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AGRICULTURE
It’s
time to plan your cutting garden
Jeneen
Wiche
My
new vegetable garden comes complete with an eight-foot fence to
keep the deer out. This wildlife fence has given me a sense of
security I never felt about the garden on the hill. Beans would
disappear at night and tomato cages were sometimes smashed and
thrown about (I can only guess it got stuck on a browsing deer’s
head as it zeroed in on a tomato).
My new sense of security allows me to be as creative as I want
in the vegetable garden. This space is not just for food but herbs,
plants that attract beneficial insects and an expanded cutting
garden. I love everything about this time of the year but one
special bonus is being able to make flower arrangements, for free,
to bring into the house. It starts in late winter with daffodils
and woodland flowers; in May the peonies fill the house with their
spicy, sweet scent; and then a steady stream of annuals and perennials
fill mason jars and vases through the first frost.
Since cutting gardens are about production, the first order of
business is preparing the soil. You will want maximum harvest
so prepare the soil with compost for extra nutrition; good drainage
is necessary, too, of course. Some of our favorite cutting flowers,
like cosmos and zinnias, demand good drainage. In fact, these
annuals are so undemanding a little neglect often improves performance.
If you have the space, plan out your cutting garden in rows or
blocks. Planting, cultivation and harvesting will be easier and
more efficient. In order to maximize production, work a slow-release
fertilizer like cottonseed meal into the soil during the planting
of seedlings or container plants; if starting from seed, wait
to side-dress the plants once they have several sets of true leaves.
Providing small amounts of fertilizer to the plants’ root
systems at a slow rate can be supplemented by a bi-weekly application
of a water-soluble fertilizer like fish emulsion or a local manufactured
brand.
Certainly, food and water are essential for maximum production
so if Mother Nature does not provide rainfall then water one inch
per week on average, depending on the requirements of the plant.
If flowers go uncut, be sure to dead-head any spent blooms. You
want your annuals and perennials to expend their energy on producing
blooms, not seeds. However, at the end of the season allow some
flowers to go to seed so that you can harvest them for planting
next year.
In my world, success as a cutting flower is measured in three
days. If it can hold your color, petals and resist wilting for
three days in a vase, it is a good cut flower.
Annuals typically make up the bulk of a cutting garden; some reliable
blooms include bachelor buttons and cosmos, which generally reseed
themselves year after year. As soon as the soil warms I sew zinnias
in all shapes and sizes. Sunflowers are a snap to start from seed,
too.
Perennials also have a place in the cutting garden and quite a
few last in the vase well beyond the three-day mark. Gaillardia,
knautia, veronica, veronicastrum, eryngium, solidago, salvias,
helianthus, heliopsis, achillea, coreopsis and echinacea are all
prolific summer perennials that deserve a row in the cutting garden.
Good filler plants that appeal to me and hold up relatively well
(I say relatively because there is a little blossom drop after
a couple of days) includes catmint “Six Hills Giant”
in late spring through the summer; and Russian sage and beautiful
mint (calamintha) in late summer.
You can also use foliage plants like Solomon’s seal, hostas
and herbs as fillers in your vase. These “fillers”
have the ability to anchor cut arrangements literally and figuratively.
All of these high-volume plants will fill the vase, then you can
add the flowers that you really want to highlight, like a bright
orange cluster of asclepias, or butterfly weed, in late spring;
or the bright blue of salvia “Black and Blue” in the
summer.
High-quality
forage boosts animal performance
Kim
Strohmeier
County Agriculture Extension Agent
The
ultimate test of forage quality is animal performance. Producing
high quality forages is vital to improved animal performance,
whether your goal is more pounds of milk, a higher rate of gain,
or an improved conception rate.
Forages provide a major percentage of the nutrients for beef and
dairy cattle, goats, sheep, horses and ruminant wildlife. If the
quality isn’t right, you can’t feed animals enough
forage to achieve production goals.
Forage quality is defined as “the extent to which a forage,
whether pasture, hay or silage, has the ability to produce the
desired animal response.”
While many factors affect forage quality, the stage of maturity
at harvest is the single most important consideration. It also
is the one you have the most control of. Protein content, digestibility
and acceptability to livestock drops as legumes and grasses move
from the vegetative (or leafy) stage to the reproductive (or seed)
stage. For instance, grasses may contain more than 30-percent
protein at the immature, leafy stage, but drop to less than 8-percent
protein when they mature.
Because there is considerable variation in quality among the various
forage species, choosing plant species is another important factor
in producing high-quality forages. Generally, legumes are higher
quality than grasses. Cool season grasses usually are more digestible
than warm-season grasses. Plant breeders continue to improve forage
quality within species, so variation also exists within species
among varieties.
In addition to forage quality, you’ll need to consider animals’
nutritional needs and match the quality to these needs. For example,
a high-producing dairy cow needs a higher quality feed than a
dry, pregnant beef cow. Palatability, intake, digestibility and
nutrient content are among these considerations.
Palatability is a measure of acceptability by animals when offered
free choice. In general, high-quality forages are more palatable.
Forages must be palatable for animals to consume enough to meet
their daily needs. Research has shown that animals tend to eat
more of the better quality forages.
Digestibility also improves with forage quality. Animals may digest
80 to 90 percent of immature, leafy grasses but only 50 percent
or less of mature material with lots of stems. High quality forages
have significant amounts of protein, energy, vitamins and minerals,
but are low in undesirable contents such as fiber and lignin.
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