All posts by Jordan Charbonneau

Fall Garden Clean-Up: Prepare Your Soil for Spring

October 24, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Spring tidying may be the routine for household tasks, but in the garden, a clean-up and refresh is called for in the fall, so the garden is ready to go in spring. These tasks will help keep your garden disease-free, improve and protect soil health, and allow easy spring planting. Follow these steps to properly prepare your soil and tuck in your fall garden.

Clean Up Diseased Crop Debris

An untidy garden isn’t always a bad thing. Plant material naturally decomposes and adds organic matter back to the soil. Flower heads like Rudbeckia, echinacea, and sunflowers provide seeds for songbirds like goldfinches and chipping sparrows. Long plant stems also offer places for solitary bees and beneficial insects to overwinter and lay eggs.

However, leaving diseased or pest-ridden plant material in the garden is always a bad idea. Plant diseases and pests can remain on the material and in the soil over the winter. Remove the material from garden beds and trellises if plants are infected with pests or diseases.

Removing material from crops you know are susceptible to diseases is also a good idea. For example, if you have struggled with blight in the past. You may want to remove all the tomato plant residue even if it appears healthy.

Don’t add pest-ridden or diseased plant material unless you have a very well-maintained compost pile. Compost piles must reach 131°F or higher for at least three days to kill most pathogens.

Avoid Adding Fertilizer

It may seem like you’re getting a head start on spring, but fall is a poor time to add fertilizer to the garden. Fertilizers are generally water soluble and begin breaking down quickly. During winter’s cold temperatures, cover crops or any winter crops you have won’t be able to absorb the nutrients. Much of the fertilizer applied in fall ends up in local waterways, which can cause toxic algae blooms. Wait until spring!

Get Your Soil Tested

A soil test is one of the best ways to start improving your soil. They’re generally quite affordable and tell you precisely what you need. Unfortunately, they often take a while to process. Fall is a great time to test your soil to have the results before the growing season.

Usually, an extension agent can help you interpret your results and guide you on amending your soil. However, you can also check out our Guide to Understanding Soil Tests.

Add Slow-Acting Amendments

Not all amendments act like fertilizer. Dolomite lime, bone meal, rock phosphate, and some other mineral amendments need plenty of time to break down. Using these slow-acting amendments in the fall gives them to incorporate into the soil so that they’re accessible to your plants in spring.

Sow Cover Crops

As you empty beds, you can sow fall cover crops. Cover crops help protect the soil and add nutrients and organic matter. This time of year, you’ll need to focus on hardy crops like Common Winter Rye, Hard Winter Wheat, and Austrian Winter Peas. In zone 7, you can typically sow Austrian Winter Peas and Winter Wheat through October. Rye is the hardiest, and you may be able to sow Rye up to November 15th. Austrian Winter Pea shoots also double as a salad green!

Mulch

Leaving beds bare over the winter is one of the worst things you can do for your soil health! Leaving the soil bare can cause erosion and kill helpful fungi, bacteria, and insects. It’s also a wasted opportunity to continue building up your soil. If you’ve already missed the window for cover crops, it’s time for mulch. A 2 to 3-inch layer of mulch over the soil provides habitat for beneficial insects, adds organic matter as it breaks down, and helps to insulate and protect the soil.

While much of the harvesting is finished, the garden chores aren’t over yet! Follow these fall garden clean-up steps to ensure your soil remains productive and healthy for future seasons.

Garden Advice, Seed Saving

Endless Blooms: How to Save Zinnia Seeds

October 17, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Heirloom tomatoes and colorful corn varieties often garner much of the attention when we talk about seed saving, but it’s not just vegetables that have a rich history. Gardeners have saved and selected flower seeds for thousands of years. Zinnias, one of the easiest flowers to grow, are also easy to save seeds from to keep next year’s gardens full of blooms. Learn how to save zinnia seeds in a few simple steps.

Select Good, Open-Pollinated Plants

If you want to save seed, having an open-pollinated variety is best. Varieties can mostly be divided into two categories, hybrid and open-pollinated, with heirlooms falling under the open-pollinated umbrella.

Hybrids are a first-generation cross between two parent varieties. As they are a cross, there’s no guarantee on what their seed will produce next year; they may revert to looking more like one of the parents rather than what you just grew. You can still save seed if you’re okay with a potential surprise.

Open-pollinated varieties are established varieties that produce “true-to-type.” You can save seeds from them year after year with little change unless you select for it. For example, if you only saved seeds from a particular shade bloom.

All of the zinnias we carry are open-pollinated.

The “good” part of this statement is somewhat relative. To start, try to save seeds from plants that have been healthy and vigorous. Avoid diseased plants, as some diseases, like powdery mildew, can remain on the seeds. Then, you can also focus on other characteristics like color, size, or bloom period. Essentially, save seeds from plants you think looked and performed the best in your garden.

Consider Cross-Pollination

If you’ve grown multiple varieties of zinnias, insects may have cross-pollinated them. To achieve pure seed, like what we sell, zinnia varieties need to be isolated by 1/2 mile. However, no rule says you need absolutely pure seed. It’s fine to save seed even if there’s been a little promiscuous pollination; you may get some fun surprise variation from next season’s flowers.

Allow The Flowerheads to Dry

With any seeds, it’s essential to let them fully mature before harvesting to ensure good germination rates. For zinnias, this means that the flower heads, including the petals, should be brown and dry. When this happens, you’re ready to start saving seeds and can cut or pull the flowerheads from the plant.

Process the Flowerheads

First, pull the petals off the flowerhead and set them aside for composting. Some seeds may come off with the petals. Then, rub the flowerhead over a flat surface until it comes apart to release the seeds. The seeds are brown and a bit arrow-shaped. Pick out any extra material you can and set it aside for composting.

Dry Your Zinnia Seeds

Allow your zinnia seeds to air dry on a towel or other flat surface for about one week. This will help ensure they’re fully dry and won’t mold in storage.

Store Your Zinnia Seeds

After they’re fully dry, you can store your zinnia seeds. Place them in an airtight container somewhere cool and dark. Zinnia seeds can last 3 to 5 years if harvested and stored properly.

Be sure to label your container with the variety and the year you harvested your seed. Once you start seed saving, it’s easy to save more, and you’ll need to keep track of your seeds!

Zinnias are easy to grow, and their long bloom period and variety of colors make them an excellent choice for any ornamental or cut flower garden. Saving your own zinnia seeds is simple! It’s also a great way to help steward an open-pollinated variety and save a bit of money. Follow these steps for success with zinnia seeds.

Garden Advice

Cover Crops: Improve Clay Soils

October 11, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Utisols, also known as red clay soils, are the most common soil type in the Southeastern United States. They’re what many Southern Exposure Seed Exchange customers and seed growers garden. While many gardeners may wish they had soft, dark loam, clay soils aren’t terrible. Like any soil, they come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. In this post, we’ll discuss the features of clay soil and how you can use cover crops to improve it.

Advantages of Clay Soil

Clay soils aren’t perfect, but they come with their own set of advantages. Clay soil holds water for much longer than sandy soil, especially when you mulch it, helping you cut down on that water bill.

Clay soil is also high in nutrients and minerals that plants need, the perfect starting place for a garden. All of those tiny clay particles are also very good at holding onto nutrients from amendments that tend to leach out of sandy soil quickly.

While clay soils are dense, that density helps perennial plants and fruit trees hold tightly to the ground and withstand wind, storms, and erosion better than in light, sandy soil.

Disadvantages of Clay Soils

If you’ve ever had to till or dig garden beds in clay, you’re probably already familiar with one of the main disadvantages. Clay soil is heavy. This makes working it quite troublesome. When it’s wet, it’s heavy and sticky. When it’s dry, it’s often brick-like.

This same characteristic also means that clay soil compacts easily. Especially when the soil is wet, walking on it or using equipment on it can cause severe compaction. Heavy, dense clay soil can be especially tough to deal with if you’re hoping to grow root vegetables like carrots.

Some of its advantages can have a negative side, too. If you live in boggy or low areas, clay soil’s ability to hold water isn’t ideal and can lead to issues like root rot. Additionally, its ability to hold little particles also means that it can hold onto bad particles like salt, and changing the soil’s pH may take some serious work.

What Do Clay Soils Need?

The best thing you can do to amend clay soil is to add plenty of organic matter. There are many ways to add organic, including compost, mulch, leaf mold, peat moss, and cover crops.

Don’t add sand. It can be a tempting choice to improve drainage, but it gets stuck between the clay particles and creates denser, brick-like soil.

Though somewhat slow, cover crops are an excellent, affordable way to build up organic matter in the soil each season. They can help add nutrients and break up hard pans and compaction, allowing air and water into the soil.

Using Cover Crops to Improve Clay Soils

There are several great cover crops for improving clay soil, and fall is a great time to plant them! While all cover crops are good, some excel in specific areas.

Cover Crops to Add Organic Matter

Clover

Clover is an all-around good choice for cover cropping. Clovers fix nitrogen and produce plenty of organic matter. White Clover can be sown in late winter, spring, summer, or fall. It also makes an excellent living mulch for pathways. Mowing these paths and collecting the material with a bagger gives you a consistent supply of mulch and organic matter for the beds they border.

Winter Wheat

Though generally grown as a cereal, winter wheat is also an excellent cover crop. It produces a large amount of mulch material, adding plenty of organic matter to the soil. It’s also easy to kill and less likely to get weedy than other cover crops. It’s also a great cover crop for no-till systems. Mow it down in the spring and transplant it into the beds.

Buckwheat

Buckwheat is one of the fastest-growing cover crops. It can create tons of organic matter in just 30 to 45 days. We recommend sowing buckwheat with crimson clover for a fall or winter cover crop. The buckwheat acts as a nurse crop for the crimson clover during the heat of the day. In the fall, the buckwheat is killed by frost.

Cover Crops to Break Up Compacted Soil

Daikon Radishes

Daikon Radishes are popular for compacted soils because their tough, fast-growing roots easily break up the soil. They put on rapid fall growth, and winter kills them where temps regularly get below 20°F.

The crop residue from daikons decomposes quickly and releases its nitrogen early. The channels created by radish roots improve infiltration, drainage, soil warming, and growth of the next crop’s root systems.

Rye

Rye is a great winter cover crop with an extensive root system, making it an excellent choice for improving soil structure in compacted beds. Rye is very good at releasing phosphorus and potassium. It also stabilizes excess soil and manure nitrogen.

Many of us gardeners of the Southeast grow our crops in red clay soils. While we’re thankful for the nutrients and other advantages they bring, they also have a few downfalls. One of the most affordable ways to improve these soils is to grow cover crops. Choose one of these cover crops and sow this fall to improve your clay soil this winter.