Monty’s Rose Care Calender – Month of May

By Dennis on May 5, 2010

May:  When the purplish-red leaves have turned green and the buds are pea sized, mix your pesticide of choice according to label directions.  

Add the following ingredients to each gallon of insecticide solution:  

  • (1) one tablespoon epsom salts
  • (1) one tablespoon apple cider vinegar,
  • 1/2 teaspoon (.08 ounces or 3ml) Monty’s  orange label (2-15-15)

 Make sure leaves are sprayed from the underneath side as well as the top.  Always add Monty’s when water is applied to your roses.  

 As temperatures warm into the mid 80 degrees watch for spider mites.  These critters crawl from the ground up the stems of roses onto the underside of leaves and suck the chlorophyll out of the leaves.  It is essential for the vigor of your roses to have healthy green leaves.  Mites do not like water.  So using a hose and sprayer nozzle wash through the leaves, particularly from the bottom up of your rose plants twice weekly.  This is another good time to feed your roses through the leaves by adding Monty’s Liquid Plant Food.

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More Uses for Grass Clippings

By Dennis on May 1, 2010

Short entry today.  Storms are moving in this evening and I have a lot of work to do.  Weather man says we are expecting 4+ inches of rain.  We’ll see.

Anyway, mowing season is in full swing and I have found another use for grass clippings.  My son and I are using them to create paths so we can walk through our garden, even after a rain, without bogging down in this god-forsaken E. Tennessee clay.  Additionally we are using it around the tomatoes to help suppress weeds.

One word of caution that I learned the hard way last season.  DO NOT try this if you have a Bermuda grass lawn and your grass has formed seed heads.  The seeds will germinate and you will spend the rest of the summer fighting to keep Bermuda grass out of your garden.

The benefit of using the grass clippings like this is that it does give us the paths and the weed barriers that I am looking for with the added benefits that I can till it in in the fall to add organic structure into the soil, plus unlike using bark mulch, which is expensive and semi-permanent, I can reconfigure the layout of my garden each season so that I can easily rotate my crops to keep disease and insects in check.

Happy gardening.  I’m back to work.

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Reduce, Reuse, Retire

By Dennis on April 30, 2010

I am undertaking three experiments this year in an effort to not only garden well, but garden sustainably, easily and in a way that helps out the environment.

I have long been intrigued by the concept of square foot gardening ever since I first heard about it while doing a news story in my former position as a Farm Broadcaster (agricultural journalist for radio…you know those guys who wake you up in the morning with pork belly prices and news about farm conditions). 

The benefits of square foot gardening are manifold.  You can produce more with less space, weeding in the raised beds is easier, if even necessary, and you have more control over the environment in which your plants are growing.

My problems with the system number exactly 2.  Number one, philosophically I am a cheapskate.  One of the reasons I garden is to save money on produce.  So spending money on the lumber or railroad ties to build the frames ran my cost per plot up and lowered my ROI.  Number 2, I am a REALLY bad carpenter.  I did not trust myself to build the frames to begin with and the thoughts of piles of mis-cut, mis-measured, mis-constructed piles of lumber and the awkward looking, almost-square frames did not thrill me.

So I have created my own concept for square foot gardening made easy and cheap.  The local tire dealer in my small East TN town had piles of old worn out tires just sitting around.  I knew these were bound for the local dump at some point and would add to the environmental problem.  So, I called him up and asked how much he would charge for some of the ‘junk’ tires.  He told me I could have all I was willing to haul away, for free! 

Never one to shirk at anything that is free, I loaded up two dozen tires (I am getting more this weekend) and returned home.  Once home, I mixed compost and top soil 50/50 in a wheel barrow then misted the mixture with Monty’s Liquid Carbon to improve its organic structure further.

I arranged my tires in three locations for three distinct experiments, the first is my “tire-farm” on the edge of my traditional garden, the second is a ‘kitchen garden’ just outside my back door so my wife can have ready access to them, and the third is my “Tater Towers” out in the garden area.  I will show pictures of each and describe the process below.

First, let me say that each wheel barrow took about 7 shovel-fulls of dirt and 7 of compost to fill.  Once filled, mixed and treated, each barrow-full of my created dirt is enough to fill two tires.  I fill the tires, including the area inside each tire till it is just about flush with the rim.  This new soil mixture is far richer and looser than my native East TN clay and makes a better growing medium without having to overhaul my entire garden. 

One benefit of using these tire gardens is that the black of the tire attracts early spring sun and acts as a heat sink, warming the soil quickly.  The plants in my tires are germinating much faster than those in the actual garden. The soil also drains better than the heavy clay in the garden.  The two factors are a benefit, but also a cause for caution; you will need to water more frequently.

“Tater Towers”

I have planted my potatoes in tires (four seed potatoes per tire) and I may thin them later as needed. As I planted them, I soaked them overnight in Monty’s Liquid Carbon and Monty’s 4-15-12. They have emerged and are looking good.  My next step will be to place another tire on top of the existing one and filling it again with the soil/compost mixture.  Each time the plant is covered, it will send it through a stress which will cause it to send out more lateral roots, each one of these laterals will start producing more potatoes.  The plant then, in an efort to reach the sunlight, will continue growing toward the top of the new tire in the stack. By the time I am done layering the tires, I will have four feet tall towers that should be full of potatoes at each level.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  So far, things are looking good.

The Kitchen Garden

My wife and I both love to cook.  I prefer to use as many fresh ingredients as I can and having them at the ready will be convenient throughout the summer.  In order to accomplish this, I have arranged a row of tires just off of our back porch and have filled them with my soil mixture as described above, then planted onions, tomatoes, basil, oregano, thyme, parsley and other goodies bound for sauces, spice racks, and fresh salads. 

The tomatoes, because they are heavy feeders, and due their mature size  have been planted one plant per tire.

The onions are planted intentionally too thick, so that I can thin them for green onions while letting some of the bulbs mature to full size.  As this planting plays out, I will plant more throughout the season.

The herbs are planted two varieties per tire to make the most of my space.  Again, I will keep you posted, but the ‘crops’  have been planted for one-two weeks and are all looking good.

The Tire Farm

One section of my garden , toward the back and out of the way in case it fails miserably :-), I have dubbed my “Tire Farm”  I have groups of four tires arranged by crop.  Again, these are filled with my dirt mixture as described above.  Although I am not, I suppose you could use just a straight potting mix or regular top soil. So far I have planted broccoli, lettuce (leaf), spinach, carrots, and watermelon with others to be seeded as time and weather permit. 

This was my first year to plant carrots and I had no idea those little seeds were so small.  I eventually gave up trying to separate out the little buggers and just scattered seeded them then covered them with a layer of compost.  They have germinated well, but I am going to have to thin them heavily.  The other crops have all starting germinating this week after being in the ground about 7 days.

As with all of my seeds, I soak them in a solution of Monty’s seed starter and Monty’s Liquid Carbon.

Again, with words and pictures I will let you know how my experiments work throughout this season.

Enjoy, and write/post back any stories you may have or recommendations for successfully gardening in square foot style.  I would enjoy hearing your stories of success and difficulty. Plus, the other readers might benefit as well.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to the results, knowing that I have taken something bound for the dump, that will not break down in my lifetime, and found a useful new purpose for it; one that will benefit my family and the environment (and save me some money.)  Who knows, if all goes well, I may expand.  I have already threatened my wife with an entire garden full of tires next season.

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New way of planting onions, They are up and looking good.

By Dennis on April 30, 2010

After only marginal success with my onions last year, I decided to try something different this year.  So far, so good. 

For those of you following this blog, you know I harvested some free compost this winter. My soil here is extremely heavy clay (more on that in another post), but my onions just would not develop fully in the tight soil.  So this season I (okay, honest moment, mainly my protesting son) scraped up some of the better top soil from unused corners of the garden and mixed this 50/50 in a wheel barrow to create a lighter, more organically rich type of soil.

Once this was accomplished I (another honest moment, my daughter, pulled back the soil about 1 foot wide by 75 feet long on the south facing side of my garden.  I put this strip on the south so that my corn, okra, beans, and tomatoes would not block the sun from my ground dwellers.  This strip is serving as the home to my onions and cucumbers this year.

As the dirt work was being done, I soaked my onions sets in a mixture of 1 tsp of Monty’s 4-15-12 and 1 TBSP Monty’s Liquid Carbon in 16 ounces of water. (I did this for both my white and yellow onions. 

Once the soil was pulled back, I (okay, this time it was me) dug one inch deep holes in the earth spaced 1 inch apart in all directions in a grid about 1 foot by one foot.  Then I placed my onion sets in the indentations.  Once they were in place, I covered them with 3-4 inches of my newly created soil/compost mix.  Two weeks later they are up and looking good.

Without having to fight through the hard East Tennesee clay, the onions are emerging early.

For those of you who grow onion regularly, you will know that onions spaced only 1 inch apart will not develop fully as the bulbs will crowd each other.  However, my plans are to make my first harvest in about two weeks.  This will give us some good, early spring onions, or green onions, and leave those remaining with the space they will need to develop into good sized bulbs.

If you are doing the math, you know that my 2 onions patches must look awfully lonely in a 72 foot row.  Indeed, they do.  But my plans are to plant similar subsequent patches every three weeks into early/mid June so that I will have a continuous harvest of fresh onions this season.

Keep checking back and I will keep you posted on how this experiment is working, but so far, so good.

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Remember: Take time to enjoy your garden

By Dennis on April 22, 2010

Whether you are gardening for the flowers or for the freezer it is important to remember why you are doing it in the first place.  I know many times this time of year I get so caught up in the business of it all that i forget to really enjoy what is happening around me.  I have spent every spare minute in the garden with the kids digging, hoeing, planting, trying to get everything planted.  It has been fun and we should have a great garden this season (my onions are already coming up and my watermelons are germinating nicely.

However, that said, nature is in full bloom.  The dogwoods, red-buds, daffodils are all telling me Spring is here.  My wife jsut harvest some lilacs from the corner of the house and took them to a very appreciative mother who was having a rough day with three grand-kids.  All the while, I have not taken the time to get my camera out once this season.  Shame on me.

So, as a reminder to you.  take some time off.  Go enjoy your garden or at least take a look at what nature is growing for you down that path and just a little to the left.  and while your there, here’s some tips on how to get some winning photographs from a photography blog I subscribe to.

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Rose Tips for March

By Dennis on March 12, 2010

Recently, our name-sake, wrote a nice article on what we should be doing with roses this time of year.  Bear in mind that he lives in north central KY and adjust his advice for your particular growth zone you could be a month or two either way on his timing, but the advice is still valid. When it comes to rose information, there is none better.  Monty, thanks for the great read.

            Are you ready to get started for a new rose season?  Well it’s going to be here when the yellow forsythia blooms signal the growing temperatures are just right for rose roots to wake up and new growth to appear on your roses.

            Last month I wrote about pruning the stems of large roses (Hybrid, Grandiflora, Floribunda) by removing winter damaged stems (those that have a tan or dark pith) instead of a healthy cream color, even if you cut-back into the mulch or ground.  You should want the stored vigor and new growth to emerge from healthy tissue.  If the weather prediction for the next week or so is favorable (no freezes), pull back the mulch, feed with your favorite dry fertilizer (20-20-20) within the rose bed area but as far from the center of the rose bush as is possible.  Plants are like we humans; first of all they want to survive and secondly they want to propagate and produce seed.  If your roses are planted close together then the roots don’t have to reach out very far at all and all other things being equal they will tend to have fewer stems and blooms.
           
           This fact was presented to me by a farmer, Roy, who lives just outside Louisville.  He did most everything different or wrong from what I had learned that one should do to have good roses. He had 300 rose plants planted in three rows of 100 each.  Each rose within the beds were in a straight line 6’ apart.  Each bed was 12’ wide. The ground was bare of grass, weeds and mulch because he tilled the soil monthly adding the rose clippings and 20-20-20 dry fertilizer before doing so. The beds were intentionally lower than the surrounding ground area and he had no watering systems but natural rain.  The soil beneath the rose was heavy clay.  The roses flourished because the ground held the moisture really well. Because the porous fertilized soil was 3 to 6 feet on either side of the line of roses, the roots reached out three to six feet.  In doing so, each rose plant was humongous with twenty or more large stems and with 50 or more blooms.  I have not seen so many huge rose bushes.  Most of the plants were hybrid teas and grandifloras but the floribundas were spectacular covered with hundreds of blooms.  This was an experience I’ll never forget.
           
            Getting back now to your rose bed that is starting to grow.  Pull back the mulch on a cloudy day to prevent damage from the sun. A stream of water can help disengage the new growth from the mulch with less chance of breaking the tender new growth.  Should a frost or freeze be predicted, lightly recover with mulch.  Taller stems may be covered with cardboard boxes.  Do not use plastic covers.  They will do more harm than good.  If you do not cut back the old stems of roses before they leaf out in the early spring, just fertilize and let them grow.  The time to prune will be at the end of the first bloom cycle. Remove the leaves and stems of all growth that did not produce a bloom, appear damaged or are smaller than a pencil.  Removing up to 50 per cent of these non productive stems will cause significant new growth at the base of the plant.  The timing for this pruning will create new vigor and more stems and blooms for the rest of the year.

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Pruning Roses for Winter Dormancy

By Dennis on February 3, 2010

Monty Justice Applies Liquid Carbon to his Roses

Want to know when to Prune your Roses?  Well me, too.  And when I need to know ANYTHING about roses, I check with Monty Justice.    He is one of the co-founders of Monty’s Plant Food Company, a frequent rose judge, columnist, and owner of his own rose care company. Oh, and did I mention that he is an octogenarian?!  So, when he speaks…I listen.

Here is his advice on pruning roses.  (note:  He lives in Kentucky.  You may need to modify your schedule slightly to accomodate your particular growth zone)  Just bear in mind that pruning should be done between the FIRST blooom cycle and before NEW SPRING growth appears.

In the fall, crowns and bud unions should be just below ground.  You can do what I call “pre-pruning” after a frost or temperatures in the 30 degree F. range before the plants are dormant.  Remove damaged, twiggy, crossover stems and foliage, a foot or more from the ground.  Also open up the congested middle by taking out one cane to the ground.  You can do this when temperatures are moderate.  Do nothing to the length of remaining stems or leaves.  Continue to add Monty’s 2-15-15 every time you spray.

 Before the soil warms and new growth begins, (March) do a final pruning – remaining leaves and buds, and tiny laterals at the top of each rose plant.  Seek a uniform height by shortening stems above five feet.

 Begin spraying with your accustomed fungicide and insecticide when the buds are pea size and or the “purplish-red” leaves are turning green.  Disease and insects will not attack until this change takes place.  Add one tablespoon of both vinegar and epsom salts plus one half teaspoon Monty’s 2-15-15 to each gallon of spray material.  No need to add a spreader sticker if Monty’s is added.  The humics in Monty’s takes the pesticides and nutrients into the plant effectively through the leaves and buffers the potential for burn or other damage. The vinegar acidifies the solution making the pesticides retain their viability for an extra day or two.

            Magnesium is significantly important and provides three specific benefits.  

  • It boosts the efficiency of photosynthesis and makes the process of turning sunshine into energy more effective. 
  • It also keeps the lower leaves darker green at least until they are shaded by the foliage above
  • It helps the plant metabolize other nutrients.

 Using the spray nozzle apply Monty’s Liquid Carbon soil conditioner on the rose bed four times at a rate of 2 ounces per 1,000 square feet.  Allow one month between each application for any source of water to take the humic material into the soil.  This treatment is most effective on clay soils.  Do not use if soil has already been conditioned more than six inches deep with compost etc.

 At the end of the first bloom cycle, (May-June) remove all lateral stems that did not bloom and cut back all canes to a desired thickness (one quarter inch).

             In summary, your larger plant size will have increased roots.  The abundance of leaves will increase the energy and vigor of the plant.  Removing a goodly percentage (25 to 40 percent) of the stem and foliage creates an imbalance between roots and the top growth.  This will result in increased vigor, new larger canes, and more blooms for the remaining season.

             Although I’ve not done this with Fortuniana rooted roses, I can see no reason it will not do as well as other root stock.

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Garden Cheaply, Garden Well

By Dennis on January 18, 2010

Welcome to a Monday morning.  I am a little sore this morning from an unexpected opportunity to get out in the garden and lawn this weekend. It’s not too often that we get sunshine and 50+ degree weather in January in the mountains of East Tennessee.

This weekend I had the chance to compost and line out some of my flower beds, prune some bushes, etc.  But it was the composting that I wanted to talk to you about.

Free compost My kids and I unloaded this weekend. It recieved about 1.5 inches of rain over the weekend

Free compost My kids and I unloaded this weekend. It received about 1.5 inches of rain over the weekend

Many of you want to compost but you are afraid of the process, have heard horror stories or don’t have enough plant material to get your pile started.  For me,these reasons and the fact that I live in a neighborhood and don’t really have a place to establish the size pile I would need got me searching and asking questions.  The question I asked:  What does the city/county do with all of those leaves and Christmas trees they collect throughout the year?

The answer:  In many communities, they have established FREE compost areas.  In my community, they have a location about 5-10 miles or so outside of town where they take dump-truck load after dump-truck load and pile up the leaves in long rows.  The trees and limbs they pick up through the year are run through a chipper/shredder and blown onto the same piles.

There are rows that are three+ years old and some rows of fresh (this season) and everything in-between in various stage of decay.  The only thing it cost me was the gas to travel out there, and a few hours of work loading and unloading this free source of good quality compost.

When I used to live in Frankfort, KY they had a similar program but it was located in the heart of town so it was more accessible. This brings me to a couple of points to consider.  In many cases this is a ‘free’ or tax-subsidized program so its existence in your area may vary.  I had to call several agencies from city hall, county government, park and recreation department, and sanitation until I found someone who could tell me about it.  Strangely enough, none of these bureaucrats knew anything about it…they all told me that we did not have anything like that in our area.  It was not until I met one of the truck drivers for a leaf collection crew at McDonald’s that I got the answer I was looking for.  Point is, you are likely going to have to look for it to find it.  I have also discovered that some cities charge a nominal fee for the compost while others operate it as a completely free service.  Further, (especially in the free service areas) management of the piles can vary widely. So, know what you are looking for when you go pick it up so you can tell if it has been turned regularly, etc.

Like anything there are some things to consider:

Since these piles are created from leaf-collection services their focus is collection NOT creating perfect

This close-up of the compost after we had pile it around our dogwood tree shows the texture of the free compost and the fact that it was made of various materials which are in different stages of decay

This close-up of the compost after we had pile it around our dogwood tree shows the texture of the free compost and the fact that it was made of various materials which are in different stages of decay

mulch/compost.  Therefore, I had to sort out some various bits of pop bottles, plastic, wires, small scrap metal.  All in all though, I only sifted out enough garbage to fill a small plastic grocery bag so its a small price to pay.

The compost is made of various types of plant material with various acidic conditions like oak and pine so your pH levels can be all over the place.  Therefore, I recommend testing it with a pH meter.  I am taking mine to a friend this week to have it tested.  I will update you once I have the numbers. Plus any info I have on amending it as needed.

Some areas will have staff on hand with a front-end loader, others will not and you will have to load it yourself.  One area I am aware of, does not have a front end loader, but they don’t mind if you bring your own.  For just a few dollars you could probably hire a farmer to meet you out there and load it for you.  I used a pick-up truck to haul my mulch and it held three front-end loader scoops.  It took far longer to unload it than it did to load it.

I used a standard shovel to unload it and it took approximately 20 heaping shovel loads to fill my wheel-barrow.  That will give you an idea of the time and effort it will take if you are loading it by hand.

Bottom line,  this is a good, though not perfect, system for many of you to be able to access compost in volumes that most home-owners/gardeners could not.  This compost is similar to the quality you would have to pay $40+ per front-end loader scoopful at a retailer and it is free and readily available.  Additionally, it is a good use of material that, ten years ago, would have simply ended up in our landfills.  This is the essence of  Reduce Reuse Recycle and is an example of where it works efficiently and effectively.  For these reasons, and because I am always looking at ways to save money on my gardening projects, this is one I wholeheartedly support and recommend.  If you’ve got the time and the labor available and you don’t mind waking up sore on a Monday morning, do the research find the location and go get yourself some good, free compost.

We were able to get most of the compost spread in our flowerbeds and around our trees before the rains began. This pile is adjacent to our garden we will get it spread when the soil is dry enough to walk on. Hopefully we will be adding to it with another load of free compost next weekend, if the dry weather continues.

We were able to get most of the compost spread in our flowerbeds and around our trees before the rains began. This pile is adjacent to our garden we will get it spread when the soil is dry enough to walk on. Hopefully we will be adding to it with another load of free compost next weekend, if the dry weather continues.

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Build Your Own Home-made Automated Irrigation and Fertility Injection System for Under $50

By Dennis on January 17, 2010

Brent Coffee’s farm in Northern Arkansas is a testament togreen production techniques and the cost saving nature of what we used to call ‘southern ingenuity.’  Both he and his wife work full time and his job has him on the road through most of the summer.  He wants the benefits of his home garden but can’t always guarantee he will be home when his crops need to be watered or fertilized.  So, using a recycled chemical drum and some common parts, he built his own watering system that also applies Monty’s Liquid Fertilizer to his garden as it waters.

When we spoke Brent showed me how simple this is to build for under $50.  These applications of Liquid Fertilizer are the only nutrients the garden receives apart from what is available naturally through the compost-based raised beds.

 Home Irrigation and Automated Fertilizer for under $50

Learn how you can build a similar system by watching this video segment from Brent.

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Side by Side Demonstration by Home Gardener Shows Grapes Benefit Form Monty’s Liquid Fertilizers

By Dennis on January 15, 2010

Brent Coffee lives in Northern Arkansas, in the shadow of the ‘Show-Me State.’  Perhaps that is why he had to see for himself the difference that Monty’s Liquid Fertilizer can make.  On his family’s subsistence farm, he split his grape vines in half.  One half received Monty’s Liquid Fertilizer plus reduced traditional fertilizer; the other half only received his traditional fertility program.  As an added benefit, he was able to mix the Monty’s applications with his fungicide and insect treatments, saving him additional time.  For less than $8 he more than tripled his yield and the over-all quality of his grape crop. 

See his results and explanation here. Monty’s Side by Side Experiment on Grapes

Now convinced, Brent says next year the entire crop will receive the benefit of Monty’s Liquid Fertilizer.

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