Garden Notes - July 31, 2009

It's been a very busy month in the garden since my last post. I was busy the first two weeks fighting the rabbit and the woodchuck!

I saw the rabbit eating escarole one day, so I erected a chicken wire fence around that bed. A few days later I saw the woodchuck roaming about, and then I noticed digging under the chicken wire and freshly eaten escarole. The moth ball crystals had little effect on this guy, who was apparently the one eating the small tomato plants. I also tried Repels All spray which did not work. I tried smoking him out with my smoker jury-rigged with my shop vac hose. That only melted the hose. I tried putting Bubble Yum near his entrance holes which he's supposed to choke on and die. That didn't work. All the while I had also been using a live trap with the wrong bait and caught a squirrel four times and caught one skunk as well! Finally, I dug up an escarole plant, potted it and put it in the live trap for bait. That did the trick as you can see in the picture above. I drove him a couple of miles away and released him near the creek.

The cucumbers are down to two plants after the others wilted away from beetle damage. Those two will be for seeds, and next year I will inter plant some radishes and some marigolds as a deterrent to the beetles. I found a crock for $20 and a half bushel of pickling cucumbers at the farmer's market for another $20 and started up a batch of brined dill pickles. The ones that didn't fit in the crock are canned as bread and butter pickles. So regardless of the loss of my crop, I still have pickles put up.

The bed where the cucumbers failed has become a succession planting experiment. I grouped the broccoli together and planted a few more. I also planted another couple of rows of carrot.

The beets have been the most productive. I've canned both plain cooked and pickled beets, and I've canned the beet greens as well. The trick is to put the greens in a camping cooler (aligned with stems all pointing the same direction) while dealing with the roots. The greens are easy to put up the next day (wilt and then pressure can for 90 minutes). Also, as each row of beets gets pulled, I follow right behind with a succession planting of beets.

I have small, green tomatoes at this point in the game. I have my doubts they will ripen before the first frost due to a rainy, cloudy summer and having stunted the seedlings at an early stage.

The green beans are producing, and at this point in time I've put up 1-1/2 quarts two weeks ago, I've eaten about a quart fresh, and I've just put up another 2 quarts the day of this post. The peas are time consuming to shuck, and I put up only 1 quart a couple of weeks ago, I've eaten about a pint fresh, and at the time of this post there's about another pint in the refrigerator for fresh eating. Just yesterday, I decided to yank all the plants (many of which where yellowing anyway), and then plant a succession planting as an experiment. The summer squash is productive as can be expected. I pickled eight pints a couple of weeks ago, and I probably have enough squash in the refrigerator to put up that much more, which I need to get on since we can't grill and eat it fast enough.

Garden Notes - July 3, 2009

We've had an abundance of rain in the last couple of weeks, and the trend is continuing.

The stunted tomatoes had a mystery critter nipping away at some branches, and even completely removed a couple of small plants. I had a few volunteer hybrid tomatoes growing out of the compost pile that I used to replace the destroyed ones. I even tried planting a few more non-hybrid seeds on 5/30/09. I saved two of those out for an experiment to see how late you can actually plant tomato seeds in the ground. Whatever the critter was stopped bothering them at about 3 inches high. Some online research suggested I try moth ball crystals around the plants, which may have helped.

The surprise problem was an infestation of cucumber beetles. These yellow and black striped beetles gather & mate on leaves (especially tender, curly ones) and then lay eggs near the stem. The larva then attack the roots as well. I tried insecticidal soap, but this had no effect. I tried the recommended non-organic as a last resort, which is an insecticide called "Sevin." This would have worked, but the damage had already been done. Now, there's only 11 of the original 40 plants showing signs of growth. Next year, I will try inter planting radishes with the cucumbers, which repels cucumber beetles according the the book "Country Wisdom & Know How" from the editors of Storey Books.

Rather than waste the garden space left by the dead plants, I've tried my hand at "succession planting" described in the book "Root Cellaring" by Mike and Nancy Bubel. The idea is to plant certain types of vegetables in July that flourish into late September. So, I planted some hybrid carrots and broccoli. My first choice from the list on page 5 of the book was leeks and brussels sprouts, but Lowes didn't have them.

The peas are taller and heavier than I had expected, so I will be building a more durable pea trellis next year. The beans are doing well since I gave them a dose of Epsom Salts, separated the double plants to replace ones that didn't germinate and applied mulch. The beets are doing well since I thinned them to 3-inch spacing and used the unwanted plants for salads. The escarole is still an experiment. If there's enough to put-up in the fall, I will try an experiment with replanting a few in boxes for storage in the garage. This is a technique suggested in "Root Cellaring."

Finally, I need to make note here of the organic fertilizer I am trying called Espoma Plant-Tone. I picked this up at Lowes when I had actually been looking for fish emulsion, but they didn't have that. The Espoma website tells me there's a blend more specifically for gardens, but this is what Lowes had for now.