If you grew spring stuff, hopefully you are harvesting happily now. The only thing from the early group that is still small now for me is chard. I've eaten a bit, but not much.
The things planted in late spring are probably still a while away: my beans are still small plants with no flowers yet. I have the very first one or two tiny green tomatoes forming, on the two plants that I bought as large seedlings. My own smaller seedlings which I started myself have not yet grown to flowering size. My basil is still extremely tiny.
Anyway, now that the plants are bigger, it's usually easier to manage them. Just keep up on weeding, and watering them (not this weekend, obviously, if you're growing them in the open). Once plants are well established, most of them need only a good, deep watering once a week. Deep means you pour water into the pot, trench, or depression a few times, so that the water can flow down far into the soil, where the roots grow. Many plants will have roots that go several feet or more under the soil surface, and that is where you want the water (where it won't evaporate the next day).
If you have any questions, please ask.
Because I have had more insect trouble this year than before, I've learned more about controlling insects this year. All my insect problem seem to have reduced to a more normal state: a few bites and holes here and there. Hand-picking the large ones, and diatomaceous earth for the small ones seems to have worked.
For the first time I've also been using my Korean "Homi" garden tool to weed with the blade. (Before I only used it for digging to loosen and prepare the soil for planting.) To weed, you run the straight edge of the tool (its blade) along the soil surface, cutting off small weeds. Farmers use long handled tools to weed like this, so they can do long rows very fast. Mine is a short one like a trowel. It takes a bit of practice and care to weed like this, especially so you don't kill your own plants too, but it's definitely faster than hand weeding. (On the other hand, if you have a nice small patch, hand-weeding won't take long. It's all I've done in the past.)
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Vegetable Harvesting Hints, and Tomato Side Shoots
Tomato Side Shoots
Tomatoes are naturally large spreading vines. Varieties that are not listed as determinate on the package will grow this way. Heritage and open-pollinated varieties are mostly indeterminate, meaning they will grow continuously as spreading vines, and if they are cherry tomatoes, produce more and more fruit all the while, until the frost kills them.
That's great: that's why cherry tomatoes are on the short list. They just keep growing larger and growing more fruit.
However, there can be too much of a good thing. As they grow, they like to send out more and more side branches. These will fill up your garden with tomato branches. The side shoots themselves have side shoots, so this is literally exponential growth we are talking about.
Therefore it's normal to pinch off some or all side branches while they are just starting out. (People also say the excessive leaf growth will use resources and slow the production of the fruit. I'm not sure this is true for vigorous cherry tomatoes, since every branch seems to produce more fruit. Space is the main issue with cherry tomatoes.)
It takes a bit of practice to spot the side shoots while they are small. They start out in the V where each of the tomato's big compound leaf stems meets its main stem. (The botical term for this spot where new stems emerge is called the leaf axil.) Left alone, the side shoots quickly grow into a full-fledged stem, with leaves, fruit, and... more side shoots of their own. Every single leaf spawns a side shoot, and every single side-shoot's leaves spawn their own side shoots.
I usually aim to allow a few branches on each plant, and pinch off all the rest. They grow so fast some always get away from me. If they're not in a bad place, I may let the extra one grow, or I may cut it off even if it's already somewhat large.
On the other hand, if you are totally out of vertical space, you can also cut stems off at the ends so they don't grow longer. But if you prevent all new growth, you will also prevent all new fruit. In that case, you might want to allow new side shoots to grow from below.
Harvesting Vegetables
I should have thought to talk about this earlier. I'm not sure how much of this is obvious.
For the leaf vegetables (arugula, mizuna, mustard, chard, basil), you can just keep harvesting the largest leaves, while always leaving enough leaf area on the plant so it can feed itself to grow more leaves or grow seed (if you want to collect seed). You don't need to cut them: just break the leaf stem off near the base.
By this time of year, arugula, mizuna, and mustard usually have also started growing tall seed stalks with only small leaves on them. You can still continue to harvest leaves off the seed stalks, and also you can eat the flowers (which are essentially the same as extremely tiny broccoli florets). Even the seed pods are edible, though I find them tough. Anyway, these are all good ones to collect your own seed from, to plant next year, so don't eat all the flowers and pods if you want to do that. When they dry out completely, you can collect the seed. (More about that in a future post.)
Pea pods may also be ready, depending on when you planted. They are tenderer if you pick smaller pods, of course. I have heard that they bear more peas if you don't let any pods mature, but I'm not sure if that's really true. Again, you may want to collect seeds for next year, in which case you'll have to let some pods mature, later when the plants are getting close to the end. (Pea plants finish and die by mid-summer.) Beans are young yet, but will be similar, except that climbing beans continue to produce beans all summer, slowing down gradually through the summer and into the fall.
Basil branches side shoots extensively, a lot like tomatoes do, but they are much smaller plants, so space is not an issue. What it does mean is that you can pick off the end clusters of branches, and let the new growth generate from those leaf axils. The supply of fresh leaves lasts until the first frost if you do this. When basil starts to get big, it will also start to produce flowers, and rumor has it that you should pull off the flowers to keep the plant growing actively, or for better tasting leaves. Again, of course, you will want to let some flowers mature at some point if you want to keep seed for next year. I do pick off the flowers as they form (before they open), and my plants keep going all summer and fall. At some point I pick a few whole large plants to make pesto with. In late summer I also let a few flower and produce seed.
Tomatoes are naturally large spreading vines. Varieties that are not listed as determinate on the package will grow this way. Heritage and open-pollinated varieties are mostly indeterminate, meaning they will grow continuously as spreading vines, and if they are cherry tomatoes, produce more and more fruit all the while, until the frost kills them.
That's great: that's why cherry tomatoes are on the short list. They just keep growing larger and growing more fruit.
However, there can be too much of a good thing. As they grow, they like to send out more and more side branches. These will fill up your garden with tomato branches. The side shoots themselves have side shoots, so this is literally exponential growth we are talking about.
Therefore it's normal to pinch off some or all side branches while they are just starting out. (People also say the excessive leaf growth will use resources and slow the production of the fruit. I'm not sure this is true for vigorous cherry tomatoes, since every branch seems to produce more fruit. Space is the main issue with cherry tomatoes.)
It takes a bit of practice to spot the side shoots while they are small. They start out in the V where each of the tomato's big compound leaf stems meets its main stem. (The botical term for this spot where new stems emerge is called the leaf axil.) Left alone, the side shoots quickly grow into a full-fledged stem, with leaves, fruit, and... more side shoots of their own. Every single leaf spawns a side shoot, and every single side-shoot's leaves spawn their own side shoots.
I usually aim to allow a few branches on each plant, and pinch off all the rest. They grow so fast some always get away from me. If they're not in a bad place, I may let the extra one grow, or I may cut it off even if it's already somewhat large.
On the other hand, if you are totally out of vertical space, you can also cut stems off at the ends so they don't grow longer. But if you prevent all new growth, you will also prevent all new fruit. In that case, you might want to allow new side shoots to grow from below.
Harvesting Vegetables
I should have thought to talk about this earlier. I'm not sure how much of this is obvious.
For the leaf vegetables (arugula, mizuna, mustard, chard, basil), you can just keep harvesting the largest leaves, while always leaving enough leaf area on the plant so it can feed itself to grow more leaves or grow seed (if you want to collect seed). You don't need to cut them: just break the leaf stem off near the base.
By this time of year, arugula, mizuna, and mustard usually have also started growing tall seed stalks with only small leaves on them. You can still continue to harvest leaves off the seed stalks, and also you can eat the flowers (which are essentially the same as extremely tiny broccoli florets). Even the seed pods are edible, though I find them tough. Anyway, these are all good ones to collect your own seed from, to plant next year, so don't eat all the flowers and pods if you want to do that. When they dry out completely, you can collect the seed. (More about that in a future post.)
Pea pods may also be ready, depending on when you planted. They are tenderer if you pick smaller pods, of course. I have heard that they bear more peas if you don't let any pods mature, but I'm not sure if that's really true. Again, you may want to collect seeds for next year, in which case you'll have to let some pods mature, later when the plants are getting close to the end. (Pea plants finish and die by mid-summer.) Beans are young yet, but will be similar, except that climbing beans continue to produce beans all summer, slowing down gradually through the summer and into the fall.
Basil branches side shoots extensively, a lot like tomatoes do, but they are much smaller plants, so space is not an issue. What it does mean is that you can pick off the end clusters of branches, and let the new growth generate from those leaf axils. The supply of fresh leaves lasts until the first frost if you do this. When basil starts to get big, it will also start to produce flowers, and rumor has it that you should pull off the flowers to keep the plant growing actively, or for better tasting leaves. Again, of course, you will want to let some flowers mature at some point if you want to keep seed for next year. I do pick off the flowers as they form (before they open), and my plants keep going all summer and fall. At some point I pick a few whole large plants to make pesto with. In late summer I also let a few flower and produce seed.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Interlude
From now until August, there's nothing to do but weed, water, and harvest, as needed.
Then in August, it will be time to plant more "spring" greens, which will mature and be harvestable until the first really heavy freezes. Usually you can continue to eat greens from the garden here in Toronto until mid-November or later.
Trouble Off the Short List
As for me, I'm having insect problems I've never had before. For one thing, I've tried some new things this year that are not on the short list, and I can see why they won't ever be! Broccoli, for example, is a brassica, closely related to mizuna, arugula, and mustard, but because it has to grow much longer and bigger, it is far more susceptible to insects. At worst, the spring greens get some holes in them, and then you harvest them and they are done. But my broccoli are attracting all kinds of things I have never seen in my garden.
One short list item is also getting insect attention for the first time, and that's my beans. It seems I have bean beetles (though I haven't seen them, I'm just interpreting the damage). So another factor here is that I have been growing more things in my garden for longer, and so I now I guess I have a greater variety of different insects around, including the harmful ones.
In all cases I'm reading up on the different signs and symptoms, and trying different natural controls. For the larger things: slugs, cabbage butterfly caterpillars, hand picking is helping. Slug numbers are way down, and I'm getting good at spotting the velvety pale green cabbage butterfly caterpillars on the broccoli leaves.
For smaller things or mysterious things I've never spotted but can only speculate on the identity of, diatomaceous earth seems to be helping. DE is fine white dust, a crushed mineral deposit of fossilized microorganisms. It is an abrasive gets into bugs shells and dries them out. It's relatively safe for people (used in natural cosmetic products), though you should not inhale the dust, which contains silica.
What didn't work well was the garlic/chile insecticidal soap. It was not dilute enough, and definitely caused harm to the broccoli leaves I sprayed. As always, internet sources are highly unreliable. (Beware the endlessly proliferating e-How sites, they are very inaccurate!) I later found another, better source which had a much more dilute recipe. I wish I had researched more thoroughly before I used the first recipe. I may return to that, although if DE continues working, I will avoid insecticidal soap (which seems to kill beneficial insects more readily than DE).
Then in August, it will be time to plant more "spring" greens, which will mature and be harvestable until the first really heavy freezes. Usually you can continue to eat greens from the garden here in Toronto until mid-November or later.
Trouble Off the Short List
As for me, I'm having insect problems I've never had before. For one thing, I've tried some new things this year that are not on the short list, and I can see why they won't ever be! Broccoli, for example, is a brassica, closely related to mizuna, arugula, and mustard, but because it has to grow much longer and bigger, it is far more susceptible to insects. At worst, the spring greens get some holes in them, and then you harvest them and they are done. But my broccoli are attracting all kinds of things I have never seen in my garden.
One short list item is also getting insect attention for the first time, and that's my beans. It seems I have bean beetles (though I haven't seen them, I'm just interpreting the damage). So another factor here is that I have been growing more things in my garden for longer, and so I now I guess I have a greater variety of different insects around, including the harmful ones.
In all cases I'm reading up on the different signs and symptoms, and trying different natural controls. For the larger things: slugs, cabbage butterfly caterpillars, hand picking is helping. Slug numbers are way down, and I'm getting good at spotting the velvety pale green cabbage butterfly caterpillars on the broccoli leaves.
For smaller things or mysterious things I've never spotted but can only speculate on the identity of, diatomaceous earth seems to be helping. DE is fine white dust, a crushed mineral deposit of fossilized microorganisms. It is an abrasive gets into bugs shells and dries them out. It's relatively safe for people (used in natural cosmetic products), though you should not inhale the dust, which contains silica.
What didn't work well was the garlic/chile insecticidal soap. It was not dilute enough, and definitely caused harm to the broccoli leaves I sprayed. As always, internet sources are highly unreliable. (Beware the endlessly proliferating e-How sites, they are very inaccurate!) I later found another, better source which had a much more dilute recipe. I wish I had researched more thoroughly before I used the first recipe. I may return to that, although if DE continues working, I will avoid insecticidal soap (which seems to kill beneficial insects more readily than DE).
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Water, Weeds, and Bugs
I highly recommend spending time with your garden often. That way you'll appreciate its beauty more, while also seeing what's going on and doing the work in small dose. I find taking care of the garden that way more enjoyable and satisfying than going out for hours at a time once in a while. If your garden is in a place where you can do other things, that's even better. It's nice to just watch the wild bees, for instance.
Watering Time
Since the weather has now become hot and dry (finally!), you will need to start watering regularly. The tiniest plants need to have at least slightly damp soil right near the surface. But once plants start to get beyond the first set of leaves, they are also putting out lots of roots, and you can start to let them collect moisture from deeper down. Try digging a bit to see how deep you have to go to find damp soil.
Greens tend to get stronger tasting if they are in hotter and drier weather, so you can water them more if you want to try to keep them milder. Also, hot weather makes them flower, which is the beginning of end of their life cycle. My mizuna and arugula are flowering now. The flowers are edible and taste like broccoli (which makes sense since broccoli is an overdeveloped flower in the same family). But don't eat them all, as you can collect seed for next year if you let the seed pods mature.
Tomatoes, once established, have deep roots, and can be watered less often, though uneven moisture conditions will stress any of vegetable plants. Digging down somehwhere nearby is always a good way to check.
Also, once your plants are strong, you can "mulch" to conserve moisture in the soil. "Mulch" in gardening means absolutely anything covering the soil, and people do use an extremely wide range of things. I like straw, generally. My local hardware store (Bastone, on Dufferin at Hallam) carries straw bales. But mulch can also give shelter to slugs and snails, and since I have had a lot of slugs, I will not mulch for quite a while, until all my plants are large and thriving.
Weeds and Bugs
Now is also high season for weeds and bugs. Many of your plants are still probably pretty small, and so somewhat defenceless.
On the one hand, it's best not to get too hung up on control. Biodiversity is your friend: a broad mixture of plants (including weeds) and bugs (including pests) is valuable. Pests in modest amounts support their own predators and parasites in modest amounts, which in turn keep those same pests under control for you. Weeds, in modest amounts, contribute well to the biodiversity of your garden, supporting beneficial insects, birds, and soil organisms.
So it's good to let things be somewhat disorderly/diverse. Weed enough to give your own plants a strong upper hand, and remove obviously harmful critters when you find them (e.g. slugs, tomato horn worms).
On the other hand, sometimes you definitely need to take more decisive action, or you will lose what you are trying to grow. Only some problems will solve themselves. (For example, I used to have lots of aphids, but now they seem to be under control - so I guess something came along to control them for me.)
I have not tried to control slugs much for years, however, and they have been increasing. This spring was an especially good slug spring. My plants were getting eaten pretty badly while they were tiny. So I have been coming out often in the evening for a few minutes before it gets too dark, to search for slugs on the plants themselves, and I have also been looking under bricks and things where the big ones hide during the day. Many of them were tiny ones, so it took a while to find the majority of them (usually just barely visible, clinging to stems or leaves at dusk), but since I started, it has made a big difference.
For the first time, I am also going to try to control something tiny that eats plants in the brassica family - I haven't figured out what, yet. My greens (mizuna, mustard, tat soi) don't usually take enough damage to matter, but I am growing broccoli this year, so I need these much larger plants to be healthy and energetic for a long time. (They are all in the same family, and have the same pests.)
Unlike slugs, these insects are too small and elusive to find and remove. The broccoli leaves are getting eaten pretty badly, so I am making up some gourmet natural pesticide/repellent: garlic and hot pepper infused natural soap mixture to spray on just the broccoli plants, and see if I can reduce the damage. I haven't tried this before, so not sure how it will go.
Over time, you will also learn to recognize your own most troublesome weeds, and then you can focus on removing those more thoroughly as you weed, while not worrying so much about minor ones that don't get in the way too much.
One helpful weeding technique when you have a lot of area to cover is to use the edge of a trowl to scrape/cut very small weeds just as they come up. Be careful not to injure your own plants, of course. Seedlings don't have enough resources to recover from this cutting treatment, even if the root is left intact. Small-scale organic farmers use sharpened tools for this, even mounted on wheels to weed whole rows quickly.
Again, the most helpful thing is to check out your patch quite often. Then you will catch problems before they get too large.
Watering Time
Since the weather has now become hot and dry (finally!), you will need to start watering regularly. The tiniest plants need to have at least slightly damp soil right near the surface. But once plants start to get beyond the first set of leaves, they are also putting out lots of roots, and you can start to let them collect moisture from deeper down. Try digging a bit to see how deep you have to go to find damp soil.
Greens tend to get stronger tasting if they are in hotter and drier weather, so you can water them more if you want to try to keep them milder. Also, hot weather makes them flower, which is the beginning of end of their life cycle. My mizuna and arugula are flowering now. The flowers are edible and taste like broccoli (which makes sense since broccoli is an overdeveloped flower in the same family). But don't eat them all, as you can collect seed for next year if you let the seed pods mature.
Tomatoes, once established, have deep roots, and can be watered less often, though uneven moisture conditions will stress any of vegetable plants. Digging down somehwhere nearby is always a good way to check.
Also, once your plants are strong, you can "mulch" to conserve moisture in the soil. "Mulch" in gardening means absolutely anything covering the soil, and people do use an extremely wide range of things. I like straw, generally. My local hardware store (Bastone, on Dufferin at Hallam) carries straw bales. But mulch can also give shelter to slugs and snails, and since I have had a lot of slugs, I will not mulch for quite a while, until all my plants are large and thriving.
Weeds and Bugs
Now is also high season for weeds and bugs. Many of your plants are still probably pretty small, and so somewhat defenceless.
On the one hand, it's best not to get too hung up on control. Biodiversity is your friend: a broad mixture of plants (including weeds) and bugs (including pests) is valuable. Pests in modest amounts support their own predators and parasites in modest amounts, which in turn keep those same pests under control for you. Weeds, in modest amounts, contribute well to the biodiversity of your garden, supporting beneficial insects, birds, and soil organisms.
So it's good to let things be somewhat disorderly/diverse. Weed enough to give your own plants a strong upper hand, and remove obviously harmful critters when you find them (e.g. slugs, tomato horn worms).
On the other hand, sometimes you definitely need to take more decisive action, or you will lose what you are trying to grow. Only some problems will solve themselves. (For example, I used to have lots of aphids, but now they seem to be under control - so I guess something came along to control them for me.)
I have not tried to control slugs much for years, however, and they have been increasing. This spring was an especially good slug spring. My plants were getting eaten pretty badly while they were tiny. So I have been coming out often in the evening for a few minutes before it gets too dark, to search for slugs on the plants themselves, and I have also been looking under bricks and things where the big ones hide during the day. Many of them were tiny ones, so it took a while to find the majority of them (usually just barely visible, clinging to stems or leaves at dusk), but since I started, it has made a big difference.
For the first time, I am also going to try to control something tiny that eats plants in the brassica family - I haven't figured out what, yet. My greens (mizuna, mustard, tat soi) don't usually take enough damage to matter, but I am growing broccoli this year, so I need these much larger plants to be healthy and energetic for a long time. (They are all in the same family, and have the same pests.)
Unlike slugs, these insects are too small and elusive to find and remove. The broccoli leaves are getting eaten pretty badly, so I am making up some gourmet natural pesticide/repellent: garlic and hot pepper infused natural soap mixture to spray on just the broccoli plants, and see if I can reduce the damage. I haven't tried this before, so not sure how it will go.
Over time, you will also learn to recognize your own most troublesome weeds, and then you can focus on removing those more thoroughly as you weed, while not worrying so much about minor ones that don't get in the way too much.
One helpful weeding technique when you have a lot of area to cover is to use the edge of a trowl to scrape/cut very small weeds just as they come up. Be careful not to injure your own plants, of course. Seedlings don't have enough resources to recover from this cutting treatment, even if the root is left intact. Small-scale organic farmers use sharpened tools for this, even mounted on wheels to weed whole rows quickly.
Again, the most helpful thing is to check out your patch quite often. Then you will catch problems before they get too large.
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