Weekly Gardening Outlook: It's Grow Time!

This will be a continuing series where we look ahead at the coming week in gardening for the Northwest Arkansas area

Onions reaching for the sky

The garden is planted, the days are sunny, and the nights are warm.  Now the weeding, watering, pruning, repelling insects, and fighting diseases begins.

Tomato plants, caged and ready

Whatever was eating my tomato plants got all of them over the course of three nights.  Before we left, I crossed my fingers and replanted.  When we returned home, all of them were intact and thriving.  Yea!  I believe it was the work of an animal and that the new cages overhead and the new rotted straw mulch deterred it.  This year I am trying rotted straw as a garden mulch.  It seems to be doing a great job at reducing moisture fluctuation in the soil and suppressing weeds.  Thumbs up so far.

Cutworm

I did find this cutworm in the front yard.  So they are in the area, but I don't think a cutworm was the tomato killing culprit.  The stalks were intact, but defoliated.  A cutworm would have cut them off at the base like Paul Bunyan.

Pepper plants

I planted 4 bell pepper plants, a serrano pepper plant, a jalapeño pepper plant, and a mild jalapeño pepper plant before we left.  They doubled in size while we were gone.  I added 2-3 foot high stakes after this picture was taken.  I will tie the plants loosely to the stakes with strips of pantyhose as they grow to provide support.

Sweet Basil

My three basil plants were purchased in one pot and subdivided.  They are thriving and won't require much care other than watering.

Strawberry plants sending out runners

Things that do require some care are the strawberry plants.  They constantly send out runners, which should be pruned off.  The first wave of berries has tapered off.  Another should be along shortly.

Onion sets flowering

Onions bulbing up a little

Some of the onions sets that I planted are flowering.  Onions being biennial, this shouldn't happen until the
second season.  I'm not sure why they are doing this.  Perhaps our late freeze convinced them that they had been through a winter and that they are now on their second year.  I removed the scapes and we will see if it has any effect on the bulbs.

Bolting hybrid cilantro

The hybrid cilantro that I bought from the store has begun to bolt (flower), though it resisted the heat much better than the heirloom volunteer cilantro.  The lower leaves still taste fine, so I have cut the tops off and we'll see if I get any usable cilantro from the remaining plant to use in salsa.

Bolting arugula

The arugula bolted and tasted very bitter.  It's now in the compost bin.

Lemon thyme with a side of cilantro

Thyme

Oregano

The herbs are spreading out.  I purposely did not surround them with rotted straw so that they could do this.  Also, thyme and oregano prefer a drier soil.

Green Beans planted (purple podded pole)

A row of green beans (purple podded pole beans) was planted where the spaghetti squash was last year.  The straw was simply pulled back to expose a row.  They will grow up the trellis made from cattle panel.

Butternut squash seedlings after thinning

The butternut squash seeds, planted before we left, have emerged.  I planted 2-3 seeds per hole and pinched off all, but the strongest seedling.  We had such a problem with the squash vine borer (SVB) last year, that the only squash species that we planted this year is the butternut, which is said to be resistant to the SVB.

Green blueberries

We will get 3-4 good clusters off of this bush this year.  The other remaining bush isn't producing, but seems to be growing well.

Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes)

The sunchokes are emerging.  I chose not to harvest any this past fall to give them an extra year to become established.  They took advantage of that and have multiplied quite a lot.  What you see above is from the planting of just one tuber last spring.

Native blackberry vines flowering

Unknown grape vine

Some wild edibles have sprung up at the back of the property.  We've gotten wild blackberries there for years.  There's a power line overhead and the birds "plant" the seeds for us.  The grapevine is new.  I haven't identified what kind it is, but I will keep an eye on it.  The neighbors have a large grapevine, so I assume that is the source.

Homemade, collapsible squarefoot planting guide

I have never been a fan of permanent dividers or string marking the divisions in a squarefoot garden.  They tend to get in the way of weeding, mulch application, and soaker hose placement.  So I developed this planting tool that is very portable and makes planting a square foot garden a snap.  It is simply 2"x4" boards ripped down the middle and joined together loosely with bolts.  It allows you to plant 16 square feet at a time and is removed once the seeds or plants are in place.

Chicken and Egg Report:

Chickens foraging

We are getting three to four eggs a day from our backyard flock of 6 hens. I am expecting a shipment of 10 assorted brown egg layers and 15 white cornish/rock cross meat birds sometime this week.  The 15 meat birds will be raised for only 6-7 weeks.  If they get much older than that, the meat begins to toughen up.  Come late July, we will have a freezer full of fresh, homegrown chicken!  The new laying hens will begin laying sometime in November and will replace our current hens.  The current hens will be canned up at that time for use in chicken salad sandwiches and soups.  The pressure canning process makes these tough old birds quite good to eat.

Weather Outlook:

-Hot and dry.  Slight chance of a popup shower here and there.
-Keep your garden well watered.  The high winds and temperatures will dry the garden out.

-Ten day forecast

What's Being Harvested:

Freshly harvested cilantro

-Strawberries (barely)
-Cilantro

-Herbs