The Fruits of Gardening

Aug. 10, 2011

Just before a week on the road I harvested the first cucumbers, beans, zucchinis and potatoes from my vegetable garden.  Nine days later after returning, the beans were starting to get over ripe, there were tons of zucchini, and there were some cucumbers fit to make little boats but not to eat.  Sweet corn is offered for sale now along the roadsides and my sweet corn is one week from harvest.  One of my main joys in life is biting into a fresh ear of sweet corn.  Onions are growing at a very rapid rate.  One tomato has ripened but it was split and not fit to eat.  Another few days and more will ripen.  In the northern climates all things are not early season.

The old over ripe fruit has been harvested and discarded.  Cucumbers, zucchini and beans will continue to blossom and grow new produce.  Items like cabbage and broccoli are more once and done vegetables even though they try to re-grow.

Peaches, apricots, raspberries, raspberry jam, and apricot jam

While traveling from the great Northern plains to the West I had the opportunity to buy some peaches and apricots.  We have harvested loads of raspberries from our plants.  We are filling our fruit jars.  Two weeks ago it looked like we would have loads of blueberries on our 6 bushes.  There are hardly any as a chipmunk has climbed up and eaten more than his share and left us with a handful.

Yesterday for dinner we had zucchini cut in half and filled with a scrambled egg zucchini flesh mixture with cheese melted over it and small red potatoes.  They were delicious.  Tonight we had a crock pot meal of corned beef with cabbage, green beans, carrots, and garden russet potatoes that had been cooking all day.

Harvest is now in full force with more zucchini than I can give away and enough cucumbers to make pickles.  The two types of pickles I will make are little whole dills from cucumbers 2 to 3 inches long and bread and butter pickles from larger cucumbers cut up.  Last night my daughter and I snapped, processed and froze about 8 packages of beans.  Tonight 13 pints of sweet and dill pickles were made. 

After having almost perfect weed control another round of new weeds has emerged and is growing exponentially trying to get seeds produced before the season ends in 6 to 7 weeks.  Rain has been abundant and in good fertile soil some of the plants are over running others even on 4 foot row spacing.

I have two gardens, one to eat from and one for research.

The purpose for such a large research garden is to test two chemicals.  One is for disease control and the other for insect control.  One of the major insects has been Colorado potato beetle.  The insecticide is sold commercially for beetle control and is completely controlling the beetles.  The potatoes not treated are completely defoliated.  The cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts are being chewed rapidly by cabbage worms.  The insecticide does not control those worms.  Later thrips on onions will be counted and powdery mildew on various plant species will be measured.  For good thrip numbers we need more hot dry weather.  So far, no disease is evident.  There are also five species of flowers. 

The two purposes of this research is to determine if spraying the chemical will harm the vegetation it is sprayed on and if the fungicide controls disease and the insecticide kills insects.  The two chemicals are sprayed alone and then a combination of the two is sprayed.  The chemicals and combination treatment are sprayed at the use rate and at four times the use rate to simulate over application.  Over application is often done by homeowners even though it is not necessary.  Amongst garden chemical testing, the main mantra is “Do No Harm” as sometimes the cure is worse than the problem.

Radio Gardening Shows

July 30, 2011

Driving across the great state of Iowa Saturday morning looking for a good radio show I came across the garden show on AM 600 WMT.  There were two hosts that answered questions as callers called in.  Here are a few of the questions and answers discussed on the show. 

My peas all dried up, if I cut them off will they grow back?  Peas are a cool weather crop and do much better in cool weather.  The hot weather of the past few weeds caused them to die.  Peas are a short season crop and a further question was, can I replant?  Yes, but you will be better off to wait a couple more weeks until the weather is a little cooler.

My beans are not doing well, can I cut them off and will they grow back?  They probably would grow back but they grow really fast and you would be better off to replant.  You still have time to plant and get a good crop before the season ends.

My zucchini plants germinated and were growing nicely.  There were lots of blossoms and I kept waiting for the fruit to grow.  It looked like they were starting but they never grew.  Zucchinis and most other garden produce need to be pollinated.  There just aren’t as many bees around to pollinate as there used to be.  A note from the Garden Doc—the hosts mentioned tomatoes need pollinated.  Tomatoes are self fertile, meaning each flower has both male and female flowers.  However they do need some movement such as wind to get the pollen from the pistils to the stamens. 

My zucchini were growing well then one at a time the vine turned yellow and dried up. What can I do?  The hosts said that zucchini grow fast and there is still time to replant and get plenty of fruit.  The Garden Doc says zucchini, cucumbers and several other of the vine type plants have stem borers that drill into the vine and then the vine dies.    This can also be alleviated by vigilant use of the proper insecticide.  Malathion and Sevin would be good choices.  Spinosad may work. 

My tomatoes have very large worms that are eating the tops of the plants.  The worms are tomato horn worms and are easily controlled by Sevin or Bt.  Bt is short for Bacillus thuringiensis.  (The garden hosts butchered the scientific name.)

There are three big pine trees in my yard, one of them dropped a lot of needles about a month ago.  What could be wrong with it?  The other two are doing well.  The season has been pretty rough on perennials due to the excessive rains that have fallen during the spring.  Trees are tough and the tree will probably be ok.  The hosts did make sure that they were pines.  From the Garden Doc;  A new lawn chemical has been made available this year and was extensively used by some lawn services.  About a month later the new growth on pines and possibly other conifers started dying and in some cases the whole tree appeared to die.  Whether the tree will die or not will not be known until next year but it is a serious problem.  If you have injured pine trees and used a lawn service ask if they used the herbicide Imprelis.

One person called saying he lives by several corn and soybean fields.  He had lots of monarch butterflies in his yard then the plane came spraying the soybeans and corn   Since then there have been very few monarch butterflies but they are starting to come back now.  He wondered what might be getting sprayed with.  The hosts didn’t know.  Many corn and soybean acres are now getting sprayed with fungicides to protect the yield from several diseases that would cause a yield loss.  Soybeans do have several insects such as aphids and the new marmolated stink bug that can cause a large yield loss. 

The last caller had several 3 to 4 year old rhododendrons plants that have curled up leaves.  What could be wrong with the plants?  The hosts weren’t sure what caused it and were not positive that the plants would survive.  The only thought the hosts had were that the plants may have had too much water.  Identifying problems on plants not doing well is one of the most difficult things a plant doctor can determine. 

Let me know your questions.

The Garden Doc