Daphne's Dandelions: Get Growing

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Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Get Growing in November

This is the last in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, was posting through August. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

November in New England brings frozen ground. Even most of the hardy plants will die soon without protection. Some root crops can be harvested if they are well mulched - beets, leeks, carrots, parsnips. Some brassicas could still producing like kale and Brussels sprouts, but not much gardening is going on in this month. Typically the last of the garden is cleaned up and the plants put in the compost bin.

My old garden at the end of November

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

November is a time of reflection for me. The first thing I do is look back on the growing season and take stock of what did well and what did poorly. If you took records throughout the season this part is so much easier. I don't keep a garden journal, but many do and that is a good way of record keeping. My blog is my record of what happened, but I do keep other records. I have a sheet that has all the seed that I'm going to plant and it lists what date I expect to plant. It has a a place fill in for when it was started, how well it germinated, and when it was planted outside. In early spring I'm really good about filling it out. As summer hits I quit. Lets just say record keeping isn't my strong suit. I really try, but sometimes I fail at it. When don't record things, I have to go back to my blog to try to figure out when something was planted.

I ask myself questions like, "Did my carrot crop fail because I planted too early?". "Should I have harvested my garlic later?" "Should I have put my zucchini under a row cover early on to avoid the squash vine borers?" "What were my favorite varieties?" "Was it worth growing Amish Paste again?" Step through each of the crops and take notes for yourself. I do mine on my blog every November. Look to the right panel on my blog and look for my 2009 Overviews. For each set of crops I list the good and the bad from the year. This way I have a place I can go back to and see what happens when I plant carrots in the middle July versus the middle of August. Your notes don't need to be as detailed as mine, but it is good to have all this information to tell you what works and what doesn't where you grow. Next year when you plant carrots, you can go back to your notes and see what worked for you in previous years.

Looking back at your growing season will help you plan next year's garden. Yes we have come full circle to planning your garden again. But this time you have information. Looking back will tell you if you planted too many beets and you need to only plant a three foot row rather than an eight foot row. And if you are like me and read blogs looking back on what you have read will give you an idea for what you will want to plant for next year. I know I want to try celery for the first time next year.

As you plan next year's garden. You should keep in mind one thing that I talked about once before in June. But it bears repeating because it is so important. Rotation. You will often hear that you should rotate your crops. This means that if you planted tomatoes in a spot last year, you shouldn't plant tomatoes in that spot this coming year. Different crops have different rotation schedules based on the diseases they have and how long they last in the garden. Each crop is rotated with the other in its family. These families are plants that are all closely related and tend to have the same needs and diseases and insect pests. The following is a list of the families of the common plants in your garden.

Amaryllidacaea Family often called the Alliums: leeks, onions, chives, garlic
Brassicaceae Family often called Brassicas or cole crops: broccoli, cauliflower, mustards, cabbage, rutabaga, kale, collards, cress, radish, rocket, turnips, Asian greens
Chenopodiaceae Family: beets, Swiss chard, spinach
Compositae Family: artichokes, sunflowers, lettuce
Cucurbitaceae Family often called cucurbits: squash, pumpkins, zucchini, gourds, melons
Gramineae Family: Corn
Leguminosea Family often called legumes: beans, peas, peanuts
Solanaceae Family often called nightshade crops or solanums: peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, tomatillos, eggplants
Umbelliferae Family: dill, carrots, coriander or cilantro, fennel, parsnips, parsley, celery

Typically the solanaceae rotation is on a 3-4 year basis. So don't plant tomatoes where ones of the solanaceae family has been in the last few years. The brassicas are typically on a 6-8 year rotation because club root can be very persistent in the soil. The others I worry less about as their diseases aren't as persistent in my garden. In fact I often keep the peas in the same bed with my leafy greens. And then beans come in the next year. So I occasionally have legumes following legumes. But I am adamant about not following a solanaceae with another solanaceae.

Diseases aren't the only reason to rotate crops. Different plants have different nutrient needs also. If you always grow the same crops in the same place. Your soil is more likely to become unbalanced. The typical rotation is to put a heavy feeder (like corn or leafy vegetables) in after a heavy giver (the Legume family puts nitrogen back into the soil), then follow that with a light feeder (like a root crop). Which gives you a three year rotation. This is the typical advice. Which I never follow. My rotations are as follows. Solanum is the first rotation, followed by a mix of brassicas, lettuce, root crops, herbs and peas, followed by a mix of beans, squash, and corn. I put my legumes in with my heavy feeders typically. There is no one right way to do a rotation. Do what works for you.

Since we are busy looking ahead to next season. Now is the perfect time to look ahead to your compost pile. We talked about this last February, but this is the month to collect leaves for you piles. If you live in the suburbs the easiest to find carbon source is leaves. And during this season other people do your work for you. They bag them up and put them right on the curb for you to collect. You might have enough leaves already that fall in your own yard, but if you don't, your neighbors can supply that need. I collect enough for a whole year of composting in my garden. In fact if you collect more than you need for your compost. You can save the rest in a pile for a couple of years to make leaf mold. This is just the leaves broken down into organic matter. It makes a fabulous and free much if you have enough room in the garden to do it.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Get Growing in October

This is the Eleventh in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

Garlic

In New England our gardens are winding up. Our summer crops are mostly gone, our fall crops are getting harvested. Our first frosts have either hit in northern New England or will come this month in southern New England. Unless you have a greenhouse or are overwintering some greens, it is too late to plant here except for one crop. Garlic.

Garlic is a bulb and like daffodils and tulips, it is best planted in the fall. Until the ground freezes solid the garlic clove will put out roots and get established. Occasionally leaves will start to emerge from the soil as the plant will try to grow even in the dead of winter. Garlic is very hardy and doesn't mind being frozen solid.

Varieties

Garlic is typically divided into two kinds, hardnecks and softnecks. They are so named because when they dry, the hardnecks have, well, hard necks. You can't braid them because they are stiff. The softnecks have soft necks and braid easily.

The reason for the difference is that hardnecks put up scapes (flower stalks - though garlic doesn't really flower, but produces bulbils instead). Softnecks have been bred over the years not to have flower stalks. The flower stalks take away energy from the plant. This might give you the impression that you should grow softnecks, but though scapes might take energy from the plant, they are a gourmet treat in their own right. I look forward to garlic scapes every spring. Now that I've divided them up, I should let you know that some hardnecks can act as softnecks on occasion and not put up a flower stalk and softnecks can put up scapes when they are stressed. So don't be shocked if they don't always behave as you think they ought to.

When you buy garlic from the supermarket, typically it is a softneck type of some unknown variety. Most garlic that is grown in the US is grown in Gilroy CA and that really limits the selection. Most garlic grows better in colder climates. Many hardnecks won't even grow in the south. In the north we have a huge selection. There are hundreds of varieties to choose from. And garlic is very particular to where it grows, so it might taste different and grow differently depending upon your conditions. My advice is to plant a lot of varieties to start with and keep growing the ones you like. I've narrowed my garlic varieties this year to two that I will keep growing. One is German Extra Hardy and the other is an unknown softneck from the supermarket. If you are a real gourmet you will have varieties for all the different uses. Some are mild, some are sharp, some are better to eat raw, some are better cooked, some store really well and some don't. I have trouble keeping that many varieties sorted, so two is enough for me. Both of mine are good keepers as I want stored garlic all the way through May or June.

You can get garlic from many places, but if you really want to try a lot of varieties you should become a member of the Seed Savers Exchange. I didn't count, but I'm guessing they had over three hundred different varieties of garlic listed in their yearbook. They are a non profit organization that promotes seed saving. They do some themselves and sell with their online catalog, but the real fun is their yearbook. Anyone that is a member can list seeds that they have saved (or with garlic, bulbs they have saved). You can find an amazing number of varieties for all kinds of crops in the yearbook. It is a wealth of diversity that you won't find in any other catalog.

Growing Garlic

Garlic does not put out real flowers, so it does not grow from seed. All plants are clones from the mother plant. You can get plants two ways. You can plant the bulbils that the flower stalks produce. They look like little tiny cloves of garlic. They take about three years to get to a full size bulb. Or you can plant cloves. This is what most people do. You plant them in September (in northern New England) or October (in Southern New England) and harvest the bulbs in the summer. If you save some of the bulbs for planting again the next fall, you will never have to buy garlic seed again.

There is a lot of differing opinions on how to prepare the cloves to plant. First remove all the cloves from the bulb. Toss any that aren't perfect. If the clove is damaged, it may not survive the winter, but regardless it won't do well. Now is where people start to differ. Some people soak their cloves in a variety of solutions. The wrapper around the clove can play host to a variety of nasty things - fungus, bacteria, or insect eggs. Soaking them in a solution (of baking soda, vinegar, or alcohol, all in varying concentrations) helps kill those unwanted pests. Then comes the question about removing the wrappers themselves around the cloves. Some people think that it protects the cloves before they start to grow so leave them on. Others like to remove them to get rid of anything they may be carrying.

What you can't see if you don't peel your cloves

I've done it both ways. I get marginal results if I don't peel. I get much better results if I do. So I'm in the peeler camp. First before they are peeled I make up a solution of one quart of water and one teaspoon of baking soda. The night before I drop in all the good cloves I sorted out. The next morning I take them out and peel the skin off. The solution makes the skins much easier to peel in addition to helping to disinfect the cloves. When the cloves are peeled, I usually find a few cloves that are bad, but I couldn't see because of the skin. Once they are peeled, rinse them. Then put them in alcohol for three minutes. I use vodka which is 80 proof, but many use a higher proof. I don't happen to have anything higher in the house and 80 has worked for me. Once the three minutes is up then rinse them off again. Now the cloves are ready to plant.

Garlic growing in a raised bed

Garlic is better planted in soil that drains well. They are bulbs and can rot out if they stay too wet. So a sandy loam or loam is best. If you have clay don't despair though. My last garden was clay and the garlic grew just fine. Just make sure to plant in a raised bed so they will drain well. Double digging before the crop is planted helps immensely to make the soil drain better. Garlic is a bit of a heavy feeder so make sure your soil is rich by giving it plenty of compost in the soil and sprinkle with an organic fertilizer.

Plant the cloves on a grid six inches apart in all directions. They should be planted four inches deep in the north and mulched a couple inches over that. I've mulched with compost, straw, and shredded leaves (never used unshredded leaves as they mat down too much). They all seem to work. If you use straw or shredded leaves make sure to fluff it up a bit in the spring. I've had issues with the leaves getting through the mulch if it was packed down too much over the winter.

Garlic is rather easy to care for if the bed was prepared properly. The mulch keeps down the weed. I fertilize once in the spring just as the plants start to take off. Regular watering will insure that the garlic grows bigger, but bigger with garlic is not always better. The smaller ones tend to be stronger in flavor and store better. But don't let it get too dry as the stress will invite disease.

Garlic is pretty resistant to most of the diseases and insects in the garden. In fact it repels a lot of insects and is used in sprays to repel things like aphids. Rotate the crop (along with the other alliums) and you probably won't have problems.

Harvesting

In the north garlic is usually harvested in July or August depending upon the variety and weather. There is no real set time to harvest garlic. Understanding what you want the garlic for is the key. Green garlic can be pulled in anytime the spring. The individual cloves won't have been formed yet. It will look a bit more like a leek. The leaves and bulb can both be used at this stage.

Garlic scape ready to harvest

Later if you are growing hardnecks the scape will form. They can be grilled like asparagus or can be made into things. I love garlic scape dressing on my salads. Scapes can be picked anytime, but get tougher as they age. So when they first show themselves they are at their tenderest. After they start to curl around they get tougher, but there is more of it.

Then we get to the main harvest - the bulb that you usually think of when you buy garlic. If you intend to eat them right away you can pick them at anytime. If you wait a long time the bulbs will start to split apart into individual cloves. This makes for easy use in the kitchen, but the bulbs won't store well this way. If you want to store the bulbs you have to walk a tightrope on when to harvest. The earlier you harvest the less flavorful the bulbs are. The later you harvest the shorter lifespan the bulbs will have. What you do is watch the leaves as they start to die from the bottom. Each leaf represents a layer of skin for the finished garlic bulb. When the leaf dies, that layer of skin rots below the ground. The more layers of skin you have on your garlic, the better it will keep. When you start to see the lower leaves dying, quit watering. Garlic keeps best if it hasn't been watered a lot before harvest, but don't worry too much about it. I've harvested after some veritable floods and still had it keep well enough (choose good keepers as varieties if you intend to grow enough for the whole year). Usually people harvest their garlic when there are about six leaves still living on the top. I've done it with as little as four and they still keep pretty well.

I harvest with a trowel as I don't want to damage any bulb. I try to loosen the dirt under the bulb then I just pull them up. I don't remove the roots or the leaves yet. The bulb needs to be cured before storage. I might point out that this is another highly debated topic too. Some people do cut off the leaves and roots at this point. I'm a believer in letting it all dry first.

Storage

Garlic drying

Once the garlic is harvested, you can brush off the dirt, but don't wash the bulb if you want the prettiest looking bulbs. I know that seems weird, but really they look better if you don't. I lay them out on racks to dry or tie them up with string to hang them dry. Either works well. I used to have the room to lay them all out single high to dry, but I don't anymore, so I hang them in the shed. It is best if they dry slowly, but if you are like me and only have a hot little shed to dry them in, use it. Once they are dry, in about 2-3 weeks. You can cut off the tops of the garlic and cut off the roots. I also brush out what is left of the root stub so I don't get a lot of dirt in my kitchen. Then I peel off the outer wrapper to remove the rest of the dirt. This removes any fungi spores that are on the outside and makes the bulb look really pretty - something I would want to bring into my kitchen.

Once they have been cleaned up you can store them. Garlic needs air. I usually store mine in a cardboard box with holes in it. I've also been known to just store it in a bowl. But I put the bowl in a dark place as light is bad for them. The refrigerator is too cold for long term storage.They do best in the basement if you have a dry basement or a cool room.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Get Growing in September

This is the tenth in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

Season Extension

Our growing season in Massachusetts is not very long. Our cool weather crops start at the end of March or early April by planting peas and spinach and end after a good freeze sometime in November. We have about seven months. Our warm weather crops have even a shorter life span. Maybe four months. We can plant usually sometime in late May and then our first frost shows up in October. But many of us want fresh vegetables for a longer period of time. We want fresh vegetables all year long.

Location, Location, Location

One easy way of making your season a bit longer is site selection. Most home owners don't have much of an option of where to put the garden, but if you have multiple sites to chose pick a south facing slope. South facing slopes heat up much faster in the spring and can thaw out weeks before a north facing slope. Don't put your garden in a valley. Put it near the top of a hill where the cold air can flow down the slope. Valleys collect cold air and can have much shorter growing seasons. I used to live near the top of a hill and the bottom of the hill often got frosts in the fall a week before we did.

But that is just extending the kind of growing you already do. If you want to actually harvest a lot earlier, for example when we have snow on the ground, the best place for the garden is right out your back door. The closer you are, the more often you will visit the winter garden. If you have to shovel snow way to the top of a hill to get to it, it just won't happen as often as you might think it will. The edge of your house foundation is often warmer than any other place in your yard regardless of the lay of the land. The concrete is a good heat sink and your house leaks heat too. Just be careful about planting there if you don't know the house's history. Usually in the northeast the foundations have termite barriers surrounding them. These are strong pesticides that tend not to break down over time and some have been banned due to their toxicity.

Overwintering

Harvesting in the winter really isn't that hard if you pick the right crop. Certain crops overwinter well even in the north without protection. Kale and mache are probably the easiest. Kale stands upright and can be picked through the snow. It is best to get the plant to a good size before winter starts. You might want to stake it as the heavy snows can knock it down. Mache is a very short plant and can be picked during thaws.

Another plant that overwinters well (in Eastern Massachusetts) without any protection is spinach. You can't really pick it during the winter as the overwintered leaves get very ratty, but in the spring when it starts to grow again, it will be a very early harvest. Overwintered spinach can often be a better producer than spring planted spinach.

Overwintered spinach doesn't look like much in March, but its potential is huge. And harvests will start several week earlier than spring planted spinach.

Many root crops can be heavily mulched to keep the soil from freezing. Carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, bunching onions, and potatoes all fit into this category. They may not keep all the way through winter, but at least through December. Just pile the bed up with leaves or straw about a foot or two thick before the first freeze. If you see any sign of freeze in the bed, immediately pull up all the rest of the crops.

Row Covers

One step up from mulching with straw is a floating row cover. These are often used in the summer to protect the plants from insect damage, but heavier weight ones will also protect from frost and hold heat in the bed. A simple floating row cover will not keep in enough heat to grow things over the winter, but it will extend your season on either end. Spinach overwinters particularly well under a row cover.

Floating row covers can either be put right on top of the plants (with a little give so they can grow). Or they can be put over hoops. Hoops can be made from different material. I've used 9 gauge wire. If you put the wire in as a simple hoop one after the other like below:

the wire is not strong enough to stand up to snow. But if you cross two of them and use a twist tie in the middle to hold them together the structure becomes much more sturdy. Some people use PVC pipe to hold up row covers. PVC is much sturdier than 9 gauge wire.

Hoops made from PVC, photo copyrighted, courtesy of Laura from The Modern Victory Garden

Others use electrical conduit wire that can be bent. And still others use wooden structures.

Tunnels made from bent conduit in the snow, photo copyrighted, courtesy of Thomas at A Growing Tradition

It is often useful for PVC or conduit hoops to have a ridge line to keep the hoops from bending under the weight of the snow. But in the end what you need is something sturdy that won't collapse under a couple of feet of snow.

Row covers can either be floating row covers that are made of lightweight porous material or they can be made of plastic. Plastic will hold in the heat and heat up better during the day. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. If the day gets to be 60F (15C) outside, your poor plants can bake and die. You have to be very vigilant about venting the ends or rolling up the sides on warm days. In addition you have to water. A floating row cover is porous and water will come in when it rains, but not if you use plastic.

If you truly want to harvest all winter long you need both. The outer cover of plastic and an inner floating row cover. This protects the plants pretty well. They can still freeze, but inside you would only plant things that are very hardy. Onions, carrots, brassicas, and lettuce are all good candidates. Pick varieties that are the hardiest ones. The plants won't actually grow much during the winter. It is really too cold, but they will hold in the ground and grow during the warmer spells.

Plastic row covers and black plastic or IRT mulch in the spring can make for earlier spring planting.

In addition to plastic above the plants, warm weather vegetables can be started earlier by having plastic mulch under the plants. To further protect warm weather plants you can add milk jugs or soda bottles filled with water. The more you put in the better protection you will have.

Cold Frames

For the typical home gardener the cold frame is the Cadillac of winter protection. They have wooden walls and a glass top, often slanted to catch the sun better. Sometimes they are insulated on the inside. They are a lot like the plastic row covers, but they can retain heat they absorb from the sun. Plastic really has no insulating value so once the sun sets the plants get cold. If the cold frame is well built, this doesn't happen. In addition you can get an automatic thermostatically controlled opener for the lid so you plants won't fry on hot days when you forget to vent the cold frame.

Cold Frame, photo copyrighted and courtesy of Dan from Urban Veggie Garden Blog. Follow the link to see instructions on how to build it.

Though cold frames typically aren't heated, people sometimes use manure to heat the frame (often called a hot bed). They dig fresh manure and straw deep in under the plants 24"-6" under the soil, with 6' of good soil on top. The heat that comes up from its decomposition helps keep the cold frame from freezing. This used to be a very common practice a century ago, but now that farm animals aren't as prevalent it is harder to find fresh manure.

Hoop Houses and Greenhouses

Most home gardeners don't have hoop houses or greenhouses. Hoop houses are the cheap man's version of the green house. They are made with metal pipe hoops and often have wooden frames for doors on the ends. They are easy to get as kits in different sizes. They are covered with plastic, which as we have discussed before, is not very insulating, but many hoop houses have a double row of plastic which has an insulating air layer between. Typically these are not heated, but sometimes are heated with compost. Composting puts out a lot of heat and can be used to keep a hoop house warm. In addition there is often a heat sink of some kind. The most common that I've seen are black barrels filled with water. Even the ground can be a heat sink if it is black enough and kept very moist.

Greenhouses are very expensive and made of glass. Small ones can be bought as kits, or there are plenty of companies that will build one for you. I've even seen one made out of old random windows patched together. Everyone wishes they had one (including me), but they aren't all that common because of their expense. Even most commercial farm operations around here go for hoop houses to raise their seedlings in. But they are invaluable if you want to grow tender crops all year long. Most people here just live without those wonderful tomatoes until tomato season hits. But if we have prepared well in the winter we eat greens from the garden and dream of warmer days to come.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Get Growing in August

This is the ninth in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

Preserving Food

The title of this series is "Get Growing", but in New England in August it is less about growing and more about harvesting and what to do with all your bounty. If your plantings did well, you will be inundated with squash, tomatoes, beans, peppers, corn, and herbs. Something always seems to fail every year, but celebrate what you do get. Even if it is a huge pile of zucchini and your neighbors slam the door when you get close because they don't want any more.

Instead of tossing the excess think about preserving the food for the winter. You might be sick of zucchini now, but zucchini bread will sound really good in the depth of winter. Not everything freezes well, but most things can be preserved this way.

Freezing

Most vegetables have enzymes in them that will break down the food into mush over time or taste strange, even in the freezer. To deactivate these enzymes you need to blanch your food. This method just heats up the food by boiling for long enough to break down the enzymes. Foods need longer or shorter blanching depending on its thickness.

Basic water blanching method:

Wash and trim your vegetable
Get a pot of water boiling that is large enough to cover the vegetables
Drop in the vegetables
Wait until it is boiling again and time for the appropriate length
Immediately drain with a strainer and put into ice water to cool quickly add more ice if necessary. Cool the vegetables as quickly as possible. I often stir to make sure the ice water gets through it evenly.
Drain and freeze

It is possible to steam blanch food too, but you have to steam them in a single layer and is not very conducive to freezing large quantities.

Tray freezing beans

The freezing step can be done in two ways. You can either tray freeze your vegetables or not. Tray freezing just means you spread the vegetable out over a tray like a cookie sheet and put the sheet into the freezer. Then once they are frozen you can put into a bag making sure to get out all the air. The advantage of tray freezing is that when you use the vegetable you can measure out what you want. You don't have to use the whole bag at once. Tray freezing works well for things that have individual pieces like corn or green beans, but not so well for spinach. For spinach and chard I tend to freeze them in plastic containers then pop them out and put them in bags. For shredded zucchini I measure the amount I use in zucchini bread and freeze it in pack of that size.

Some vegetables don't need blanching some do, here is a list of how long to blanch:

Vegetable	Minutes*
Asparagus	2-4
Beets	25-50
Green beans	3
Lima Beans	2-4
Broccoli	3
Brussels Sprouts	3-5
Cabbage	1 1/2
Carrots diced	2
Cauliflower	3
Corn kernels	4
Eggplant	4
Greens	2
Snow peas	2
Snap peas	3
Peas	1 1/2
Summer Squash	3

*If there is a range it is based on size.

Vegetables that don't need to be blanched, but can just be frozen: onions, celery, peppers, herbs, tomatoes, and shredded zucchini. For shredded zucchini the water separates out in freezing but still works well for soups and zucchini bread. Just don't drain it before using. The bread will need that liquid. And just as a note, none of these will retain their texture well, but still maintain their flavor and are good for cooking.

Frozen vegetables can keep a long time in the freezer if you have a chest freezer that is not auto defrosting. The auto defrosting freezers (like the one with your fridge) heats the walls of your freezer up on occasion to make sure no frost forms. This is very detrimental to storing frozen goods long term. My rule of thumb is one to two months in an auto defrosting freezer and about a year in a chest freezer.

Dehydrating

Many things that you wouldn't think of dehydrating can in fact be dehydrated. Dehydrated food lasts a long time and doesn't need expensive equipment like a chest freezer. Some things like herbs you can just dehydrate by hanging them in bunches upside down in a dark, dry, warm spot. In our humid environment I've found it not to be too practical. Things often mold before they dry out. I've found a dehydrator to be indispensable here.

Mine is just a really cheap one with a heating element on the bottom and five trays for which I paid $25. It uses convection to dry and it works, but not well. The best ones have thermostats as not all things should be dried at the same temperature. They also have airflow over the tops of the tray and not from the bottom which makes drying much more even. These styles cost over $100, but are very nice.

I've dried many things in my dehydrator over the decades. Herbs of all kinds are the most common. But I've dried peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes, beans, fruit, and even cabbage. Sometimes it is fun to experiment.

Canning

There are two methods of canning. The most common is the water bath canner. It is just a pot with a rack for jars and you submerge the jars in boiling water for a given time to kill all the bacteria in the jar. This works well with highly acidic foods, but otherwise it is dangerous. Botulism is not killed by boiling water and grows whenever the pH is over 4.6. To can these kinds of foods you need to use a pressure canner. When water boils in a pressure canner it brings the water to a higher temperature than when it is out in the air.

I'm not going to go into all about canning as the USDA puts out a wonderful guide that is online. Peruse it at your hearts content. I will put fourth a few safety tips though. For water bath recipes I've told you that you need to have a certain pH. This means you can NEVER lower the amount of anything acidic put into the recipe. Acidic things are: vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice, and fruit. These is your major preservatives. In addition salt and sugar are also preservatives so it is not a good idea to lower their amount either. You have very little leeway with changing the tested recipes if you want to keep safe. But you can always lower the amount of non acidic ingredients. For instance in a salsa recipe you might have tomatoes, vinegar, salt, sugar, peppers, cilantro onions, and garlic. Don't mess with any of those first four, but if you don't like garlic, you can leave it out. Or if you don't like cilantro. You can put half the number of peppers into it. Just don't mess with the preservative ingredients. Also you can add preservatives. You can add more vinegar, salt or sugar. Tomatoes are a weird one though. You can't lower the amount in a recipe and you can't raise it either. Tomatoes hover around a pH of 4.6. Some are over and some are under. You don't know which way they go. Tomatoes CAN NOT be canned safely by themselves. They need a acid to be added to make sure they are safe.

After all that talk of safety and the thought of botulism, the whole concept of canning might put you off, but it really is quite easy. Just follow the recipes as written on the USDA site (they have all been thoroughly tested) and you have nothing to worry about. Once you have done it once you will see how easy it is.

What to Plant for the Fall

There are a few things to plant for fall that still have time to mature. Usually I plant spinach in August and also short maturing Asian greens, radishes, and sometimes short maturing turnips. I've been given a lot of advice to plant spinach 40 days before my average first frost in the fall, but the reality is the plants won't be ready if you follow that advice. At my last house my normal last frost date would be at the end of October. If I planted spinach in the middle of September it would never grow. This is because the sun is lower to the horizon. Everything grows much slower. Last year I planted spinach on September 1st. It wasn't really long enough to get much of a harvest. A few leaves maybe but not much more. Assume that this time of year your plants will take twice as long to grow as normal and you will be all set.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Get Growing in July

This is the eighth in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

Insects are our friends

July brings the summer harvests to New England. During this month we will be inundated with zucchini, cucumbers, and beans, but unless you planted early tomatoes the first tomato won't hit until the end of July or early August. And though I have no corn in my garden this year, I'm sure I'll be buying a lot of it from the farmers markets this month.

These flowers were female

If you look close at your zucchini plants you will notice that there are two types of flowers. There are male blossoms that have normal stems behind the flower and female blossoms that have little tiny zucchinis behind the flower. All cucurbits (cucumbers, melons, squash, pumpkins, gourds) are like this. Many other plants can self pollinate their flowers (like tomatoes, beans, peas, and peppers), but cucurbits can't. They require bees to pollinate. If you notice that your female blossoms have opened and then a few days later they fall off and die, it is most likely because the flowers weren't pollinated. You can hand pollinate by transferring the pollen from the male blossoms to the female blossom, but it is so much easier if the bees are doing their job.

This is one reason I never spray a broad spectrum pesticide on my plants. I have several approaches to insect control to avoid it. The first approach is to let nature take it course. In the spring I do get some aphids. In not long the lady bugs and lacewings come in to take care of them. I find that nature controls these kinds of insects fairly well in my garden. But I do help her out. I plant perennial flowers around the vegetable garden to encourage the beneficial insects. Mallow is a great plant to attract bees, as is bee balm, and even some varieties of coreopsis. Marigolds attract hoverflies which is a predatory insect. Also I let my umbelliferae family herbs (cilantro/coriander, parsley, and dill) bloom every year. Adult lacewings and the predatory wasps love these blooms. In addition the plants will self seed every year and you can harvest the coriander and dill seed for your spice rack.

Lacewing eggs on dill are tiny, but grow into voracious aphid eaters

The above is an example of companion planting. But companion planting can do more than attract the good insects. It can also attract the bad. For instance if you plant borage. It will attract bees to the garden, but it will also attract aphids. You might think this is a bad thing, but it is called a trap crop. If the aphids like the borage more than they like your peas then your peas will have less aphids. It will also give the aphids a place to live in an innocuous place. A lady bug won't lay eggs in your garden if there are no aphids around. But better on the borage than on your peas. Nasturtiums are another good trap crop. I've heard many insects that they attract from caterpillars to flee beetles. Personally I've only noticed they they attract aphids.

A companion plant can also repel insects. It isn't uncommon for people to scatter onions throughout the carrot patch. The scent of the onions helps to repel the carrot fly. One of my favorite plants in this category is the marigold. I always plant my tomatoes near them. Marigolds are toxic to the root knot nematode. These nematodes can seriously stunt crops.

Ground Control Marigolds

So you plant companions. You have some that attract and some that repel, but you still have an insect problem. Your plants are getting eaten. I have four other strategies that don't require any pesticides. I can hand pick them. Big insects are particularly easy. I get a bowl of soapy water and knock the insect into it. I know gardeners that squish the bugs with their hands, but I'm a bit too squeamish for that. If aphids get really out of hand I cut off the infested part (usually just one branch) and toss it into the lawn near the garden. I don't know if it helps, but I figure if the lady bugs find the aphids there it is just as good.

The second way is to trap your insects. Not all insects have good traps, but some do. The only insect trap in the garden I use is a flee beetle trap. It is very simple to make. Have a white bowl filled with soapy water. Leave it out under the plant. If it rains a lot replenish it. It might not kill all the flee beetles, but I find it will keep the numbers way down so they aren't seriously damaging the plants. I occasionally use it for the tomato family crops, but I use it every year with the Asian greens.

The third is a row cover. This is a light cloth, usually remay in the US. You put on right after the plants are put in the ground. It has to be on the plants their whole life, or the bad bugs will breed under it without any predators. Often it is held up off the plants with supports. The trick is that you have to tack the edges down well to keep the insects from finding a way in. Its biggest flaw is that it raises the air temperature. If you are growing in the summer, make sure you get the lightest one available. I use these on my brassicas because I've found them almost impossible to grow without one. Between flee beetles, root maggots, and caterpillars, it is just easier to throw on a row cover.

The fourth strategy I've only used on one crop. Squash. My insect nemesis is the squash vine borer. It is a moth that looks a little like a red and black wasp. The female lays her eggs all along the stem of the squash vine. She can lay up to a hundred of the eggs. When the egg hatches the caterpillar tunnels into the vine and destroys it from the inside. The first sign of damage you notice is that your vine is wilting even in the mornings when it has been watered (vines will often wilt in the hot afternoon sun even without borers). I've tried picking off the eggs. I always miss some. I've tried slitting along the stem to get out the borer. The plant is unhappy. I can't use a row cover because the flowers need to be pollinated. There aren't a lot of solutions. So I plant resistant varieties of squash. There is one species, C. moschata, that is resistant. Sadly pumpkins are C. pepo, but butternut squash is in the C. moschata species so that is what I grow. Zucchini is C. pepo too, but the borer won't kill the plant until sometime in August and by that time I'm pretty sick of zucchini anyway. Winter squash on the other hand takes a long time to mature so mine are resistant.

When all else fails people go to pesticides. I'm not a big fan. I don't like things that are broad spectrum since they kill the the good insects with the bad. If you feel you must, please spray in the early, early morning before the bees become active or at night when they are in their hive. There are a handful of insecticides that I have used in the garden at times. Bt is Bacillus Thuringiensis. It often goes under the brand name Dipel. It is a bacteria that is specific to caterpillars (some strains are used for other larvea). It will not hurt any other insect in the garden. If you are not using a row cover on your brassicas, I would heartily recommend using it as a caterpillar control. Don't spray it willy nilly about the garden though. It kills all caterpillars including the "good" ones. Black swallowtails will lay eggs on dill, fennel, parsley, and sometimes carrots. I love the butterflies so am happy to lose a couple of plants to them. The smile on my face when I see them is more than enough to pay for the loss of some dill. So if you like to see butterflies around, keep the Bt in your brassicas and away from the other plants.

Slug

Another targeted pesticide that I've come to enjoy is Sluggo. It is Iron Phosphate, which is pretty non toxic. Slugs are a huge problem in my rainy New England garden. Some years I hand pick to control them, but you have to do this about every other night (yes I said night as they are nocturnal creatures) and sometimes even that is not enough to keep the plants alive. I'm not fond of fighting mosquitoes to get to the slugs either. Sluggo does a pretty good job of control. So I use it.

I've used two other pesticides over the years. I've used Diatomaceous Earth. This is the fossil remains diatoms. They are very sharp (and shouldn't be breathed), but so tiny you won't notice it. The slugs however get lacerated by the little knives. The flaw with this control is that it is only effective when dry and slugs are most active when we get a lot of rain. You have to reapply constantly to keep it working right. It is also not specific. It can kill chitinous insects too including the rove beetle, which is a slug predator.

The last is just insecticidal soap. I used to use this before my garden had a good balance of the good insects to bad. Now I just wait for the predators to show up whenever I have an aphid infestation. They never fail me.

Planting the Fall Crops

In last month's segment we talked about starting the longer mature fall crops. Well mid to late July is the time to plant most of them. If we are getting very hot weather you might have to pamper them a little bit. Make sure they get plenty of water. You can also start some more transplants this month. This time start the earlier maturing Asian greens, like bok choy for transplanting in August. You can just direct seed, but often July is too hot for them outside and slugs are rampant in the garden. An Asian green seedling doesn't have much of a chance.

You can however direct seed carrots. If you want full sized fall carrots plant them by mid July. Make sure you keep them well watered or they won't come up in the heat. A board over the row is very useful for shade and to keep in moisture. Check under the board every day and if you see them start to sprout remove it.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Get Growing in June

This is the seventh in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

Growing Fall Transplants And Fighting Diseases

Fall Crops Now?

In New England in June the summer garden of tomatoes, peppers, beans and squash is well on its way and the spring garden of peas, broccoli, Asian greens, and cabbage is being harvested. The garden is fully planted up and growing well - hopefully. It is hard to imagine the fall right now as the weather is just heating up, but June is the time to start your fall transplants. It is often hard to find fall crops in the garden centers, so it is often best to grow your own.

These transplants will be ready to put in the garden in mid to late July. The spring crops will all have been harvested by then so there will be space for the transplants. Some people direct seed these crops in the garden, but I find for many that there isn't time for both a spring and a fall crop if I don't start transplants.

So which crops should you seed now? Any fall crops that take 60 days or more to mature, except carrots which need to be direct seeded in July. These include broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, and any of the longer maturing of the Asian greens like Chinese Cabbage. If you had trouble with any of the brassicas (all in the list but lettuce) then you will have an easier time growing them in the fall. The weather fluctuations and growing heat of spring often causes these to bolt in the spring, but in the fall the cooling temperatures are more to their liking.

July planted Chinese Cabbage harvested in October

Planting one crop when another crop comes out is called succession planting. It keeps a small garden more productive. I also succession plant some of the more heat resistant Asian greens, like green stemmed bok choy, mizuna, and Komatsuna, but for these I do it more often. I will grow a new batch of seedlings every two to three weeks and as a few plants get pulled, I have the next one waiting to take its place. You don't need to grow transplants for these. You can direct seed as soon as your plants comes out, but if you have a small space, you will get larger harvests by growing transplants or having a small section of the bed devoted to seedlings for transplanting.

Green stemmed bok choy

When I do successions I typically replace lettuce with lettuce and bok choy with bok choy, but you can't do this from year to year. There are many plant diseases that will build up in the soil over time.

How to Control Plant Disease in the Garden

The best way to control disease in the garden is by crop rotation. Crop rotation is just moving which plants grow in which section of the garden every year. Each family of plants has their own set of diseases and moving them every year will keep diseased soil from infecting your plants. A few diseases will cross family lines but not may. So to set up a rotation schedule in your garden you need to know what plants are in what families.

Amaryllidacaea Family often called the Alliums: leeks, onions, chives, garlic
Brassicaceae Family often called Brassicas or cole crops: broccoli, cauliflower, mustards, cabbage, rutabaga, kale, collards, cress, radish, rocket, turnips, Asian greens
Chenopodiaceae Family: beets, Swiss chard, spinach
Compositae Family: artichokes, sunflowers, lettuce
Cucurbitaceae Family often called cucurbits: squash, pumpkins, zucchini, gourds, melons
Leguminosea Family often called legumes: beans, peas, peanuts
Solanaceae Family often called nightshade crops or solanums: peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, tomatillos, eggplants
Umbelliferae Family: dill, carrots, coriander or cilantro, fennel, parsnips, parsley, celery

More experienced gardeners might noticed that I left at least one major crop out. I don't have corn on the list because its family has very few edibles (corn and sorghum), so they are in their own rotation.

Some plants have disease that don't persist in the soil very long. Some have diseases that can last a long time in the soil. The worse is probably the brassicas. The have a disease (clubfoot) that can persist in the soil for years. Usually a rotation of 6-8 years is recommended. Which means you want to plant a different crop there for 5-7 years before the soil sees a brassica again. This is not always easy to do. The second worst is probably the solanums. This is not because they need such a long rotation, but because they have so many soil born diseases. There is never a year that goes by when my tomatoes aren't infected with at least one disease. They need to be rotated on at least a three year schedule, but four is better. I use a three year schedule because I love my solanums so much. So a third of the garden is always devoted to them. Each year it is a different third.

Rotation also helps the soil for another reason. Some plants are light feeders and some are heavy feeders. For instance, beans can actually set nitrogen on their roots. The legumes are the only plants that can do this. So if they follow something that is a heavy feeder (like lettuce and brassicas) they can help to balance out the nutrients in the soil.

Powdery mildew on squash

But back to diseases. Even rotating your crops will not prevent all diseases. If it is a wet year in New England you will have many diseases anyway. Some are just endemic to the area. You will have powdery mildew on your zucchini in the late summer to fall. It is just a given. There are a few ways to help keep diseases from running rampant. First make sure you don't crowd your plants too close together. For instance if your tomatoes are a solid mass of leaves, it would behoove you to prune some of the foliage out to keep the air flowing.

Second don't work in the garden when it is wet. Some plants, like beans, have a greater disease transmission when you touch the wet plants. It is best to stay out of the bean patch when it is damp. Wait to pick until the leaves dry off.

Third, when you see a diseased leaf in the garden you can pick it off and destroy it. Make sure if you use tools on infected plants to wash them off afterward. Most people will recommend that you use a 10% bleach solution to sterilize them. If you don't, you will just be spreading the disease around the garden.

Rust on the beans

Fourth you can spray. I don't like to spray with toxic materials in the garden. I stick with safer things. For powdery mildew you can spray a 10% solution of milk diluted with water. Since I don't usually have milk in the house, I spray my plants with a mixture of worm compost tea and aspirin (3/4 of a tablet per gallon of water - aspirin has been shown to switch on a tomato's own disease fighting mechanisms). If it is a very wet year, I alternate the above spray with Seranade. Seranade's active ingredient is a bacteria that destroys spores.

In the Northeast you will never have a year without diseases in your garden, but with good gardening practices you can at least keep them to a manageable level. My beans might always get rust every year, but the beans are still very productive. The tomatoes will get Septoria Leaf Spot no matter what I do, but I will still get many tomatoes off of my plants.

Last year was a particularly bad year for tomatoes as Late Blight was rampant in the Northeast, but I was vigilant. Every day I was out in the garden checking the plants. I picked off any diseased leaf or stem and disposed of it properly (for Late Blight this means bagging in a black plastic bag, sealing it and setting it in the sun for a few days to kill off the spores). I still had a good harvest. My potatoes were also infected so when I harvested them I made sure to get every last one of them out of the soil. Late blight can't over winter here except on live plant material. For us this means potatoes left in the soil. I even double dug that section of the garden to make sure no potato was left. If one potato overwintered and came up in the spring it would mean that my garden would be reinfected. Not everyone last year was as good as I was. There are already reports of Late Blight overwintering in potatoes in Pennsylvania and Maryland. An outbreak is already starting. So this year we may have issues again. The Massachusetts extension service has a page up to help you identify and tell you want to do.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Get Growing in May

This is the sixth in a twelve part series for new gardeners. If you have never planted vegetables before but always wanted to, this is the series for you. Robin, who writes the blog Vegetable Matter, and I will post on the first of every month. Robin lives in Houston and I live in Boston. We will be posting about what to do in the garden that month and giving advice. So if you have always wanted that vegetable garden, but didn’t know where to start, you have no excuse. Get growing!

May brings warmer weather to New England. Here in the Boston area our temperature averages are in the 60s at the start of the month and rise to the 70s by the end of the month. Though some in southern New England have already seen their last frost for the year, usually the warm season crops aren't planted until May 15th, or May 31st in more northern areas. A good rule of thumb is to plant warm weather crops two weeks after your average last frost date, as these plants will die if they see a frost. A list of these include: tomatoes, peppers, basil, tomatillo, beans, cucumbers and squash. Some warm weather crops are more finicky. If your season is long enough it would be prudent to wait 4 weeks after your last frost for melons and eggplant. They much prefer the warmer nights of summer to the cool nights of spring.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the queen of the vegetable crop. People who grow nothing else will plant tomatoes. The taste of a homegrown tomato does not even taste like the same species as the tomatoes that you buy in the grocery store. In New England tomatoes are not the easiest of crops to grow. Our weather tends to be cooler then they like and the humidity and rain encourage a host of diseases. But it is worth the effort.

What Tomatoes to Grow

Tomatoes come in all sizes, shapes, and colors

Between the more disease resistant hybrids (a hybrid is a cross between two tomatoes that you can buy commercially, you can't save seed from hybrids) and the resurgence in popularity of old fashioned heirlooms (that breed true so you can save seed from one year to the next) there is a lot of choices in tomatoes. If you haven't already grown them from seed where the choices seem almost infinite, there is probably a garden center near you that grows many different varieties. One near me grows around 30 each year.

Tomatoes come in several generalized forms. The cherry tomato is good for salads and tends to be easier to grow than the larger tomatoes. I recommend Sun Gold which is a hybrid gold tomato. It is particularly good for our area as it is cold tolerant. It is early. Typically it is the first tomato in my garden to get ripe and the last one in the fall to still be standing. It is very disease tolerant, not because it has innate resistance, but because it grows so fast it seem to out grow a lot of the standard diseases. The best part about this little gem though is its taste. It frequently wins taste tests. Another favorite of mine is Black Cherry and Chocolate Cherry. They are two black tomatoes - well they are really brown with red and green hints, but they are called black tomatoes. Black tomatoes have a flavor all their own. If you have never tried one before, you are missing out.

Most paste tomatoes have an elongated shape called a plum tomato

A very popular form of tomato for cooks and canners is the paste tomato. This kind of tomato has a lower water content, so it will cook down into a thick sauce faster than other types. Though I don't currently have a favorite, often people will like San Marzano, Opalka, and Amish Paste.

The top of the heap in tomatoes is the slicer. Everyone has their own favorite. Some large slicers that are popular like Brandywine, Pineapple, and Cherokee Purple take a long time to ripen. They can be done successfully here in the northeast, but in bad years they can also be a failure. My suggestion is to plant some shorter season plants (70 days or less to maturity) in addition to the longer season ones to hedge your bets. Disease resistant hybrids like Celebrity can also be useful, though I'm more fond of the open pollinated plants because I like to save seed from year to year. Currently my favorite early slicer is Market Miracle which did well in last year's bad weather. It is a Russian heirloom. Many of the Russian tomatoes do well in colder climates. (Note: there seem to be more than one kind of Market Miracle tomatoes. Mine are the 6-8oz variety not the 2-3 oz.)

Tomatoes not only have different sizes of tomatoes, but there are different sizes of plants and growth habits. Determinate tomatoes don't get very large compared to indeterminate ones. Determinate tomatoes branch out and at the end of the vine they set a terminal bud. As soon as the plant sets fruit they quit growing and put their effort into ripening those tomatoes. Pruning determinate tomatoes will result in low fruit set since the fruit itself is set at the end of the vine. There is also a form of this that is called semi-determinate. These will form terminal buds, but the plant will keep on sending out side branches, so fruit keeps getting set. Usually for a home gardener, you want to get fruit over a long period of time. If you do you can plant varieties that become ripe at different times. Many people like the short manageable size of determinates. They tend to only get 3-4 feet high. Or if you like to can your tomatoes, having all your fruit becoming ripe at the same time is a bonus as it is easier to process everything at once.

Indeterminate tomatoes do not have a set size. If they have good growing conditions they will continue to grow forever. And they can produce a lot of fruit. Fruit is set off of the stem and not at the end so the vines keep growing. Tomatoes are actually a perennial in the right climate (though diseases shorten their life span). Up north they will be taken out by frost, but even here I have seen vines grow to nine feet tall. Be prepared to support them to about six feet tall. I have had tomato cages in the past that are four feet tall and they easily out grow them. You can chop off the tops or just let them flop out of the top if your cages or stakes are too short.

Transplanting Tomatoes

Tomatoes and peppers in newspaper pots getting hardened off

Tomato transplants are not strong enough to go out into the garden without hardening them off first. Make sure they have a good week of slowly letting them get used to the weather. They can get sunburnt easily if they were grown under fluorescent lights. I often let my home grown transplants see the sun on any good day during April and May. It keeps them sturdy and the hardening off process is shorter.

I like to give my tomatoes a lot of tender loving care before they are even planted. I double dig the tomato bed, which is a lot of work, but gives the roots plenty of room to grow. Right before planting I dig a deep wide hole maybe 18" deep and add 1c organic 5-3-3 fertilizer, 1c bonemeal, and one cup powdered eggshells (eggshells ground in a food processor that I've been saving all year for this). I mix it well into the hole. Then add some more of the dirt and mix again. I'm trying to encourage the roots to go down more.

Then I cut off all the lower leaves to the tomato plant and plant it so just the top leaves are showing. The tomato will form roots all along the stem. Not all plants can do this, in fact many would die if you did, but tomatoes do well if they are planted deep.

Tomato plants should be planted somewhere between 1' and 3' apart depending on what kind of tomatoes you grow and how you train your plants. Some people let their plants sprawl on the ground (which needs lots of space), but that promotes disease and the fruit often rot. Some people like to stake their plants and train the plants up the stake as they grow (requires less space). I tend to like cages. I find I get more fruit when I cage and let the plant grow mostly to its own designs. The fruit tends to be later than staked tomatoes, but it has larger harvests.

Tomato Problems

The first problem you could encounter with tomatoes is the cut worm. It loves to chop the newly planted tomato down. Most people use a cutworm collar. Which is just a collar a couple of inches from the stem that goes all the way around. It has to go two inches into the soil and stick up a couple of inches. I've seen them made from old cans, cardboard and newspaper. It doesn't provide 100% protection because I have seen cutworms go down three inches, but two inches is usually enough. I don't protect my seedlings this way. I use old hosta flower stems from the previous year. The stems are about 1/8" thick. I cut off two four inch sections of the old flower stem which is brown and tough. I push them into the ground, one on each side of the stem and very close. Cutworms wrap themselves around the stem as they chew and when they wrap around the stems with the flower stems, they can't chew through.

Horn worm with wasp cocoons

Other insect problems is the tomato horn worm. It blends into the foliage surprisingly well for how huge it is. It can defoliate a small plant quickly, but will just damage big ones a bit. If you see one remove it. You usually find it by the damage it does and not by seeing the caterpillars first. Sometimes you will find white cocoons on the caterpillar. If you do leave it, those are parasitic wasp cocoons and you want to encourage them. Trust me that caterpillar will be doing no more damage.

There are a lot of other insect pests like flee beetles (puts holes in the leaves, but usually doesn't do a lot of damage unless the plants are seedlings), aphids and stinkbugs (sucks the juices from the leaves and can damage the fruit), but most of them are not too bothersome. I handpick any nasty bugs that I see. Don't assume an insect is bad because it is on the plant. Lady bug larvae looks very nasty, but they eat aphids.

Diseases are where your main problems will be, at least if you live in New England. We have a whole host of diseases that will spot up the leaves and slowly kill the plant. Many of them are hard to tell from one another. The basic care is to remove the diseased branch and dispose of it when you find it. To make disease less likely you can stake your plants instead of caging them. This lets the air flow through better. If you do cage, you can thin out the branches in the interior of caged plants.

One of the most important practices is crop rotation. Some of our diseases can over winter here and they stay in the soil. Rotating the crops in a three year cycle can help keep the diseases down. It won't get rid of them, but can help. The plants get a lot of diseases from the splash up of the spores from the soil. If you mulch your plants well, the spores are less likely to make it onto your plants. Black plastic as a mulch can be used when you plant, but if you are mulching with organic material, like hay, you may want to wait a while until the ground is very warm. Our soil in May is not all that warm yet and tomatoes love the heat.

If you are still having disease issues, you can spray. I don't like to put anything toxic on my plants. I used a mixture of aspirin and worm casting tea. I take 1/2c of worm castings and soak it in water for a day. I strain the mixture into my gallon sprayer. Then I add 3/4 of an aspirin tablet dissolved in water and fill the sprayer to the top. I coat the tops and bottoms of all the leaves. Most people know the benefits of worm tea. It is a foliar feed and it has microorganisms that fight off diseases in the garden. Fewer have heard of using aspirin to help their garden. Aspirin works because it turns on the plant's own disease fighting mechanisms. I usually spray this every other week. It helps better before the plants are infected, but will still help after the plants is sick.

Blossom End Rot

One condition that is very common in tomatoes, especially the larger ones, is blossom end rot (BER). As you might guess from its name, the tomato starts to rot from the bottom. This is not a fungal disease, but it is a nutrient deficiency. The plant is lacking calcium. Most often this is caused by irregular watering. Either not enough or too much water can make it hard for the plant to take up calcium. You can't prevent mother nature from sending the rain, especially in my area, but you can improve your chances of not getting BER. When I plant, I add bone meal and powdered eggshells to the hole. Both provide a large amount of calcium. If you are still getting BER, you can make eggshell tea and water your plants with it. Just throw some crushed shells into some water and let it steep for a few days then water with it every week. I warn you. It smells disgusting, so leave a lid on it and keep it outside. Each week make up a new batch.

Tomatoes really are the stars of the garden. Both Robin and I felt compelled to write about them. Though we covered the same topic, we both said different things and you might want to read her February post for her take on tomatoes too.

Harvests

2015 Reaping the Rewards
Earned $1484.12		Total 651.30 lbs
Alliums	60.29	Greens, Asian	58.37
Asparagus	0	Herbs	12.28
Beans	2.09	Melons	46.71
Broccoli	34.88	Peas	6.69
Carrots	67.59	Roots	23.51
Corn	26.19	Squash Sum	26.21
Cucumber	32.11	Squash Win	61.44
Greens	129.95	Sw. Potatoes	61.40
weight in pounds harvested 2014: 746.70 lbs 2013: 542.41 lbs 2012: 735.53 lbs 2011: 592.99 lbs 2010: 544.70 lbs 2009: 219.14 lbs

Fruits
Total: 239.10 lbs -$644.77
2015	Expenses: $173.52 Income: $369.72 100.55 lbs
2014	Expenses: $196.00 Income: $222.16 63.05 lbs
2013	Expenses: $252.29 Income: $146.07, 42.38 lbs
2012	Expenses: $50 Income: $118.46, 31.26 lbs
2011	Expenses: $816.70 Income: $7.81, 1.87 lbs

Starting in 2011
Lot size 9000 sqft
Raised veggie area 565 sqft

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Get Growing in November

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Other Posts in the Series

Friday, October 1, 2010

Get Growing in October

Garlic

Varieties

Growing Garlic

Harvesting

Storage

Other Posts in the Series

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Get Growing in September

Season Extension

Location, Location, Location

Overwintering

Row Covers

Cold Frames

Hoop Houses and Greenhouses

Other Posts in the Series

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Get Growing in August

Preserving Food

Freezing

Dehydrating

Canning

What to Plant for the Fall

Other post in the series

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Get Growing in July

Insects are our friends

Planting the Fall Crops

Other post in the series

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Get Growing in June

Growing Fall Transplants And Fighting Diseases

Fall Crops Now?

How to Control Plant Disease in the Garden

Other post in the series

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Get Growing in May

Other post in the series