February in the Garden
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Greetings from Birch Meadow,
Groundhog’s Day is close to my heart, with its roots in the ancient tradition of Candlemas on February 2, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal—the hedgehog—as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
Sure enough, this year the groundhog saw his shadow, foretelling that winter will last the full 6 weeks till spring equinox on March 20.
As the plants remain in their roots, may we all go gently with ourselves and stretch into the dream of spring while also enjoying the gifts that winter still has to offer.
THINGS TO DO IN YOUR GARDEN IN FEBRUARY
• Here is a link for things that should have been done in January, just in case you are still catching up!
• Click here for Central NC Planting Calendar for Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs.
• First week in February start broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower plants inside your home.
• Plant English peas, onions, Irish potatoes, radishes, rutabagas, spinach, kale, turnips, and carrots the last week of February.
• Plant fruit trees and grape vines while dormant, before buds open.
• Prune bunch grape vines and blueberries this month.
• Trim ornamental grasses like liriope, mondo grass, and pampass grass.
• Cut back any overgrown shrubs.
• Prune fruit trees, such as apples, cherry, nectarine, peach, pear, and plum while dormant, before buds open.
• Divide perennials like daylily and shasta daisy when the ground is dry enough.
• Clean out bluebird boxes.
• Develop a vegetable and landscape plan for your home grounds.
• Bring cut branches of forsythia, winter honeysuckle, spirea , and quince inside. Place branches in water-filled vases to enjoy early blooms.
WHY ARE EARTHWORMS SO IMPORTANT IN THE GARDEN?
Earthworms are some of the hardest-working critters in the garden. They process organic material (both in the soil and in your compost pile) and recycle the contents into nutrients, they help improve soil structure, and they create tunnels in the soil for air, water, and plant roots.
Worms that compost are usually smaller, live closer to the soil surface, and can tolerate higher temperatures and a more crowded environment. They prefer to eat organic matter like compost more than they do actual soil, and as a result, produce richer worm “castings” (worm poop). These are the earthworms you see in your compost pile, and the ones that are recommended for vermicomposting indoors. Common names to look for are “red wigglers” or “red worms.”
The worms that move the earth go deeper in the soil and tend to be larger as a natural requirement for the job they do. They help aerate the soil and improve soil, and prefer cooler soil and less crowded living conditions. While they also produce valuable castings, theirs tend to be less rich ones than their compost-eating cousins.
There are lots of ways to attract worms to your garden:
Add compost and other organic matter to your soil.
Start a compost pile. You build it, and they will come.
Avoid tilling the soil. It destroys soil structure and can kill the worms you already have.
When your veggies are done for the year, leave their roots in the soil. Got old broccoli plants that need to go? Rather than pulling up the entire plant, simply cut it off at the base, and throw the top part of the plant into your compost pile. Surface-dwelling earthworms will process the roots.
There’s another, very cool way to garden with worms. Check out our friends at Rogue Worms and order your worms today!
WATCH ROGUE WORMS!
(If link times out, type rogueworms.com in browser and wait a sec)
WILDFLOWER LANE FARM IS FEEDING OUR LOCAL KIDS
Jim Sander of Efland, NC, and client of Birch Meadow, is providing food relief to local children who are food insecure by taking the money and middlemen out of farming. He has been increasing his yields each year by using low-till, high-density, regenerative farming techniques.
Wildflower Lane Farm began operating in 2010 in Orange County, NC after Jim attended an introductory farming course at the Breeze Farm in Hillsborough. For the first 7 years, Jim grew organically-certified produce and sold it to local markets, including Whole Foods, Weaver Street Market, Eastern Carolina Organics, and numerous restaurants and CSA's. At the end of year 7, Jim decided to take another approach to feeding local people. The existing system made small scale farming frustrating and difficult.
Jim’s spark of inspiration led him to stop in at the local non-profit group TABLE one day while he was walking around Carrboro. TABLE has been operating for 12 years; their mission is to feed local kids who are food insecure. Approximately 30% of children in Orange County, NC are food insecure, and TABLE provides food relief to those families with weekly food boxes delivered to them either at school or to their house.
The plan Jim presented was simple: TABLE would provide funding for needed materials such as seeds, seedlings, compost, irrigation lines, fertilizer etc. They would also provide free volunteer labor. Jim agreed to work 20 hours each week for free, supervising volunteers provided by TABLE.
To his delight, TABLE visited the farm and agreed to try the plan for a year. They supplied $4,500 for materials in 2019. Jim worked 20 hours each week, and 6-8 volunteers worked about 30-40 hours/week. At the end of the year, food valued at approximately $45,000 was delivered to TABLE for distribution.
In 2020, TABLE supplied about $8,000 for materials, and received $58,000 in produce. In 2021 they continued the program, by supplying $15,000 ($9,000 in materials and $6,000 for one part-time worker), with a return of $80,000 in organic produce. This is on 3/4 acre! In fact, Wildflower Lane Farm produced over 25,000 pounds of produce over 9 months in 2021.
HOW MODERN FOOD CAN REGAIN ITS NUTRIENTS
by Rachel Lovell, BBC
Supermarket staples have been getting bigger, juicier and more appealing.
But their nutritional content has not been keeping pace.
To grow the healthiest food we need to understand what we put into it to start with.
It looks like a carrot, it tastes like a carrot, but is it as good for us as it once was?
The nutritional values of some popular vegetables, from asparagus to spinach, have dropped significantly since 1950. A 2004 US study found important nutrients in some garden crops are up to 38% lower than there were at the middle of the 20th Century. On average, across the 43 vegetables analyzed, calcium content declined 16%, iron by 15% and phosphorus by 9%. The vitamins riboflavin and ascorbic acid both dropped significantly, while there were slight declines in protein levels. Similar decreases have been observed in the nutrients present in wheat. What's happening?
Prompted by food shortages after World War Two, scientists developed new high-yield varieties of crops and breeds of livestock, alongside synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, to boost food production. Coupled with improvements in irrigation and the advent of affordable tractors, crop productivity increased dramatically. The average global cereal yield rose 175% between 1961 and 2014, with wheat, for example, rising from an average yield of 1.1 tonnes per hectare to 3.4 tonnes per hectare in around the same timeframe.
While yields went up, nutrient levels in some crops declined, bringing intensive farming techniques under scrutiny. Could it be, as some have claimed, the result of the increased use of artificial pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals disrupting the fine balance of soil life, the health of crop plants, and therefore affecting the quality of the food we eat?
A 170-year study into wheat grown using different farming techniques in the UK suggests there is more going on.
"The Broadbalk experiment is one of the oldest continuous agronomic experiments in the world. Started in 1843, it has been comparing the effect of inorganic [artificial] fertilizers and organic manures on winter wheat. It has specifically examined the levels of iron and zinc in wheat grown under different farming methods," explains Steve McGrath, a professor in soil and plant science at Rothamsted Research in the UK.
"First, our findings show that it isn't a lack of micronutrients in the soil that is driving the lower nutrients in the crop. Those that are bioavailable, that is, in a form that the plant can absorb, don't change with intensive farming methods."
So, if the soil is as good as it was, what else is going on? Have the plants themselves changed?
WHAT IS FIG BUTTERCUP AND WHY IS IT A PROBLEM?
Fig buttercup (Ficaria verna) is an invasive plant that is aggressively taking over floodplain and streamside ecosystems in North Carolina. It spreads easily when its bulblets and tubers spread through water to start new colonies. Once established, it creates dense mats that outcompete native plants and disrupts the natural balance of our ecosystems.
Also called lesser celandine and pilewort, fig buttercup is generally only visible above ground in winter and spring. It puts out leaves in winter, and then its yellow flowers appear in March and April. By early summer, the flowers and leaves die back, and the plant becomes dormant until the following winter.
Native to Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, fig buttercup has long been invasive in the northeastern U.S. In the last 10 to 15 years, it has increasingly become a problem here in North Carolina. Sometimes grown as an ornamental plant, it can spread from home gardens into drainage ways to nearby streams and floodplains and through mulch.
See where fig buttercup has been spotted in Durham, Orange, Chatham, and Wake Counties.
If you would like help tending your established garden or installing a new one, please let us know! Click here for Maintenance Policy & Pricing.
We hope you are all staying cozy and well and are resting up as pring creeps forth.
The Birch Meadow Team
Mary Beth, Kelley, Barbara, Karla, Jared, Frankie, Kizzia, Jess, Rachael & CommUnity Based Landscaping
919-224-9697