I'm Seeing Spots

Cedar apple rust on an apple tree

One of our new apple trees has cedar-apple rust.  I first noticed these spots in late May and did some reading.  I found this excellent fact sheet from the University of Arkansas.

Here's a quick rundown:

Cedar-apple rust is a fungal disease with a lifecycle requiring both cedar trees and apple trees (or crab apple).  It forms very interesting looking baseball sized orange galls on cedar trees, but doesn't really hurt them.  The problem arises in late spring, when it infects apple trees with the leaf spots seen in the picture above.  It causes early leaf drop and can also infect the apples themselves.

So what do you do about it?  The best answer appears to be to only plant cedar-apple rust resistant varieties.  The fact sheet I linked to above has a list of resistant varieties.  Our Pixie Crunch tree is not on that list.  We could treat the tree with a heavy duty fungicide like Daconil, but it would just get infected again and I don't like to use chemical fungicides anyway.  We will treat this tree with Serenade, an organic treatment containing a microorganism that eats fungi.  If the tree doesn't respond, we may have to just get rid of it and be more aware of this disease when we select our new varieties.

Weekly Gardening Outlook: Last Minute Bed Prep and Some Early Plantings

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

Bermuda grass infesting raised bed.

In December of 2009, I added two wooden framed 4' x 8' raised beds to my garden.  Despite scalping the area with a lawnmower on its lowest setting and laying down two layers of thick cardboard, the Bermuda grass persisted and invaded my new beds last year.  This spring, I raked the soil back and removed as much as I could, but I have no doubt that I will deal with it again this year.  If you are building a new bed and have Bermuda grass, my suggestion is to remove the top 3-4" of soil containing the grass before building your bed.  A flat-nosed shovel will do the job, but a motorized sod-cutter can be rented to expedite the job if you are putting in multiple beds.

Evergreen bunching onions flowering.

Evergreen bunching onions flowering.

The flowers are opening up on the evergreen bunching onions.  As they are pollinated and form seeds, I will be watching them closely to try to harvest some of my own seeds.  I started these from seed last spring and look forward to completing the cycle from seed to seed.

Apple tree leafing out.

Despite my concern over the -18 degree temperatures, the potted apple trees made it safely through the winter.  I will pot them up into larger containers soon.

Partially planted bed containing onions and herbs.

This past Sunday, I planted a portion of the "Bermuda grass free" bed with onion sets (yellow and purple), cilantro, lemon thyme, oregano, and bok choy.  The onions can handle any mild freeze that we may get, but I will have to cover the herbs and the bok choy.  In about two weeks, when all danger of frost has passed, the garden really gets going when I put in the main summer crops.  Until then, bed prep continues.

Oregano. 

A common herb, oregano is used in Italian and Mexican food.  Because it spreads via runners, I only bought one plant and will divide it up as it spreads to eventually have several for plantings in my blocks.  Oregano is known for its hardy nature.  Once established, it will come back year after year.

Lemon Thyme.

 Lemon thyme is a less common herb that I haven't found in stores.  It's great on fish and chicken or anything that you want to add a lemony zing to.  Thyme of any variety is very tough and stays green through the winter and comes back year after year.

Bok Choy.

I've never grown bok choy and bought this plant on a whim.  It appears that spring may not be the easiest time to grow these according to THIS source.

Arugula.

 Arugula is a nice addition to a salad with a spicy flavor.  It continuously sends up new leaves as I pick the young tender ones for salads.  As the days get warmer, it will bolt (send up flowers) and become bitter.  I will erect a shade cloth to cover it in three or four weeks to try to prolong the harvest.

Divided cilantro.

Transplanted volunteer cilantro. 

 My transplanted volunteer cilantro is doing great.  I bought two more cilantro plants and then divided them immediately in half before planting.  We use a lot of cilantro in salsa.  It will bolt as it gets hotter outside.  Once it flowers and forms seeds, they can be harvested and used for cooking.  Their seeds are the seasoning called coriander.  I will erect shade clothes over them in three to four weeks as well to try to prolong the harvests.

Yellow onion sets.

Purple onion sets.

 After these pictures were taken, the sets were covered with an inch of soil.  Our local nursery provides as many onion sets as I would care to take free of charge every year.  This year I added purple onions to the garden just for the variety.  Onions are very easy to grow.  For large bulbs, plant the smallest sets four inches apart and 1-2" deep.  Water them once and pretty much leave them alone until late July.

Rabbit or deer damage to a blueberry bush.

Budding blueberry bush.

I stopped by the house of the customer that I helped plant four blueberry bushes.  Three of their bushes suffered severe damage over the winter from rabbits or deer munching on them.  This next fall, we will install wire fencing around each bush to protect them.

Chicken and Egg Report:

We are still getting four to five eggs a day.  One hen has gone broody and is sitting on the eggs.  She's not pulling feathers from her breast, so I figure she'll come out of it pretty quickly.  FYI broody means that a hen begins sitting on the eggs with the intent to hatch them.  Usually she pulls the feathers from her breast so that the skin can better transmit her heat into the eggs.  She also doesn't get up to eat or drink very much and can lose weight.  In the spring and summer our hens go broody here and there and we just leave them be other than harvesting the eggs out from under them daily.

Weather Outlook:

About an inch and half of rain.

-The evening after planting the our bed, we got about an inch and a half of much needed rain!

-It's going to cool down with a chance of rain Friday and Saturday.  I've seen predictions that it might get close to a frost Saturday morning, so keep and eye on that.  By Sunday it should warm back up into daytime high in the 70s.

-Ten day forecast

What's Being Harvested:

-Herbs

-Arugula

Weekly Gardening Outlook

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

The garden

Much of the garden is now fallow.  A pending freeze Thursday night will pretty much do away with the summer crops like tomatoes and peppers.

This tomato plant became too heavy for the wire cage to support

This plant was a volunteer Roma from the spot where our compost pile was last year.  We left it in the spot it sprouted in and put a wire cage around it and mulched the base with grass clippings to help keep the grass away from its roots.  This was our largest, healthiest, and most productive tomato plant.  Fusarium wilt affected all of our tomato plants except for this one.  This is a reminder to rotate crops.  Next year, we will not grow tomatoes in the same locations as this year.

Green tomatoes

We've harvested 10-12 reddish tomatoes over the last couple of days.  The pending freeze Thursday night will have us out collecting all tomatoes that we can.  Hopefully they are mature enough to ripen up inside.

The daily bounty from our molting flock

Our chickens have given us 1-2 eggs per day for the last week.  They have been eating a lot more feed over the last several weeks.  They require a lot of energy to replace their feathers.  Their consumption will remain somewhat elevated over the winter as wild forage availability will decrease with cooling temperatures.

Blueberry bush

 Our blueberry bushes had a severe case of leaf spot earlier in the year.  We lost two of the five to it.  The remaining three are flourishing after a few treatments with Serenade.  We've discussed this organic treatment before here and still highly recommend it.

Late season jalapeños 

Rocky Top lettuce

We practice the cut and come method with this lettuce.  We harvest it to 1-2" high and it regrows again quickly without replanting.

The first year apple trees

From leafless sticks to a 3 foot tall, multi-branched trees our two new apple trees have survived Japanese beetles and drought. We treated them with neem oil once a week while the Japanese beetles were arround and that kept them at bay.

Over summered kale

The kale absolutely did not regrow when cooler weather hit as we had hoped it would.  Next year we will pull it as soon as it bolts and plant something else in its spot.

Weather outlook:

-Highs in the mid to upper 60s with a chance of a freeze Thursday night.  Clear with no chance of rain through the week.

-Ten day forecast

What's being harvested:

-Green onions

-Lettuce

-Peppers (We will likely harvest everything on Thursday)

-Tomatoes (We will likely harvest everything on Thursday)

-Chard

-Basil, mint, and other herbs (We will likely harvest everything on Thursday)

Weekly Gardening Outlook

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

        

The onions are ready to be harvested.  Look for more discussion of onions later in the week.  The paste (cooking type) tomatoes are coming online.  The garlic is harvested and put up.  Peppers are starting to pop.  What does that add up to?  Well, almost any Italian dish really, but for us it's salsa making time!  The cilantro has all flowered due to the heat, so we had to resort to buying that at the local store.  Next to watermelons, fresh salsa is the best thing about summer gardening.  

     Flowering cilantro

In anticipation of the coming harvests, we are freeing up freezer space.  Last summer we raised 15 hens and 25 roosters.  We kept the 6 best looking hens and put the rest into the freezer.  We tried to keep the best two roosters around, but in our opinion, they just made too much noise for a suburban environment.  We are pressure canning the remaining meat.  Chicken salad anyone?

Things to be on the lookout for:

Japanese beetles are out in full force.  As we've discussed before here, they can be kept at bay on medium to small plants with a jar of soapy water and diligence.  On our pole bean arbor and large apple tree, this just isn't possible.  Too much real estate and too high up.  Being busy people, we let the beetles get a head start on our apple tree.  They did this much damage in a little over a week!  The tree will survive, as it has past attacks, but it now has much less foliage to gather the sun's energy.  The result will likely be smaller apples.  They are just now attacking our pole beans and we aren't going to go down without a fight.  So how to deal with this problem organically?  Our old friend neem oil to the rescue.  A twice weekly application should hold them off.  We are also attacking them on another front by spreading milky spore on the lawn.  This is a bacteria that invades beetle grubs and kills them within 1-3 weeks.  When that grub dies, it releases even more milky spore to take out other grubs.  This method is organic and safe for pets and children.  We'll keep you updated on our progress.

Weather outlook:
-Low 90's
-Dry; very slight chance of rain late in the week
-Ten day forecast

What's being harvested:
-Green beans (Wow!  These pole beans are really producing!)

-Peppers

-Watermelons (Getting some delicious melons)

-Chard and kale

-Onions (Most are ready to harvest)
-Tomatoes
-Cucumbers (MANY cucumbers!)
-Kohlrabi (Should probably pull the last stragglers, but haven't yet)
-Squash and zucchini (Squash vine borer has hurt the harvest, but still getting some zucchini)
-Squash blossoms
-Celeriac leaves, basil, mint, and other herbs (all going strong)

Weekly Gardening Outlook

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

Sorry for the intermittent posting. We just returned last night from vacation and wifi was, shall we say... spotty.

What a difference a week makes! We returned to full grown cucumbers, 10 foot long and flowering pole bean vines, baby watermelons, spaghetti squash running wild, tomato plants twice as tall, and Bermuda grass... ahh the Bermuda grass. It is a truly obnoxious weed. The only problem that we really had with the garden while we were gone is that most of the broccoli (pictured above) flowered. We got a little bit, but it was a shame most of it went for naught.

young spaghetti squash  

young watermelon

Things to be on the lookout for:

Japanese beetles have arrived. They are on our apple trees, but have not eaten any plants in our beds. It seems the onions are doing their job.

The Japanese beetle's defense mechanism when disturbed is to let go of the plant and fall into the grass. We use that to our advantage by keeping a jar of soapy water in the garden and when we see the beetles, we hold the jar under them. Then we brush a hand over them and they fall right in and die. They tend to cluster up, so it doesn't take much time and if done every day will keep them from causing serious damage.

We advise not putting those pheromone traps (the kind with the bag) in your garden because they will actually attract beetles to your garden. If you have a large piece of property, place these traps in remote areas away from your garden.

Weather outlook:
-Warm, lower 90's
-Chance of rain Wednesday; dry later in the week
-Ten day forecast

What's being harvested:

-Cucumbers

-Kohlrabi
-Broccoli
-Squash and zucchini
-Squash blossoms
-Celeriac leaves
-Basil, mint, and other herbs
-Radishes
-Strawberries

What's coming soon:
-Green tomatoes
-Peppers

Apple Trees

When we bought this house 7 years ago, it came with a large, overgrown apple tree in the backyard.  We have harvested a lot of small (2-3") green apples from it over the years.  They made passable jelly and apple sauce.


Tired of small fruits, we decided to try to increase our fruit size and quality.  We started by pruning this unruly tree in late winter.  Then, as the fruits appeared in early May, we thinned them by hand. What a difference it made!  It turns out that our tree is not a green apple tree after all!  The apples are growing much quicker than previous years and are starting to turn red.  Our apples were never ripening.  It will be interesting to see what kind of apples this tree is supposed to produce!  We added to our "orchard" with two dwarf apple trees planted in pots this spring.


Thinking about planting apple trees?  It's not difficult.  Here's what you need to know.


All apple trees consist of a tree grafted to root stock.  The tree portion determines what kind of apples your tree will produce, while the root stock determines final tree size.  The neat thing about this is that an apple tree can be made to fit in almost any yard.

Dwarf trees (pictured at right)

• need as little as 8' of horizontal space
• grow 4-8' tall
• can be harvested and sprayed without ladders
• some varieties can be grown in pots
• produce 30-40 full sized apples per tree when mature
• must be staked as they grow larger because dwarf rootstock does not hold a tree up well

Semi-dwarf trees (pictured below)

• need 15' of horizontal space
• grow 10-16' tall
• require pruning to maintain shape and height
• require ladders to pick the upper branches
• produce a large crop when mature

Standard trees

• need 40' of horizontal space
• grow 30' or taller
• require a cherry picker to prune and harvest the upper reaches
• produce a large crop, but thinning and picking all fruits is virtually impossible

Tip and Tricks:

• It takes 3-5 years to get fruit, but apples trees can produce for decades so start as soon as possible
• Plant from late fall to early spring
• Water new trees very well for the first year
• Don't plant in low pockets of land as these places will hold cold air in the spring, potentially frosting blossoms
• The fruits will try to grow in clusters (see picture above); when they reach the size of dimes pick off the smallest fruits leaving only one apple per 6" of branch 
• Prune vertical and interlacing branches each winter
• Plant at least two different varieties of apple trees (a crabapple will work as well) for cross-pollination making sure that the trees will bloom at the same time in the year
• Planting dwarf varieties that mature at different times of the year can ensure a constant harvest without consuming much yard space or producing too many apples at once
• Plant the graft juncture above the soil line
• Contact your county extension agent for advice on which varieties work best in your area
• Also contact your county extension agent if insect or disease problems arise (if you want to stay organic, make sure they know that)