It's My Birthday

Spring Hours!

First, the news is that we are back open with our spring hours, with more daylight and more days to share with all of our wonderful customers!

Birthday Blessings

Friday, February 27th is my birthday, and it seems that almost every year my birthday is accompanied by unusually warm days to lull us into the false hope of spring. I have to share my birthday with my brother - I was his ‘present’ for his 6th birthday, which is one day after mine - so I think that having a glorious day and lots of cake and ice cream is a fair compromise with sharing birthdays with siblings.

But birthdays only last one day, and a quick look at the forecast shows a rapid return to cooler and perhaps showery weather next week. So don’t get too excited to put in the tomatoes and basil yet, however this is a good opportunity to clean up and get the soil ready, and consider how you want to grow your herbs and vegetables this year. Directly in the soil, in raised beds or in containers?

Prepping Your Raised Beds

We see more customers building raised beds or purchasing larger containers, barrels or even metal cattle troughs to use for herb and vegetable gardens. While at Morningsun we grow our test gardens in ground, we certainly understand the benefits to raised gardening. Raised beds can be more convenient as they eliminate the need to bend over and can even be built with benches on the edge to assist with gardening. You can use wood, rock, brick, block or metal as your siding - it can be beautiful, functional, recycled, minimalist or whatever style suits you or your budget allows. You can control the quality of the soil in the bed. In raised beds the soil warms faster, allowing for an earlier start to your season. It is often easier to manage insects, crawling nuisances like snails, dogs, children, rabbits and even burrowing animals.

Unless your container or raised bed is on wheels or can be moved easily, you will want to be sure your bed is in a sunny location if you are planning to grow vegetables and most of your common herbs. Six to eight hours of sunlight during the growing season is a must! Placement of plants in the bed will also be important, as large growing plants such as tomatoes can shade out shorter growers. Shady spots in the garden can be used for shade loving or tolerant herbs such as cilantro, dill and chives.

Herbs and flowers are excellent to use as border plants in a raised bed. Besides the benefit of flavor and cut flowers, blooming herbs and flowers can attract beneficial insects and pollinators.

Although it’s tempting to hand water raised beds, installing soaker hoses or drip lines allows for slow watering. This thoroughly moistens the soil rather than leaving dry areas. It also gives uniform watering, and makes it much easier to keep the bed watered if you are off on a vacation.

Soil quality is one of the most important components in the raised bed. In large containers and raised beds, don’t use native soil as it will not drain properly. Instead, use a well blended bagged soil mix which will give plenty of air space and allow for drainage. For raised beds, a good soil mix can be the most expensive part of the bed building. It’s important to remember that spending money on soil is a long term investment. A good soil mix doesn’t need to be replaced, just amended with additional soil mix and fertilizer. Soil is like a house’s foundation - a house will stand strong on a well built foundation. Likewise high quality soil leads to strong, well branched root growth, ease of nutrient uptake and ability for a plant to withstand drought. So even though the soil isn’t the pretty part of the garden, or the delicious part, remember it is the foundation for your plant’s long term growth.

There are many choices for good soil mixes. At Morningsun we like to use E.B. Stone ‘Organics Raised Bed’ mix for most of our larger pots and raised beds. When we are amending the raised beds after harvest and before replanting, we often mix in E.B. Stone ‘Soil Booster’ which gives a boost of earthworm castings, chicken manure, bat guano, feather meal, alfalfa meal and kelp meal.

To help you get a good start on your spring gardening, we are buying in many pallets of our favorite soil amendments this week, from our most popular ‘Big Harvest Garden Soil’ used to amend and mulch in ground planting, to Soil Booster, Raised Bed and Cactus Mix. And we have a sale to get your garden going, with 15% off all soils from February 27th -March 8th. And if you buy three or more bags you will qualify for our $1 off discount and you can earn rewards points with the purchase, so it’s a great deal all round!

Need some guidance on growing in containers and raised beds? Check out our video on growing herbs in containers and raised beds by clicking here.

Herb Gardening Classes coming in March!

Our first classes of the year will be a weekend series on all things herbs, March 14th - 15th. Learn the basics of herbs in the first class, then expand your knowledge with a hands on class in propagation, a class on planting your herb garden and a class on harvesting and preserving your herbs. Taught by Morningsun Herb Farm owner Rose Loveall and herbalist Brita Wynn, this is a information packed hands on weekend.

Sign up for classes on our website or click here for more information. Each class is $60, the entire weekend series is $200.

Morningsun is on the Road!

Our first event of the year is on Saturday, March 7th. We will be travelling to McKinley Park in Sacramento for their annual Gardeners Market. It’s a great opportunity to visit with local nurseries and artisans from around Sacramento Valley.

Why is my name Rosemary?

And finally, for all of you who think I am named after the delicious herb and hardy landscaping plant, sorry to disappoint. My brother got to name me since I was his birthday ‘present’, and he named me after the babysitter. He even announced on the afternoon children’s TV show ‘Captain Satellite’ on channel 2 that he was getting a baby sister named Rosemary, so I guess I just got lucky that my name fits my career!