How is your garden growing in this heat? How to recognize problems as your veggies grow.
Greetings fellow gardeners,
It never seems to rain enough. I was watching the radar and doing the rain-dance but sigh, not nearly enough.
I wandered back to the back of my property to cut some comfrey to chop up for fertilizer and passed by a wild parsnip the size of a sapling! How did I miss that? I will go back as the sun goes down and cut it down carefully. I will put a garbage bag over it and cut it at the base being careful not to get any sap on me. The sap needs the sun to activate so I am looking for a cloudy moment. As for the comfrey I chop it up and put it in a bucket. I put some of the comfrey directly under my plants and the rest I leave with a bit of water to make a concentrate. Comfrey concentrate is ‘aromatic’ so it should be covered up.
How are your vegetables growing? You should be seeing some results soon. I have had a few yellow zucchinis and my cucumber plants are blooming. The tomatoes are finally forming fruit and I found a small pepper this morning. Of course, there are a few problems in the vegetable garden and the sooner we deal with them the better.
Yellow leaves: there are so many reasons for yellow leaves so let’s go through the basics. First of all, check for pests. Do you see small worms? Are tiny bugs (aphids) stuck to the leaves? Are there small bugs hoping about on the leaves? If there are no bugs, leaves can get yellow if you give your plant too much water or if it is sitting in water due to poor drainage. Leaves can get yellow if the plant is not getting enough water. Put your finger in the soil and it is dry to the first knuckle water the plant. Sometimes the leaf dies, and you take it off allowing the greener leaves to flourish.
There are no baby vegetables: on your tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis and so forth, there are flowers, but no fruit is forming. With the heat and lack of rain it is difficult for pollinators. I have flowers like marigolds and calendula available to attract pollinators and small dishes of water with stones for safe drinking. You can also take a small paintbrush and brush the pollen on the flowers around to help with pollination. Be sure to clean the brush between plants.
This tastes bitter: when you first planted your lettuce, it was tender and sweet but after three or four pickings it is sharp and bitter. Lettuce only has a few pickings in it before you need to plant more seeds. If you find other vegetables to be bitter, it may be due to lack of water. Vegetables like cucumbers, carrots and zucchini have a lot of water in them and need a lot of water during weather like this.
Root Vegetables are stunted: you may find your carrots are stunted and your radishes do not fill out. First of all be sure they are not planted too close together; check the information on the seed package. Also, if your soil has too much nitrogen you will get lovely green tops and stubby carrots. You want to use a well-balanced fertilizer. Root vegetables prefer loose soil as well. It is not too late for you to do another planting.
Leaves are drooping in the afternoon; the plants are watered every morning, but they droop in the afternoon. If your plant has large leaves this is the plants way of protecting itself from the heat. The leaf when it is droopy has less of a surface area for the sun to beat down on. As long as you water them regularly the droopy leaf is normal. Check the plant again after the sun goes down and you will find that the leaf has revived.
I filled small dishes with stones and water so that the pollinators can drink safely.
This week we have a guest writer, Master Gardener S.R. Bicket who has written a piece called The New Gardener based on the questions asked by her son. We have part one this week.
Have a wonderful week and water, water, water!!
Judith (email: lapisdragonarts@gmail.com)
All Veggie Bites are available at https://sites.google.com/site/sghortsoc/
The New Gardener, part 1
S.R. Bicket
For a new gardener, a garden can be a daunting space, it can be totally empty a blank slate or a previous gardener may have doodled in it, or you could even be inheriting a masterpiece! Stand back and get to know your space, take a good look or even several looks. Where to start?
Maintenance is good place to start, the grass needs cutting, the edges trimmed, the beds weeded, hedges trimmed and dead wood pruning. As you maintain your garden you will get to know the plants inhabiting it and start making choices about what you like and do not. You will find out where the shade is, the wet spots and the dry, where things grow and where they struggle.
Grass
There is a lot of work that can go into grass to achieve the ‘perfect’ lawn but as a beginner concentrate on keeping it mowed. Grass should be cut so it is about 7.5 to 10 cm long during the summer months. It can be cut shorter in spring and autumn (5 cm). Ideally the maximum amount of a grass blade that is cut off is a third. So, if you are cutting to 10 cm the grass should be no longer than 15 cm high when you mow. How quickly the grass grows will depend on the weather and the amount of rainfall. It is not unusual for the grass to turn brown and go dormant in hot dry spells, most of the time it recovers once it starts raining again. At these times you cut the weeds rather than the grass.
Edges
Well-kept lawn edges can make a garden. Put a good edge all around a lawn, along garden beds, driveways, paths, curbs, and steppingstones. There is special tool for this called an edger or half-moon, but a garden spade (flat edged blade) works just as well. Put the spade blade on the edge of the grass and slice down, remove the slice to a compost heap. This will leave you with a small ditch about 7.5 cm deep around beds and stop the lawn encroaching on hard surfaces. This needs to be done once or twice a year. A metal file can be used to sharpen the blade of the spade. Next time the edge can be clipped with shears or cut with a strimmer. This is usually done after the lawn has been mown.
Tool list:
Lawn mower
Edging tool either a spade or half-moon
Shears or strimmer
Weed bucket
Weeding
Identifying what is a weed and what is a plant is the first hurdle. When weeding a garden bed if it looks like grass is it probably a weed, the exception being spring bulbs such as crocus (it has a strip down the middle of the leaf). If you pull up a bulb by mistake just rebury it. Most perennial plant grow as clumps, so leave obvious clumps, and woody plants (shrubs and trees). If in doubt leave it and ask a more experienced gardener “is this a weed?” Look it up in a plant book or on the internet. Many weeds when small can be pulled up with a sharp tug, as they get bigger a hand fork and finally a garden fork can be used. Dig up the root or as much as you can get. To the compost pile. Over time you will become familiar with weeds and their root structures. Pull before the weed flowers and sets seeds if possible. Sometimes all you can do is just cut the top off at ground level, the weed will regrow but if you keep ‘topping’ it eventually it will die.
Tools List
Garden gloves
Hand fork
Garden fork
Bucket to collect weeds
Hedge Trimming
Not every garden will have a hedge. This may be one job it is better to leave to the professionals. Before trimming a hedge identify what kind of tree or shrub is forming the hedge. Cedar and other evergreens (retain leaves all year round) cannot be cut into old wood, the exception is yew. Ideally you are looking to trim off ½ to 2/3rd of this year’s growth – still green- around June to early August. Deciduous (loses leaves in winter) hedges can be cut back further around late winter and again mid-summer the exact timing depends on species. It is important to shape the hedge, so it is narrower at the top than the bottom and the top is not flat but rounded or angled this reduces snow damage.
Tools List
Secateurs
Shears
Hedge trimmer
Stakes and cord (to level hedge)
Ladder – to reach over top of all but the shortest of hedges
Pruning
As a novice garden, ease into pruning, start by cutting off any dead wood, any broken branches and branches you keep bumping into (dangerous). These cuts can be done at any time of the year.
Tools List
Safety glasses
Long sleeved shirt
Secateurs
Pruning saw
Watering
Normally most gardens will survive on rainfall, but when there a prolonged period with little rain gardens need to be watered. How often depends on several factors, soil, shelter, shade, slope etc. As a rule of thumb 2.5 cm per week should keep a garden ticking over, vegetables will need more. A plant is in distress when it wilts and does not recover as the day cools towards evening. Most gardens have at least one ‘canary’ plant which indicates it is time to water. It is better to give one long deep watering than several short shallow ones. The best times to water are early morning (best for sprinklers) or in the evening. Ideally water should be applied at soil level and not sprayed over leaves. A drip or weeping hose does this. For individual plants, a watering-can can be used.
Tool List:
Rain barrel
Watering can
Hose
Drip/weeping hose
Sprinkler, nozzle
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