Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 2/9/2022
WESTFIELD – The calendar has turned to February and the groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter, but Connie Adams, a Westfield farmer, said this is the time to start thinking about planning gardens.
“Now is the time to be sitting down and dreaming about making a nice garden,” said Adams. On Feb. 2, she gave some practical tips about starting vegetable gardens during a nearly 45-minute Zoom presentation for the Southwick Public Library.
Her PowerPoint presentation, “How to Grow Fresh Healthy Food at Home,” was delivered from the Yellow Stonehouse Farm she and her husband own on Root Road near the Southampton line.
She told gardeners that starting vegetable seeds inside requires diligence, patience, and care. “It takes a long time from germination to harvest. Buy your own seeds or may want to buy plants that are ready transplant when the soil temperature in the spring is warm enough.”
Seeds need light, moisture and warmth to germinate. She added that soil temperature is important when sowing seeds or transplanting young plants.
“Feeding and weeding are key when plants are young. Keeping young plants weed-free also is critical,” said Adams. She has already started growing vegetable plants in the stone basement of her yellow farmhouse.
Adams regularly makes presentations to groups to talk about her passion for growing fresh, healthy food. She once wrote a column for The Westfield News called “Farming Matters.” She now writes a blog using the same title.
She encouraged the 16 people on her virtual talk to make their gardens simple, but practical.
“Measure, make drawings, think about where you will put the garden. Don’t put it out in the woods where you will never get out to it,” she said.
Adams added that if there are barriers to accessing the garden, it will increase the chances that gardeners won’t get to their gardens to take care of them. She also suggested that people who have trouble bending should install raised garden beds.
She explained that another benefit of raised bed gardening is the ability to create better soil. If the soil in the yard is too rocky, dense, hard or infertile, she recommended building a raised bed and filling it with enriched garden soil.
Other factors to consider when planning the location of a garden are wind exposure, exhaust from cars, exposure to road salts, and proximity to areas that may shelter pests like deer and rabbits.
Adams said most vegetables require full sun – especially “fruiting vegetables” such as cucumbers, peppers, squash and tomatoes. These types of vegetables require between six and eight hours of sunlight every day.
But there are some vegetables that like a little shade or can’t tolerate the hot afternoon sun. For those, she suggested interplanting crops to provide shade, such as a taller crop of corn on the west side of a row of lettuce. This also allows plants to work together.
Another important ingredient for a garden is water – rainfall, rain barrels, well water, town water, and ponds and streams. The type of soil – clay versus sandy – affects its ability to absorb water.
Adams also discussed methods of watering – irrigating, sprinkling, using buckets – as well as how extremes – droughts vs. deluges – can determine when to water. In response to a question, she said acid rain is not as much of an issue as it was years ago in this area.
Soil acidity versus alkalinity is an important element in growing vegetables. Adams said before planting a garden, test the soil. Depending on the pH level, certain soil “amendments,” such as lime to sweeten soil or pine needles to increase acidity, may be needed to balance the soil.
When answering a question about soil in container gardening, Adams said the soil can’t be reused.
“The best thing is to use new soil each year.”
Adams is an advocate for growing vegetables organically, without any chemicals. She said pesticides and herbicides are toxins.
“We must do our darndest not to pollute our water,” she said.
They not only contaminate vegetables, but they also accumulate in human beings and have been linked to numerous illnesses. Additionally, pesticides and herbicides used on plants are bad environmentally.
“They are toxins that are non-discriminatory,” said Adams.
Man-made chemicals also upset the ecological balance by killing “good” bugs and plants along with “bad” ones, she said: “If you kill a predator insect’s food source, you eliminate the ability of those predators to regulate pests.”
Adams told her audience they should know the difference between beneficial and harmful pests. Bad bugs: aphids, beetles, worms. Good bugs: bees, butterflies, dragonflies. Many of the good bugs are also pollinators.
Another problem when growing vegetables is weeds.
“Weeds are not our friends,” she said. “You have to weed regularly. Keeping ahead of weeds is essential.”
Adams explained that weeds compete with plants for nutrients and moisture in the soil. One advantage of transplanting is that it gives vegetables a head start against weeds.
She said prevention is better than weeding. Putting down black plastic, nontoxic mulch, straw, or newspaper, as well as hand-weeding, hoeing, or tilling are ways to eliminate seed-bearing weeds before they disperse.
“Avoid herbicides – they kill everything, including soil microbes, and may be a carcinogen,” said Adams. Her farm, Westfield’s first one in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, grows only certified organic vegetables and flowers for its CSA shareholders.