It's ON: Gardening 2012

As I mentioned in my first post here on this blog, gardening is a trial-and-error experience and you can't start learning until you start doing.  Each year that I've gardened on my own has been more valuable than the season before, even if it wasn't more successful than before.  And this year, I'm feeling great about putting my past experiences into action! 

The past has taught me that I need to get digging and adding compost before the day that I wake up with the unquenchable desire to plant. It is just too much to try preparing the beds and planting all in the same day, and if I wait too long to obtain enough compost I'll end up planting without it and regretting it later.  Planting days are coming - and for some plants are already here! - and so I've had February in mind as the month to turn the garden over, smooth things out, and add compost.

I'd been feeling discouraged and even defeated without having found a source of good compost yet this year.  The dairy farm we used to easily get manure from hasn't been returning my calls and though we live in close proximity to a handful of horse stables, the manure is so full of wood chips that it's not so useful for gardening.  But then - SUCCESS!  Someone down the road from me posted in a swap group that she had plenty of manure in her barn ready for shoveling!  I was so THRILLED to shovel it into our truck one day and then into the garden the next.  It came at just the right time and though it feels silly to admit that I prayed for manure - well, I did.  So after 1 hour of loading and 2 hours turning the garden and spreading the manure, I have 1 small garden spot and 1/3 of the large one ready to plant. 

With all this springlike weather, I began to feel like maybe getting an even earlier start on planting but I consulted the planting calendar at www.almanac.com .  Glad I did!  Though it's fine to sow seeds of carrot, radish, turnip, beets, and spinach before March 1, everything else needs to wait another week or two or even three.  That calendar doesn't say much about lettuce seedlings, so I hope to get down to the Athens Seed store to see if they are selling their romaine and redleaf plants yet.  They are a great source for plants, seeds, and gardening supplies and more than other garden centers, I trust that when they are selling it, it's fine to plant it.  The past has also taught me that my soil + horse manure + romaine seedlings from Athens Seed planted at the right time = the biggest, most beautiful, wonderfully productive lettuce garden possible.  Boy oh boy I'm in the mood for salad now!

Pests I have known

At least - pests I got to know this year. 

Aphids and Whitefly

Aphids are very small soft-bodied insects, and I've seen green, white, yellowish, black, and brown aphids in my garden.  They will congregate on young stems and leaves, beneath older leaves, and often on flower buds and young fruit.  They penetrate the plant tissues with their mouth to feed on them.  An interesting fact is that they secrete a sweet sticky substance that some kinds of ants like to feed on.  The ants like the stuff so much that sometimes they will carry the otherwise slow-moving aphids up onto plants and place them there to return and harvest their secretions! 

Being small, aphids will usually not cause significant damage unless they occur in very large numbers.  They can be easily dislodged from plants using a water hose (make sure you aim the hose upwards to get them from underneath leaves).  They are also easily controlled with horticultural oil, which can be made at home (I'll let you Google to find what sounds like your favorite recipe).  Ladybugs LOVE aphids, and so do Preying/Praying Mantises.  Welcome both into your garden! 

Whitefly are similar in habits to aphids, only my experience has been that they can take over and more quickly cause real trouble in your garden.  They can be controlled with horticultural oil but application is trickier since they will fly off the plant at first hint of trouble, making it difficult to douse them efficiently.   On the plant they may look like a soft moldy substance, but upon gentle agitation of leaves they'll fly up all over the place and in your face. 

A byproduct of an infestation of aphids, and also of whitefly, is something called sooty mold.  Like aphids, whitefly secrete a sweet sticky substance.  Should enough of that stickiness remain on your plants for long enough, sooty mold can begin to grow within the sticky stuff on your plants.  It is very black and almost looks like somebody spray painted your plants.  The sooty mold will often do more damage than the aphids or whitefly themselves, as it blocks out light and oxygen from reaching plant cells.  Prune off effected plant parts and destroy them far away from your garden.  Don't add them to your compost pile.  Then get rid of the aphids or whitefly. 

In my garden this year I had a few aphids here and there, mainly on the squash flowers and substantially on the tenderest growth of my okra plants.  I did see the ants helping them out on the okra.  They were not enough of a problem for me to do much other than spray them off the plants as I watered each time.  Whitefly showed up more recently, but as my summer garden was already in decline, I've not given them any attention.  Since cleaning out the garden in preparation for some fall planting, I've not noticed the whitefly at all.  They do need host plants to be close together in order to thrive. 

Leaf Miners and Vine Borers

You know you have leaf miners when you see their tracks on the leaves of squash, cucumber, and sometimes tomatoes or peppers.  They are pretty harmless - I've never had trouble enough with them to warrant any treatment; they generally don't do enough damage to enough leaves to significantly set the plant back. 

You know you have vine borers when a leaf and stem on your squash plant wilts and turns yellow, then brown.  I'm not including a photo of the borer itself as you won't see them unless you cut off the affected stem, slice it open, and find the disgusting-looking grub slithering about inside.  Since they hide out underground until they bore into thick stems for their sustenance, they are very difficult to control.  The best non-chemical method is to be vigilant, and as soon as you see a leaf beginning to wilt, do as described above and stomp the life out of the buggers. 

Squash Bugs
The photo here shows an immature squash bug - a smaller, round grey version of the adult - which are larger, more elongated, and brown - almost blackish in color.  They can be confused with stink bugs, but are not quite the same insect.  Some varieties have long angular legs and can look quite scary. 

I had few of these in my main garden plot, but I believe a large infestation of them to be the cause of the sudden and complete death of all butternut and acorn squash in my compost garden. They will congregate in large numbers on the central stems, vines, leaves, and fruit of squash plants, and sometimes cucumbers.  At first they appeared to be causing no real damage, but they seemed to launch a sudden and complete attack on the plants all at once, sucking the life out of them.  Literally my plants were green one day and wilted, yellow, and browning the next.  Next year I will not tolerate these curious-looking insects in my garden.  They are very easy to step on, and if that doesn't work next year I'll look up what other methods can be used to eradicate them. 

Deer

Yes, deer.  We've got plenty in the area, and although I have not actually seen any in our yard for several years, the half-eaten apples under the apple tree are plenty suspicious.  I went out to the garden one morning to find the 3 okra plants on the end were completely defoliated.  They were already several feet tall and so I knew it could not have been rabbits.  It was too much damage to happen over one night to think it was some sort of insect, and the remaining bits of leaves had very obviously been chomped, not nibbled.  Those 3 plants were located right along any path that would be taken to the apple tree, and so I feel pretty good about my conclusion.

Other than the loss of those squash plants here at the end of the season and the deer keeping 3 okra plants pruned beyond production, there was no other significant damage from pests and I used no control methods other than spraying them off.  Once again I'm convinced that healthy plants and a well-maintained garden are a wonderful pest preventative.  At the end of the season I slacked on weeding and I noticed several new potential pests here and there - it became obvious to me that weeds are an exceptional place for pests to live, hide, and breed within your garden. 

My Compost Garden

It's always fun when you compost haphazardly as I do and when you mix that innocent-looking black richness into your garden soil and - Vavoom!  You find yourself growing more than what you planted.  It's kind of like a trip down memory lane of last year's farmers' market purchases.  It's kind of fun wondering what those sprouts may be - were they heirloom plants that will grow true to their variety and bring you a reliably-yummy garden vegetable?  Or are these seeds from a hybrid variety meaning there's no telling what strangeness may occur from here on out?  Normally I'm cautious about such a garden, as most frequently the latter has occurred, and oh - the strangeness!  But having purchased consistently from the AFM last season, I decided to give it a grow. 

There were a few tomatoes popping up, and my mind ran wild - could they be those Russian Purple variety, or that green-striped variety, or grape or cherry or plum tomatoes?  And the squash/melon/pumpkin vines which seemed to be doing very well - it was quite hard to maintain patience in wondering WHAT were they gong to BE?!  And then there was this lone determined sunflower. 

The tomatoes turned out to produce one normal-looking modest-sized tomato.  Which the birds pecked profusely.  Ah well.

The vines turned out to be a variety of pattypan, butternut, and acorn - what luck!  At first I was stir-frying the young butternut as I'd never seen a young butternut before - and let me tell you, they are quite yummy that way.  Then upon visiting my grandmother and seeing her intentionally-planted butternuts, I realized my error and was sad that I'd sacrificed those tender little ones instead of allowing them to mature to their wonderful ripe sweetness.  The acorn squash I recognized right away and since they matured much faster than the butternut, we had a satisfying harvest. 

The sunflower?  It is towering over our roof.  Just when we thought it couldn't get any taller, it would shoot up another 2 feet.  It appears, however, to be sympathizing with my crookneck squash and zucchini - no flowers.  Who knows. 

It was fun to learn that I could grow acorn and butternut squash without trying, and it became obvious to me that tomatoes do need attention if they are going to produce adequately, or at all. 

My new garden's first season

was rather satisfying.  Satisfying not in the great quantities of vegetables it provided (though the ones it did provide were immensely satisfying) but in the overall experience of this new plot.  As I mentioned in the very first post here, gardening is about trial-and-error.  I definitely learned some things that will give me greater success next year.

In my new plot I had 3 heirloom tomato plants, 2 hills of Tendergreen cucumbers, 2 of Armenian Long cucumbers, 2 "red" bell pepper plants, 7 green bell pepper plants, 2 cayenne, 2 hills of yellow crookneck squash, one of zucchini, 1 small row of green beans, 1 row of okra, 2 rows of corn, 2 hills of pumpkin plants, and basil.  Here are the results:

I am apparently lucky to have had any tomatoes at all - a neighbor from down the way explained there was a fungus in town that wiped out everybody else's.  So - go me and go heirlooms.  From mid-July onward I've been able to harvest about 3 nice maters each week.  They seemed slow to ripen and as a result, often ended up being attacked by birds before they were ready to pick.  I wouldn't mind so much if a bird would actually eat a tomato, instead of pecking holes in multiple fruits and leaving them to decay on the vines.  

Tomato goal for next year: plant earlier, look into some natural fertilizers to help boost production

This is the second year I planted Tendergreen cucumbers, and I'm still very pleased with how they grow and produce.  The Armenian long are a similar variety to the "English" cukes in the store that come wrapped in plastic.  I don't think I'll grow those again.  They sneak up on you - they'll stay this tiny little thing for a week and then BAM - you walk out there to find this monstrous overgrown cukemonster that seemed to have evolved overnight!  They take up a lot of garden room, and overall they did not produce in a significant quantity.  

Cucumber goal for next year: plant earlier and then begin successive plantings 2 weeks later, and try out an heirloom variety along with the tendergreen.

Peppers did pretty well - and I was exceptionally pleased with the results as I've had little luck with them in the past.  Plus, we eat a lot of peppers.  I think 9-ish plants is a good number, but next year I'll forgo the "red" bell pepper as they never really produce much different from the "green" bells and they tend to be more expensive as plants.  Cayenne peppers? - Are they really this easy for everyone?  Or maybe I can strut around a little bit because I am GREAT at growing profuse numbers of beautiful cayenne peppers.  Too bad they're too hot to be a real food source.  I'll be drying some and making hot pepper vinegar with the rest. 

Pepper goal:try one new, heirloom variety.


When it comes to squash and zucchini - I'm stumped.  Normally these are the easiest veggies to grow, but something was going very wrong in my garden for their taste this season.  I've looked all over the internet and places where I've found this problem mentioned, no solid determination was made as to the source of the problem and no good suggestions were made as to a remedy.  The dang female flowers would not open.  If they don't open, they don't get pollinated.  If they don't get pollinated, they don't make no squash.  Or zucchini.  And after a few weeks of this, they quit making female flowers altogether!  Dang chauvinists.  There I was with the most beautiful, huge, big dark leafy green squash plants that anybody had ever seen!  Seriously!  I could have won an award.  And by the end of July I stared them down and ripped them from their roots.  Beauty will earn you nothing in my garden unless you are a vegetable.  I actually wonder if the problem is endemic to this garden spot as a whole as I felt strongly the cukes should have many more female flowers as well.

Squash goal: get soil tested, talk to some experts, try different varieties, preferably heirloom.

My row of green beans?  Well, it wasn't.  By the time I planted them I was tired of caring for seedlings and so I won't speculate as to the problem since they never got the attention they deserved.  Goal for next year - try harder.

This was the first year I grew okra, and - yeah boy! - I can do it, I can do it well, and next year I'll plant more!  And next year I will NOT burn myself in 12 different places trying to fry said okra and hopefully I will no longer fear frying okra and so hopefully I will not get shamefully behind on picking it such that what remains is suitable only for dried arrangements.  

Okra goal: plant more, maybe stick to grilling, roasting, and steaming.


This was also the first year ever I grew corn and again - I can do it!  Yummy stuff.  We ate all of it raw, some of it before it even made it into the house. 

Corn goal: plant earlier, plant successively.


The pumpkin plants?  I took the boys on a 3-day trip to visit friends at the beach and forgot to remind my husband to specifically water the young pumpkin plants every day.  They died. 

Pumpkin goal: plant earlier and pay attention!

My successive plantings of basil turned out very pleasing results!  I planted 3 times, 2 weeks apart, using up an entire package of seed over the 3 plantings.  I had wonderful fresh basil throughout July and August, still do - and plan on drying some. 

No - this garden did not provide the abundance of produce I'd hoped for, but it provided enough to get excited about and it most definitely lowered our grocery bill this summer.  And I'm excited about what I learned.  How 'bout y'all?  What did YOU learn?  Please share in comments!!!

Pesky Sides

Yes I've been delinquent on this page.  I've set out to write the next post several times, but really I think it's taken me getting out in my garden all season to figure out what I really think about pest control.

I could have titled this one "Dealing with Peskies Naturally" and then the next one "Dealing with Peskies Chemically," but I've come to believe that the two methods are often blurred. 

Natural methods can include spreading ground cayenne pepper around young seedlings to prevent slugs or cutworms from felling them.  It can include placing small dishes of beer in your garden at night to lure, make drunk, and drown your slugs.  Horticultural oil can be found/made in "natural" versions - it's a simple pesticide made of very small amounts of dish soap and vegetable oil added to water.  If you use an all-natural dish soap this would be considered an all-natural garden solution against small, soft-bodied pests like aphids.  Even if you use a commercial dish soap, it's not all that toxic in your garden and easily washed off your produce before consuming. 

Use of a pyrethrin-based pesticide is also considered natural.  Pyrethrin is a substance that is naturally derived from the seeds of plants in the chrysanthemum family.  There are two ways to look at this - YAY for a COMPLETELY ALL-NATURAL poison!  Or BOO for a completely-all-natural POISON.  Yes it is an all-natural substance that completely breaks down naturally in the soil of your garden.  Yes it is very effective in both repelling and killing garden pests.  Yes it is a neurotoxin.  Yes it is toxic to bees, birds, fish, pets, and humans.  Though it is not persistent - as in persisting long periods of time in the bodies of animals or within the environment, it is highly toxic, able to even cause death in pets - much less fish or birds!

Here's where the line gets blurred.  Here's where you need to choose your side. 

Then there's a host of chemical pesticides out there - which by design are persistent both in your garden, on your produce, and in the environment, and which by design are highly toxic.  If you read the labels you will see described those measures for "proper and safe use," but really - it all comes down to Parts Per Million.  Parts Per Million is the scientific format for keeping up with what may or may not be deemed "safe" levels of pesticides in your garden, in the rainwater that washes them from your garden, in the streams and rivers where it is concentrated from widespread use on the land, in the fish who live in these streams and rivers - and so on until it gets into our food supply both on the front end - from direct application on our produce - and residually as they invade our environment and are stored in the fats of animals that we later consume as meat. 

It's just bad mojo. 

I don't want to go all doomsday on you, but as gardeners we have a responsibility - to garden sustainably, and to learn how it can be done so that we can teach others, teach our children, and contribute to the permanent change that is so desperately needed. 

I apologize for not having more practical information to offer, but I can't write about things with which I have no personal experience.  I did not use any form of pesticide in my garden this year, and I'm grateful to be able to say that it did not affect my harvest hardly at all.  I'll discuss more about that in the next post.

I do fully recognize the attractiveness of chemical or natural pesticide use - when you desperately want to save your tomatoes from destruction by a pest invasion, but only you can make that decision for yourself. 

Consider these things as you form your opinion and choose your pesky side:

What effect will my choices have on the local environment (your garden, your yard, your neighbors' property)?

What effect will my choices have on the larger environment (everything solvable that goes into/on your garden will eventually wash somewhere - into the ground or as storm runoff into a stream which leads to a river which leads to...)

What effect will my choices have on what I produce from my garden and on those who consume this produce?

What can I learn from my choices that I can share with others and improve the way people in my community garden?  

What am I teaching my children through my gardening choices?

Dealing with Peskies Mechanically

Mechanical methods include the physical removal of pests.  For example, aphids can be hosed off of leaves rather easily.  Yes they may climb back up there, but if you stay at it a few days in a row there's a decent chance they will give up.

Another example - vine-borers.  These are nasty things.  They are little evil worms that bore into your squash or pumpkin (and sometimes cucumber) vines and dine voraciously.  It's obvious very quickly when you have one as the leaf at the end of that vine will promptly wilt.  Since they are inside the stem of your plant, there's no use spraying anything - so go ahead and get a garden knife or pruner, cut that stem off at it's base, slit the stem open and look until you find the detestable creature, and then gain great satisfaction from stomping the life out of it.

In some cases you may get an infestation on just one plant - usually the one on the end of the row or edge of the garden.  I have had situations when literally - just one plant - is very quickly overcome but there's no sign of problems on the adjacent plants.  Assess the situation quickly, but it might be more beneficial to sacrifice the one plant and dispose of it as far away from your garden as possible in order to keep the problem from spreading.

Sometimes you may experiment with growing a particular type of vegetable or ornamental plant, only to discover that a certain pest is prevalent in your area and will always attack that type of plant no matter what you try.  This is where I step back and consider the big picture.  Many vegetable plants we grow these days are not native to our location.  Even the ones that are native in origin have often been bred to no longer resemble the plants that were once native.  In some cases certain plants aren't quite suited to our garden environment and may always struggle to thrive, therefore inviting pests to come take advantage of the situation.  The way I look at it, if a plant variety just isn't going to be happy to grow in your garden, or if the same pests repeatedly take it over time and time again - you've got 2 choices.  1 - douse it with chemicals, or 2 - give it up.  I'd rather eat vegetables that have not been doused with chemicals, and I'd rather not introduce harmful chemicals into my garden environment.  It is way more worth it to me to stick with the things that grow well than to go against my conscience trying to convince any plant to thrive when the odds are against it. 

Mechanical methods of pest removal can be very effective if you are vigilant with inspecting your garden closely and you are consistent in your removal of anything suspicious.  This method is certainly worth a first try, even if you choose to move onto other remedies.

Peskies

I have delayed writing this one.  (Sorry Christyn!)  There's just so much that could be discussed.  What to do, what to do! - when your plants are being invaded!  I'll give the discussion a start, and we'll see where it goes.   Garden pests can include critters, bugs, and fungi - but for now we'll deal with the bugs.

Rule #1 Regarding Garden Pests:  Pests will rarely attack a perfectly healthy plant. 
This is what I've always been told, and in my experience, it's rather true.  A healthy plant has its defenses up, and just like humans, plants do have pretty good defenses.  But allow your garden to wilt, allow weeds to crowd your plants, allow a nutrient deficit to get out of control - and you'll be invaded.  Keeping your plants happy and healthy is your first preemptive strike.


Monitor your garden regularly for water needs.  It's been raining a lot this week, but if next week is dry and your garden is already producing fruit regularly, it may need some supplemental watering.  Much damage can be done if your garden is allowed even just one good wilt.

Weeds readily bring pests into a garden.  They allow nocturnal insects a place to hide during the daytime, they keep the ground moist in a way that provides habitat for slugs and the like; since weeds often have a shorter life span and go into decline readily, they invite pests to themselves that will then move onto your garden plants once the weeds have expired.  Weeds also compete for sunlight and nutrients so that your plants won't get as much as they could and therefore might begin to suffer.

If you notice that your plants are yellowing or your blooms are dropping off prior to setting fruit - those are signs of nutrient deficiencies.  Consider mulching with a rich compost, watering your plants with a "tea" made from soaking compost in water for most of a day, or purchase a good organic (or not-so-organic, depending on your persuasion) fertilizer.  Follow package instructions carefully for any sort of chemical fertilizer since adding too much can "burn" and very much harm your plants.

Inspect your plants regularly.  If you find a branch on a tomato that may have been bruised and the branch is starting to decline, go ahead and clip it off.  Remove any declining leaves and take them far away from your garden in order to discourage any sort of fungus from gaining a foothold.  Look very carefully for any signs of pests - look closely enough that you would discover if a half-dozen aphids were setting up camp on a cucumber bud.  The earlier you might find a pest problem, the more success you will have in fighting it.

If your garden does begin to experience a pest problem there are basically 3 ways you can deal with it: Mechanically, Naturally, or Chemically.  We'll be discussing these in subsequent posts, so stay tuned...