Garden Update Late June, 2012: The Squashes

Baby butternut squash

The butternut squash is starting to come  in. I like butternut for a lot of reasons, mostly related to taste. If you pick them young, while they are still yellow, they taste and cook like summer squash.

I have plenty of summer squash coming in, though, so I am going to wait and let these ripen up. If you pick them when they are completely ripe, and are careful not to bruise them, and if you store them properly, they will keep quite well through the winter months. That's why these are called a kind of winter squash.

Summer Squash (Tomatillos to the Left)

So far I have seen no sign of the squash bugs that plagued my garden last summer. I suspect the main reason for this is that I have avoided using wood chips for mulch underneath them. Squash bugs really like to hide underneath wood! I do have wood chips on my garden paths, however. Don and Matthew chipped up the tree limbs that were destroyed, along with part of a neighbor's fence, when he promised me the sun. I am also experimenting with growing the squash up on a trellis to make any squash bugs easier to see and, hopefully, more vulnerable to predators. I've learned to squish them when I see them, however, especially the nymphs, which move a lot more slowly than adults.

To trellis the heavier squashes is not enough. I will have to find the baby squashes and support them up against the trellis as they grow. This is new to me, although I've read about it and seen it done in my travels in Italy.

Early June Garden Efforts

This has been a beautiful weekend for puttering around in my garden. Most plants seem to be thriving, perhaps due to the weather, perhaps due to the top-dressing with compost and mulching with leaves as I mentioned in my previous post. I had a few garlic bulbs tucked in a small flower garden in front of the house. I had nowhere else to plant them last fall, since Don hadn't yet built our raised beds. Yesterday I harvested the bulbs, cut off the tops, cut back the roots to 1/4 inches, and let them rest in a lawn chair on our shady front porch to dry for a couple of days. Then they'll need to cure for a couple of weeks in a dry, dark place to develop full flavor for eating.

Then they won't last long. Don LOVES garlic, and he's developed his own system for peeling the garlic and then roasting it. After that, he eats it fast.

This is too bad, because I like to cook with it, and the flavor of this home-grown garlic is better than anything we can buy in the supermarket. I figure I will order cloves of different types in late August to plant in the fall in our raised beds. I am beginning to think we can't raise too much garlic.

The beer traps I have set out for the slugs have claimed some victims, so that effort has been a success. I've harvested most of my radishes, but I've been spraying what's left with Neem oil because something (caterpillars? I don't see any) have been chewing on them pretty badly. The spinach is looking OK, but something has started to attack it, so I sprayed it, too, just in case.

My Romaine lettuce is the perfect size for picking. We need to be eating some salads this week. I planted more lettuce where I've been pulling up Romaine and where the radishes have been pulled up.

Something, I suspect a rabbit, has eaten all the leaves off my precious young eggplant and a young "healthy pepper" plant. We have three dogs, so I gathered up all the dog hair I could find and spread some around that bed. I've read that rabbits don't like the smell of dog hair. Time will tell.

**Update: we later learned that the eggplant-eating culprit might have been a crayfish or "land lobster," as I called it.  I can't prove it, but the damage to the garden stopped after Don found and killed the crayfish.

My Virginia Garden Late May 2012

Square-Foot Raised Beds, May 27, 2012, Southeastern VA

My raised beds are doing better than I ever dreamed. If you want to see what I have planted where, my online garden planner has more details. The asparagus is coming up beautifully, and the beds are coming alive and green with vegetation.

Asparagus Bed

 The beds are mostly vegetables but I interspersed flowers to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. I've put some flowering potted plants near the beds for the same reason. I've already started to harvest some Cherry Belle radishes, both the greens for salads and the roots themselves. The Romaine lettuce is ready for some selective picking of their outer leaves. I've mulched most plants, except the lettuces, since mulch attracts slugs. Most plants have been mulched with a mix of chicken manure, vegetable scraps, straw, and other items from my Compostumbler, but some of the squares of asparagus with white clover. The clover is an experiment. I suspect it is a bad idea, especially since it is the first year for the asparagus. I read in an article that researchers tried this and the asparagus produced thinner spears than the control plants and reduced yields:

 Unsuppressed white Dutch clover established

at asparagus planting controlled weeds and provided
N over time to the asparagus in a Wisconsin
study, but reduced yield significantly. Establishing
the clover in the second year or third year of an
asparagus planting would be more effective.

Experimental asparagus with clover as living mulch

Unfortunately, I sowed the clover with the asparagus in the first year. Everything I've read suggests that Dutch White Clover is a good idea under tomatoes and pole beans, although it does compete with the taller plants for water. Water has been plentiful so far this year so I will allow the experiment to continue. ***Update or 7/18/12: The asparagus has grown in so thick, it has smothered most of the clover for lack of light. I suspect this is just as well. The clover adds nitrogen to the soil, and if it's dead, it can't compete with the asparagus for water in the summer heat we are having. I was afraid the clover would take over my vegetable beds, but it never did.

I read somewhere a recommendation of sowing winter peas and oats in late September over cleaned asparagus beds as a winter cover crop. The Sustainable Agriculture Network recommends winter rye for the same purpose in its free publication, "Managing Cover Crops Profitably."

Squash Bed

Something, either slugs or caterpillars, has been munching heavily on my radish tops. I plan to try some beer traps in case it is the former. The radishes may be acting as a trap crop, however, because whatever the pest is, it has been mostly leaving my young spinach and lettuces alone. I'd much prefer to lose radish greens than the other salad greens. I also tried spraying a little Neem oil on the radishes and on the few lettuces that are seeing damage.

Romaine lettuce

Basil with leaf mulch

Basil with compost

Baby spinach

We have lot of trees on our property. This has both its good and bad points. The main bad point is that we accidentally located the garden in a spot that does not get enough sunlight for fruiting crops such as tomatoes. To give ourselves credit, there are so many trees it is hard to find a truly sunny spot. Don plans to trim trees and limbs to improve the sunlight. He can't do it fast enough for me!


The "up" side to having so many limbs is that they produce lots of leaves. Our oak tree also sheds flowers in the spring (and tons of acorns for the squirrels). Yes, the leaves are a plus! We continually shake our heads at neighbors who bag them up and leave them at the curb.

We have a terrific lawnmower. We can either use it as a mulching mower, and mulch DRY leaves and oak flowers into the soil, or we can use the bagger that comes with the mower to shred the leaves to use as mulch. Right now most of my garden is mulched with compost  or leaves or a combination of both.


Two words of warning: be sure the leaves are brown (dry). Be sure compost is well-aged. Squash and potatoes, however, will grow more easily in less-than-optimal compost than other plants.

So far I love pole beans! This is the first year I've ever grown them, and I love how quickly they grow up the teepee-style trellises I have put up for them. But I wouldn't have planted them so close to the tomatoes if I'd realized how little sunlight my gardens would get. Oh, well.

Tomato, Pepper, and Pole Bean Bed

  Note to self: I have GOT to pay more attention to my garden planner. I originally planned to grow two tomatillos. I think I read they pollinate and produce better that way. I had two growing beautifully. Wouldn't you know it, I pulled one up? Aargh! At least I'll have more room for squash, since I am growing more than I originally planned in the same space. The square-foot method isn't well suited to squashes, melons, etc., although you can try growing them vertically, which is what I plan to do.

I will post some pictures of my flowers planted for biodiversity and attracting pollinators below. Some double as edibles or herbs.

Nasturtiums are spicy and edible

Marigolds are welcome in any garden

Forget Me Nots

Potted Thyme and Cilantro Flowering

With Marigolds Sprouting, Can Spring Be Far Behind?

Of all the seeds I planted last weekend, the marigolds were voted most likely to come up first. The seed packet said they'd sprout as early as four days after planting. Well, my French marigolds surprised me. They started sprouting a mere two days after I planted them in their peat pellets and set them on the kitchen counter. My Cottage Red marigolds are coming up right behind them. For two or three days, I gasped in amazement every time I saw a new sprout starting to peek up above the soil. Such is the miracle of life. Here are pictures of my first "babies" of the new year:

 I had covered this plastic container with some plastic wrap to maintain moisture levels, but I removed it as soon as they began to sprout since the young plants need air circulation to prevent fungal diseases. These are the French marigolds. They are a dwarf variety.

Here are the Cottage Red marigolds, a taller variety that was discovered in Mexico. I turned on an overhead fluorescent light located by the kitchen window, and the young plants seem hungry; they are quick to turn toward the light as they turn green.

The topsoil arrived Tuesday. Don has been busy shoveling it into a wheelbarrow and filling in the two big beds out back. He is mixing in well-composted chicken manure and other organic matter as he goes. I suspect some sphagnum moss will end up in there. I hope some shredded leaves, too. We certainly have enough of them around this place!

Don has put some metal screening underneath the asparagus beds before adding topsoil. I was worried that mice, moles, and voles would dig their way into the bed from underneath. The asparagus is a 15-year investment of money, time, and energy, and I don't want to plant them just to have our furry neighbors gobble them up!

 

The fencing is to try to keep the dogs out. Don has now decided it will be easier for me to work in the beds if he fences in in the entire garden area rather than the individual beds. That makes sense to me. I don't want to step in the beds if I can help it, since compacted soil doesn't grow plants as well.


In the meantime, my container gardens are getting ready for spring, too. I have some turnip greens that are starting to bolt. I am thinking of letting them go to seed. My "Thomas Jefferson" radishes, the two that are left, are producing some wonderful greens, too, but I wonder if they are thinking of bolting on me. It's hard to believe they'd do that at the beginning of March, but the weather has been unseasonably warm lately. It was in the 80s yesterday, and these plants have survived  all winter, supplying Don and me with tasty greens, just waiting for their chance to reproduce.

Turnip Greens Bolting

More Turnip Greens

Radishes from seed from Monticello.

 In other planters I have mint coming up. One planter has volunteer mint coming up from last year's plants that went to seed. I didn't plant them, and I am trying to decide whether to keep them or pull them up. The plants are growing quickly so I had better decide soon! I have plenty of mint, but the new plants look so green and vigorous and young, I can't help but "root" for them; forgive the pun! I may give them away.

Volunteer Mint

I had one barren planter that Don recently sowed mustard greens in. Some of the peas that I planted last fall as a ground cover succumbed to frost, but most of it is still growing. The plants are even flowering again. Once Don gets my beds prepared, I can sow onions, lettuces, spinach, and peas in the next two weeks. It's been raining, so I hope it dries out enough that we can get the job done. I can hardly wait! But Don reminds me that moving wet soil is labor intensive.

Winter Peas

Update for May 4, 2010. I am sad to report that most of my tenderly nurtured sprouts died this year, even the marigolds, all except for most of the tomatoes, half of the pepper plants, and one hardy French marigold. 

I am not sure what I did wrong. The seedlings didn't get as much warmth and light as they have in years past. In my worry about fungal diseases, I may have under-watered them? I also may have fertilized them with a compost tea too early or not watered the solution down enough. I am hardly new to growing from seeds, so this came as a shock. 

I purchased some young onions, chives, and leeks to fill in some spots on my garden plan, but I won't be growing anywhere near as many as I would have if I could have grown them from seed, which is cheaper. I also bought some sweet peppers in case my tender seedlings don't make it. I worry about diseases from plants bought from a big box store, but I also hate the idea of a summer without home-grown tomato peppers. And if my babies live, I'll hopefully extend the season. I direct sowed some tomatoes in various spots, too, with the hope of extending my tomato season or at least giving myself another shot at the tomatoes if my first batch die. I've  updated my online garden plan with all the changes.

Don and I did not get the beds ready early enough to plant the peas. I will save the seed and plant them in the fall, at least the Alaska variety, which are the ones that I think made it all through last winter. I actually ate quite a few fresh, tender peas from these plants before I pulled the last of them up this week.

Actually, if you use peas as a cover crop, you want to cut them down in the early flowering stage, before they produce peas, because much of the valuable nitrogen in the plant goes into making the pods and peas. If you're growing as a cover crop, you want the nitrogen in the roots/soil and in the compost bin. But I can't resist fresh peas, so I'll supplement the soil with an organic fertilizer and maybe some compost, and hope to call it even.

Spring Garden Dreams

Don and I--mostly Don--spent some time putting together two new raised beds for vegetable gardening this summer. These will be deep because we plant to plant asparagus, which is a deep-rooted vegetable. Here are some pictures:

These are two shorter beds that will be used for other vegetables:

We are eager to fill all the beds up, but we are still deciding what mixture of soil, nutrients, and organic matter to put in them. Asparagus are heavy feeders, so we will probably add a lot of composted manure. A layer of cardboard will be put across the bottom of the beds to kill the lawn underneath and to attract worms. We are hoping the raised beds will provide drainage, since we get heavy rains here and asparagus will get diseased if it sits in cold, wet soil.

Every article and website about how to plant and care for asparagus has different advice. Most websites recommend planting only the new hybrid varieties, but I am planting a mix of three different kinds, only one of which is a hybrid. The all-male hybrids produce better yields because the female plants produce fewer spears and spend energy trying to reproduce. They also produce berries which produce little asparagus weeds all over the bed. They have to be pulled up. The sites also say to plant 1-year-old crowns, but I ordered 2-year-old crowns before I read all that good advice. The experienced gardener who owns a local garden center recommends the 2-year-old crowns, though, so maybe they will turn out OK. I ordered 10 plants each of Jersey Knight, the all-male hybrid, Purple Passion, a sweet-tasting purple variety that turns green when cooked, and Mary Washington, a traditional heritage variety that is a tried and true favorite. On to sage:

My newly-transplanted sage plant is big and beautiful but stressed. The dogs have been digging all around it and it is losing the soil we have put in its bed. We may very well have to move it. We already plan to put some tall fencing around our other raised beds to keep the dogs out of it. But we are hoping their predatory behavior will dissuade neighborhood critters such as squirrels, raccoons, and possums from getting into our future produce.

We shall see.

Spring Garden Plans

I used an Online Garden Planner at Mother Earth News today to plan out four 4x8 foot raised beds. We have 30 Asparagus plants coming in March. I have many seeds in my refrigerator that I have saved from past years or bought on sale. I have a garlic collection arriving in the fall, too, for when most of this garden has gone by. I also want to add kale, mustard greens, and some cover crops for the fall, but I will wait to plan out the successive plantings.

This planner is free for the first 30 days. So far I am impressed enough with the planner that I am considering paying to subscribe. There are online tutorials that explain how the planner works. I do not plant in rows, so I was happy that there is a "Square Foot Garden" intensive-gardening mode. I plan to try to trellis my squash crops, but the planner doesn't seem to allow for this.

I had wanted to grow potatoes and sweet potatoes. I had also wanted to grow Hubbard squash as a "trap crop" this year, but the potatoes and trap crops will have to wait until we have time to add more beds. This is already double the growing area that Don wanted to commit to installing this season. The asparagus takes up more room than I'd expected, too.

I especially like how the planner has a list mode that tells me how many plants of each type or even variety I will need to install my beds as planned. It will send me emails when it is time to consider starting plants indoors or direct-sowing them outside. It works with the average first and last frost dates for my zip code. These can be adjusted for personal preference, too.