 Hi, welcome everybody. Happy spring. Welcome to the North Dakota State University spring fever garden forums where we connect gardeners with the experts at North Dakota State University. My name is Tom Cobb. I'm an extension horticulturist in the Department of Plant Sciences. Okay, let's get started with tonight's first presentation. I think the North Dakota growing season is very unpredictable. And to many of us, it's a little bit too short. And here to give us some tips on how to extend our season is Dr. Greta Graymig. Greta is an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences. And she is a weed expert, definitely. She teaches courses about weed identification and weed biology and ecology. Her current research includes non-chemical weed management, integrated weed management, weed ecology, and weed management in organic production systems. So Greta, welcome to the forums. All right. Thanks, Tom. And hi, everyone. Thank you for attending my spring fever webinar this evening. I'm really excited to share these tips for you that Tom mentioned. And first, I'm going to talk a little bit about how I know anything about growing vegetables in cold places. You probably can hear that I sound a bit like a southern girl, but I've lived my entire adult life in the North, and I learned how to garden in Bozeman, Montana. And Bozeman has 90 frost-free days. That is not very many. They are in Zone 4B, which is pretty cold. And moreover, they're at high elevation. So the nights are very cold, too. And here in Bozeman, we could not grow a red tomato on the vine. And the picture shows some cucumber vines that we used to grow inside a greenhouse that we built out of old windows. The only way we could grow cucumbers or basil, those two in particular, were very sensitive to the cold nights. And so we would grow them protected. So I learned a lot of my tricks there. That was a really hard place to garden. Then I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, same zone 4B, but 157 frost-free days. So I just went crazy there. I could grow everything. But because of that long season, oh boy, were there so many insect pests that I didn't know how to deal with as an organic gardener. So that was really challenging for me there, too. And then I moved to Fargo, which is a bit colder zone 4A. But we have a nice long-growing season, 137 frost-free days. And that's similar across the state of North Dakota. And I found that this is a really great happy medium, because the colder winters kill off more of the insect pests. But I still have a nice long-growing season. So it's really my favorite place that I've ever garden. But I still need some season extension tricks to help me get the most out of our relatively short season. So there's a bunch of different goals you might have for garden season extension. One is to get an earlier start for your cold-hearty vegetables, like spinach, kale, lettuce, things like that. And by getting an earlier start, you might be able to bypass some damaging insects, say maybe flea beetles that would eat your arugula or radishes. Another thing is if you set the cold-hearty vegetables out as start instead of direct seeding them, you can mulch them and do away with the weeds. So it can be a good strategy for the weeds to plant those cold-hearty vegetables as start. You also can buy some extra time for fruits and vegetables that take a little bit longer than our growing season. Brussels sprouts is a cold-hearty vegetable, but it needs quite a long time compared to some of the other ones like kale and cabbage. In particular, hot peppers, if you are into making those hot sauces, those can really take a long time and you for sure want to start those early. Then you can also be extending your season into the fall. And with that, you might consider growing a second round of cold-hearty vegetables, or you might be wanting to protect your warm season crops from early frost. And we'll talk all about that during the talk. So the first thing I want to talk about is garden temperature microclimates. What's a microclimate? It's a small variation in average temperature, but it sometimes makes a big difference if you're trying to just make it through a little bit of a frost. And so these natural microclimates are determined by many different factors on your property. The overall amount of sunlight that you receive as well as whether it's morning or afternoon sun, the afternoon sun tends to be warmer. Protections from wind can add a few degrees. Proximity to a heated structure like your house will add some protection and warmth as well. The type of soil and in particular the water content of soil is very important to microclimates. Wet soil is slow to warm. Wet soil is cold soil. Also the slopes that determine the angle of sun exposure and water movement can create little microclimates on your property. And also there can be cold air sinks, which are trapped air, cold air sinks, and it's trapped at lower elevations. And that can create little frost pockets. So it's good to learn about those natural microclimates around your property so you don't plant your basil in a frost pocket. You can also create your own microclimates. And one thing that you can use to do that is the concept of thermal mass, which is governed by something called specific heat. And this is the amount of energy that you need to change the temperature of a substance. Change it whether it be heated or cool it down. And you'll notice I've got some specific heat values for various substances. And you'll notice that water is quite a bit higher than air. That means that water is really hard to warm up. But once it's warm, it's also much harder to cool down. So it can create thermal mass that will protect your plants. And you can do things like fill up milk jugs with hot water and place them under your plant coverings. You could plant your rain barrels black. They will heat up more in the sun and then radiate that heat out to maybe a raised bed or a cold frame. Set close to them. You can also use buildings with thermal mass, say a wood building. Notice that the wood has a higher specific heat than air. You can locate your cold frames or raised containers against buildings, especially with a southern exposure. And they will absorb that heat during the day and then radiate it back out at night. One of my favorite micro climate approaches is a raised bed. So especially if you keep the soil in your raised bed dry over the wintertime, it will warm up quickly in the spring. And it creates a great micro climate for early sowing, especially for cold hardy crops like hardy micro greens, onions, spinach, kale, arugula, and lettuce. And you can also add some row covers with the thermal sinks to nurse things along before the last frost is over with. And I'll give you an example of that later on. When people think about season extension, they're often thinking about starting seedlings indoors. And this is a large topic I could give an entire webinar just about this. So I'm going to only hit the highlights. But why do this? It's less expensive. You can choose your own specific varieties that the nursery might not have. Some vegetables are usually not even sold as starts like spinach. And it's just fun. It's something fun to do with your kids. And it provides a sense of accomplishment. So would you ever start cold hardy vegetables inside? Most cold hardy vegetables, of course, can just be direct seeded. And that's what people might do. For instance, they could direct seed them into the raised bed like you see in this photograph. But you can get an earlier crop by starting these cold hardy crops inside and then transplanting them out maybe a couple weeks before the last frost. So one example is onions that you grow from seeds. So you want a variety that's not available as a set. You could start these inside around March 15th or Brussels sprouts that require a longer growing season than some of the other cold crops. You could start these inside too. But when people think about starting seeds inside, they're usually thinking about warm season crops. And these are things like tomatoes, squash peppers, melons, crops that need more heat to grow. After many, many years of starting my own tomatoes, I've learned that it's really not that worthwhile to try to grow great big tomato plants like you would get from the nursery. It's enough just to get them to about the stage they are in this picture. And the reason is that they are heat loving. And once it gets hot out, they're really going to grow like gangbusters. So one year I planted out little tomatoes that are about the size you see in that picture with some other much bigger tomatoes that I bought at a nursery. And in about a month, you couldn't tell the difference between the two. And so it's good to start them inside. Don't do it too early. Tomatoes, I think you could start around April 15th. Peppers, April 15th. If they're hot peppers, maybe a little bit earlier. Squash, cucumbers and melons. I wouldn't start these until about two weeks before you want to set them out. They don't like being transplanted. I usually don't grow them very large at all, maybe just until the first true leaves are just starting to show and then pop them in the ground. But really, these can be direct seeded just fine. So once you've got your seedlings started inside, I think it's good to put them out into a cold frame once they get to be about two to four leaves. And the reason for this is that they tend to get really leggy and weak inside. They don't develop all the accessory pigments that they need to contend with natural light intensity. And they don't get exposed to natural fluctuations in temperature. And so if you transfer those seedlings out to a cold frame like the one in this picture, and this is just a tiny little cold frame that I've used for years and years and years, it's only the size of two commercial flats. And yet it's enough for me to grow all my seedlings. I will start my cold hardy stuff inside. And then once it's two to four leaves, get it in the cold frame. Once that's ready to set out into the garden, I'll bring out my warm season stuff and get that in the cold frame. The only problem with it is it can be a lot of work. You need to open the cold frame during the day if it's getting too hot. And so you kind of need to be around to monitor it a bit. So there's another technique that's more sew it and forget it. Not as fiddly that I just heard about this year. It's called winter sewing. And it's a new idea to me. I'm trying it for the first time. And the idea is pretty simple. You use milk jugs. And I think the clear ones work better than the white. You can see I've got a few of each in this photograph. The clear ones are better. And you cut them in half, fill them halfway full with potting soil, clean new potting soil, and plant cold hardy vegetables into these containers. And the idea behind it is that the seeds will germinate more readily when they're exposed to natural freezing and thawing cycles. And they'll grow more slowly, but they'll be stockier. And they won't need hardening off. And it's also just trouble free. Just set the jugs outside and more or less forget about them. I've read that problems like damping off, which can really be an issue when you're growing seedlings inside, that that's not as much of an issue using the winter sewing technique. It probably works best for the cold hardy crops. And if you want to know more about that, there's a ton of really great YouTube videos about it. You can find out more. So you have another choice, which is to buy plants from a commercial greenhouse. And this might seem like giving up, you know, but I think it's a great option because these guys are pros, they're set up to grow really healthy, beautiful plants. And you can use them strategically to save your cold frame for the things that really matter to you. And this is an example from last year. I love to grow kale and I wanted as early a kale crop as possible. So I bought just eight plants from the nursery, so not a bit of expense. And I set these out in my cold frame or my raised bed rather on May the 2nd. And I was eating kale a lot sooner than I would have if I direct seeded the kale into the same raised bed. And so I think that's a great option if you're not picky about the variety. Curly kale is curly kale to me and I just wanted to eat it sooner. And then again, you can plant that mulch it and then never have to weed it. So that's another plus for using some plants, whether you grow them yourself or get them at the nursery. So you've got your plants, they're ready to go out into the garden. You've taken the leap and you've put them out. And now there's the early frost that you weren't expecting. So what are you going to do? You can use these polyester spun row covers. They come in various weights from heavy to light. You can use the heavier weight for a heavy frost. You can also just use old blankets and quilts. And then you can add the thermal sinks, the milk jugs of warm water to warm that area underneath the covers up even more. Or you can try something called cloaks or walls of water. So a wall of water is kind of a modern spin on a cloak. I also included this picture of the antique French glass cloaks just because it was fun. I thought they were really beautiful and I'd never seen those before. But I have tried these walls of water. They work great, except when they collapse. And so if it's very windy out, sometimes that can be a problem. But they are pretty nice for tomatoes and things like that if you want to get your tomatoes set out early. It's another option. So here's a little example that includes a lot of the different things I just discussed. And I have had an obsession with getting an early crop of spinach. And I have tried lots of different things. I have fall sown in a raised bed. I have early spring sown in a raised bed. I have tried low bolting or slow bolting varieties of spinach. And I never have been able to get a good spinach crop before the spinach was triggered to flower by short nights. It's actually, it's called a long day plant, but the trigger is actually the short nights that we experience around the summer solstice. And so to beat the bolting, I decided last year I was going to start some spinach inside and I started my seedlings inside, put them outside in the cold frame once it got to be maybe 28 degrees at night. And then once the danger of frost was passed, I planted them out in my raised bed. I did have to cover them one time in May. We had a little late frost and I used the covers with the thermal sinks, the water jugs, and I got a pretty good crop. Another technique that you could use is to just plant the spinach after the long days have passed, July 15. That works too. Here's some pictures of my spinach from last year. You can see on April 22, I had a pretty nice flat of spinach seedlings. This is what they looked like when I transplanted them out into my raised bed. And then on May 6, that's what they looked like in the raised bed. And by Memorial Day, I had more spinach than I knew what to do with. You know you're successful if you're begging your neighbors to take it from you. So I was giving spinach away to all of my neighbors. And I'm going to try it again this year. It was some trouble, but if you're determined, you can get stuff like this to work. You just have to be really careful when you transplant it, because they don't like to be handled that much. So that's an example using all those ideas. And then there's also extending your season into the fall. And I don't do a lot of this, mostly because by the time the fall comes, I'm kind of ready. And I've got all my stuff in the freezer and I've dried a bunch of stuff and I'm ready to have it done with. Also the plantings are really big and hard to cover. So it's probably only worth it if you get a freak early frost that's going to be followed by a lot more warmer weather. So if you have some basil and you just want to save it from one night when it's going to get too cold, you can use the covers with the warm jugs of water. With the cold hardy crops, you can get these to survive down to maybe 25 degrees Fahrenheit by mulching them with the little leaves and straw and then maybe putting a frost blanket on top of that. Fruit crops especially will improve in flavor with the frost so you can mulch these heavily too and cover them up and continue to harvest them a little later into the fall. It will keep the soil from freezing quite so quickly and you'll be able to harvest things like beets, carrots, and turnips. And so those are some tips for fall season extension. The last thing I want to mention is growing some plants and containers that can just be moved inside easily. And one thing I do this with is herbs like rosemary or lavender. And one reason is because these like growing in the pots better anyway, it approximates their native Mediterranean climate better than growing in the wet cold heavy Fargo soil. And then in the fall when it gets really cold, I can just bring them inside and have them be happy in the sunny window for a few more weeks. And so that I think is my final tip and hopefully I'm coming in at my time. It looks like I am so we have some time for questions. Thank you so much and I hope you have a really fun gardening season. Thank you Greta. Thanks for getting us off to a great start. Okay we got a couple questions going but please let's we invite your questions if you just want to scroll down to the bottom you can see your Q&A box and type in your questions there we'll get to as many as we can. One person has a question Greta about they challenge you as far as how can bozeman and Madison both be in zone 4b? Well I looked it up and that's what it says. Bozeman's in kind of a warmer area and it's colder because it's at high elevation but I was surprised too I actually didn't know that but they both are in 4b and apparently we're in 4a. Those things are changing a lot though so I don't know it may be a little bit different nowadays but that's just oh that's you know it's like related it's not how long the growing season is it's no it doesn't have anything to it has to do with how cold it gets the absolute limit so here we might get to 30 below consistently whereas in Madison and bozeman they only get to 25 below and so I always tell people there's nothing like a North Dakota winter. I tell my friends in bozeman that all the time you guys don't know what a real winter is because it's so much colder here but their winters are longer right because of the elevation. Okay I'm scrolling through the chat box here as we wait for more questions to come. Yeah also if anyone thinks of a question later on they can always email me I've got my email on the handout so feel free. Here's a question about your spinach there's confusion about the long days short nights in spinach and this gardener says she thinks you could just plant spinach outside shortly before the last frost and pick it when ready. Well you can but the problem is if you I've I've tried that for many years and what happens is that the spinach will get to you might be able to pick a few leaves but you're not going to get the full size plant before the short nights that's what spinach is a long day plant and so it responds to the photo period or the length of the day and when the nights get really short in June it will bolt and my experience is I tried it for years and years and years and years and I was never able to get a really big spinach crop until last year when I tried this starting inside thing so yeah you can grow it and you will get some spinach but this enabled me to get a lot of spinach not just a few little leaves and then it bolts if that makes any sense. How do you like your galvanized raised bed? Oh you know I love it absolutely love it that came from a kit I can't remember the company I think they're actually based in Australia but they have a US base too and it comes in pieces and you bolt it together it's relatively easy to assemble and it's supposed to last for decades whereas I used to have one of my photographs showed my old wooden beds and those lasted for about eight years and then they rotted out and so I love those metal raised beds they're not galvanized steel like they're coated steel but I really like those a lot they're perfect size just a cow tank looks like to me yeah it's not though it's a specialized it's for it's a raised bed for gardening and you'd be able to find it online I wish I could remember the name of the company but I can't off the top of my head. Okay here we go here's another one how about when you put jugs of hot water under the frost covers how far apart do you put the jugs of hot water? Well I probably in a say you had a bed that's about the size of the one I was showing with the spinach in it or the kale I would just put one in the center okay that's enough you know so that space is probably it's about three by four feet so 12 square feet that seem to work well it might depend a little bit on just how cold it was gonna get and and and it takes some experience you know to know how many degrees am I going to be able to buy myself with this technique and we got down I don't know if anyone remembers this in Fargo it happened when my plum tree was in bloom and I was very upset about the plum tree and we got down to I think 24 25 degrees and the spinach was fine covered up with one jug of water and you know the plum tree was actually fine too we tried spraying it with a little water but the trees killed all the pollinators so we still didn't get any plum sorry yeah what's your favorite plants do you you recommend for winter sowing for the winter sowing so caveat I haven't done this I'm doing it for the first time and I do have some plants that just emerged some Napa cabbage was one of the first things to come up but I would when you look at people's websites about it they talk about growing everything that way even warmer season stuff I'd probably start the warmer season stuff later if you wanted to try that personally I don't see the point for me what I'm usually trying to do more than anything is get earlier called hardy vegetables I see and so kale onions cabbage broccoli uh any kind of lettuce green I'm trying something called miners lettuce has anyone ever heard of that before it's not in the lactuca genus but I can't remember what plant family it might be related to sore sore all yeah but anyway that that is um that supposed to be the most cold hardy thing that you can grow is that miners lettuce so I'll um I'll know more about that later on and see if it really works or not but a lot of people just swear by it it seems like an easy it's low tech you know I'm this talk was supposed to be about of course you can build an expensive greenhouse I don't have one um but you can I'd love to have one but this talk was supposed to be about cheap stuff you know and so milk jugs are about as cheap as it gets and also it it's supposed to be pretty low fuss it's some trouble to make them to begin with to you know cut the jugs and poke the holes in them but aside from that it's couldn't be easier okay here's something else it's kind of easy as a cold frame can you briefly describe what a cold frame is and there's a question can you just use like a non-heated building like a shed for I don't I don't think you know the thing about the I don't know if people can still see my slides but yes I'll go back to that slide so in the photograph on the left at least it's on my left you can see my little cold frame and there's a window on the side and that window goes on the front you can see the window better in the center photograph I had it just leaning up against my house and the rest of it's just made out of plywood so it's painted black on the outside to absorb that heat and then it's painted white on the inside to reflect all of the sunlight and it's really pretty small you know it's only the size of two commercial flats but the idea is that unlike a shed it's got a window on there so your plants are receiving sunlight you would put it on the I have mine on the southern side of my house so it gets some good direct sunlight it'll heat up really well during the day even on a cold day when it's sunny and maybe 35 or 40 degrees outside it'll be pretty nice and toasty in there and the plants will really like it a lot so it's you know you do have to build it it does take a little bit of skill to cut a few pieces of wood and I think I put it together with wood screws but it's a pretty low tech solution another one would just be to lean the window up against your house that's why I showed that that's the simplest idea for a cold frame of course that's not going to be as warm because it's open on the sides right but it's just another way of bumping up the temperature a little bit so you can get those plants outside in the natural light inside the intensity of the light you can create even if you have a sunny window and you're using grow lights on top of that will only be a tiny fraction of the light that you will see outside and those plants are responding to that they are making all kinds of photosynthetic pigments and accessory pigments that help them to photosynthesize and to resist bleaching by the sun photo damage and so it's in my opinion it's really important to get those plants outside as soon as you can and cold frames is the way to do it okay Greta just got a few minutes and we want you to get around and get to as many questions as we can so we're going to go short and sweet and quick here we go lightning round all right okay about your spinach about what date do you start your spinach indoors and do you put them under grow lights I would start them under grow lights yes I just use regular shop lights and I would probably start them around right now okay and how about how far apart do you set your plants in the garden when you transplant them the spinach the spinach probably maybe five or six inches apart okay how about do you think compost could help extend the growing season oh absolutely yeah that's a technique I didn't mention but some people will either put a bunch of compost or manure would probably be even better as the heat source underneath their cold frame and then that decomposition process will produce some heat that helps to heat the cold frame and that's absolutely a technique that people use great that's old-fashioned heat yeah yeah how about what kind of mulch do you like to use around your plants when you after you transplant them in the garden well I've used all kinds of things you can use grass clippings you can use leaves mixed with grass clippings you can use straw I've used something made from hemp herd which is kind of interesting there's a company over in Minnesota that's selling that that's the inner part of a hemp stock and I wouldn't suggest using wood chips wood chips tend to shift the soil microbiology community more toward a fungal based community and you want more of a bacterial based community for vegetables okay let's see a lot of interest in your cold frame what kind of materials is your cold frame made out of it's made out of three-quarter inch plywood okay and so it's just it's it's open on the bottom so it's just four sides and a top and the front is slanted so that you can my window just lays on there you could have hinges to attach it but mine just sits on there okay how about uh when you grow your herbs can you just leave them in the containers that you buy them in just without transplanting them I wouldn't I wouldn't do that I think that unless you're buying them in a really large pot I generally see the herbs I buy would tend to come in maybe a three to four inch pot and they're going to get root bound and you're also going to have to water them all the time and so I really like to grow most of my herbs either in my raised beds or my rosemary I always grow and lavender I always grow in a pot they seem to really like that warmer climate by the way peppers do too peppers are really good to grow in raised beds or pots is there a general planting date for a second planting of cool crops um you know it's tricky because a lot of those seeds are not going to want to germinate when it's really hot out in July but that's probably when I would do it is maybe in late July or August because you're you're going to want to the thing about having those crops um into the fall is they're not going to grow very much you need to have them grown as much as you need them to be by say September and so you really need to start them probably in late July or early August and you might be able to use some shade cloth or start them in flats or put your cold frame in a shady area so again it's all about micro climates find a cooler micro climate because those are cold season crops and they they're not going to really want to grow like gang investors when it's um 95 degrees outside okay last question and only because you're a weed expert oh no it's that uh there's a lot of people who want to know how to get rid of creeping jenny um that's the worst weed of all time and I assume you're talking about field bindweed that's the name that I know it from yes and I've never fortunately had this in my garden beds I think if you do probably the best thing you can do is use some chemicals to try to get rid of it spray it with Roundup you might be able to mulch it really heavily put a tarp on the area for a year and try to starve it out but that is very difficult to get rid of once it's gotten started so if I had a solution for that I could retire tomorrow it's it's really challenging I know what you mean okay you know I try to get to as many questions as we could and I try to get the ones that were most focused on our topic and Greta I want to thank you for this presentation it was wonderful and everybody we're just going to take a very short break a couple minutes a couple three minutes and then we're going to start and talk about no till gardening