FoxFarm Blog

The Birds and the Bees

Need another reason to go organic?  What about wildlife?  Bee shortages around the United States are alarming conservationists and sending fruit growers scrambling to install new hives. One small garden can support a diverse wildlife population and help butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees bounce back.  Here’s how to make it happen:

Use safe pest control.  Our Don’t Bug Me spray is an environmentally friendly treatment for soft-bodied insects like aphids and whitefly.  Be sure to apply it only when you can see the pests.  No pest control should be used in a broad-spectrum way—it’s important to use the right product on the right pest.

Use organic fertilizers.  We created Peace of Mind and Happy Frog because we know that chemical fertilizers can end up in ponds, streams and groundwater.  Organic fertilizers help support a diverse population of soil-dwelling organisms, and that provides the foundation for a good habitat.

Go native.  Attracting wildlife is all about your local microclimate.  Visit a local native plant nursery and ask for some ideas.  The shrub that attracts butterflies in one community might not be the right habitat for your backyard visitors.

Oh Yeah—Water!

It’s easy to forget about adjusting your watering schedule in the spring, but as the days get longer, your garden’s going to need a drink.  Here are a few water-wise techniques:

Avoid overhead watering:  This can spread disease, and it wastes water that is lost through evaporation.  Overhead watering can also lead to scorch marks on tender leaves.  Instead, use drip irrigation or a soaker hose, or just lay a hose at the foot of large trees and shrubs until the ground is soaked.

Long, infrequent drinks:  This isn’t the cocktail hour.  Don’t give your plants a little sip every evening.  A good, long soak once a week (or once a month for drought-tolerant natives) will encourage deep, healthy roots.

Mulch, mulch, mulch:  There’s nothing like a good, thick layer of mulch to keep roots moist and suppress weeds.  Let our Happy Frog organic soil conditioner do the work for you.  It’s packed with beneficial microbes that actually help plant roots access moisture and nutrients in the soil and better survive droughts.

Earthworms, Start Your Engines!

Make a worm bin one of your New Years Resolutions.  There’s no easier way to improve the health of your soil.  A few tips:

• Buy a worm bin from a garden center or make your own using rubber storage tubs with small holes in the bottom for drainage.
• Red wigglers are the best worms for the job.  Buy them at a bait stand or from a commercial worm farm.  Other earthworms in your soil won’t live well in captivity.
• Use a bedding of worm castings (if the worms come in their own castings) or shredded coconut fiber, and always keep a layer of shredded newspaper on top.
• Feed worms a vegan diet of fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, eggshells, bread, and grains.  No dairy, meat, or oils, please.
• Finished worm castings look black and crumbly.  It will take several months to get enough to use in the garden.  Separate worms from castings and mix castings with water to create a fresh compost tea, or add a small shovelful of castings at the bottom of each planting hole when you plant in the spring. 
• Remember that the benefit of worm castings comes from their healthy microbial population, so use them while they’re fresh and know that a little goes a long way!

Bareroots

Bareroot plants are the kind of plants that only a gardener could love.  A few twigs, some gnarly old roots, maybe one green sprout to prove it’s still alive.  And they don’t even come in pots—they’re just packed into dirt crates and you’re expected to fish around and find one that you like.  What’s up with that?

But bareroot plants are not only a great value, they also grow quickly because they don’t experience the shock of being transplanted from a pot.  This winter, you’ll be able to get bareroot asparagus, strawberries, fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and roses in bareroot form.

Before you rush out to the nursery to pick some out, get the ground ready.  Bareroot plants hate to be exposed to sunlight, so you’ll want to plant them as soon as you get them home—or at least keep their roots completely covered in soil until you can plant.

Dig a hole that’s just deep enough to give the roots room to spread out.  Mix half native soil with well-aged compost or our FoxFarm Original Planting Mix.  Add a little Peace of Mind Starter according to package directions, and you’re ready to plant.

Carefully spread the roots out and cover them gently with soil.  You may need to make a little mound in the bottom of the hole for the base of the plant to rest on; this depends mostly on the shape of the plant’s root system.  Cover it well, leaving only the branches or trunk above-ground.  Mark the area with a stake if you need to, and wait for spring!

Winterize Your Garden

Now that winter’s almost upon us, it’s time to finish up a few garden chores and get the garden ready for a little hibernation.  Here’s what we’re doing:

Check drainage:   Winter rains can pool in low spots in the garden, creating boggy conditions and bringing on root rot.  A sturdy rake or a garden hoe may be all you need to level the ground and keep water from stagnating.

Feed if you need to:  Newly-planted bulbs could use some Peace of Mind Bulb Food to get them ready to bloom in spring, and in warmer climates, blooming ornamentals can be fed monthly all year long.

Plant a cover crop:  Don’t let vegetable beds sit empty all winter long.  If you won’t be doing any cool-season gardening, plant seeds of fava, vetch, or rye.  They’ll put down roots, fix nitrogen in the soil, smother weeds, and prevent erosion.  In spring, just till them under and plant.

Watch Your Water

Now that it’s officially fall, it’s time to cut way back on your watering schedule.  If you use an automatic irrigation system, make some adjustments to account for fewer hours of daylight, cooler temperatures, and rainfall. 

And if you’re watering by hand, just scrape away mulch and dig down a little to check the moisture level around the root zone.  Wind and cooler temps can dry out plants, but chances are the soil’s a little more damp than it was a few months ago.

This is a good time to think about mulching around established plants to conserve water and support a healthy root system all winter long.  A mulch will also suppress weeds and will keep a light frost from damaging fragile roots.

A well-composted mixture of grass clippings, dried leaves, and other yard trimmings makes a great mulch for fall, but to give it an extra boost, try our Happy Frog Soil Conditioner, which will do everything you need a mulch to do and add 19 species of beneficial microbes to your soil.  These microbes help feed plants at the root zone and keep them strong over the winter months.

Prize-winning pumpkins!

One of our customers sent in these photos of the giant pumpkins they're growing for competition.  As an experiment, each pumpkin got a different fertilizer, and the winner so far is--you guessed it!--FoxFarm. So far, the winner is estimated to weigh a whopping 125 pounds.

Although we gotta say, it's not easy to pull off a test like this in the pumpkin patch.  Why?  Because FoxFarm's organic composts and fertilizers are teeming with beneficial microbes that will colonize the soil and benefit your whole vegetable garden.  You can try to pamper just one pumpkin and feed something else to the other vines, but we're willing to bet that if you're using any FoxFarm at all ,the whole garden's going to be a winner.

Fall is the New Spring

Gardeners are waking up to the fact that fall isn’t a time to shut down the garden—it’s a time to rev it up.  In all but the coldest climates, fall offers warm, sunny days, cool nights, and an opportunity to really extend the garden season.  Here’s what we’re thinking about as we get into fall:

· Start over with annuals.  Cool-season annuals like Icelandic poppies and calendula can fill in empty spots in the garden and bloom right into winter.

· Eat your veggies.  A quick crop of cool-season lettuce, radishes, and baby carrots will give you something to show off at Thanksgiving.  Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli also do well in winter and even taste better with a little light frost.

· Don’t forget to feed.  By fall, soil can be depleted, and most plants could use an extra boost to get them through winter.  For new plantings of annuals and vegetables, start with Peace of Mind Starter or Happy Frog Jump Start.  For established plantings, choose the formula that’s made just for your plants—Acid Loving, Fruit & Flower, or Rose Food, to name a few.

Halloween: 30 Days and Counting

If you’re a vegetable gardener, you’ve probably made room in your garden for a couple pumpkin vines.  They’re the ultimate Halloween decoration, and they’re also a nutritional powerhouse, packed with beta carotene.  To keep your winter squash vines going strong until harvest time, don’t forget:

• Gently place newspaper or straw under each squash to prevent rot.
• Regular irrigation is critical during ripening, but avoid overhead watering, which can spread disease.  Instead, use a soaker hose or drip irrigation for deep, intermittent waterings.
• Feed monthly with Peace of Mind Tomato Vegetable. Just scratch it in around each vine according to package directions and water well.
• If you’re going for giant, prize-winning squash, pick your winners now and pinch off smaller fruit.  That lets the vine put all its energy into the ones that are left.

Be Good To Your Worms

You’ve learned how to manage your annuals and perennials.  You’re on top of irrigation.  You’re at peace with your bugs.  But what about your worms? What have you done for them lately?

Earthworms do more than plough the soil.  They also devour harmful, disease-causing bacteria, encourage beneficial microbes to flourish, and help deliver nutrients to the root zone.  Earthworm castings are extraordinarily high in helpful bacteria and fungi that attach to plant roots, transforming nutrients into a form that’s easier for them to use and expanding the effective root area.

Earthworms prefer a damp, rich soil. Adding organic matter—compost, aged manure, mulch, and organic fertilizers—will give them something to munch on while they’re keeping your plants healthy.

If you till or double-dig your garden, you’ll discourage earthworms. They like undisturbed soil.  Instead, try smothering weeds with newspaper or cardboard, piling compost, mulch, dried leaves, grass clippings, and aged manure on top, and letting that settle for a few months.  Then plant right into it.  No digging required!

Fill unused beds with cover crops like fava, vetch, and rye.  Earthworms are attracted to the roots, and the crops make a great “green manure.”  The roots help hold soil in place during heavy rains, and in spring, you can cut the crops down or pull them out and add them right to your compost pile.

Avoid harsh chemicals like high-nitrogen lawn fertilizers or any chemical designed to kill nematodes and grubs.  They’ll also hurt earthworm populations.  For natural, healthy lawns, we’re partial to our Peace of Mind Premium Lawn Organic Fertilizer.  It works.