MSU Extension starts winter gardening workshops Wednesday

Winter might seem to be an unlikely time to think about gardening, but Montana State University Hill County Extension Office is hosting free gardening workshops this winter to help prepare people to care for soils, lawns, flowers, vegetables, trees and fruits in the coming growing season.

The first workshop is Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Timmons Room on the bottom floor of the Hill County Courthouse.

Hill County Extension Agent Tom Allen, who is teaching the four workshops on gardening, said that the information is based on what is taught for the Master Gardener certification course.

“We’re just hitting the highlights,” he said.

Most people he added, want the basic information, and don’t want the commitment of the full eight-week program, and this series he has planned to be beginner-friendly to help gardeners avoid mistakes and find success.

Wednesday’s class is Soils and Compost.

Lawns and Flowerbeds will be held Tuesday, Jan. 7, at 6 p.m. in the Havre-Hill County Library. This course will cover the basics such as fertilizing and watering, Allen said. For lawn care, the list of basic care also includes aerating and thatching. For flowerbeds, he will also cover flowerbed design that will enhance the viewing and health, using ornamental grasses, annuals and perennials, and choosing the right plants for the environment and soil.

The Vegetable Gardens workshop, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 6 p.m. at Havre-Hill County Library, will cover organic versus inorganic fertilizers, plant varieties and placement of plants, he said, adding that he will have the details of these later workshops in a few weeks.

The Trees and Fruits workshop, though, he knows will include basics about choosing trees, planting, common diseases, frost and freezing damage, and a little bit on pruning. He said he’ll touch a little bit on chokecherries and June berries, but mostly focus on apple trees, raspberries and strawberries.

Allen gave a summary of what he will cover Wednesday.

“The reason we start with soils and composting is that’s where everything starts from in your garden is your soils,” he said, adding, that putting additional compost helps build soils if it’s done correctly.

The first thing to do, he said, is for gardeners to determine what type of soil they are dealing with, and around north-central Montana that means determining the balance of silt, sand and clay in the soil.

To do this, he said, people need to look at the soil texture triangle, which classifies soils, or loam, based on the percentage composition of silt, sand and clay.

This percentage can be determined by placing a soil sample in a jar. MSU Extension research said to fill a straight-sided pint jar 1/3 with soil that doesn’t have rocks, slowly add water until almost full, mark the soil depth, add 1 teaspoon of dishwasher soap or water softener, cover and shake, then let it settle.

The soil sample meeds to settle for 24 hours, then lines drawn on the jar to indicate the levels of each element. Sand will be on the bottom, silt in the middle and clay at the top and looking at the color and texture changes will help determine where the lines should go.

A somewhat quicker method is to mark the depth of sand at one minute and the depth of silt at six hours and the remaining soil would be clay.

The quickest way to determine the percentage of sand, silt and clay is by feel, called hand-texturing. The gardener should evenly dampen a small handful of soil, then rub it between their fingers. The sand in the soil, he said, will feel gritty, so figure first how much of the sample is gritty material.

The silt and clay will both feel smooth, so to determine the percentages of these pressed between the fingers in what is called a ribbon test. How well the soil sticks together when flattened tells the percentage of clay content. The better it holds its shape the more clay content it has. The remaining percentage is the silt.

“Most of our soils have a high clay content in this area,” Allen said. “That’s why we talk about adding compost to your soil, or adding amendments to your soil.”

“You’re looking for a sandy loam or a silty loam is what you’re aiming to get to,” he added. “It’s hard to change your soil texture, but if you know where you’re starting off at it can be helped.”

One of the ways to help improve soil is by adding compost, but gardeners need to show caution because compost adds nutrients and too much of some can cause as much problem as lack of nutrients, he said.

Compost materials include a mix of coffee grounds, corncobs and stalks, eggshells, fish and shellfish scraps, fruit and vegetable waste, grass, hay, straw, leaves, wood sawdust and chips, manure, straw and wood ash.

“Most of the time we put way too much compost on our gardens,” he said. “If you start adding compost to your garden every year, you can reach toxic levels of some nutrients.”

Chicken manure, for example, can be very high in potash and nitrate.

The plants will show different symptoms from deficiencies or excesses of nutrients, he said. For example, too little phosphorous will show up as purple in the leaves. Too little potash will show up as yellowing of older leaves and too much will just kill plants.

With compost, it’s best to send a sample to a soil testing lab to get the nutrients verified.

“There are just some basic things you don’t want to throw in your compost pile and things you do,” he said, “to give it the right balance of carbon of nitrogen.”

Oily foods are at the top of the list, he said, like butter, mayonnaise and vegetable oils. The oils coat everything and slow the decomposition process, plus, he said, they will start to stink and attract pests. These same problems apply to bones and fatty meat, which don’t break down.

Other issues can crop up with the type of vegetation put in compost.

Most people use their lawn grass clippings in compost, Allen said, but shouldn’t add clippings from a lawn that has recently been sprayed with an herbicide. These can carry over and some can last for a long time, he added, with the potential to kill gardens.

These same cautions should be taken if adding straw, hay or other vegetation from a crop or pasture, he said.

People should also avoid putting weeds in compost, he said, especially those that spread through roots, like field bind weed, which is a vining plant with an arrowhead-shaped leaf and white or pink bell-shaped flowers, and Canada thistle. These are tough to kill once established, he added.

The composting process creates heat. The optimum temperature within a compost pile occurs between the temperatures of 50 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, but the ideal temperature range is 125 to 140 degrees, he said. Weed seeds will start dying off at about 140 degrees, he added.

The only way to tell the temperature is with a compost thermometer that looks roughly like a meat thermometer with a much longer probe, Allen said. These thermometers can be found at gardening supply stores.

Composting is an aerobic process so it should be turned once a week, he said, and it also needs moisture, and the ideal time to get the moisture throughout the pile is to water it, just until it’s moist, while turning the compost.

Composting can be done simply by piling the material, but it’s easier to contain if it’s kept in bins, he said, with a minimum size of 3-feet by 3-feet by 3-feet. He said he prefers larger bins than that because the smaller bins, or piles, are just too hard to keep going.

Composting requires a specific environment, which is hard to maintain in a small piles — this includes the barrel composting systems that can be turned with a hand crank. Some people, he said, have had good luck with them, but not everyone can make them work.

“One of the old horticulture guys told me, ‘The size of a Volkswagen Bug is what you really need,’” he said, laughing.

Allen said he likes to have three bins, one with the new composting material, the second with composting in process and a third with the finished compost.

The bins don’t need to be fancy. He said, he’s made them out of chicken wire or pallets.

In the end, good compost will be completely broken down, so if people are adding large or hard things like a cantaloupe or wood, they need to make sure the foods are cut up and the wood has been through a chipper.

The finished compost will be dark, earthy smelling and free of clumps, he said, and it can be set aside for use as needed.

The big thing to remember, he said, is that compost is an additive to soil, not the soil itself.

January Garden Workshops

Soils and Compost, Wednesday, 6 p.m., Timmons Room, Hill County Courthouse

Lawns and flowerbeds, Jan. 7, 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library

Vegetable Gardens, Jan. 14, 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library

Trees and Fruits, Jan. 28, 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library

Call 406-400-2333 to register