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.

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

The "Little Tomato That Could" Again

I should preface my update on "The Little Tomato" with the fact that my fiance and I have three dogs and one cat, and all of them are rescues. This means that nobody else wanted them, and by taking them in, we probably saved their lives. The three dogs came from the SPCA of Northeastern North Carolina, and the cat from a total stranger on the Freecycle Network.

But my fiance has more sympathy for and patience with the underdog than even I do. This year I found a pathetic tomato plant that was sprouting in my fall garden. He wouldn't let me pull it up but has nurtured it. We've had unseasonably warm weather in Southeastern Virginia this year, and the plant was in a container along the North wall of the house, and we'd covered it with a cloche, but we finally had a cold snap about two weeks ago where he had to bring the tomato plant inside the house or lose it to a killing frost.

But I am a worrywart. And I knew that the tomato couldn't live in our dimly-lit living room. I watched the weather forecasts carefully, and when the days were supposed to be relatively warm and sunny, I'd been putting the tomato out on the front lawn to feed on the energy of the sun.

So, there we were, with me lugging the heavy planter onto the front lawn every day and my fiance lugging it back in each afternoon or evening as the temperatures started to drop. But the tomato was unhappy. It was exposed to winter winds, had insufficient light despite our efforts, and was looking increasingly poor.

So Don converted an old garbage can into a house for the tomato. He put a light in the lid and put the light on a timer. He put the tomato plant in its new home in a corner of our bedroom. Then he found a squash plant that had sprouted in the moist darkness of our worm composting-bin and decided to rescue THAT. So now we have a baby squash plant keeping the tomato company. And something else is coming up in the planter; Lord knows what! The plants get 14 hours of compact-fluorescent light a day. A regular plant light would be better, from what I've read, because it gives a broader spectrum of the lights plants need. The fluorescent tends to make plants grow leggy. But we'll have to risk it, because Don likes to conserve energy.

I'll post some pictures below of the tomato plant and its new companions. So far they are looking healthy, and the tomato has certainly turned quite green. The worrywart in me worries that the plants might need better air circulation.  And if Don finds any more plants he wants to rescue, he's going to have to build us a greenhouse!