I can't believe it's been so long...

since I've blogged here. Granted, since my editor decided that my posting my articles here before I sent them to her was something with which she did not agree - including, but not limited to, her telling me to take down this blog - I have limited time to devote to an extra article for the blog. I really need an extra six working hours a day. Who needs sleep, anyway?

Time has once again galloped along at a rate that I’m starting to find ... horrifying. It seems like just recently I was writing about fall clean up. Then it was winter, not being able to get to work due to the snow on the roads, building snow families on the back deck and gallons of hot chocolate. Spring and summer have come and gone – again – in seemingly the blink of an eye. We had some frost last Wednesday; not bad – didn’t kill the last straggling tomatoes or the watermelon that JUST WON’T GET RIPE – but frost all the same.

Conversations have turned from summer clothes and swimming in the river to how much snow we might get this winter and “Do you think Father Christmas could bring me a rad snowboard for Yule?”

The garden is not excluded from this either, you know. I’ve been thinking about the bags of shredded paper I’ve stockpiled from the paper shredder at work to mulch into the soil before it freezes. I’ve considered tilling and then covering with newspaper to kill off the weeds in the areas I’m wanting to use next spring. I’ve been wondering who made off with my garden cart and who I’m going to have to kill to get it back.

I’ve also been thinking about gourds…I grew some and it’s high time I did something with them.

Nothing really sets the mood for fall like gourds and Indian corn and pumpkins. Gourds are so cool and you can do a ton of things with them. Birds like them for housing, when they’re dried out with an appropriate hole cut into them for easy access.

Here’s what YOU can do so you can use them for fall decorating:

Harvest them when the stem is try but before the first serious frost invades. Cut them from the vine with a few inches of stem intact.

Wash and disinfect the gourds with either a diluted bleach solution (1 tsp. of bleach in a gallon of water) or white vinegar, water and grapefruit seed extract.

Gently dry with a cloth. Place your gourds on layers of newspaper in a warm and well-ventilated area (like the laundry room). Don’t put them in direct sunlight as this will fade the colors. And be careful not to scratch or bruise the tender skin.

Turn your gourds regularly and replace any newspaper the becomes damp with fresh, dry paper. Curing a gourd can take one to six months, so be prepared for your gourds to practically become members of the family – only members who eat a whole lot less than the human ones!

The skin of a gourd will take about a week to harden on the outside but will take at least a month to dry out on the inside.

When you shake the gourd and hear those seeds rattling around inside, it’s done. You can then apply wax, varnish or paint, cut a hole in it and get the seeds out, leave them whole for decorating or a variety of other crafts that you can easily locate through Bing or Google.

Happy Gourding!!

Staying green...

Procrastination is generally not a good thing, but when it comes to your lawn in the summertime, a little bit can be a good thing. So says the turf grass specialists at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Summer lawn care and maintenance knowledge will make the difference between a lush, healthy law – just begging to be tip-toed through with bare feet – and a scraggly brown one. Grasses usually go into a state of semi-dormancy and are vulnerable to disturbance.

There are a number of things to look at with summer lawn care:

Fertilizer –
Fertilizing is one of the best lawn maintenance choices you can make. Misusing it will make things turn really ugly, really fast. Using a fertilizer that is higher in nitrogen may be a good thing in the fall or the spring, but in the summer, when the only cooler place is on the sun, you can burn the daylights out of your lawn. Go for a slow-release fertilizer with lower nitrogen for this time of the year and carefully follow the instructions for use. You might even want to forgo fertilizing at all until the season starts to cool off and head into fall.

Water –
One of the most common issues seen with summer lawn care is NOT ENOUGH WATER. You may be watering as you normally do, but remember – it’s summer – water evaporates much more quickly than other times of the year. Water your lawn until the moisture has penetrated the soil to around six inches. Also, consider increasing the number of times per week you turn on the sprinklers. Whatever you do, don’t let your lawn turn brown and then water them back to a green condition. This depletes energy reserves and stresses out the plants. A wise garden writer said in print recently, “Yes, grasses are plants, too.” Keep in mind that they need the same care as other plants in your garden. Water as early in the day as possible.


Yard Toys –
My kids bugged and bugged for a Slip N Slide. While I am generally not the mom to deny her kids summer fun – and I didn’t – I am a bit of a psycho (hey, now!) about them not leaving their stuff all over the lawn. That Slip N Slide (or tarp or whatever they’re covering your lawn with) will get smothered by that hot plastic. Of course, if you’re setting up a pool, it’s just not practical to tear it down and set it up. I’ve given instructions for repairing those spots in the past and may do so again in the fall, but the other stuff? Don’t leave that tarp or Slip N Slide laying around if the kidlets aren’t using them. No reason to damage your lawn when you’re doing all this work to keep it lush.

Mowing –
Mowing height adjustment is probably the most important practice in preparation for hot weather. Don’t mow ANY LOWER than three inches, even a little longer wouldn’t hurt. Lawns allowed to exist at this higher level will usually develop deeper roots and dry out more slowly than closely mowed grass. As the summer gets hotter and drier, the growth of your lawn should slow somewhat.

Other lawn care practices –
Avoid seeding, thatch control and the application of weed killers (including “weed and feed” if you use that type of product) until later in the season. September is a much better time for those things.

Mower Maintenance –
If you own your own mower, there are a few things you should do to take care of and insure the life of your mower. After each mowing, wait until the engine cools and then hose off the clippings and grass debris that may be clinging to the underside of the mower deck. Be sure to make sure that you have disconnected the spark plug cable prior to cleaning. Reconnect it afterwards.

It’s a good idea to sharpen, or have sharpened, the blades of your mower once a month or every six weeks. If you mow more than 4 times a month or happen to run over lots of rocks and debris, definitely once a month. Sharp mower blades are perhaps the one most important thing to focus on with your mower. Aside from the damage that dull blades will cause on your lawn, you could use up to 20% more fuel and you could spend a lot more time mowing that would ordinarily be required with sharp blades.

Always remember when reinstalling your blades that the sharp cutting edges of the blade should be facing down, not up! Most mulching blades are twisted, so make sure that the sharp end is facing toward the ground.

At the end of the season, don’t just put your mower away – prepare it first. Drain the fuel. Be sure to disconnect your spark plug prior to draining. By draining the fuel from your mower, you are preventing the remaining fuel from aging and potentially going bad inside your mower engine and carburetor.

Once the fuel has been drained, reconnect the spark plug wire and run the engine until it burns all the remaining fuel and runs out of gas.

Most mowers have instructions for putting your mower up for the season. If you still have the manual, follow those instructions.

Once spring rolls around again, bring your mower out of hibernation. If you’re not mechanically inclined, drag that mower to a shop to have it serviced.

If you’re up to doing this on your own, here are the few things you should do to get your mower ready for the season

Change the oil in the mower. If your mower has a two-stroke engine, oil is already mixed into the fuel and you can skip this step. Smaller, gas powered four-stroke engines will use 30 weight oil. Check the owner’s manual.

Replace the spark plug. These can fowl out and should be replaced at least once a year.

If your mower has a fuel filter, this should be replaced as well.

Replace the air filter. Your motor will need to breathe and if you kick up a lot of dust and debris while mowing, your filter could be choking your engine and it won’t function properly.

If there are issues with the way in which your mower runs, you may want to consider taking it in to a service shop.

With good cultural practices and mower maintenance, lawn care – all the way around – can be easily accomplished and extremely rewarding. Good luck through the rest of the summer and don’t forget to take care of yourself in this heat. Wear a hat and some sunscreen and be sure to drink lots of water if you’re going to be out in this heat for any length of time.

Summer Mish Mash

I’ve got a little bit of this and a little bit of that to talk about.

I’m hearing a lot about moles and gophers this year. A lot. I even have my own not insignificant issues with moles. I’ve got mole plant. I’ve got castor bean plant. But the best thing I’ve found for moles? A cat. My family presented me with a large, orange and white tom cat, rescued from the Siskiyou Human Society (they work with Petsmart). He’s a fabulous cat. Loves the kids, absolutely LOVES the dog. Last night, I went on the hunt for the cat and found him sitting quietly in the side yard, about 18 inches from a mole hole in action. Watching him, I could tell that he could sense, or perhaps hear, the varmints under the ground. While he didn’t nab himself a mole last night, I know that it’s on his agenda and that nasty, large mole will be dispatched in short order shortly. Got moles? Rescue a cat.

I’m also hearing a lot about a variety of mysterious pests this year. Folks finding plants with lacified leaves and no clue as to what’s doing it. Today, we’re a lot more aware of the need to protect our environment and keep the use of poisons to a minimum. The days of flinging about clouds of dust and spraying everything that moves are on the way out. Organic and biological controls are the wave we are riding right now, and the wave we’ll continue to ride in the future.

Most garden pests have natural predators, but we don’t always have them waiting in our gardens for aphids to show up. I have yet to see a praying mantis hanging about, rubbing her front claws together, saying, “Oh boy, I can’t wait for the squash bugs to hatch!” There are things we can do to draw them into our landscape, but – more often than not – its mail order that puts the beneficial insects and nematodes where we need them. Ladybug Indoor Gardens in Jacksonville can provide pest identification, excellent advice and is an outlet for every kind of beneficial insect that would help you out with your pest problems. Diatomaceous earth will help with a myriad of garden pests, but you want the kind NOT meant for pool filters. Tiny fossils in the diatomaceous earth put minute scratches in the exoskeletons of the pest that walk over it and they wind up dehydrating. Think about a trip to Ladybug Gardens for perhaps no other reason than education. They’re really nice there, as well.

Let’s talk about nuts. I don’t mean your crazy friends, people from California or certain family members. I’m talking about hazel nuts, cashews, almonds and the kind. Little nuts. Most nut trees are too large to grow more than maybe one or two in the home orchard.

The dwarf Siberian pine bears edible pine nuts and grows to only around 9 feet tall. Some hazelnuts are actually more of a bush and work for a crackerjack hedge. There are hybrid nut trees that will produce in as little as 3 years, whereas the larger walnuts and butternuts can take up to ten years to bear fruit. The purple leaf filbert is a smaller hedge bush and you would need two of these. Purple leaf filberts grow to 8 feet or so.

Almonds are a stone fruit like peaches, only you eat the nut. When selecting an almond variety, be sure to either choose a self-pollinator or plant two trees. You will also have to encourage honey bees to come to your yard and orchard if you’re going the cross-pollination route. If you want honey bees to frequent you yard and orchard, stay away from pesticides. We need to do all we can to support the honeybee. No bees = no food. Hive collapse is more serious than any of us really knows, far reaching with an impact that is mind boggling. But I digress…

I would recommend staying away from cashews unless you are in an area that doesn’t frost. They are very susceptible.

Pistachios are actually a fairly large tree; 20 feet or so and you need two of them for production. They need a lot of water, but they also need really good drainage.

There are lots of different nut producing pines. Popular varieties are Siberian, Korean, Italian Stone and Chilgoza pine as well as several types of pinyon, including the Colorado pinyon. The Korean Nut Pine is very hardy, does well in our clay soil, is resistant to white pine blister rust and is a slow grower. A number of the edible pine nut trees are also very nice as ornamentals.

Other nut trees to consider might be the chinquapin, which is similar to a chestnut and of which you would need two for pollination. The ginkgo, also known as the maidenhair tree, which is not a small tree, but at lovely for cooking and eating, have well known health benefits and are one of the few nut trees not affected by pests or disease.

The monkey-puzzle tree is as beautiful and unusual as it is practical. The nuts are about two inches long and grow on a large cone. You can get as many as 250 nuts out of one cone. You can roast them and eat them like chestnuts or grind them and use them as flour, among other things. Monkey-puzzles are evergreen and will require a male and a female in order to produce.

Is anyone thinking about what to do with the bounty we’re starting to see in the Rogue Valley gardens? Once you’ve taken care of your family, perhaps given some back to the community with that extra row or two you planted this spring, what then? If you’re like me, you’re probably overrun with tomatoes. Don’t have time for traditional “putting up” of the harvest? Try a dehydrator. Dry your sliced tomatoes, then pack them in pretty jars layered with basil and garlic and filled with a good olive oil. Pizza topping in a jar. And makes a great Hostess or Holiday gift. Aside from the fact that you may find that you eat it all before the Holidays roll around, of course.

There are lots of dehydrators on the market ranging in price from $50 to $500. If you really believe that you need a new one, perhaps rallying a few friends to go in together on one and everyone takes turns using it. Other options for finding a dehydrator would be thrift stores, the internet to check out Craigslist or even Freecycle (see http://www.freecycle.org for a group in our area) as well as the ever-popular garage sale.

Since most of us are drying fruits, tomatoes, peppers and other produce, the circular, tower style should work just fine. If it’s jerky you’re after, you really do want something with a thermostatic control. They’re usually square and have forced hot air that comes from the rear of the unit across the trays. The square trays are a lot easier to deal with if you’re making fruit leathers since you won’t have that hole in the middle of the tray to contend with.

The summer is progressing; we’re all spending time weeding and hovering over gardens waiting for our first fruits to ripen. I had the first few tomatoes this week along with some lovely sautéed onions and peppers on a turkey burger with a nice, melty Jarlsberg cheese and tomato. Before too long, we’ll all be swimming in produce. Some of us are already sowing our second round of some things while others are already pondering the winter garden. Still others are trying to figure out how to convert their entire garden to square-foot gardening and how many shitake-inoculated oak logs can be stuffed under their porch. Later summer means something different in every garden and to every gardener. And all of it bears with it a certain amount of fun and magic.

They're at it again...

The burrowing vermin. I loathe them with the heat of a thousand suns. At our old residence, we had them, but they rather limited themselves to the side yard where no one gardened and no one ever went, except the dog who would participate in epic excavation efforts. We figured it kept her out of trouble and gave her some exercise.

Now, though, I’m finding what I suspect are pocket gophers burrowing everywhere. Along the front pad of our front patio one evening, I could see the ground undulating with the creature’s progress. Attempts to capture and dispatch this particular little troll were brutally rebuffed and we were left with an empty shovel and no furry sojourner.

Seriously, they’re driving me mad! While I’m not near the point of blasting craters in my yard with a shotgun (yet), I have reached the point of pondering my mental health (no comments from the peanut gallery or my family, please) as a result of my attempts to rid my yard of burrowing vermin.

I’ve been told about and tried a lot of different things. Flooding the runs with water. Perhaps I should offer soap as well, since they seem to enjoy this. Gopher bombs? Hmph. Insert your favorite 420 joke here. I think they like it. It’s probably a big ol’ gopher party down there every time I set one off. Sonic gopher spikes. Well, yesterday morning there was a gopher mound literally RIGHT NEXT TO the fancy solar spike that was brought to me with pride, since it was on sale and didn’t require batteries. RIGHT NEXT TO IT. Yaaaaah!

I even forced a friend to drive me out to Gold Hill in search of Euphorbia lathyris, commonly known as Caper Spurge or Mole Plant. Truth be told, I actually thought I was looking for Castor Bean Plant (ricinus communis), and had to drive back and forth several time before I found “a weedy looking plant that had just set seed pods”. What I found was Mole Plant, when I was looking for the large, distinct leaves of the Castor Bean. Sigh. So, I leaped out of the truck, whacked off several hands-full and stuffed them in a bucket. Thus far, my attempts to root them are not working so well, but I suspect that I will – at least – get some seeds with which I can infest my yard.

Euphorbia lathyris, commonly known as Mole Plant, is an annual with opposite, lance shaped leaves which is often grown as an ornamental plant. It’s not really “weedy” looking, as I stated above. It’s somewhat attractive and interesting looking. Caper Spurge, as it is also known (and spurge is so much more fun to say) does occasionally occur as a weed on roadsides (like the ones I was directed to – Thank YOU, Russell!) and pastures. I’m finding that this is not all that common. Toward the top of the plant the leaves change into a triangular shape and have a conspicuous white vein in the center. When you break one of these plants, a sticky, white sap comes out. The flowers are fairly inconspicuous and will occur on the upper portions of the plant, yellow in color. The seed pods are roundish and appear to be in three sections, put together. It’s those seeds that I’m really after! Supposedly, it’s the roots and the seeds that are noxious to gophers. Mole Plant doesn’t kill them – They just go away. At this point, I’d be OK with dead gophers, but disappearing gophers would be cause for celebration. Careful with this plant – it is said to be poisonous.

Unlike the Castor Bean, these plants grow about four feet tall, but take up the space of about one foot in diameter, like a tower. They self seed when the plant falls over from drying out in the fall. I’ve heard that folks have been successful growing it with soil that is hard, high clay content, with minimal watering even through hot, dry summers.

With regard to Castor Bean, which I personally am going to try in my quest to rid my yard of varmints, it is a big, attractive, fast growing plant with huge exotic looking leaves. I found seeds from my favorite online shopping source and got three different colors. I have LOTS of varmints.

Castor Bean can be sown directly outdoors or started 6 to 8 weeks before the last average frost date indoors. They can also be planted just about any other time when frost isn’t an issue. Soak your seeds for 24 hours in warm water, then plant about an inch deep. Plant them outdoors in full sun. Castor Beans like rich, well drained soil, so dig in a few spades full of compost into the soil where you’ll be planting. Keep the soil evenly moist and mulch well. As your Castor Bean blooms, you can deadhead unless you are thinking to gather beans for future planting. In that case, you’ll want to let the seed pods form and gather them up. Fertilize with a good organic fertilizer every four to six weeks. Castor Bean gets big, fast. You may need to stake your plants. They’ll need plenty of space, so keep this in mind when planting or plan on doing lots of pruning otherwise. Tear out and discard the plants when frost gets them in the fall. If you’re in one of the warmer areas, you could treat it as a perennial, cutting it back and mulching heavily for over-wintering.

Both the Mole Plant and Castor Bean are said to be poisonous. I researched this and found a wide range of opinion on toxicity. I have also found it said that poinsettia is poisonous, but have been unable to locate any reports of death to humans or animals. Best to err on the side of caution and keep small children and livestock away from your Castor Beans. Deer do not eat Castor Bean.

Getting back to the varmints…

The other methods for getting rid of moles and gophers include traps with such medieval monikers as “scissor” traps, “choker” traps and “harpoon” traps. Nice. There are also live traps, but that begs the question of what to do with the varmint once you catch it.

I’ve read of a method, with no testimony to back it up, of opening a number of varmint tunnels, pouring in a baby food jar full of gasoline into each, waiting a bit for the fumes to flood the tunnels and then lighting the tunnels. Definitely not ecologically sound and rather brings to mind crowds of adolescent boys having a lark.

Daffodils, squill, anything in the allium (onion/garlic family), Mexican marigolds and fritillaria are all said to repel varmints. My varmints actually like squill, I think. Probably with a nice vinaigrette. Your mileage may vary. And you may wind up growing ONLY those things, if you’re really infested with a subterranean invasion.

I’ve heard that gum of the Juicy Fruit variety will kill varmints. Now that we’ve spent something equaling the National deficit on gum and fumigator bombs, I think I can categorically state that somewhere there’s a gopher who could be the world bubble blowing champion if only they’d let him into the contest. As for the bombs, again, insert your favorite 420 joke here. I bought castor oil, thinking that if they didn’t like the plant, how could they like the oil? Aside from the fact that it does not come in the convenient 50 gallon drum, I suspect that the varmints are moisturizing with it.

Hair clippings from the salon? Um, don’t think so. They may have taken up weaving rugs and blanket for their dens, because it sure isn’t killing them or driving them away. Used cat litter? My dog is having a field day with that one. M-80’s? I heard my neighbor using them, but they still have moles. And craters.

Of course, with the number of Dachshunds in Rogue River, you could probably find someone who would bring the little rodent-wieners to your house to excavate the vermin, but do you really want you yard dug up like that? I don’t.

So, with great sighing, eye rolling and the wringing of hands, I’m closing this week with the request for any suggestions for gopher removal, destruction or repellant. I’d love to hear it. In the meantime, I’m waiting on my Castor Bean seeds…

Flower Pots, Washtubs, Wooden Boxes...Oh My!

Container gardening is a really easy way to bring some color up close and personal as well as getting some fresh produce into your diet. One of the things I love about container gardening is that anyone can do it. For seniors, it puts your garden more within reach. Pull up a chair and garden in a variety of containers from a half barrel to an old wagon to a collection of old metal pails. For kids, a larger container can produce both some lovely flowers as well as a small crop of baby carrots or Easter egg radishes.

What you can grow in a container is limited pretty much only by the size of the container and possibly by your imagination. I read about a house warming gift of a Summer Salad Container - a cherry tomato, some basil, parsley and chives, a dwarf cucumber and summer salad greens. Truth be told, by late summer, they won’t be the prettiest, but this arrangement should produce into the fall, provided you’ve planted it in a 24” to 30” container.

Your choices in containers ranges from the practical (think large, black, plastic) to the attractive (think wooden half barrels) to the whimsical (antique pails, bushel baskets, Radio Flyer wagons). No matter what kind of container you choose for veggie gardening, it will need holes in the base or bottom for drainage of excess water.

While we see lots of black plastic containers, and you probably have a few in your yard or garage, bear in mind that the darker colored containers absorb heat. There is a possibility that the root systems of plants in these types of containers could be damaged to heat. If you do opt for the dark colored pots, try painting them a lighter color or shading just the container.

The size of the container and what you plant in it is a consideration. For larger veggies, like tomatoes and eggplants, you should use a five gallon container for each plant. You can grow these plants in 2 or 3 gallon containers, but they will require considerably more attention.

You can use the soil from your garden for your containers. If you do, you should plan on amending it with compost. There are many fine mixes available that are excellent as well. Mixing one part compost to two parts planting mix will aid in fertility. Using a complete organic fertilizer and giving your plants a sip of fish emulsion mixed with water will keep your veggies fed for the whole growing season.

Containers require more frequent watering than plants in the ground. As the season progresses and your plants grow larger, their root system will expand. This will require even more water. Don’t wait until you see your plants wilting. Check your containers daily to determine is more water is needed.

When choosing what to put in your containers, be on the lookout for buzz words like bush, compact and dwarf.

Here are some varieties that you might consider for your container garden:
Tomatoes: Patio, Pixie, Saladette, Tumbling Tom and Small Fry
Leaf Lettuce: Buttercrunch, Bibb and Salad Bowl
Green Beans: Pole beans actually have a higher yield for a smaller area. Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder and French Dwarf are excellent choices.
Peppers: Red Cherry, Jalapeno, Sweet Banana and Cubanelle
Eggplant: Bambino and Slim Jim

Looking ahead: It’s not too early to think ahead to the fall and winter vegetable garden. Planning should start now. Fall and winter gardening is an old practice that is a great solution for maintaining the fertility of your garden’s soil at peak levels. It also yields crops of delicious veggies at a fraction of the cost of the grocery store.

The climate patters of the lower elevation areas west of the Cascades, right where we are, are very suitable for fall and winter gardening. Careful mulching can ensure the usual winter frosts will not be severe enough to cause significant damage. Further extension of the growing season can be affected with cold frames and tunnels.

The main factor with winter gardening is knowing the average date of the first killing frost in our area. This is usually around the end of October. Plant your winter crops early enough to let them reach full maturity before that first killing frost. The Master Gardeners have loads of helpful information about the timing of first frosts, hardiness of various crops for our area as well as being just the coolest people you’d ever want to chat with about gardening.

Here are some suggestions, with maturity times and planting guidelines:

Beets, Brussels’ sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, fava beans, carrots, parsnips and globe onions mature in about 90 days. Plant them by mid-July for fall harvest.

Early carrots, leeks, turnips, collards and Swiss chard mature in around 60 days and should be planted by mid-August.

Chives, green onions, radishes, broccoli, leaf lettuces and spinach mature in about 30 days and should be in the ground no later than the first week of September.

You can add ten to fifteen degrees to your fall and winter garden by planting near windbreaks and walls. Take a look at any south facing wall of your home, shed or barn and see if it is ideally situation for utilizing that free solar energy.

Make a cloche out of clear pop bottles or gallon milk jugs. Cover your smaller plants, remove the lids and you have an instant little greenhouse.

If you have the means to have raised beds, the soil in a well made and maintained raised bed can be between 8 and 12 degrees warmer than the same soil in the surrounding garden areas. Raised beds also mean less bending to work in or harvest from.

Mulching serves many purposes in the winter garden. In addition to insulating the plants with a blanket of protection over the root system, it helps deter winter growth of weeks and grasses. Mulch also aids in reducing evaporation of moisture from the soil during dry times as well as preventing erosion from heavier winter rainstorms. Two inches of mulch material is best.

Remember that, with fall and winter veggies, rotation is vital. Don’t plant the same veggie crops in the same location as the previous year or the summer season. The soil will be weakened through continual loss of the same nutrients, but the plants will also lend themselves to insect pests and disease.

If you have a portion of your garden that will be laying idle for a time, you can build up your soil by growing a cover crop. These are fast growing, green plants that can be chopped up, spaded or tilled in and will add green matter that compost into hummus. Alfalfa, various varieties of clover, vetch, oats and lupines are all common cover crops that will benefit your soil.

In closing, try successive plantings of quick growing veggies like leaf lettuce, beets, spinach and radishes. Don’t be afraid to try planting some crops later than recommended. It’s a bit risky, but the reward is definitely worth the risk. Keep a record of what you planted, when and what worked and what didn’t.

Share your successes with your friends and neighbors. And don’t forget to plant a little extra for those in our community that are struggling.

Flower of the Month for June: The Rose

Everywhere you look around town and driving out towards Wimer, you see roses in glorious bloom. I wonder if any of those plants got any pruning earlier this spring. There is one in particular in town that is simply gorgeous; it looks like a Hawaiian sunset. Every spring for the last three springs, I’ve watched that rose bloom, while the canes get thinner and sparser. The blooms are still fabulous, but that plant is going to need some help in the next couple of seasons before it starts to break from lack of stoutness.

If you pruned your roses earlier this year, you may have erred on the side of caution and not pruned enough. Or your roses may have had other ideas and are now working toward doing their own thing. “Their Own Thing” is not always the best thing for the bush as a whole.

Pruning is primarily an early spring activity, although a certain amount of it is frequently required during the course of the growing season. June here in the Valley often brings a flush of growth in our roses.

Now is the time to check on the pruning you did earlier this spring. You’ll want to check for die-back. Check the canes you cut earlier and see if there has been further die-back. If there is, you’ll want to top off that cane by cutting down to an outside bud or leaf growth. If you are seeing a lot of growth in the center of the bush, you’ll want to remedy that by correcting the pruning at the center. Watch for suckers, too, as they will sap the energy from the plant and its blooms.

Local rose experts advise cleaning up the bud union by trimming off the old canes and stubs. A nice, clean bud union will reward you with many more basal canes and eventually more rose bush and better blooms.

Don’t forget deadheading at this time of the year, with the flush of the season’s first blooms. You’ll want your plant to stay strong and deadheading encourages further and more blooms for the rest of the summer. If you’re growing hybrid tea roses, you’ll want to deadhead by removing the spent flower at a point on the cane where five or seven leaflets are growing. The cut should be made ¼ inch above the leaf axial of an outward growing bud and should slope downward into the center of the bush.

Floribundas and Grandifloras are deadheaded much the same way, although removing the center bloom from a Floribunda plant will produce much more uniform bloom sprays. Some experts recommend removing the spent blooms from Floribundas and Grandifloras as they complete their bloom cycle without disturbing the rest of the blooms on the spray. Once a bloom cycle is complete, these two types of roses are pruned exactly as the Hybrid Tea. Olde Roses can also profit from deadheading, because reoccurring blooms are encouraged in those types that are intermittent or repeat bloomers.

Be mindful of unproductive growth that will crowd the middle of the plant and restrict sunlight and the flow of air. Remove this growth and any blind shoots which are twiggy in appearance and do not end in a bloom bud. A good resource is the book,”Growing Good Roses” by Rayford Reddell. He recommends pruning basal breaks at a bud eye when the cane is twelve to fifteen inches tall so to encourage a sturdy branched cane that will produce more and better blooms.

For the suckers that will inevitably emerge through this season, you should dig down beneath the soil and prune that sucker off at the point where it grows.

Let’s talk about the really fun part of growing roses – cuttings. Growing new rose plants from cuttings is one of the most enjoyable facets of growing roses. Cuttings can be taken at any time, but following the first bloom of the season is the best time because of the amount of good weather remaining for the cutting to get established and gain strength.

There are many ways to prepare cuttings and once you find one that works for you, stick with it. The easiest and most convenient way, in my opinion, is cutting the fading bloom of the variety I want to grow at a point on the stem which will provide four (or more) bud eyes and placing that cutting immediately in water.

The cutting is prepared by removing the bloom and the leaves from the lower two sets of leaflets. The end of the cutting, to be placed in the growing material, is stripped on several places of bark and the stripped areas and the end are generously coated with Rootone (a rooting hormone). The prepared cutting is then placed in a pot filled with a growing medium of equal parts soil, sand and peat moss. Make a hole in the medium, place your cutting, being careful not to knock off the Rootone and tamp the medium firmly around the stem.

Record what kind of rose you’ve gotten your cutting from (if you can) and the date on the pot. Enclose your cutting in plastic that is supported by a couple of lengths of stout wire (coat hangers are great for this) bent into a U. Make sure you make a hole in the top for ventilation. The bag acts like a mini-greenhouse. Place your cuttings in a shady place and wait for them to mature. Watch for new leaves to appear, remove the plastic bag and feed with a water soluble fertilizer. Some folks like Ra-Pid-Grow. Fox Organics makes several good water solubles. Any of the Fox products, liquid kelp or fish emulsion are good choices. Don’t put your cuttings out into the full sun immediately. Do this gradually and watch it grow. Once your cutting is ready to move to the full sun, it is ready to be planted at its permanent location.

Ordinarily, June is also the month that gardeners start to wonder about how much water they should be giving their roses. If the spring has been especially dry, this will understandably generate some concern. This year, though, we seem to be having a somewhat wonky weather pattern. Roses in the height of their growth cycle are very thirsty and require about an inch of water a week. Less water stresses the plants and will result in poor growth and less bloom. Putting a rain gauge in your rose garden is a good idea since it’s pretty easy to overestimate the amount of rainfall we are actually getting.

There are two schools of thought on the method of watering. Some say that wet rose foliage is to be avoided and deliberately spraying roses is inviting disease into your rose garden. Others will say that roses enjoy and benefit from the occasional cleansing shower. After all, we don’t live in the Sahara and rains often wash our roses. A strong stream of water from a water wand is a good way to rid the roses of aphids and spider mites. It’s generally a good idea after a rain or a bath to respray for blackspot as it requires moisture to infect our plants. Use the baking soda and water formula or the fungicide of your choice.

Other Thoughts…

Remember, just because you don’t have a plot of land on which to grow fresh veggies, doesn’t mean you can’t. Many veggies lend themselves well to container gardening. Selecting a dwarf or bush variety and give you a plant well adapted to growing in a pot. Veggies that take up little space, such as carrots, radishes and lettuces work well in a lower, shallower container. Carrots come in shorter and rounder varieties these days and do nicely in the barrel sections one sees this time of the year at the garden centers. Crops that bear fruits over a longer period, such as tomatoes and peppers, are perfect for container gardens.

In The Early Summer Garden...

Wow, it sure did get HOT fast, didn’t it? While I’m not loving it so much (with a nod to a certain woman I know who THRIVES in the heat…), our gardens certainly are.

Please, folks, pay attention to your bodies when you’re working out in the yard in the heat. Wear a hat and sunscreen. And whatever you do, stay hydrated. You need water in this heat as much as the plants you are care-taking in your yards and gardens. Where will they be if you’re laid up with heat stroke?

Some tips for keeping your early summer garden looking fresh and colorful:
Trim or shear deciduous or evergreen hedges.
Mow your lawn as often as needed, but don’t cut it too short. Never remove more than 1/3 of the grass blades at one time. When your lawn is growing like a house a’fire, it’s better to mow it every four or five days, than to wait a whole week.
Keep weeding! Easy to say, but not always easy to do. If you have children or grandchildren, spending a couple of hours together in the morning or the cool of early evening with a reward of, perhaps, baking some cookies afterward, is a sure way to get those weeds in check quick.
Continue to water as needed, especially new plants, trees, shrubs and perennials. They definitely need a good soaking every week for the first couple of months. If it doesn’t rain enough, and it’s looking like we’re pretty much done with rain for the year, you will have to water. You may want to also get out your watering can and hand out a dose of water mixed with fish emulsion every couple of weeks as well.
Keep a keen eye out for developing insect and disease problems.
Deadhead your rhodies and lilacs and prune back some of those spring flowering shrubs that have finished blooming.
Spray your roses every week with a baking soda solution or fungicide (if you use chemicals in your garden) to protect against blackspot disease. A great homemade fungicide is 2 teaspoons of baking soda with a few drops of Ivory dish soap in a half gallon of water. Use a spray bottle or garden sprayer. This will also help prevent aphids on your roses.
Pinch back your asters and mums, if you have them, to encourage compact growth and more blooms.
Cut back yellowing bulb foliage.

Let’s talk a bit about fertilizing your roses. You probably first fertilized your plants this year around mid April. You probably used a general purpose 10-10-10 fertilizer. Some of you may have supplemented with alfalfa pellets, cottonseed meal or fish emulsion. You may have also added some Epsom salts to encourage new canes from the crowns of your plants and healthy leaf production. You’re coming up on the next general fertilizer application. As much as I prefer organics, for success with roses you really should consider a fertilizer formulated especially for roses. Apply in a circle about six to eight inches from the crown. Scratch the fertilizer lightly into the soil and water it in. Be careful not to disturb the roots that live nearer to the surface of the soil.

Many rose gardeners are using a liquid fertilizer in between the major feedings in April, June and August. Liquid plant foods can be applied as a spray and can be combined with sprays for fungus and insects, including the baking soda fungicide. Do not spray your roses during the heat of the day; this could result in leaf burn. Early evening, when it’s pleasant out, is ideal. One point to note – Experts say that we should spray our roses for blackspot and fungus even if we see no evidence of these diseases. Using the baking soda solution will not only help prevent disease but also kill insects.

We’re going to talk about mulching your roses, although mulching is something that will benefit ALL of your planted areas. There are a number of important reasons for mulching. One is to provide a neat and manicured look to your rose and flower gardens. Some weed control is provided, moisture is retained, soil temperature is regulated through summer and winter, erosion is prevented and mulching prevents the need for constant cultivation. Mulch also encourages root growth, encourages earthworms and bacteria in the soil, and – if you’re using an organic – will renew and rebuild the content of your soil.

You can use lots of different things for mulching. Before I list those, let’s note that pine needles – which most of us have in copious amounts – benefit acid-loving plants. Rhodies and berries of any kind like this. The variety of materials available for mulching include hardwood bark, pine needles, rotted manure, straw (not alfalfa), wood chips, mushroom compost, ground corn cobs, grass clippings, chopped tree leaves, black plastic, sawdust and chopped or ground nut hulls. Generally, what you use greatly depends on what you can get, how much it costs and how easy it is to deal with. Be aware that straw has a tendency to reduce available nitrogen in the soil, but it does furnish potassium. You will want to maintain a mulch thickness on all your beds, including vegetable gardens, of two to four inches. If you’re using hardwood bark, you will have to regularly test your soil and, if the pH lowers to the acid side, you will need to add lime to maintain a 6.0 to 6.5 pH level.

In the rose or perennial garden, a convenient way to utilize hardwood bark as a mulch is to mound your plants with it as winter protection and then spread it out over the rest of the bed in the spring.

Some key tips for your veggie gardens for this season are:
Keep picking.
Water regularly.
Control insects and diseases.
Feed lightly.
Make sure they’re getting enough sun.
Keep the weeds down.
Practice succession planting.
Consider fall planting, perhaps with the use of a tunnel or cold frame system, to extend your veggie growing season.

Remember to share the bounty. With a little extra work and maybe some luck, we’ll all probably have more veggies than we can use. Sure, we can all freeze some and put some up for the winter. We’ll probably be dropping some off on the neighbor’s porch when they’re not looking (that is, if we aren’t competing against them for the best salad greens or the biggest ‘maters!). Don’t forget that our community center, local churches, food banks and the Plant A Row programs can all use extra help. With so many in our region struggling to put food on their tables, let’s not forget that caring for our fellows is always the right thing to do.

Gardening With Kids, Part 2

Watching our feathered friends eat from a homemade bird feeder has always filled my little budding birdwatchers with pride and fascination. Probably the best of all, is that these feeders are super easy to make with your kids or grandkids or whatever children are hanging around your house over the coming spring and summer months.

Toast Feeder. Make some toast and spread it with some nut butter. Peanut is great, but if food allergies are an issue, sun butter, made from sunflower seeds, is also a good choice. Cut the toast into a fun shape with a large cookie cutter, and then poke a hole in the top with a wooden skewer or a straw. Have the child press the buttered side of the toast into a plate full of bird seeds. Thread a ribbon through the hole, knot the ends and hang. This feeder should last for at least a week or until the next rain.

Pine Cones. Smear nut butter onto a pinecone with a stiff paintbrush until it’s well coated. Have the child put the cone into a large zip lock bag full of seeds, close securely (this can be a real mess if the bag isn’t closed tightly!) and shake the cone in the bag until it is thoroughly covered with seeds. Tie a piece of string or ribbon around the end of the pinecone, knot the ends and hang.

Cone-servationist. Have the child nibble a small hole in the end of a pointy ice cream cone or poke a hole into the flat part of a flat bottomed cone. Spread nut butter on the cone and roll it in birdseed, thickly coating it. Thread the ends of a ribbon into the hole, tie a knot too big to slip out of the hole and hang it up.

It won’t take long to cultivate the gardening bug in your kids with this project developed by Hans Leo of Massachusetts. His inspiration comes from the Canadian Indians would create temporary lodges out of live saplings by tying the upper branches together to form a roof.

Here are the instructions for planting and growing a sunflower hideaway of your own, including ways to keep the kids interested in the project.

In the spring, like right now, stake out a six foot square area where the sunflowers can be planted. Using a fork or rototiller, if you have one, loosen and turn a path about a foot wide along the perimeter of the square. Leave a few feet unturned on the north side for an entry way. Sunflowers need a fair amount of nutrients, so mixing in compost or aged manure into the turned soil is vital.

In late May or early June, plant your sunflowers. Hans recommends the Mammoth Gray Stripe, which has a stout stem, very large flower heads and can grow up to twelve feet tall. You can start your seeds in peat pots, thus getting the kids involved in the planting and sprouting process. Plus, you can plant the seedlings, pot and all. Plant 2 seeds in 24 pots and set them in a sunny, but sheltered, location. Keep the soil moist, but not soaking. Once your seedlings are four or five inches tall, snip back the smaller one. Plant the seedlings in their pots about a foot apart and water them well. You can also direct-sow your seeds, two to a hole, about a foot apart. When your seedlings are four to eight inches tall, snip off the weaker of the two.

As they grow, water and weed as needed. Spread mulch around them to conserve water. Give them a good watering once a week unless it gets really hot. Spraying the leaves weekly with liquid kelp will produce vibrant growth.

When your sunflowers are around 4 feet tall, you can add petunias or marigolds or whatever annuals you like to add some color to the house.

By the time your sunflowers are 6 feet or so tall, it’s time to start making your roof. Gently tie some baling twine around a flower on one side of the house about a foot below the flower head. You may need a stepladder for this. Slowly pull the plant toward the flower opposite of it and loop the free end of the twine around it. Bring the flower heads together and secure the twine. Don’t tie them too tightly or you could uproot your sunflowers. Pair up the flowers until your roof is done. You may have to adjust the twines over the next few weeks as the plants continue to grow.

As the sunflowers grow, periodically weed and rake the floor of the house to keep it clear. Kids like quick results, so include fast growing plants. Nasturtiums are also a good choice as are marigolds. Radishes of several varieties (Easter egg radishes, with their multiple colors, are a huge hit around here) and short or round carrots are a nice addition to the spaces between the flowers. Think short and round so you’re not compromising the roof system of the sunflowers when you pull up the veggies.

Encourage the children in your life to help with the planting, weeding and picking, but don’t let these activities stretch beyond their attention span. Make gardening fun but not a chore. Then it will be something that they look forward to each spring and summer.

Gardening projects to do with the kidlets, part 1

There are a number of very cool crafty projects that you can put together for your garden. And what child doesn’t like doing crafts? I know that my two would rather do crafts of any kind over just about anything else. Add gardening to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for an afternoon of excited and happy kids. And happy gardeners!

The first project I wanted to tackle is the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter. They sell these gadgets on those infomercials for over twenty bucks a piece (and that’s only if you buy two of them!). Even though I resisted the whole idea of the upside down tomato, I did have the opportunity to give the topsy turvy a try and it’s actually OK. I don’t care much for the price, and was pleased to find instructions on how to make my own.

The bottom line is that tomatoes love the sun, and even planting them upside down will not deter them from searching out the light.

It takes a couple of hours to put this together and – if your planter is white – why not have your kids or grandkids decorate it with some bright colored Sharpie pens? You’re going to need a sturdy bucket, preferably one with a cover, a drill with a 2” hole saw, electrical tape, sphagnum moss, tomato plants (smaller ones), potting soil and compost.

I’ve seen these done a couple different ways. One is to plant only one plant per bucket, right out of the bottom. I don't care for that version; what if you have to take down the planter and set it down? The other is to use three, from the sides of the bucket. I prefer the three from the side version, so those are the instructions I’m using here.

Moving on…Thoroughly clean out your bucket and cut three holes, equally spaced, about two inches from the bottom of your bucket. Wrap the edges of the holes with electrical tape to avoid sharp edges. You could sand them as well, if you wish. Put moss in the bucket all around the holes to keep the tomato plant from falling out when you first hang the bucket.

Thread the upper two to three inches of your tomato seedling through the holes but keep the root ball inside the bucket. Then you and your kidlet can loosely pack soil around the stem and root ball. Add enough soil to cover the roots by about two inches. Add a layer of compost and then another couple inches of soil. You will want to fill your bucket so that the soil is just a few inches below the rim. Hang the bucket by its handle in a sunny location, perhaps on the edge of your patio, and water it thoroughly, until water starts running out of the holes. Water your topsy turvy regularly and add soil and compost when levels inside the bucket fall. Keeping a cover on the bucket will help retain moisture. As the plants grow, the leaves will search out the sun until fruit forms to weigh them down.

Many of us are seeing crowds of winged visitors in our yards right about now. This little bird feeder is quick to make, fun for the kidlets and uses recycled materials. You’re going to need a 1-liter soda bottle, a craft knife, two wooden spoons, a small eye-screw and a length of twine or wire for hanging. Start by drawing a ½ inch asterisk on the side of a clean 1-liter pop bottle about 4 inches from the bottom. Turn the bottle 90 degrees and draw another asterisk about 2 inches from the bottom of the bottle. Draw a 1 inch wide circle on the opposite side of each asterisk. Using your craft knife slit the asterisk lines and cut out the circle (that’s a grown-up job!). Insert the wooden spoon handle first through the hole and then through the asterisk to hold it in place. Turn the spoon so that the depression will catch the seeds as they come out of the feeder and push it far enough in so that the base of the spoon is just inside that hole you cut. The handle on the other side serves as a perch. Take off the cap of the bottle and twist the small eye screw in to the top for hanging. Finally, fill your feeder with birdseed, recap it and use your length of twine or wire and hang if from a tree or your patio. Remember, though, that hanging a feeder on your patio or deck can get messy after that feeder becomes popular with your feathered visitors.

These are both projects that you can do with the kidlets in your life, or projects that you can make and give away. Wouldn’t grandma really grin over a topsy turvy tomato planter? And who doesn’t love bird feeders? Make some for your own yard and garden and make some for gifts. Don’t forget Father’s Day is coming up and Dad’s and Grandpa’s garden, too!

Catmint and other stuff....

I generally try to be whimsical and chirpy about approaching my computer each week to compose something that will, hopefully, be remotely informative and mildly entertaining. I’m finding that I really need the human equivalent of catmint; something that will instill euphoria and just make everything right in the world.

Sigh.

Since I’ve not found that human equivalent, catmint and a couple of other cool plants are the order of the day. Catmint, obviously, is a member of the mint family and has a lovely lemony-mint flavor. My girls love to crush a few leaves in the bottom of a glass before pouring in the ice and lemonade. It’s easy to grow both for your kitties and for tea or other beverages for you.

This is a strong smelling herb with clusters of purplish-blue flowers loved by honeybees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Oh, yeah…and cats. Historically, the medicinal effects of catmint have been recorded as great for treating colic or other tummy upsets and cold symptoms. Naturally, many of the supposed treatments have been dismissed, although it’s astringency and antioxidant qualities are documented.

In 2007, Faassen’s Catmint “Walker’s Low” was chosen as the Perennial Plant Association’s Perennial of the Year. This variety is slightly more compact than other catmints and much less floppy. It is drought tolerant and, since it is – after all – a mint, can creep through its area if you don’t keep an eye on it.

Catmint literally “billows” when it grows. It’s nice to have at the bottoms of roses, hollyhocks or even peonies to hide their “knees”. It’s a great border plant, lovely cascading over a wall and makes a nice substitute for lavender.

There are two schools of thought on the best way to propagate catmint. Our fabulous friends at the Master Gardeners swear by propagation via seed. They say if you bring the plants into your yard and crush so little as one leaf getting them planted, you will attract every cat in the neighborhood. Seed is the way to go, they say. Established plants can be propagated by division of the root ball. Remember to allow for plenty of space.

There’s a cute little rhyme for catmint:
“If you set it, the cats will eat it,
If you sow it, the cats don’t know it.”

Either way, it’s a nice addition to any home garden.

Catmint is easy to grow in either sun or partial shade and has few to no pests or other issues. Catmint is deer resistant. It likes well drained soil that is not too rich. Fertilizer is not generally needed, unless your soil is really bereft of nutrients. Maybe a little at planting and then a couple times a year for maximum growth. Periodically pinch back the shoots of your catmint to help make them bushy. First bloom should be around mid-summer at which time you can harvest the leaves for tea or cat toys. You can probably expect three harvests a year, and the honeybees will love you for growing it. Harvest the leaves as the flowers begin to bloom. You can cut off the leaves, stems and flowers for use fresh, dried or frozen.
Some nice varieties to try are ‘Felix’, ‘Six Hills Giant’, ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Walker’s Low’. Catmint is beautiful when combined with the yellow and pinks of daylilies or yarrow.

Another plant that looks especially nice planted with catmint is Lamb’s Ears. The fuzzy, silver green foliage – soft as suede – are a nice counter to the brighter greens. They flower on tall spikes, pinkish-purple or white, in the late spring and early summer. Some folks like the flowers and others cut them off because they want that soft and fuzzy foliage more than blooms. As with catmint, bees love the blooms of the Lamb’s Ear. They look best as a rambling ground cover or border plant. You will have to do some maintenance to keep them from creeping out of their area. Lamb’s Ears self-seed like nobody’s business, and in some areas can be invasive and hard to get rid of.

Astilbes or Meadowsweet (love that name!) are very cool, plume-like bloomers that are noted for their long flowering quality. One of the easiest perennials to grow, Meadowsweet gives a very high return with their white, pink and red blooms. A pest free perennial, they offer color that pops to the shadier areas of your garden and do very well in containers. Their foliage is rather fern-like and the feathery blooms are on stalks above the foliage. The bloom cycle will last several weeks and the colors will slowly fade as the blooms dry. They prefer partial shade, but can do full sun with lots of water. They also like a richer soil. Meadowsweet is generally trouble free and not bothered by disease or insect pests. Cut these back in the spring or if the stalks fall over. They should be divided and shared amongst your friends every four to five years. Some varieties to consider: ‘Bridal Veil’, 3’ tall with full white plumes, ‘Purple Candles’, 3’-4’ tall with glorious purple plumes, ‘Fanal’, 1-1/2’ to 2’ tall with crimson flowers and bronze foliage, and ‘Rheinland’, 2’-2-1/2’ feet tall with rich pink blooms.

Well, I feel better now. I’m heading out to the garden. How about you?

Strawberries

With the exception of those unfortunate few who are allergic to them, who doesn’t absolutely love strawberries? Kids love ‘em right off the plant and if you have some in your yard – strawberries, not kids – I’m sure you’ll find the kids grazing on them from time to time. I can think of one extraordinary child whose favorite food in the whole, wide world is strawberry waffles!

While strawberries are indeed a huge favorite, the do also show up on the “Dirty Dozen” list. That list is the twelve fruits that carry the highest levels of residual pesticides, even after you wash them. It’s a pretty scary list. From the top: peaches, celery, apples, sweet bell peppers, cherries, imported grapes, nectarines, pears, potatoes, raspberries, spinach and strawberries. In fact, 90% of commercially grown strawberries have tested positive for – are you ready for this – THIRTY SIX DIFFERENT KINDS OF PESTICIDES. For a fruit with not very many pests, that is really mind-boggling, in my opinion. Obviously, growing them on your own organically is a much better choice. Even purchasing organic, in this instance, is a much better choice, but that’s an opinion for another forum.

There are four types of strawberries, although I think that the Alpine is too much effort. They will produce fruit almost all summer, but the fruits are tiny and you would need a lot of plants to get enough fruit to make growing these worth the effort.

There are, however, three other types that work very well for the home organic garden.

June Bearing: June bearers bear all their fruit in June (duh!). You can purchase early, mid and late season varieties, but that still means early, mid or late JUNE. These plants grow fairly large and develop an active runner system. They work well in a dedicated strawberry patch. These produce a large crop all at one time. Also, June bearing varieties won’t produce until their second season in the ground.

Ever-Bearing: Ever bearing strawberries produce fruit from late spring until early fall. They will regularly develop fruit, but never really very much at one time. The plants don’t get huge and don’t produce runners like the June bearers. And you’ll be able to harvest fruit in the first season.

Day-Neutral: (My personal favorite) Day-neutral varieties produce fairly decent crops of berries from spring until fall, with a fairly large crop in the fall. The plants are on the smaller side but produce fruit quite well. I’m told that the only drawback to the day-neutrals is that they don’t do well in places with very hot summers. If we were to have a severe heat wave in the Valley, I’d suggest shade cloth for the hot afternoon/early evening. The great folks at the extension don’t feel that the heat we get in the summer should be a deterrent to growing day-neutral varieties. As with the ever-bearing varieties, day-neutrals will produce fruit in their first season of growth.

Purchase your plants from a local nursery or order from a catalog for planting in the early spring. That’s right now. I got some very nice plants locally and then some others from a grower who was plowing up their field. If Seven Oaks plants strawberries this year, you might be able to get some of those plants for free when they plow the field at the end of the season. Plant them and grow them organically, if you have room for a dedicated strawberry patch.

Strawberries require five or six hours of sun per day, so choose your location accordingly. Soil that is high in organic matter is an absolute necessity, with a pH of 5.5 to 6.5. I’ve talked a lot about pH and test kits. I’ve noticed some nice little test kits – reasonably priced – available right here in town. To get your plants off to a ripping start, clear your area of all weeds and grass and dig in two to three inches of compost into the top few inches of soil. A dedicated strawberry patch would work well with the Lasagna gardening method; check the archives for information on that.

Planting strawberries is fairly straightforward. In your prepared bed, dig holes the size of the root ball and plant it with the crown of the plant slightly above soil level. Fill it in and water your plants well. Once they’re in, mulch with straw, shredded leaves or pine needles. Pine needles are really great for strawberries since they will raise the acidity of the soil slightly as they break down. Another added caveat is that most of us have some pine needles in our yards that need a place to go.

There are two methods for planting a strawberry bed. The first – The Matted Row – provides for easy maintenance. Set your plants 18 inches apart in rows three feet apart. The plants will send out runners and each runner will create a new plant. Keep the spaces between the rows open by removing plants from both sides of each row as they start to grow outward. You can either cut the runners and dig up the attached plant or simply run a tiller down the row. Remove some of the original plants from each row at the same time as the newest plants will bear the most fruit the next season.

The second – hill planting – is best if you have limited space. Again, lasagna gardening works well for this. Set your plants out 12 inches apart in all directions, either in row or groups. Make sure the bed is small enough that you can reach all the plants. Cut off the runners as soon as they appear so that the plants will direct all their energy into fruit production and give you large harvests.

Make sure that your plants get at least an inch of water a week. Remember to mulch to save on water and stop weeds without weed killers. Feed your plants with compost or organic fertilizer monthly. Blood meal and bone meal are good choices. If there are coffee drinkers in your house, you can put those grounds right into the strawberry bed. Strawberries are fairly shallow rooted. While they don’t like “wet feet”, if the soil dries out too much, fruit production will stop. This is one reason why mulching is so important. I wouldn’t use that whole inch of water a week all at once either. Water twice a week to ensure even moisture. Maybe a little extra if it’s really hot.

There are two schools of thought on strawberries. I’ve talked to folks on both sides of this fence at the Master Gardeners. Some say not to allow any fruit to develop in that first year, with the exception of ever-bearing plants. They say to pick off every single blossom as soon as you see it and that even one or two berries will weaken your plants and production will be greatly impaired. Others say, if you’re growing ever-bearers or day-neutrals, pick off the blossoms into mid-summer to give the plants time to develop strong root systems and grow into strong plants. By then, your plants should be well established enough to bear a late summer or fall crop. Since instant gratification is my personal super power, I’d be more likely to take that second option. Your mileage may vary.

Don’t plant your strawberries in or near an area where you are growing tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes or raspberries. These plants can carry verticillium wilt that can infect your strawberries.

Strawberries aren’t bothered by a huge number of pests (unless you count your significant other, who decimates the crop regularly) and of those, our feathered friends are perhaps the greatest offenders. Bird netting is available at nurseries and our local hardware store. The other main pests are slugs and snails. There are a number of things you can do to keep them away. Install a copper edging strip around the perimeter of the bed. Slugs and snails won’t cross copper because it creates and electrical reaction when it comes in contact with their slime. You can use diatomaceous earth as a deterrent or the ever-popular dishes of beer in the garden.

As if this even needs saying – Be sure to pick your strawberries as soon as they ripen and eat, freeze or preserve them immediately. Like we could leave a strawberry to rot in the bed! Ha!

Daisy, daisy

Someone once said that daisies represent what is so right about gardening. And, you know what? They’re right. Daisies are so cool. There are so many varieties and colors and they’re just so…fun. So HAPPY. They are just the happiest flower to look at, grow and have around. They are also one of the most popular flowers to grow in the home garden. Easy to grow, this delicate and lovely flower reminds us that spring is here, relaxing afternoons and Easter time.

Some random facts about daisies:
The name “daisy” comes from the Anglo-Saxon meaning “day’s eye”.
Most daisies have a spreading growth habit.
In many cultures, daisies are symbols of innocence.
Daisies can be propagated by division.
The English daisy is an invasive weed in the Northwest.
Daisies are used by children to make daisy chains.
Daisy leaves are edible.

Daisies come in all shapes and sizes. Most daisies are perennials, which I like, and that they’ll last several years. Perennials come with a time investment requirement, so they may also take a while to grow. There are annual daisies, to be sure. African daisies, for example, will require a little more work since – as annuals – their life cycle is only the one year. The choice is yours. They can all mostly be grown from seed, so head on down to the local garden center and pick up a package of daisy seeds of your choice.

I like Shasta daisies – so classic. I also really like the Gerber daisies with their brilliant colors. Once you’ve made YOUR choice, you’ll have to find the right place to plant them. Daisies like well-drained soil that is rich with nutrients. They also like full sun. Make sure that your location will get as much sunlight as possible. As always, before you plant, feed your soil so that your soil will feed your plants.

Daisies look best in clumps so it would behoove you to plant your seeds close together. Feed them a nice organic fertilizer during early growth and then once a month after that. Adding a high Phosphorous fertilizer right before bloom time will add to size and brilliance of bloom. Water your daisies when they get dry. Generally, daisies are not bothered by critters. Insects don’t seem to like them. If you find visitors amongst your daisies, there are some good homemade remedies in the arsenal you can check out. Go to the Rogue River Press archives and check out the past articles.

Let’s talk about size. Of the smaller varieties, Gerber or Gerbera daisies are by far the most popular. Angelita or Santa Barbara daisies are good, cheerful choices of the smaller size range. Medium size daisy plants include the chrysanthemums, Echinacea, asters, galliardia, Gloriosa daisy, golden marguerite (can take frost) and the lovely blue-hued Swan River daisy. Larger plants are the Shastas and Euryops. Sunflowers are considered by many to be GIANT daisies and can now be found in a variety of sizes and colors from brilliant reds, to browns and every hue of yellow. Annual daisy varieties include cosmos, coreopsis, Acton, calendula, painted daisies and African daisies.

Gerbera daisies. A bouquet of them will lift the spirit and brighten the day of anyone who receives them. The multitude of varieties and colors lends the Gerbera to becoming the favorite choice for the OCCASION bouquet. Brilliant pink, snowy white, sunshine yellow and deep ruby are a few of the fabulous colors that these happy flowers bring to the gardening table.
While I doubt that anyone is going to have nothing but daisies in their gardens, I think that we overlook this intrinsically happy and underrated flower. I guess people think them common, but nothing says “Welcome To My Garden” like a rousing display of Shastas, with their sunny demeanor.

Daisies lend themselves to cutting to bring indoors. Bring some of this cheer to your garden this year, and take a second look at the varieties of daisy-like flowers. You’ll be glad you did.

Sweet smell of . . .

Success. And that smell is the fragrance of a Daphne plant that has weathered more than one season in your yard. A friend was telling me about how this is her very favorite of all plants. I’d forgotten the incredible fragrance of Daphne. I’d also forgotten how finicky and persnickety it can be. If you give it the right spot…and I mean, exactly the right spot, with the right soil and don’t water it much…Daphne can be an absolute wonder of the most amazing fragrance you can grow in your garden.

The Daphnis have rather gotten themselves a “bad reputation”. One of the fine folks at the Master Gardeners has stated that Daphne are “fussy about soil and prone to sudden death for no apparent reason.” Hmph. There’s always a reason. Always. Further inquiry shows that success with Daphne means not disturbing the roots when planting. It is a common practice to break apart the root ball when planting shrubs. For Daphne, it is the kiss of death. Carefully remove the plant from the container and with equal care place it into the planting hole so as not to disturb its roots.

Most of the time, Daphne is a fairly unassuming shrub, just hanging out in the shadier parts of the garden. They grow to four feet high or so and around six feet wide. Its 3-inch long leaves are glossy and thick and rich in color. The most popular variety has a yellow or white edged leaf.

Daphne produces clusters of extremely fragrant flowers that are pink to deep red on the outside and a creamy pale pink on the inside. Blooming in February, Daphne is the perfect Valentine’s Day gift for your favorite gardener and is truly a gift that keeps on giving. The blooms last for a few weeks, through March usually.

Daphne is not interested in full sun; plant it so that it gets shade at mid-day. Aside from the fragrance, the other really wonderful thing about Daphne is that it is deer proof. Not deer resistant – DEER PROOF.

The big thing with Daphne is that it wants really great drainage; not so easy to do in some of our yards in the Rogue Valley, where the soil tends to sometimes be heavy. Work in plenty of organic matter into your soil. You plant Daphne just like you do Rhodies, but unlike Rhodies, you will want to water Daphne as infrequently as possible. Little water during the dry season helps Daphne form its flower buds for the following year.

Plant the root ball of Daphne a bit high in the ground and mulch the soil or plant a nice ground cover to shade the roots.

Daphne is slow growing and makes an excellent container plant. This is a good thing since you can move it around to find the place that it likes best and to take advantage of the fragrance at bloom time.

Other fragrant dainties for the winter garden are Sarcococca, which is an evergreen shrub. Small, inconspicuous white flowers offer an unmistakable fragrance. Sarcococca thrives in partial to deep shade and they actually like it under cedar or Douglass fir trees. Good companion plants for both Daphne and Sarcococca are tassel fern, bleeding hearts and anemone.

Another candidate for the winter garden is the Chinese witch hazel. It is a slow growing, deciduous shrub boasting unusual and typically yellow flowers. Chinese witch hazel will persist in the worst winter weather, including frost and snow, and will survive beautifully. Chinese witch hazel likes a bit of sun but will do alright with light shade as well.

The last winter surprise I want to talk about is the evergreen clematis (clematis armandii). This plant features large white flowers that begin to appear in January or February with a scent that is abundant and heady. This plant likes full sun, is easy to grow and requires a screen or trellis for support.

Speaking of fragrance, at the other end of the seasonal spectrum, we have the tuberose. This is a bulb that produces tall flower spikes with numerous blooms and a fragrance that is rich and wonderful. If you have a sunny, warm site in your flower garden, then tuberose could be for you.

Find a location with excellent drainage. If there are water puddles 5 hours after a hard rain, choose a different site. You can also heavily amend the soil and raise the level two to three inches to improve the drainage. Compost, ground bark or decomposed manure all work well for tuberose.

Plant your bulbs where they will receive full sun. If you can find tuberose bulbs in clusters, that’s always a good choice. Plant about 3” deep and about 8 inches apart. After planting, water generously, soaking the soil. Roots and top growth will develop in a few weeks. Water regularly during the growing season if there’s no rain. Tuberoses are hungry and like a side dressing of an 8-8-8 fertilizer while in an active growth cycle.

Tuberose will flower in mid to later summer, generally 120 days after you plant them. When that bloom hits, be sure to bring some inside for cut flowers.

After the bloom, leave the foliage in place. The leaves will gather sunlight and provide nourishment for next season’s bloom cycle. Water as needed. When the leaves start to turn yellow, later in the season, feel free to remove them then. Tuberose also does well in containers, where you can shift them around to best take advantage of the fragrance.

Just before the annual frost, you might consider digging up your bulbs, cutting off the tops to within 2 inches of the apex of the bulb and placing them in shallow boxes in the sun to air out for about a week. If the evenings are too cold, bring them in. You don’t want them exposed to temperatures below 40 degrees. Store them away in boxes for the winter. There are gardeners who have successfully overwintered tuberose in the ground by utilizing a heavy cover of mulch. Just depends on where you are in the valley, how much sun your yard gets and how long the snow stays on the ground at your house.

Birds of a feather...

I like to see all kinds of birds in the yard. From those teeny yellow finches, squabbling over the Niger thistle seeds, to the handsome chickadee and the flying jewels that are the hummers.

Of all the birds you can invite in, hummingbirds are probably the easiest and least messy to have in your yard as a guest. The best time to get started is RIGHT NOW – early spring – when they are starting to return from migration and looking for the best places to build their nests.

When you bring out your feeders to wash them and fill them, give them plenty of time for the hummers to find them. I’ve been told it could take a month or more. I, personally, have not had that experience. Hummers seem to come looking for them. If you have one that’s busy and you add another, the numbers seem to exponentially increase and pretty soon, you got hoards of the little beggars. However many feeders you put up, make sure that you keep your feeding solution fresh.

When you’re choosing a feeder, be sure to choose one with some red color on it. Most of them do anyway. We got a feeder kit recently that uses a one liter soda bottle for the solution tank. Kind of cool, a great way to recycle a pop bottle and the kit was reasonably priced.

Fill your feeder with either a commercially prepared feeder solution or a solution with a ratio of 1:4 of sugar and water. Boil the solution to rid it of any potential bacteria, fungus or mold. Let it cool before filling your feeder. I hate to shriek this out in all capital letters, but here goes: DO NOT USE HONEY OR ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS IN YOUR HUMMINGBIRD FEEDERS. These are both harmful to hummingbirds. Make a gallon at a time and keep it in an empty milk jug in the refrigerator (recycle recycle recycle) so you can easily keep your feeders filled. You can store it for up to a week and, in summer, you’re going to use at least that much. Skip the red food coloring. Your feeder probably has enough red on it to attract the hummers and that red chemical is likely not all that great for the birds.

I can’t say this enough – keep the solution in the feeders FRESH. In cooler weather, change it out and wash your feeder once a week, even if it’s not empty. When it gets warmer – say mid-June or so – two or three times a week. Mold and fungus grows pretty easily and it’s hazardous to hummers.

Male hummers are very territorial towards their feeders and spend lots of time chasing interlopers. While it’s entertaining to watch, it’s really better to simply reduce the competition by hanging out several feeders throughout your yard. I generally keep feeders for the hummers away from feeders for the other birds.

There are many types of plants you can offer in your garden that have a dual purpose of being gorgeous and attracting hummers, honey bees and butterflies. Good choices for our area are: Honeysuckle, sage or salvia, columbine, bee balm, comfrey, foxglove, delphinium, red hot poker, coral bells, dianthus, nicotiana, lupine, petunias, impatiens, fuscias, morning glories and trumpet vines.

For the other types of feathered friends, there are some really easy things you can do that will attract more birds to your yard.

Of course, the first thing is feeders. Mesh bags full of Niger thistle seeds will bring in the finches, chickadees and a host of other tiny birds. Feeders containing the more traditional seed offerings will bring along everyone else. We had a suet plug feeder that was quite entertaining with the flickers, woodpeckers and Stellar jays duking it out for a snack.

The basket style of suet feeder actually can serve a dual purpose. Once you’re done feeding suet and nest building time arrives, you can fill it with cotton cushion stuffing, dog hair from grooming your dog, sheep’s wool, llama down, snips of yarn and such. Hummers, in particular, seem attracted to the cotton down cushion stuffing.

If you have the room on your property to have one, a brush pile will be used by birds to get out of the harsher elements. Take fallen and pruned branches from trees and shrubs on your property and loosely stack them in an area where they won’t bug your neighbors or be an eyesore. Try to make your pile about 6’ x 6’. It should be airy and have lots of open spaces for the birds to flit in and out. A brush pile will provide food in that there will be insects among the decaying branches or on the ground beneath the pile. Brush piles seem to be used the most during the winter and earlier spring months. You can burn it, if you wish, toward the end of the burn season. Don’t forget your permit.

Planting a hedgerow – a long line of shrubs and small trees at the border of a field or lawn. Birds will use hedgerows in all seasons because they provide food, shelter and nesting sites.

Leave the leaves. Fallen leaves provide nutrients to your soil as they break down. They provide an insulation layer over the soil that keeps it warmer and moister. Insects and other microbial soil denizens live under these conditions. There are many garden birds that love to feed in leaf litter, including thrushes, robins and sparrows.

Providing a dust bath area will allow many birds a way to rid themselves of mites and other parasites and to fluff their feathers to keep them in top condition. Choose a sunny area about three feet square in the vicinity of your seed feeders. Clear it of vegetation, hollow it out two to three inches. If you can, get some fine dust or that super fine sand you find in the river bed. With the river much lower these days, access to the sandy spots should be more available. You can always mix sand with topsoil as well. Rim your dust bath with rocks and natural timber to make it more attractive. Be sure to keep an eye on any cats wandering about. Birds won’t use the dust bath it the cats have been using it.

I’d like to leave you with some suggestions for shrubs and perennials that would be great for drawing our feathered friends to your yard. Of course, the annual Sunflowers are perfect and make me happy just to have them around.

Shrubs: Holly, pyracantha, lilac, Oregon grape, sumac, barberry, raspberry, hackberry, elderberry, gooseberry. If you have them, and the means to take care of them, those “pesky” blackberry brambles, trimming them up, watering them and providing some decent fertilizer will not only give you some superior fruit, but really provide some great habitat for the birds.

Perennials: Coreopsis, bleeding heart, penstemons, phlox, globe thistle or even artichokes, goldenrod and just about any of the large family of ornamental grasses.

They say variety is the spice of life. It’s also the key to encouraging birds of all kinds to hang out in your yard. Providing a mixture of trees, clumps of berry bearing shrubs, fruit trees and a variety of flowers and grasses, weeds allowed to go to seed, a wildflower patch, insects to forage, a well stocked feeder and maybe even a water feature, like a fountain or birdbath will please a great variety of feathered visitors.

There's tomatoes and then there's TOMATOES...

Is bigger always better? When it comes to a tomato sandwich, usually.

The two most often asked questions in the veggie gardening world are:

How can I grow BIGGER fruits/veggies?
How can I get a BIGGER harvest of my fruits/veggies?

One assumes that, if you do the basics – plenty of water, feed your soil and the right amount of sunlight – you’ll get that bumper crop of whatever it is that’s making your heart sing. Tomato Bob has provided a lot of great information as have a number of other gardeners in the Rogue Valley for growing tomatoes, but most of this information can be applied to anything you’re growing. Some factors that you can’t easily modify are weather and insects. Last year, I wrote about some home remedies for various nasties in the garden. Email thegardengrrl@gmail.com for a reprint of that article. They say that soil is one of those things you can’t easily remedy, but I don’t believe that for a minute. Feed the soil and the soil will – to a large degree – feed your plants.

Let’s talk first about soil. The best soil conditions result in a well-drained garden that holds moisture well; within its structure, not pooled on the surface. A loose structure allows for superior root development, which is vital to healthy plants and thus greater yields. Dense clay or sandy soils can be improved greatly and immediately by adding peat moss or compost. You can use uncomposted leaves or grass clippings, but it’s recommended that you till those in four to six months before you plant as this kind of soil amendment lowers the available nitrogen. You’ll get slow growing plants with yellow leaves if there’s not enough nitrogen. If you mulch with either leaves or grass clippings, it won’t affect the nitrogen levels, will provide a really great long-term source of nutrients, keep down weeds and conserve water. You can add compost any time.

Perhaps the greatest mistake people make with tomatoes is over fertilizing. A number of the commercial liquid or mix with water fertilizers are high in nitrogen and produce huge glorious plants. But they do this at the expense of the harvest. A good average nutrient formula, found in several available commercial organic fertilizers is N-P-K (5-5-5). Nitrogen promotes growth of the plant, phosphorous promotes blossom development and potassium promotes root growth and disease resistance.

Prior to planting, you will want to till in an application of a dry organic fertilizer with an NPK rating similar to what I’ve described above. At the time of transplanting, liquid fish emulsion is a really great choice, as it will give your seedlings a nitrogen boost, as it’s a 5-1-1 fertilizer. Every three weeks throughout your growing season, use that same dry organic fertilizer as instructed on the package. When your ‘maters (or whatever) start to bloom, apply some bone meal (4-12-0) to help increase the number of blossoms and to help the dreaded Blossom End Rot.

Be aware of the pH of your soil. This is really important, folks. The optimal levels you need to provide for the best rate of nutrient absorption is between 6.5 and 7.5. Main Building has some inexpensive pH test kits available. If they’re out, have them order one for you.

Let’s talk a minute about WHAT you’re going to be growing…

If you’re after size, some of the best varieties for HUGE beefsteaks are: of course, Beefmaster, Brandywine, Amana Orange, Giant Belgium, Mexico and Old German. My kids LOVE tomato sandwiches – bread, mayo and tomato – and the beefsteak varieties totally fit the bill for those one-slice sandwiches.

If it’s sheer numbers you’re after, any variety of Roma or paste tomato is going to produce in copious amounts. Others include Rutgers, Old Brooks, De Pinto, Campbell’s 1327 and Avalanche.

Of course, everyone has his or her favorites and I’m no exception. Every year, I tell myself, “Only five plants, only five plants…” Last year, I had twenty-three. The year before that, nineteen. My neighbors actually started to hide and pretend they weren’t home when I showed up with my bags of tomatoes, zucchini and Armenian cucumbers. (If you haven’t tried those, do. They’re super tasty and seem to appear in your garden overnight, as if by magic!) I love the Heirlooms and I love anything weird or different. My kids love any tomato, but have a marked preference for grazing on anything small. Hits in our garden have been Green Zebra, Green Grape, Moon Glow, Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, Oxhearts, Royal Hillbilly, Blosser Pink Beefsteak, Black Cherry, Black Krim, Red Fig, Marmande, Fox Cherry, Pantano Romanesco, Pineapple, Red Zebra, Black Pineapple, Yellow Pear and Lemon Oxhearts.

Now, about seeds…

Start with fresh seeds that will give you the healthiest seedlings. Old seeds may not germinate well and inferior plants will be the result. They are more likely to become diseased and produce poorly. I’ve had good luck with the variety of seedlings available from a number of sources. Without shoehorning in a shameless plug for my favorite places, email me if you’d like to know. thegardengrrl@gmail.com.

Temperature is a huge factor as well. Seeds need it to be at least between 65 and 80 degrees to germinate. You can direct sow in your yard at 50 degrees. Tomatoes will blossom from 55 to 95 degrees. However, several days above 95 degrees and most tomato varieties will drop their blooms until things cool down a bit. The warmer the ground, the more quickly your plants will become established.

Tomatoes are both HUNGRY and THIRSTY. If you’re growing Heirlooms, you have to be really consistent with your watering to be successful with them. Their skins are thinner, so if you skip a day and then make up for it with extra water next time, you can almost count on your ‘maters splitting. Try and keep even moisture in your ‘mater bed. Compost, plastic and any kind of natural mulch will help retain moisture. In my opinion, a soaker hose or drippers on a timer are an excellent choice for a couple of reasons. #1 – you don’t have to think about them; they do all the work for you. #2 – they provide bottom watering preferred over top spraying as it helps prevent soil borne disease.

Tomatoes need at least six hours of full sun a day. Seems like a lot. I’ve tried growing near a grove of trees and between a small orchard and – people – it just doesn’t work. They want the sun. If you’re looking at getting the most out of your tomato plants, get the out into the sun!

The preferred spacing for tomatoes is two to three feet apart. They need air circulation to keep the leaves dry, otherwise you’re just asking for disease to come make a home in your garden. If you’ve chose an indeterminate variety of Heirloom that’s going to try to grow to be eight feet tall, I’d recommend training against a fence. Sure, you can cage them and stake them, but if you’ve got a fence with nothing on it and have no plans to run your beans there or grow morning glories on it, why not use it for tomatoes? Now, when you plant your seedlings, dig your holes deep and plant them all the way up to four or six leaves. This will help them develop a robust root system as roots will develop all along the buried stem.

Heirloom tomatoes are more susceptible to disease than their hybrid relatives. These include Fusarium and Verticilium Wilt, Septoria Leaf Spot, Tobacco Mosaic Virus and Root Knot Nematodes. “That’s all?”, you say. Not really, but those are the major ones. Keep your plants well- but not over-fertilized and utilize bottom watering and you will minimize the risks greatly. Rotate tomatoes and potatoes (or grow your spuds in a bag) every year if possible. Clean up your crop residue in the fall and get rid of it instead of composting it or tilling it under.

Pests, ah pests. First of all, get some marigolds and put those around your tomatoes. Maybe some garlic and onions, as well. That’s a start. The biggest – literally – pest of tomatoes is the Tomato Hornworm. They’re disgusting. You can spot the leaf damage from about a mile away and – horrors! – the best way to get rid of them is to hand pick them off your plants. Ick! But worth the effort. Nasty little beetles can be kept at bay with insecticidal soap, garlic spray or tomato leaf spray (either one made by soaking garlic or tomato leaves in warm water over night and then decanting into a spray bottle).

OK…Now for the good stuff…The secrets…

For MONSTER tomatoes, remove all the tomatoes from a plant except for four or five. Snip off the blossom clusters and keep an eye out for more blossom production. When fruit sets, always leave the largest. This allows more energy to go into those remaining tomatoes.

For SCADS of tomatoes, prune off any branches that don’t appear to have blossoms on them. They’re just taking up space. Your plant will now focus energy on producing tomatoes and not on growing fruitless branches. This IS time consuming, but well worth the effort, if you’re going for numbers.

Remember, plant a row this year to help feed those less fortunate.