Hello! And Happy New Year!

I trust that everyone has survived this week’s sub-arctic blast. Life in the North Country - gotta love it! At least with all these super cold freezing, frigid temperatures, we’re all pretty well preserved!

At any rate, come on in now; take a break from snow shoveling, snow blowing, snow moving. Let’s give it a rest. At least for a few minutes, let’s think warm thoughts; let’s think spring thoughts. Come on now - can’t you just feel it?

Last week we went through a list of about 5 different New Year’s resolutions that we gardeners can concentrate on to make our gardening chores easier and better for this coming growing season. These included plans to grow more stuff, to grow more, better, different stuff, to grow more, better, different healthy, healthier stuff.

Let’s continue. Maybe we can just keep that cabin fever at bay for a little while longer.

Resolution 6 - (because we did the first 5 last week, remember?) - grow your garden better. Think back to last year’s garden. What grew good for you? Then grow it better this year! What was a depressing disappointment? Don’t repeat that failure; grow it differently. Grow a different variety; grow it in a different spot. Find out what went wrong; make plans to correct it. Come on - write down your plans. Hey, that can be resolution 7!

Resolution 7 - write down all your garden plans. Make a list; check it twice! Number them; prioritize them. Draw a garden diagram; plan where all your favorite varieties are going to go. If you have last year’s plan - great! Compare last year’s garden layout to this year’s proposed plan.
Because . . .

Resolution 8 - rotate those crops! Do compare last year’s layout; make plans to switch things around. For instance, if you plant potatoes, keep in mind that they need a really low pH. So keep potatoes on the edges of your garden where you are not going to throw down too much lime. Lots of lime = high pH = sweeter soil.

Most vegetable plants really love a high pH between 6 and 7. Then their roots can suck up all those wonderful nutrients in the soil, and then grow healthy and then pump out lots of really healthy vegetables for you to harvest. But potatoes like a low pH - like 5. Too much lime for them, and you’ll end up with scabby potatoes. Nothing life threatening, but not a pretty sight. Yuck! Scabby potatoes!

Keep in mind, certain vegetable families should not be planted in the same spot for more than 2 years in a row. So rotate all vegetable crops to minimize the risk of disease. Some crops - like beans and peas -are especially susceptible to foot and root rotting diseases. (Doesn’t that sound a lot like hoof and mouth disease?)

At any rate these foot and root rotting diseases build up in the soil and remain for years. Conversely - on the other hand – peas and beans and the other members of this legume family always increase the nitrogen levels in the soil. And that’s a good thing for the next season’s crop that’s planted in this location.

Certain pests and pathogens - aka bad bugs and plant diseases – that affect members of the nightshade family do not affect the brassica family. (Nightshade = tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant. . . . Brassicas = broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower . . . .)

Resolution 9 - learn all of the different kinds of cultural practices out there and make plans to use some of them. Now we’re not talking Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms here!
• Crop rotation is one cultural practice that encourages healthy plants and high yields with relatively little effort.
• Mulching around your plants conserves moisture and suppresses weeds and replenishes the soil if it’s an organic mulch like old wood chips, grass clippings, leaves, or straw. (Hay is OK - but too many weed seeds are left to run wild in the soil!)
• Composting is still another cultural practice that results in inexpensive black gold for your garden and makes for some really happy, healthy plants. Use old vegetable scraps - carrot and potato peels, apple cores and skins, eggshells, everything except meat and fatty scraps. Stick these good scraps outside in a heap; mix them with leaves, grass clippings, hay, old manure and wood chips. Eventually they’ll all break down and turn into wonderful, rich black compost.
• Raised beds, wide beds, companion planting, integrated pest management – all these are some other easy cultural practices that are guaranteed to make garden life easier and better for both you and your garden plants. Use these winter months to find out about them and then decide if they will work for you.

Resolution 10 - resolve to get a soil sample done for your garden soil. Find out your soil pH, your potassium, phosphorous, calcium, aluminum, organic levels. Get a recommendation that tells you if you need any lime to sweeten the soil. Maybe you need to add sulfur to make it more acidic because your pH is too high. Save money on fertilizers and lime; your soil test can tell you if you need to add fertilizer or lime and how much.

Obviously, you can’t pull a soil sample just yet because of the high snow levels and the frozen ground. But resolve to find out about the kinds of soil testing available. There are those “el cheapo” special home kits out there. But they are just that – “el cheapo”! And then there is a complete test done through our Cornell Cooperative Extension. We send your sample to the expert Cornell Soil Labs for a complete analysis. There are a few other soil testing labs out there as well.

So for 2008, make plans. Make garden plans! Right now I’m making plans for a complete listing of all the wonderful seed and gardening supply sources out there. Give us a call at 376-5270 or stop on by at our Cornell Cooperative Extension office for a copy. Also available is a complete listing of the 2008 Recommended Varieties for the Home Garden put out by the great gardening gurus at Cornell University.

Remember – Eat Smart New York!
And – Bye – talk to you soon!

D