Backyard Bounty - Revised & Expanded 2nd Edition: The Complete Guide to Year-round Gardening in the Pacific Northwest
384
Backyard Bounty - Revised & Expanded 2nd Edition: The Complete Guide to Year-round Gardening in the Pacific Northwest
384Paperback(Revised and Expanded)
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Overview
Are you itching to start your own garden or grow more in the one you have, but feel that gardening is too challenging or time-consuming for your busy schedule?
Now completely updated and expanded, Backyard Bounty will demystify gardening, bringing it back to the down-to-earth, environmentally practical activity that anyone can enjoy.
Author and master gardener Linda Gilkeson covers everything you'll need to grow a successful garden, including:
- Planning your garden and preparing the soil
- Organic fertilizers and simplified composting
- Planting for winter harvests and intensive planting schedules
- Comprehensive information on pests, diseases, and working with an unstable climate
- Greenhouses, tunnels and containers
- Organic pest management.
Packed with a wealth of information specific to the Pacific Northwest, this complete guide emphasizes low-maintenance methods, covers problems related to common pests and climate concerns, includes a monthly garden schedule for year-round planting and harvesting, and features plant profiles for everything from apples to zucchini.
Perfect for novice and experienced gardeners alike, Backyard Bounty shows how even the smallest garden can produce a surprising amount of food twelve months of the year.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780865718418 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New Society Publishers |
| Publication date: | 03/20/2018 |
| Series: | Transmontanus Series |
| Edition description: | Revised and Expanded |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 422,576 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.50(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.10(d) |
| Age Range: | 16 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
{CHnumber}CHAPTER 1{CHnumber}
{CHtitle}OUR GARDENING CLIMATE AND HOW PLANTS GROW{CHtitle}
This chapter covers basic information to help take the guesswork out of growing vegetables and fruit in the Pacific Northwest coastal climate. It starts with an overview of the climate and weather along the coast and how it is being affected by the changing climate. The final section reviews how plants grow, flower and fruit.
{SH1}Gardening in the Coastal Climate{SH1}
What’s different about gardening on the Pacific Northwest coast? The climate here is generally characterized by mild winters and warm summers. Only rarely has it been too hot in the summer to grow vegetables that do well in cool conditions (such as broccoli, lettuce and peas), yet it is almost always warm enough to allow warm-season crops to be grown reasonably well in most gardens. This is actually a wonderful place to garden because so many vegetables can be harvested fresh out of the garden all winter. Because garden beds can produce food all year, you can grow a surprising amount in a small area — and you don’t have to spend the time that gardeners from less “fortunate” climates do preserving food for the winter. (When those gardeners move to the Pacific Northwest, it can take them a while to adjust to the idea that our planting season lasts for six months and our harvesting season lasts all year.) That isn’t to say there aren’t challenges, however. One is adapting to the increasingly variable weather and higher average temperatures resulting from the changing climate; another is learning how to deal with the new pests and diseases that continue to arrive in the region.
{INSERT figure 1.1
PHOTO Ch 1-1
Caption: What’s for dinner in January? Carrots, kale, Komatsuna, Brussels sprouts, parsley, and radicchio.
END INSERT}
{SH2}Microclimates on the Coast{SH2}
Within this generally mild climate, the varied geography of the region — from mountains to seashore — holds many local microclimates. The complexities of West Coast geography mean that the USDA climate zone maps are not much use here. While roughly USDA Zone 8 for much of the lower elevation coast, there are large differences in local microclimates.
These microclimates differ in:
{bullet}total rainfall and the timing of rainfall;
{bullet}amount of local fog, marine clouds, and direct sunshine each year;
{bullet}average low winter temperatures, frequency of frosts and snowfall;
{bullet}the average warm temperatures in the summer;
{bullet}amount of shading from trees, buildings, even mountain tops.
{SH2}Effects of Elevation{SH2}
Elevation affects microclimates, but not always in obvious ways. The higher the elevation, the lower the minimum temperatures are in the winter. But higher elevations also get more snow. With an insulating blanket of snow providing cold protection, overwintering plants often have a better chance of surviving an Arctic outbreak at higher elevations than at sea level. With precipitation falling mostly as rain at lower elevations, the ground is often bare during cold snaps, so plants are less protected.
Higher elevation gardens (up to 1,000 feet), if they are on open slopes, can sometimes have a longer frost-free growing season than valley gardens because cold air flows down the hillsides and pools in the valleys. On very still nights, even in the winter, the air may be even be a few degrees warmer at higher elevations than down in the valley due to temperature inversions. This can be an advantage for higher elevation tree fruit production because there is less chance that a late frost will kill the blossoms of peaches and other early flowering fruit.
The effect of all this is that two gardens only a short distance apart may have the same average annual temperature, but quite different gardening climates. A garden close to the ocean or the Strait of Juan de Fuca will have cooler summer with more fog than a garden a short distance inland, but the winters won’t be as cold. Gardeners may need a greenhouse to ripen tomatoes in an oceanside garden, but winter crops such as broccoli and salad greens will grow beautifully without one.
On top of variations from geography, weather patterns in the coastal region vary over cycles of a few year to a few decades due to two cyclical atmospheric patterns affecting the Pacific Ocean:
- El Niňo-La Niňa events: Occurring on cycles of 2 to 7 years, with each phase lasting for 8-18 months, these result from complex oscillations of warmer and cooler water and high and low atmospheric pressure in the south Pacific Ocean. The effect differs depending where you are on the continent, but for the Pacific Northwest coast, the El Niňo phase usually brings warmer and drier than average winters; the ensuring La Niňa phase usually brings cooler and wetter weather.
- The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO): This is a variable 10-30 year pattern of alternating cool and warm cycles in Pacific Ocean water temperatures. It appears we are now in a warm cycle. The PDO is not well understood and the pattern may or may not continue as the changing climate affects ocean currents. When an El Niňo phase occurs while the ocean is in a warm cycle of the PDO, temperatures are even higher than usual as occurred in the extreme El Niňo of 2015-16.
A feature of winters in the south coast of British Columbia and north coastal Washington State is the occasional Arctic outbreak. These blasts of frigid air break out of higher latitudes, bringing periods of much colder-than-average temperatures. There may only be one or two such outbreaks in a winter, and they usually only last for a few days to a week at a time, but the abrupt drop in temperatures can be very damaging to plants.
Rainfall patterns also vary widely around the region. Gardens in the rainforest microclimates receive far more rain than gardens in the rain shadow of the Olympics or other coastal mountains only a few miles away. (A rain shadow is the dry zone on the opposite side of a mountain range from the prevailing direction of wind and rain; as storms pass, they dump rain on one side of the mountain, leaving little to fall on the other side.)
{Sbar}
{Sbartitle}Know Your Garden{Sbartitle}
You can keep simple weather records for your own garden for a small investment in a manual minimum-maximum thermometer and a simple rain gauge (or a straight-sided tin can). Wireless digital weather stations are also available if you want to keep more detailed records (be sure to put the temperature sensor for this well away from your house to ensure an accurate reading for the garden). Your records will become more and more useful as the years go by because they will show you the range of temperatures and rainfall in your own garden. Keeping notes on sowing and harvest dates and other gardening observations will make the records even more valuable. Lee Valley Tools still sells a hardbound 10-year garden journal with spaces for 10 years of notes for each date and there are many apps for gardeners that make it easy to keep electronic records. The latter range are frequently reviewed in garden magazines and web sites for the latest products.
{End Sbar}
{SH1}Gardening in a Changing Climate{SH1}
By now, most people are aware of the increasingly variable weather that is the result of a changing global climate. It isn’t your imagination that extreme weather in recent years is making gardening more difficult than it used to be. Information on how to adapt our gardens and methods to meet the challenge of a changing climate is a significant part of the new content I have added to this revised edition of Backyard Bounty.
The coastal regions of British Columbia have warmed by around 1.1oC (2oF) over the last century. Climate projections for the 2050’s show that by mid-century, average temperatures will like increase by 1.8-2oC (3-4oF) as compared to 1961-1990 averages. As of 2017, the 15 warmest years ever recorded had occurred in the previous16 years, with 2016 setting a new global record for the amount temperatures increased in one year. UPDATE NOTES about 2016 and 2017 just before press. An important factor contributing to higher average temperatures is higher nighttime temperatures, which have been rising steadily.
Average temperatures don't tell the whole story, however, because extreme minimum and maximum temperatures can average out to a normal temperature range. While extremes of heat are becoming more frequent, that doesn’t mean that periods of extreme cold are less likely (the prolonged cold of mid-winter 2016/17 was a harsh reminder). A particular concern is that warmer average spring temperatures cause fruit trees to bloom earlier, increasing the risk of damage to the crop from a late frost.
Periods of extreme temperatures are lasting longer because of the weakening polar jet stream, another effect of the warming global climate. With a weaker jet stream, weather systems that should move along across the continent from west to east stall for longer over one region. The result is prolonged periods of extreme heat or Arctic cold or record-breaking rainfall causing severe flooding. As the global atmosphere warms, it holds more energy and more water vapor, which also means an increased potential for stronger windstorms and heavier rainfall. As with temperature, however, the effect is variable. We are seeing shifts in when and where precipitation (mostly rain) occurs, leading to increased flooding in some places and longer droughts in others.
For the PNW coast in the long term, climate modeling shows that we can expect a continuing trend toward warmer average growing seasons with less rainfall in the summer months. The models show the region can expect about the same amount of precipitation in the winter, but it is likely to fall over a shorter period, in more intense storms. More of it is expected to fall as rain rather than snow at higher elevations. Early drier springs and less snow pack in the mountains means a higher risk of summer water shortages for communities dependent on snow melt to fill rivers and reservoirs.
While the record-breaking drought and heat of 2015 in the coastal PNW was unprecedented, meteorologists say that it was a preview of what may be an average summer by the middle of the century (and that's only 30 years away). And if that is what an average summer by mid-century might look like, then the variability in weather patterns means some years are likely to be even hotter or drier (or colder or wetter…) than anything we have so far experienced.
Adding to the stress on water resources from a changing climate is the fact that the growing population in the region is also increasing demand for water. Limiting water for gardens is usually one of the first restrictions imposed by water districts when supplies are low. Where once gardeners could irrigate as much as they liked to keep plants growing, water conservation is now an important — even critical — issue for many.
Plants are able to handle variable weather, but the more we know about how plants are affected by weird weather, the better prepared we will be to protect plants from extremes and to design gardens to adapt to these changes.
{SH1}The Basics of Plant Growth{SH1}
You might be tempted to skip this bit, but I urge you to read on because so many crop problems that perplex gardeners have to do with growing conditions (weather, nutrients, irrigation) that affect plant growth, flowering and fruiting. When plants do weird things — such as bursting into flower when they shouldn’t — we need to understand why, so we can avoid it in future.
{SH2}Requirements for Growth{SH2}
Photosynthesis in plants is a truly amazing process. It allows plants to take energy from sunshine, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water from the soil and make it into sugars. Plants use these sugars as building blocks to make fats, starches, proteins, plant hormones and other compounds. Through a process called “respiration,” plant cells burn sugars to get the energy needed for growth and metabolism. If they are making more food than they can use, plants store the surplus sugars and starch in storage organs, such as roots, for later use. Some necessary elements such as nitrogen, sulfur, calcium and micronutrients, come from the soil, but, surprisingly, most of the weight of the solid material that makes up a plant is actually built out of carbon from the atmosphere rather than elements from the soil.
Water and nutrients move within plants through a vascular system that reaches to all parts of the plant. Water moving upward from the roots and evaporating from the leaves travels in the xylem vessels. Another set of vessels, called the phloem, carries sap with nutrients and metabolic compounds to other plants parts. This process, called ‘translocation’, moves food internally from a source, such as a photosynthesizing leaf, to a part of the plant that needs it for growth. Surplus food can also be translocated to storage organs, such as roots or fruit. There is one more, very interesting, place that plants send their sugars and starches: they leak a significant amount of what they make into the soil around their roots. This sounds outlandish, but plants actually benefit a lot by providing food for beneficial soil bacteria and fungi around their roots (more on this interesting relationship in Chapter 3).
{SH3}Sunlight is Essential{SH3}
To make a very complicated story simple: exposure to sunlight is vital. Vegetables and fruit need bright sunlight for as long as possible to produce the building blocks that make leaves, seeds, roots and fruit. Leafy greens can grow adequately — though slowly — with half a day of direct sun each day, but most crops plants do much better with 8 hours of direct sun in the summer. Gardens in open areas with even longer sun exposure will grow even faster as they simply have more hours of light to photosynthesize.
The efficiency of photosynthesis depends mostly on light levels, but it also depends on temperature. The best range for photosynthesis is10-30oC (50-85oF) ; photosynthesis stops when it gets too cool (below 5oC/40oF) and when it gets too hot (above 35oC/95oF) for most temperate zone plants).
{INSERT figure 1.2
DRAWING 1-2
Caption: How plants grow: With energy from the sun, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water and minerals flowing upward from the roots, plant cells produce the building blocks that become leaves, flowers and seeds.
END INSERT}
{SH3}Plants are Mostly Water{SH3}
Water is an essential ingredient for plant growth and survival. Evaporation from the leaves pulls moisture up through the plant, moving water from the roots to the leaves and shoots (called “transpiration”). This upward flow carries nutrients from the soil up through the stem to the photosynthesis “factories” on the leaves. When the water reaches the leaves and evaporates, it cools the plant. Cooling is essential to prevent leaf temperatures from rising too high and damaging leaf cells.
Almost all of the water (97%) taken up by plants passes into the atmosphere in this process.
Plants must have a film of water around their roots so nutrients from the soil can pass into the cells of the roots. If this film dries out, even temporarily, fine root hairs die. The movement of nutrients from the soil and through the plant ceases and growth stops. Because the leaves also lose their cooling system when evaporation stops, it means that in hot weather, leaf cells can (rapidly!) overheat in the sun and die. Plants may be so severely stressed or injured that even if they survive, they may never be as productive as they could have been.
{SH3}Soil Has a Supporting Role{SH3}
The soil physically holds up plants and anchors them. It is the source of water and essential major and minor elements needed for photosynthesis and respiration.
A healthy soil contains a complex, inter-dependent community of organisms that range in size from microscopic bacteria to (relatively) huge earthworms. This vitally important community includes decomposers that digest organic matter and release nutrients in forms that plants can use; fungi that penetrate root hairs and ferry nutrients into root cells; bacteria that colonize the surface of roots and produce compounds that actively protect plants from pathogens. Soil bacteria are also the main diet of protozoa (one-celled micro-organisms), and in turn, protozoa are the main diet of earthworms.
The larger soil inhabitants include insects, mites, nematodes, earthworms, slugs and snails, crustaceans (e.g., pillbugs), millipedes and centipedes. While a few of these characters attack plants, our gardens couldn’t do without the others because they play so many roles essential to the cycling of nutrients, aerating and mixing the soil and keeping plants healthy. The soil surface is also the hunting ground for predators, such as large, purplish-black ground beetles, centipedes and many kinds of spiders.
{SH3}Plants Need Nutrients{SH3}
Crop plants need some elements in larger quantities for growth. These major nutrients are: nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium and sulfur. The first three elements are main ingredients in fertilizers. Local soils usually also need additions of calcium, sometimes magnesium, but rarely sulphur to grow crop plants.
A second group of nutrients is essential too, but in extremely small amounts. These “micronutrients” or “trace elements,” include iron, manganese, chlorine, zinc, boron, molybdenum, and copper. The tricky thing about this group is that most are toxic to plants in large amounts or if soil conditions (such as acidic soil) make them too easily available to plants.
Chapter 3 covers nutrients from the soil in greater detail and describes how you can make them available to the roots of plants
{SH2}How Plants Grow{SH2}
Plant growth depends on external factors such as weather, sunlight and nutrients as well as on the internal workings of the plants.
{SH3}Annuals, Biennials, Perennials{SH3}
Vegetables are mostly either annual (go to seed in the first year of growth) or biennial (go to seed the second year). Many crops (lettuce, radishes, mustard greens, beans and squash) are annuals wherever they are grown, which means they will flower and produce seeds in the same summer if left in the garden long enough. Practically speaking, however, in the Pacific Northwest most garden vegetables are treated as annuals, which means we harvest crops the same year we sow the seeds.
Crops such as carrots, cabbage, kale, leeks, beets, Swiss chard and parsley are biennials. Left to their own devices in the garden, they would have a two-year life cycle. From a spring planting, they grow all summer without going to seed. After spending the winter in the garden, they send up a flower stalk the following spring. The seeds ripen and the plant dies in its second summer. The hardy winter broccoli and winter cauliflowers are also biennials; these are sown in June or July, but don’t produce heads until early the following spring. For biennials, the cold chill of winter is the signal that tells them they are beginning their second year.
Some plants that we treat as annuals, such as tomatoes and peppers, are actually perennials ; in a subtropical climate or heated greenhouse they could continue to produce flowers and fruits year after year. Tender herbs, such as sweet basil and sweet marjoram, are also perennials, but they are often grown as annuals because they are not hardy enough to survive winter outdoors.
There are a few hardy perennial vegetables, such as artichokes, French sorrel and asparagus. And of course, all fruit trees, grapes, berries and rhubarb are hardy perennials in the garden.
{SH3}Effects of Temperature{SH3}
Plants grow best when it is warm; when it turns colder, growth slows, then stops altogether. The cut-off point at which growth stops differs among plants. Frost-hardy vegetables continue to grow (very slowly) even in the winter, whenever temperatures rise enough for photosynthesis to continue. Heat lovers, such as corn or melons, however, pack it in and die. Eventually, when the days are shortest and temperatures are cold enough, all plants stop growing.
Perennials, such as fruit trees, have a natural dormancy in winter. They drop their old leaves in the fall and withdraw the sap from their stems so they can survive very cold weather without damage. They won’t suddenly start to grow if there is a brief period of warm weather in mid-winter because they also need the lengthening days of spring to break the dormant state and stimulate growth. Leafy vegetables, on the other hand, are just resting in the cold; they can take advantage of warm spells in a mild winter to resume growing a bit.
How well plants withstand winter temperatures depends on when, how quickly and for how long, it turns cold. As days get shorter and temperatures gradually drop, plants “harden off,” becoming used to the cold. If there is unusually cold weather in late November, before plants have hardened off completely, they can be injured by temperatures that wouldn’t hurt them in mid-winter. In spring, if there has been mild weather for a month and plants start to grow again, a late cold snap can cause far more injury than the same temperatures would have done earlier.
At the other end of the thermometer, as temperatures rise, plants grow faster — but only to a point. When it is too warm (above 28–35oC/82–95oF, depending on the crop) plant growth slows or may even stop temporarily. In hot weather, the balance between photosynthesis (making sugars) and respiration (using sugars for energy) gets out of whack — and plants become stressed as their stores of sugars are used up in hot weather faster than they can be replaced. Vegetables lose their sweetness and flavours become bitter (e.g., lettuce) or bland (e.g., tomatoes).
To avoid a disastrous loss of water when it is too hot, plants have to close the pores (called “stomata”) on their leaves during the hottest part of the day. This shuts down photosynthesis; plants cannot start making food again until it is cool enough for the pores to open. Closing the stomata also shuts off the plant’s cooling system because water is no longer evaporating from leaves. So not only does a prolonged hot spell mean a prolonged inability to make food, but it also leaves the cells of fruit and foliage vulnerable to heat injury (sunscald).
{SH3}Growth and Flowering{SH3}
While they are young, vegetable plants should be growing quickly. This period of vegetative growth gives the plants more leaf area (more capacity to photosynthesize) and bigger roots (more access to water and nutrients from the soil). If all goes according to plan, by the time conditions are right for them to produce flowers and fruit, plants will have accumulated enough food reserves to support a good crop.
For vegetables such as lettuce, leafy greens or root crops, the vegetative growth period should be as long as possible because we harvest the leaves or roots, not the flowers and fruit. For these plants, fertile soil, high levels of nitrogen and regular watering helps prolong their vegetative growth period. For fruiting plants, however, such as squash or tomatoes, a prolonged period of leafy growth isn’t desirable, because it delays flowers and fruit production. Such plants would eventually produce a large crop, but in the coastal climate we don’t have a long enough growing season to reap the harvest.
{INSERT figure 1.3
PHOTO 1-3
Caption: A tale of two squash: The plant on the left was sown April 6th; the plant on the right May 6th. Vegetative growth of the older plant was stunted by being held too long in a pot. Now it is flowering, but it is too small to carry a crop.
END INSERT}
Once a plant switches over to flowering mode, its vegetative growth slows, at least until the fruit is picked. If a squash plant or a very young fruit tree, for example, is allowed to carry fruit while the plant is too small, the plant has to divert energy into the fruit, resulting in stunted growth. To avoid this, simply pick off early flowers that form when plants are too small.
Several things can cause plants to flower:
{bullet}Day length is a signal to some. At these northern latitudes, spinach, for example, resolutely flowers in response to the long days of June no matter how early or late it is sown in the spring.
{bullet}Temperature is a signal for others. Biennials flower after experiencing the cold of winter; other plants flower in response to the heat of summer.
{bullet}Stress from a poor nutrient or water supply, from being root-bound in a small container, or from unseasonably cool weather can cause plants to flower prematurely (see “Vernalization,” below). This is why it is so important to grow seedlings under good conditions, and to do what you can to avoid stressing them.
{SH3}Vernalization (or Why Vegetables Unexpectedly Go to Seed){SH3}
Vernalization is a plant’s response to low temperatures that results in flowering. After the cold of winter, biennials normally “bolt”, meaning they send up flowers. But if a seedling is big enough, a spring cold spell can fool it into behaving as if winter has passed, so it grows a flower stalk in its first summer instead of waiting (as it normally would) until the following spring. Crops readily vernalized by cool temperatures in the spring include beets, Swiss chard, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, leeks, celery and celeriac. Temperatures of 5–10oC (40–50oF) for one to two weeks, for example, can be enough to cause onions to bolt.
Plants can only be induced to flower if they have grown large enough to have enough food reserves to devote to flowering. If the cold period happens while seedlings are still tiny, they won’t flower because they are too small. Plants don’t have to be very large, however, to respond to cool temperatures. Onion sets larger than a nickel and cabbage or leek transplants with stems the thickness of a pencil are big enough to be induced to flower prematurely by a cool spell. The larger the seedlings are when the cool weather occurs, the more likely it is that they will switch to flowering mode.
{INSERT figure 1.4
PHOTO 1-4
Caption: Leeks flowering in response to a cool spell that happened shortly after they were transplanted. Only the largest one has gone to flower, but if they had all been that large, they might all have flowered this summer.
END INSERT}
Vernalization is a particular problem for coastal gardeners eager to get a jump on the season. In our mild climate, it is often possible to sow seeds of hardy vegetables as early as February. If there is a nice long period of mild weather, these early seedlings grow big enough that a late cold spell (and we always seem to get a late cold spell!) can cause them to flower. You don’t see the flower stalks immediately, but the plants get set on a growth path that will result in too-early flowers later on.
Vernalization is also a problem if you try to get a head start by starting seeds indoors too early. If you a do a good job of growing large, healthy transplants and set them out early, it can take as little as a week of cool weather to induce some of them to flower. Our spring weather is so variable that it is more reliable to start seedlings later and plant out small plants that can tolerate a late cold spell without bolting.
{SH2}Pollination and Fruit Set{SH2}
For many vegetables, flowers are only important if you want to save seeds. For fruiting plants, however, such as tomatoes, squash, apples or blueberries, there can only be a crop if the plants flower and the flowers are successfully fertilized.
Pollination occurs when the dust-like pollen from the male parts (stamens) of the flower reaches the female parts (pistils) of the flower. The flower is successfully fertilized when the pollen grain sends a pollen tube into the egg cells in the ovary of the female flower. Most vegetables and fruit have flowers with both male and female parts in the same flower. Most are also self-fertile, meaning that pollen from the same flower only has to drop onto the pistil within the flower for fertilization to proceed. Bean and pea flowers, for example, are already pollinated by the time the flowers open.
{INSERT figure 1.5
PHOTO Ch 1-5. CHANGE PHOTO TO NATIVE BEE
Caption: A honeybee working a flower. Bees are called “nature’s sparkplugs” because without them, many plants can’t start to produce a crop.
END INSERT}
Many species of bees, flies and other insects have a vital role in pollinating flowers. As they collect nectar and pollen, they move the pollen from one blossom to another. Bumblebees, because of their large size, also vibrate flowers as they work, which causes the pollen to fall onto the pistil inside the flower. People can be another pollinating agent: gardeners can hand pollinate flowers to improve fruit set or to make sure seeds they save are true to the variety.
Some crops, such as squash, cucumbers and melons, have separate male and female flowers on the same plant. They depend on insects (or people) to carry the pollen from male to female flowers. This is also the case for kiwi fruit, which has male flowers on one plant and female flowers on a separate plant. Corn has separate male and female flowers on the same plant, but it depends on wind to shake the pollen from the male flowers at the top of the plant onto the silks of the ears (female part) lower on the stalks. Other plants pollinated by wind include tomatoes and grapes. The flowers are self-fertile, but they need the wind to shake the pollen onto the pistils within the flowers.
{Sbar}
{Sbartitle}Were Your Squash Flowers Pollinated?{Sbartitle}
Many disappointed gardeners want to know why their squash plants produce flowers but no fruit. It happens because the flowers were not pollinated. The flowers need bees to pollinate them, but wild bees are scarcer now and few people keep domestic honeybees in populated areas anymore. Bees are also less active in cool weather, so flowers go unpollinated when it is cool and rainy. The bottom lin is that nowadays gardeners nee
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments IntroductionChapter 1: Our Gardening Climate and How Plants Grow Chapter 2: Planning a Productive Garden Chapter 3: Preparing the Soil Chapter 4: Basic Methods for Growing Vegetables Chapter 5: Starting Seedlings and Saving Seeds Chapter 6 Basic Methods for Growing Fruit Chapter 7 Food Crops in Greenhouses and Containers Chapter 8 Year-round Gardening Calendar Chapter 9 Managing Pests and Problems Chapter 10 A to Z Vegetables Chapter 11 A to Z Fruit
Resources Index About the Author About New Society Publishers
What People are Saying About This
" Backyard Bounty is very likely the best book ever written on growing food in the Pacific Northwest, and it sets a whole new standard for garden writing. By acknowledging the impacts of climate change on our gardens, Gilkeson further elevates the literature. This is the first "real time" gardening book. It is fresh and timely, and every page courses with practical advice and revelations. All growers should own this amazing and insightful book, and we should refer back to it often."
— Mark Macdonald, West Coast Seeds
"Ideal for both new and seasoned gardeners, this new edition adds more listings to the detailed fruit and vegetable profiles, updates variety choices, and supplies practical information on dealing with common pests and diseases, including new ones to our region. Tips on adapting gardening practices to changing weather patterns are eminently helpful, as is a focus on the soil as a life force that fosters health in plants."
— Helen Chesnut, Garden columnist, Times Colonist
"As usual, Linda Gilkeson is spot on with her trademark down-to-earth advice to Pacific Northwest Gardeners. If, like me, you sometimes find your vegetables bolting before their time and falling short of your expectations, if you're wondering how climate change is affecting what you should plant and when, if you're perplexed about pollination and the impact it is having on your garden's productivity, struggling with organic pest management, or wondering how to achieve year-round bounty in your outdoor space, you'll find these pages brimming with seasoned wisdom and practical common sense."
— Carol Pope, Editor, GardenWise
"Whether you have a small or large lot, little or plenty of time, this book shows you how to grow your own toxic-free fruit and vegetables the whole year round. From preparing the ground to harvesting and storing the ripened produce, all is clearly explained. An invaluable book for novices and experienced gardeners."
— Barry Roberts, Past-President, Master Gardeners Association of BC
"Linda Gilkeson has paid some tuition in the garden. Backyard Bounty is remarkably thorough, from roots to pests to pruning to crowns, and it inspires even the experienced grower. Just like homemade soil for a bedding plant, this book is loaded with the richness we need in order to feed ourselves."
— Lyle Estill, author, Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy and Industrial Evolution: Tales from a Low Carbon Future
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