot bed always has the most weeds.

When the carrot seedlings are about four inches high it is a good idea to weed even though it seems harsh on the fragile seedlings. They recover from weeding just fine, so be sure to get in there and pull every tiny weed.

About mid to late July you should be able to start eating delicious, sweet carrots, and you will be so glad you planted them.

Next week’s column — Everything I’ve learned about planting peas.

Brought to you by Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden

2103 Sawmill Creek Road

Open June-August / Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

747-6108 or 738-2241

http://downtoearthupick.blogspot.com/

The Sitka Local Foods Network will host its first planting party of the season from 2-4 p.m on Saturday, May 5, at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm (located behind St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church on Lincoln Street, above Crescent Harbor).

Produce grown at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm is sold during the Sitka Farmers Markets to help fund Sitka Local Foods Network projects throughout the year. The 2012 Sitka Farmers Markets take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on alternate Saturdays starting July 7 through Sept. 15 (July 7, 21, Aug. 4, 18, Sept. 1, 15) at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall on Katlian Street.

Our last work party on April 21 was an absolute success (see photo slideshow above), and we’d like to continue to build on this momentum. In addition to planting crops, we’ll continue with bed building, adding amendments to the soil, laying down wood chips to prevent future weeds and lots more.  Tools and teaching will be provided.  Dress for the weather.

For more information, contact St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm lead gardener Laura Schmidt at 623-7003 or 738-7009. We will need a lot of bodies for this work party. We will continue planting the gardens on Saturday afternoons throughout May, now that we’re past the final freeze.

(Lori Adams, who owns Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden and is a frequent vendor at the Sitka Farmers Market, will be writing a regular garden column in the Daily Sitka Sentinel this summer. The Sentinel is allowing us to reprint the columns on this site after they first appear in the newspaper. This column appeared on Page 4 of the Wednesday, April 25, 2012, edition of the Daily Sitka Sentinel.)

GARDENING IN SITKA

By Lori Adams

TRANSPLANTING TIME

Most vegetable transplant starts can not handle any frost, so it is important to know the average frost-free date in your area. In Sitka we can get frost right up to about May 15, but you can transplant out a full month earlier if you utilize a product called a “floating row cover.”

Our local stores carry several brands of row cover in varying sizes. It is basically a light-spun polyester type of fabric through which water and light can penetrate. A floating row cover protects plants from frost and raises the temperature of the bed approximately 10 degrees. It can lie directly on the plants or be held aloft with hoops, but it needs to be weighted down around the edges to keep it from blowing away.  Here at the Down To Earth U-Pick Garden, I use a seine net to hold it down. But you can use rocks or milk jugs full of water if you don’t have netting.

It would be best to leave this cover on your beds all season, but I take mine off about July 15 or when the vegetables are ready to pick, whichever comes first.

As a general rule I transplant the following vegetables outdoors in mid-April —  broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, kohlrabi, kale and beets.  And I sow these seeds directly into the soil — radishes, potatoes, turnips, carrots and peas. In May, I transplant — celery, leeks, fennel, sunflowers, herbs, zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes; and I sow beans directly into the soil.

The first step in the transplanting process is to “harden off” your starts.  This is a very tedious task which I hate, but it really is a must. Hardening off is a term used to describe the process of gradually getting the transplants used to the outside environment. During this process you carry your flats of transplants outdoors into a sunny sheltered area for several hours and then bring them back inside. Each day you extend the time they spend outdoors until they are ready to go out permanently. This reduces the shock to the baby vegetables.

When transplanting make a shallow dish-shaped depression in the bed and then dig a hole for the start right in the center. Carefully remove the start from its pot without handling the fragile stem (the plant can grow another leaf but it can’t grow another stem). Put it in the hole and lightly firm the soil around it. The shallow depression should remain to help catch water. You can bury most plants up to their first true leaves, but be sure not to cover the growing center of the plant with soil. Water lightly about three times that first day and at least once a day for the next two days if it doesn’t rain. Watering with a vitamin B solution is said to help starts deal with this stressful process. In a week or so your transplants should recover from the move and start showing signs of growth.

Next week’s column — Everything I know about carrots.

Brought to you by Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden

2103 Sawmill Creek Road

Open June-August / Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

747-6108 or 738-2241

http://downtoearthupick.blogspot.com/

(Lori Adams, who owns Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden and is a frequent vendor at the Sitka Farmers Market, will be writing a regular garden column in the Daily Sitka Sentinel this summer. The Sentinel is allowing us to reprint the columns on this site after they first appear in the newspaper. This column appeared on Page 4 of the Wednesday, April 18, 2012, edition of the Daily Sitka Sentinel.)

GARDENING IN SITKA

By Lori Adams

UNDERSTANDING CROP ROTATION

It’s time to start transplanting and direct sowing seeds for most crops, but before you put them in your beds you should be aware of the benefits of crop rotation. Each separate crop depletes the soil of specific nutrients and attracts specific pests. If you plant that same crop in the same place year after year that crop will decline in quality. It is good to determine to not place the same crop in the same spot for at least three years.

Different crops can be grouped together based on similar qualities and be considered “family groups”. To begin planning your crop rotation plan, familiarize yourself with the different plant family groups. There are many books and articles written on the subject. Many books I have read confused me because they separated the plants into too many groups and included too many things that don’t grow well here, like corn and eggplant. But I have used their information to separate my crops into these basic family groups:

• First year (new dirt) — potatoes, radishes
• Second year (amend with organic material and plant legumes that bring nitrogen into the soil) — peas green beans, fava beans
• Third year (amend with nitrogen rich material and plant heaviest feeders) — lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, celery, zucchini, fennel
• Fourth year (amend again but not as heavily as previous year and plant heavy feeders that attract root maggot flies) — broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, Chinese cabbage
• Fifth year (amend with phosphorus and plant light feeding root crops) — beets, turnips, carrots, parsnips, garlic, onions, leeks

This plan is not perfectly by the book, and I apologize if I forgot anything, but it works for my garden. Rhubarb, berries and asparagus stay in the same spot every year and I am planning to keep my herbs in the same spot also because many of them over-winter well and I don’t like disturbing them in the spring to move them to a new bed.

If you feel that you need less than five groups for your garden just minimize your plan to this type of rotation: new dirt (potatoes), heavily amended soil (heavy feeders), used soil (light feeding root crops). If you don’t have the same amount of beds as you have family groups simply divide your beds into sections. Once you have your crop rotation plan in place it is a good idea to draw a diagram of your garden on paper each year and note which crops were grown in each area. Time has a way of helping you forget what you did the years before!

Many gardeners swear that growing specific crops together is beneficial — that the crops help each other in some way.  There is a good book written on the subject named, Carrots Love Tomatoes written by Louise Riotte, that you should read if you are interested in learning more about the technique.

Next week’s column — Transplanting time.

Brought to you by Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden

2103 Sawmill Creek Road

Open June-August / Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

747-6108 or 738-2241

http://downtoearthupick.blogspot.com/

This benefit dinner will include a presentation of the grand prize of the Alaska Farm to Schools Challenge for the 2011-12 school year, which will be presented by Johanna Herron of the Alaska Department of Resources. The benefit features a local seafood dinner of crispy oven-baked rockfish prepared by chef Colette Nelson of Ludvig’s Bistro and students from Pacific High School’s food services program.

Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and students, and $5 for youth age 18 and younger, and they can be purchased at Old Harbor Books. All proceeds benefit the Sitka Fish to Schools program that brings regular fish meal choices to students at Blatchley Middle School, Keet Gooshi Heen Elementary School and Pacific High School.

The Fish to Schools program (link goes to April 15 Juneau Empire article) was a community health project from the 2010 Sitka Health Summit, and the Sitka Conservation Society has been managing the 2-year-old program in partnership with the Sitka School District, local fishermen and other community partners. For more information about the Fish to Schools program, contact Tracy Gagnon of the Sitka Conservation Society at 747-7509 or tracy@sitkawild.org.

This is the third year of the Alaskans Own CSF program, and this year there are four-month and six-month subscriptions. The six-month subscriptions are new this year, and they will allow people to keep receiving freshly caught seafood through October instead of August. Half-subscriptions also are available. Subscriptions include a mix of locally caught black cod (sablefish), halibut, king salmon, coho salmon, lingcod and miscellaneous rockfish, depending on the commercial fishing season.

In Sitka, pick-ups take place on the fourth Wednesday of the month (May through August for four-month subscriptions, May through October for six-month subscriptions) at the Mill Building at the Sitka Sound Science Center. A pick-up location for Juneau will be announced at a later date. Registration for 2012 subscriptions opened on April 13, and the first pick-up is scheduled for Wednesday, May 23. Subscriptions are limited, so sign up early. For those who miss out on subscriptions, Alaskans Own frequently has a booth at the Sitka Farmers Markets.

The four-month summer subscription price (May through August) is $430 plus tax for 40 pounds of seafood total, while the half-subscription price is $230 plus tax for 20 pounds. The four-month share will have two pounds of blackcod and 10 pounds of miscellaneous rockfish in May, eight pounds of lingcod and four pounds of halibut in June, six pounds of king salmon in July and 10 pounds of coho salmon in August. The half-subscription has half shares of each fish species.

The six-month summer subscription price (May through October) is $635 plus tax for 60 pounds of seafood, while the half-subscription price is $335 plus tax for 30 pounds of seafood. The six-month share will be the same as the four-month share for May through August, with September adding one pound of blackcod, five pounds of miscellaneous rockfish and four pounds of lingcod, and October including two pounds of halibut, three pounds of king salmon and five pounds of coho salmon. The half-subscription matches the four-month half-subscription through August, then adds one pound of black cod, three pounds of miscellaneous rockfish and two pounds of lingcod in September, and one pound of halibut, one pound of king salmon and two pounds of coho salmon in October.

The mix outlined is subject to change, as Alaskans Own bases its costs on estimated dock prices that can fluctuate throughout the season. For example, if July king salmon prices are higher than expected, you’ll receive a little bit less of that species and get additional pounds of coho salmon. The bottom line is you get the best mix of seafood possible for the subscription price.

For more information, go to the CSF page on the Alaskans Own website, or call 738-3360 in Sitka. You can contact Alaskans Own by e-mail in Sitka at info@alaskansown.com or in Juneau at alaskansown@gmail.com.

(Lori Adams, who owns Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden and is a frequent vendor at the Sitka Farmers Market, will be writing a regular garden column in the Daily Sitka Sentinel this summer. The Sentinel is allowing us to reprint the columns on this site after they first appear in the newspaper. This column appeared on Page 4 of the Monday, April 16, 2012, edition of the Daily Sitka Sentinel.)

GARDENING IN SITKA

By Lori Adams

FEEDING YOUR PLANTS

New seedlings do not need anything in the way of fertilizer until they have their first set of true leaves. Then I recommend a diluted liquid food administered every watering rather than periodic full-strength doses. It is less harsh and promotes steady, healthy growth. Once the starts are planted outdoors the proper food should already be in the garden soil, ready for them. So what is the proper food for vegetable plants?

First of all, I like to think of it as “feeding the soil” rather than “feeding the plants.” Garden soil is alive, and each square inch of good garden soil contains billions of microorganisms which convert organic material into energy for plants. Plants need many nutrients to do their best, but the three essential nutrients reduced to their simplest terms are:

• Nitrogen (N) — The most important. Promotes green growth. — Natural sources are composted grass clippings, animal manure, herring eggs on seaweed or fish carcasses.
• Phosphorus (P) — Promotes root growth. — Natural sources are starfish, pulverized deer bones or fish skeletons.
• Potassium (K) — Promotes fruit and flower growth. — Natural sources are seaweed, greensand, granite dust or wood ashes.

Our local stores have shelves that are loaded with great fertilizer products. You just need to know how to read the labels. The amounts of NPK will always appear in the same order on the front of the product written as numbers, like this; 8-5-1. These numbers represent the percentage of NPK in the product.  In this case there is 8 percent Nitrogen, 5 percent Phosphorus and 1 percent Potassium, with the remaining 86 percent consisting of inert or inactive materials. The inactive materials help to dilute and mix the fertilizers more thoroughly.

You can research the best NPK amounts for each vegetable you are going to grow, but a good all-around ratio for the general garden would be roughly 3-1-2.  It is a good idea to fertilize (with either purchased or gathered ammendments) at the beginning of the year and again mid summer, but be sure to read any instructions for purchased fertilizers thoroughly.

Compost is a fantastic way to add nutrients, but if you want to use it exclusively it’s best to think of it as a really healthy, nutritious snack that needs to be added liberally and frequently to be effective.  Just remember that the only thing you will get out of your compost pile is what you have put into it. Compost is another subject that will be addressed in a later column.

Finally, don’t forget to address the ph level of your soil.  Even if you have applied the proper amount of fertilizer the plants can not fully utilize it if the ph level is not correct. Ph levels can be adjusted with either purchased lime or gathered seashell sand.

Next week’s column — Understanding crop rotation.

Brought to you by Down-To-Earth U-Pick Garden

2103 Sawmill Creek Road

Open June-August / Mon-Sat 11:00-6:00

747-6108 or 738-2241

http://downtoearthupick.blogspot.com/

The Sitka Local Foods Network will host its second work party of the season from 2-4 p.m on Saturday, April 21, at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm (located behind St. Peter’s By The Sea Episcopal Church on Lincoln Street, above Crescent Harbor).

Produce grown at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm is sold during the Sitka Farmers Markets to help fund Sitka Local Foods Network projects throughout the year.

Our first work party on April 14 was an absolute success (see photo slideshow above), and we’d like to continue to build on this momentum. We’ll continue with bed building, adding amendments to the soil, laying down wood chips to prevent future weeds and lots more.  Tools and teaching will be provided.  Dress for the weather.

For more information, contact St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm lead gardener Laura Schmidt at 623-7003 or 738-7009. We will need a lot of bodies for this work party. We will start planting the gardens in May, once we’re past the final freeze.

The butter clam has one set of rings that go one direction only, around the same center point (Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation)

This past week, there were four suspected cases of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) reported in Juneau. These four cases, combined with a couple of PSP cases in the Ketchikan/Metlakatla areas this winter and record-high levels of the PSP toxin found in shellfish last summer should serve as reminders that the state discourages eating recreationally and subsistence-harvested shellfish on most beaches in Alaska.

The first three PSP cases reported to the Alaska Section on Epidemiology last week involved clams harvested over the Easter weekend near Juneau — the first case reported April 10 involved razor clams from Admiralty Island and the next two cases reported April 12 involved butter clams from either Lincoln Island or Ralston Island. On April 13, another case was reported where a person ate pink neck clams (also known as surf clams) harvested from Shelter Island.

The littleneck clam has two sets of rings that cross each other at 90 degree angles (Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation)

In each case, the people who ate the clams experienced classic PSP toxin symptoms — tingling and numbness of the mouth and tongue that eventually can extend into the extremities and then the rest of the body. Once the toxin moves into the body, it can paralyze the heart and lungs, causing them to stop and leading to intensive care treatment and possibly death (PSP deaths were reported in Juneau and Haines in 2010). If people experience these symptoms, they should get to the hospital immediately because sometimes a hospital respirator can save a life.

PSP can cause severe health problems and even death, and there is no antidote. The toxin is not visible, and requires special testing to be detected. It can occur during any month of the year, and the toxin can remain in affected shellfish for as long as two years. There is no antidote to the toxin. PSP generally affects bivalves that filter food when they eat, such as clams, cockles, mussels, oysters or scallops. Crab meat does not carry the PSP toxin, but crab guts can have the toxin since crab eat bivalves.

A cockle has deep ridges similar to a Ruffles potato chip (Photo courtesy of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation)

Southeast Alaska beaches, like most beaches in the state frequented by recreational and subsistence harvesters, are not tested by the state for the PSP toxin. The state does check commercially harvested shellfish for the toxin, but in recent months at least one commercial geoduck season was closed because of the toxin’s presence.

To learn more about PSP, here is an informational page created by the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) after last year’s extremely high levels of PSP toxin were discovered. This page features information about how PSP is formed, what types of shellfish can carry the PSP toxin, basic first aid for PSP symptoms and more.

• Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning Fact Sheet from the State of Alaska

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article first appeared on this site in April 2010. It is repeated because much of the information remains current and newsworthy.)

As you start to plan your garden for this spring and summer, don’t forget to Plant A Row For The Hungry. The Plant A Row For The Hungry program (also known as Plant A Row or PAR) is a national campaign by the Garden Writers Association of America that got its start in Alaska.

In the cold winter of 1994, Anchorage Daily News garden columnist and former Garden Writers Association of America President Jeff Lowenfels was returning to his hotel after a Washington, D.C., event when he was approached by a homeless person who asked for some money to buy food. Lowenfels said Washington, D.C., had signs saying, “Don’t give money to panhandlers,” so he shook his head and kept on walking. But the man’s reply, “I really am homeless and I really am hungry. You can come with me and watch me eat,” stayed with Lowenfels for the rest of his trip.

Jeff Lowenfels

The encounter continued to bother Lowenfels, even as he was flying back to Anchorage. During the flight, Lowenfels came up with an idea when he started writing his weekly garden column (the longest continuously running garden column in the country, with no missed weeks since it started on Nov. 13, 1976). He asked his readers to plant one extra row in their gardens to grow food to donate to Bean’s Café, an Anchorage soup kitchen. The idea took off.

When Anchorage hosted the Garden Writers Association of America convention in 1995, Lowenfels took the GWAA members to Bean’s Café to learn about the Plant A Row For Bean’s Café program. The Garden Writers Association of America liked the idea, and it became the national Plant A Row For The Hungry campaign (also known as Plant A Row or PAR). In 2002, the Garden Writers Association Foundation was created as a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit to manage the Plant A Row For The Hungry program.

“I am not surprised by the growth of PAR,” Lowenfels wrote in an e-mail to the Sitka Local Foods Network. “It is now in all 50 states and across Canada and there are thousands of variations of the original program — from prison gardens for the hungry to botanical gardens donating their produce from public display gardens. This is because gardeners always share information and extra food, so the idea was a natural.”

It took five years for the program to reach its first million pounds of donated food, but the second million only took two years and the next eight years saw a million pounds of donated food (or more) each year. Since 1995, more than 14 million pounds of food have been donated. Not only that, the program is getting ready to expand overseas to Australia, England and other countries with avid gardeners.

“We have supplied something in the vicinity of enough food for 50 million meals,” Lowenfels wrote in his e-mail. “Gardeners can solve this hunger problem without the government. And we don’t need a tea party to do it! Or chemicals, I might add, as author of a book on organic gardening (Teaming With Microbes, written with Wayne Lewis)!”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one out of every eight U.S. households experiences hunger or the risk of hunger. Many people skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going an entire day or more without food. About 33 million Americans, including 13 million children, have substandard diets or must resort to seeking emergency food because they can’t always afford to buy the food they need. In recent years the demand for hunger assistance has increased 70 percent, and research shows that hundreds of children and adults are turned away from food banks each year because of lack of resources.

While many people credit Lowenfels for creating the Plant A Row For The Hungry program, Lowenfels says the real heroes are the gardeners growing the extra food and donating it to local soup kitchens, senior programs, schools, homeless shelters and neighbors. You can hear him pass along the credit to all gardeners at the end of this interview last year with an Oklahoma television station (video also embedded below).

“One row. That’s all it takes. No rules other than the food goes to the hungry. You pick the drop-off spot or just give it to a needy friend or neighbor. Nothing slips between the lip and the cup, I say,” Lowenfels wrote in his e-mail.

For people wanting to Plant A Row For The Hungry in Sitka, there are several places that would love to help distribute some fresh locally grown veggies or berries to those who are less fortunate, such as the Salvation Army, Sitkans Against Family Violence (SAFV), local churches, Sitka Tribe of Alaska and other organizations. The food the Sitka Local Foods Network grows at St. Peter’s Fellowship Farm communal garden goes to the Sitka Farmers Market, where people who are in the WIC (Women, Infants, Children) supplemental food program (operated in Southeast Alaska by the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium or SEARHC) can use special farmers market vouchers to buy fresh vegetables.

The Sitka Local Foods Network also takes donations of local produce to sell at the Sitka Farmers Markets, and all proceeds from the Sitka Farmers Markets are used to help pay for Sitka Local Foods Network projects geared toward helping more people in Sitka grow and harvest local food. For more information, contact Sitka Local Foods Network President Kerry MacLane (maclanekerry@yahoo.com), Sitka Local Foods Network Vice President Linda Wilson (lawilson87@hotmail.com) or Sitka Farmers Market Coordinator Johanna Willingham-Guevin (johanna.willingham@gmail.com).

• 2010 Plant A Row For The Hungry marketing brochure

• 2009 Start a local Plant A Row For The Hungry campaign brochure