Pittsburgh Garden Experiment

Hey there gardeners,

 

 I hope everyone’s growing season is going fantastic! If you find yourself with excess produce that is going to waist please keep the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in mind and help feed the hungry with your surplus of produce.

 

The Food Bank is participating in Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR), a public service campaign of the Garden Writers Association of America (GWAA). PAR is a way for gardeners to help the community and fight hunger. Gardeners can grow extra specifically for the program or they may collect excess produce to donate. The Food Bank will connect the gardener to a local pantry or soup kitchen so they may drop off their donation at their convenience, as well as receipts. The gardener is to fill out the receipts with their name, the date, the agency they have dropped off to and the pounds that are being donated (this can be estimated), and mail or fax the receipts back to the Food Bank. The food bank will keep track of the pounds donated in order to measure the success of the program.

 

A gardener may also check out www.AmpleHarvest.org, a website that connects gardeners to food pantries near them. It is very user friendly for both the gardener and the food pantry. All the food pantry needs to do is register on the website, the gardeners can then enter their address and or zip code and the closest pantry to them will be shown via map and listing. There are currently 2,155 food pantries listed on AmpleHarvest.org nation wide.

 

If there are no pantries listed near you the Food Bank is happy to help! If you choose to find a pantry through AmpleHarvest.org, please still contact the Food Bank for receipts in order to participate in the program. 

 

For more information on how to be involved please contact Michelle Herrle at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank mherrle@gpcfb.org  412-460-3663 X. 214   

I read yesterday that trapping and dropping off a raccoon although seemingly humane is actually a bad thing.

Check out this interesting website:  Center for Human-Wildlife Conflict Resolution

The raccoon is one of the most abundant urban animals.  If you trap and move it, it will most likely be taking the spot of another rural raccoon, meanwhile the spot in your backyard will fill with another raccoon. It could also transfer an urban disease to the rural population.

The best way to deal is not to trap or kill, but to make your area less attractive to raccoons.  Coop your chickens and fence in your compost areas well if raccoons are a problem.

Has anyone tried coyote urine?

Any other ideas?

This blog was reposted from PittsburghPermaculture.org

So... last year we bought a McIntosh apple and promptly filled up the rest of the yard to the point that we didn't feel like we had enough space for another semi-dwarf tree, nor do we need that many apples. The problem is that apples need a different variety nearby in order to set their best fruit and we aren't sure if there are any other apples or crab apples that would be close enough to do the job (sweet cherries, pears and others have similar needs).

The solution?...... Two varieties on a single tree!

You may have heard of trees for sale that have several varieties on them, what you may not know is that you too can be Dr. Frankenstein.

Here is what I did.

First, you have to figure out what kind of apple can pollinate the one you already have, CLICK HERE. Then you have to identify scion (branch of the new tree type) material, say from a close big box store's fruit tree stock which was in bad need of pruning. The scion should be 8 buds long with clean cuts on both ends (make sure you know which end is which). Scions can be taken in the fall and stored carefully, but I took mine fresh in late winter/early spring.

The next step is identifying a branch of similar diameter as the scion on the receiving tree. This way when you set up the graft union the cambium lines up on both sides, giving the union a better chance of success. Then you make a straight cut with bypass clippers at that point.

Then, as in the diagram in the slide show above, you take the utility knife and cut the receiving branch in half to a depth of 1.5". The diagram is not perfect because it looks as though I made 2 cuts to take out a wedge when, in fact, it is a single cut and the two halves are spread apart. This is called a modified cleft graft, better pictures can be found HERE.

Then you sharpen the bottom part of the scion by making a single, clean cut about 2 inches long down one side and, turning the scion over, cut starting at the same point as last time and make a clean cut to meet up with the other cut 1.5" down.

Once the cuts are made, quickly insert the scion into the receiving branch, making sure to line up the cambium (the little bit of green tissue between the bark and the wood) perfectly on one side, if the other side lines up that's perfect but you must definitely line up one side.

Finally, wrap the graft union with the electrical tape. I felt like it was best to wrap the union from the bottom up to reduce sitting water in the wrapping, but maybe that doesn't matter. Whats important is to wrap it firmly and overlap the tape to reduce moisture loss and drying of the scion.

Keep an eye on the scion and when you see the buds swell, it means you have succeeded. At this point it is not clear to me whether to remove the wrapping or wait for a while. I have read different fact sheets that suggest both methods, so maybe it doesn't matter so much as long as the tape isn't permitted to bite into the bark.

Now we have two different varieties on a single tree that will pollinate each other and we will get two types of apples in the fall.

If you have questions, have tried this yourself or are going to give it a shot, please feel free to comment below.

-Troy

- - -

Update: I am now 2 for 2 with this type of graft and I found a pretty good video describing the process:

June 2 marked my first "farm" tour at Fireman Farms and to my aid came Steel City Soil's own Jeff Newman-  we showed off the power of Mo Bitty Bits and talked about the Pittsburgh Garden Experiment- they even learned about permaculture and polyculture.  I showed off the soil and let them eat my yard.  More to follow.

I've been researching some questions on fruit pollination lately.

Whether you're an expert or not, here's a good recap of the rules from Missouri Extension.

Missouri Extension - Pollinating Fruit Crops

Hey all,

I hope the growing season has been productive for everyone so far, and that your seeds and gardens are taking off with this warm spring weather.

I've been growing in the greenhouse since Feb. and things are starting to look really good with lots of flowers blooming, perennials getting potted up, and vegetable starts gaining some growth.

I'm currently open for retail sales @ 152 Mechling Hill Rd. in Colliers W.V. from 10-7 everyday through May.  I've got a lot of hanging baskets full of petunias and ivy geraniums, along with flats of many different annual flowers.  Tomato varieties to name a few include big boy, beefsteak, brandywine, roma, riesentroube, cosmonaut, arkansas traveller, pink oxheart, sub arctic plenty, pink egg, and more.

Hot and sweet heirloom peppers are getting up in size and ready for the garden along with eggplants of a couple varieties.

Perenial plants for sale currently include rhubarb, day lilies, strawberries, lily of the valley, ostrich fern, along with a small selection of trees like aborvitae, juniper, white pine, austrian pine, and my personal favorite from the ohio valley the pawpaw tree.

I just seeded the majority of herbs a week or so ago and will have a diversity of annual and perennial culinary and medicinal herb plants for sale in a few weeks.

The gardens are getting filled up, so far about 400lbs of potatoes and 100lbs of onions in the ground, lots of peas looking good, and of course greens and radishes have been my lunch almost everyday.

Hope the season grows well for all

Come on out to Colliers to see what I've got

Wiggy

 

Keyline design is a technique for routing water through your farm.  Here's a 5 part youtube series.

 

here's a video from a great gardening blog called Doug Green's Garden.

 

 

Check out the full article here:  http://www.douggreensgarden.com/the-basics-of-pruning-fruit-trees.html

Hey everybody.  I need some help!  I am training a grape vine up my house and over a window and want a simple support structure.  I found a cool German website:

http://www.fassadengruen.de/eng/uw/climbing_plants/uw/grapevine/grapevine.htm

*you need to translate most of the pages to english by typing the url into google

anyways....  this is what they have pictures of that i would like to find:

 

or...

 

If you have any information about where to get something like this, let me know!

 

Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture(growing fish) and hydroponics(growing plants in water).  These systems seem to fit together well for maximum productivity in your ponds or even in plastic barrels indoors.

This is a great resource for pond management and indoor fish farming.  It's called Faith.And.Sustainable.Technology, a non-profit organization which works to teach people how to grow their own food efficiently.

They have a ton of downloadable documents on topics like aquaculture and animal husbandry, .  There are plans for a fish farm which uses plastic barrels.  I have the barrels, I just need a place to put them!  Anyone with some greenhouse space?