From Beetles to Beds: Low-Stress Garden Care
A fellow gardener and I were chatting recently and he asked how I deal with potato beetles. My reply was as simple as my method. Each morning, I inspect the plants and drop the adults and larvae into soapy water. This works for squash bugs too. The key here is the daily checking and removing of bugs. As I look for potato beetles, I find many beneficial insects which is why I choose not to spray with Spinosad, even if it is labeled for organic use. Find a method that works for you. If your mornings are too busy, take a walk to the garden before dinner and find what you’d like to add to the meal. Do I miss a day occasionally? Of course! Life is busy and we’re not always home but when we are, daily checking on the garden is a great method to keep the harmful insects at bay and pick the produce as it ripens. Daily picking of cucumbers and summer squash helps the plants to continue to produce. And you never know what you’ll see on your daily garden inspection. This morning, a beautiful fox snake and I met at the garden gate. I thanked the friend for eating things that eat my plants.
A friendly fox snake in the garden
Is your garden feeling cramped now that the plants are getting so large? If you’re thinking of expanding your growing area, give this method a try. Give the grass in the area a buzz cut with either a mower or a weed whacker. Leave the clippings lay. Water the area thoroughly. Cover the whole area with a very thick layer of newspapers. Water again to make the papers heavy and flat. Walk around the area to flatten the papers and water again. Cover the newspaper with overlapping layers of woven weed barrier. Weigh these down with heavy objects such as stones, logs or bricks. Place a few of the weights in the middle on the overlapping edges. After 1-2 months, check under the layers to see if the bed is ready for planting. August is a great month to start this process. By spring, your new garden space will be ready to plant! Roll up the weed barrier and keep for future use. Remove the newspapers and dry before recycling them. Add old manure and/or compost to the top and scratch it in. You can loosen the soil with a fork or broad fork before planting. This method is easy on the back as you’re allowing time to do the work for you. It works for both flower beds and veggie gardens.
Water Deep, Plant More, Share Often
Ah the heat of July! When nature provides an inch of rain a week, all is well but when conditions are dry, keep up with the watering. Your plants will thank you. One deep watering of an inch per week is better than frequent shallow waterings. Your plants will also appreciate mulch and it’s not too late to apply mulch such as straw or leaves. It will help keep the roots cooler and moist.
One of the questions I am asked in the early summer is if I am done planting the garden. I don’t stop planting until mid to late August. Succession planting means that you plant small amounts of some crops throughout the growing season. The first frost in our area usually comes at the end of September or early October. It seems funny to contemplate frost in July but it’s important for late season planting. You can use this date to count the frost free dates left for growing and check the seed packet for the dates to maturity. If there are enough days to maturity, go ahead and plant. In early July, pop in a row of arugula, beans, chard, lettuce, spinach, peas, carrots, turnip or rutabaga. You can plant cabbage, broccoli, Chinese cabbage, kohlrabi, summer squash and cucumber. Planting when the soil is warm in July is often successful because germination happens so quickly as opposed to the cool soil temperatures of spring.
It’s fun to experiment with late season planting. You can start plants such as cabbage, broccoli, cucumbers and summer squash inside in pots and transplant them out in the garden in early July or just start a short row in the garden and transplant them where you have space from a spring crop that has already been removed. If you have started the plants inside, remember to harden them off, as discussed in last month’s article, before planting in the garden. Planting in containers on a sunny deck may work well, if you can keep the critters from nibbling them.
The abundance of food produced in even a small garden is astounding. Keeping up with picking and harvesting helps plants such as beans to keep producing. Don’t pull your broccoli out after you cut that large head as it will keep producing side shoots that are easily harvested until hard frost. I’ve had broccoli produce into November! You may find that you have too much to eat and your friends and neighbors don’t need more. I drop off my extra produce at the Lincoln Center (ADRC) in Stevens Point. They have a scale for weighing what I donate and a sheet to write down what I have brought in. It’s easy and the produce is appreciated and disappears quickly. Operation Bootstrap also takes donations of things that don’t need refrigeration. In other words, lettuce doesn’t work well but summer squash and the like does. Gardening can be such joyful work and sharing the harvest adds an extra layer of kindness.
Hardening Off and Digging In: A Joyful June Garden
June is upon us and the plant growth is almost exponential! This is the time of year when there aren’t enough hours in the day to garden even when the days are long. Don’t worry, my gardening friends! A little work in the garden in June goes a long way later in summer.
Once you narrow down what you would like to plant, make sure you have enough sunlight. Leaf lettuce and spinach can get by with as little as 4 hours of direct light a day. Most veggie crops like a good 6 hours of sunlight. Tomatoes and peppers need 8 hours to be at their best. I have a friend with a shady backyard. He uses containers on his sunny, warm driveway to grow his tomatoes and peppers. They thrive!
Hardening off plants that have been grown in a greenhouse is essential so that the plants adapt to being outside gradually. This process takes about a week. Expose your plants to an hour of direct sunlight the first day and gradually increase this time until they are used to direct sunlight for a whole day. Make sure you water them. They can be left outside at night if the temperatures are in the 50s or above, otherwise bring them in at night. This acclimation of direct sunlight and cooler night time temperatures is necessary for plant success. Try not to back them over with your car, forget about them, or let critters have their way with them. Yes, I have done all these things! Life is not a perfect science.
Providing adequate moisture is essential. Let those plant roots grow long and deep by watering, or getting rainfall, equivalent to about an inch per week. Daily watering is only necessary for transplants for the first week or two. Less frequent, deep watering allows the plants to develop a robust root system so that the plants can withstand summer drought. On a recent trip to France, we were told that it is illegal to water grape vines. By not watering, the roots grow deep within the limestone substrate. Your plants will appreciate less frequent, deep watering. When planting in pots, make sure you have good drainage. Can you plant in 5 gallon buckets? Sure! Just get out the drill and make a bunch of holes in the bottom.
What about soil? Adding compost and/or aged manure to garden beds will make for happy plants. Adding leaves to the garden is mimicking the process of soil building in a forest. Leaves also help with weed control between plants. In the fall, you can save bagged leaves and use them at this time of year. Some municipalities will deliver bagged leaves by the truckload to you if you don’t have enough of your own leaves. An ambitious gardener can turn these leaves into compost by adding water occasionally to the pile and turning them. The pile will heat up nicely and voila! You have your own leaf compost. And maybe you don’t have to go to the gym as often because it’s great exercise.
Ready, Set, Grow! Welcoming Spring in the Garden
Happy Spring! Recently a friend of mine mentioned that she’s on the lookout for anything green in her garden. Each green shoot is a celebration! I spend the winter months waiting patiently, or not so patiently, for the long awaited emergence of my plant friends’ return. And I plan! The seed catalogs arrive and I dive in, cup of tea in hand. What’s new? Too many seeds come in the mail as resistance is futile.
Learning what to plant in the vegetable garden takes some practice. Here’s a few questions to guide an eager planter: What do you like to eat? Do you want enough to eat through the winter by storing or preserving? How much time can you spend in your garden? How much space do you have? Starting small and expanding year by year is a great strategy for success.
Some vegetables do best when planted directly by seed into the garden. Just a few days ago, I planted lettuce, spinach and peas. I’ll continue to plant lettuce and spinach seeds in short rows every 2 weeks until the heat of summer arrives. Onions and leeks can be planted by bulbs or small plants in the spring. They like the cool soil.
Tomatoes, peppers, and many other vegetables do best when started inside and transplanted out as small plants after all chance of frost is past. This jump start allows the plants to produce crops in our short garden season. The Growing Collective is a local volunteer group that grows vegetable starts from seeds including heirloom, organic and unusual selections of tomatoes, peppers, herbs, winter and summer squash, edible flowers, native plants and more. Every year, they hold a plant sale in the Farmshed Greenhouse at 1220 Briggs Court in Stevens Point. This year’s sale days and hours are:
Saturday, May 17th 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Sunday, May 18th 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Monday, May 19th 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Tuesday, May 20th 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Wednesday, May 21st 12 p.m. - 7p.m.
Thursday, May 22nd, 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.
This year, the Growing Collective is offering an early sale for cold hardy plants such as kale, chard, arugula, lettuce, spinach, onion and leeks on Saturday, May 3rd, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. The sale will also take place in the Farmshed Greenhouse.
Happy planting, gardening friends! See you here next month.