Weekly Gardening Outlook: Insect Fighting and Makeshift Nest Boxes

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

Aphids on a bean vine

Aphids on a blueberry bush

I noticed an unusual number of ants on my bean vines, blueberry bushes, and squash vines.  I looked closer and found that aphids were beginning to infest my crops.  Aphids are small, soft bodied insects that suck the juices from plants.  In small numbers, they aren't a problem.  If not nipped in the bud early though, the population can explode and harm crops.  The reason the ants alerted me to their presence, was that ants are known to "farm" aphids.  The aphids secrete a sweet liquids from their anus' called honeydew, which ants feed upon.  In exchange, the ants protect the aphids from predators.  Quite the system.

A low tech, organic treatment is to spray the aphids off with a stream of water.  They are fairly immobile and if knocked off the plants, cannot return and will die in the soil.  I did that this morning.  If they continue to be a problem, a treatment of an organic pesticide called NeemII (Neem oil + pyrethrin) will take care of it.

Squash bug eggs on a butternut squash vine

While spraying the aphids off of my squash vines, I also found these squash bug eggs.  A stream of water and a scrape of the fingernail and they are gone too.

Squash bug on a butternut squash vine

The water causes any adult squash bugs present to climb to higher ground where I smashed them by hand.  This is a good way to flush them out.  If necessary, a treatment of the previously mentioned NeemII will knock them back.

Turnips

The turnips have finally poked up above the mulch.  They do quite well planted four per square foot, but we don't eat a ton of turnips so I planted only one per square foot.  As they get pulled, I will replace them by succession planting radishes.

Immature cherry tomatoes

Immature Roma tomatoes

Tomatoes are coming!  Can't wait.

Eggplant

The eggplants are doing fine.  Flea beetles have put a few holes in the leaves, but that won't hurt them.

Young okra

The okra gets a whole bed to itself.  These will grow into 6 foot tall plants with treelike stalks 2-3" thick at the base.

Serrano peppers

Jalapeno peppers

Onions

Yellow onions

Purple onion

The peppers and onions are ready.  I'm making salsa today with store bought tomatoes.  Can't wait for mine to start ripening.  Gotta have the salsa!

Ripening blueberries

While not nearly as numerous as the blueberries from the farm, these are a nice treat each morning in the garden.  An explosion of flavor as they're eaten straight from the bush.

Sweet basil

Thyme, oregano, and lemon thyme (left to right)

Coriander (cilantro seeds)

Herbs are just so easy.  Most originated in the Mediterranean area and will tolerate poor soils and somewhat dry conditions.  It's a lot of fun to bring in fresh herbs for cooking with.  There's no reason why a person shouldn't have them in the garden.  The oregano continues it's spread through the bed.  It will be time to harvest the coriander soon.

Swiss chard

Chard is another one of those plants every garden should have as a spinach replacement.  Young, tender leaves are good in salads.  Older leaves are good for cooking anywhere you would use spinach.  It grows through the hot summer and well into the fall.  It will grow through the entire winter if surrounded by a cold frame.

Pole bean vines

The pole beans haven't been too affected by the aphids.  They are usually a big target of the Japanese beetle when it emerges.  They will be treated with NeemII when I see the first beetles of the year.

Chicken and Egg Report:

5 gallon buckets serve as makeshift nesting boxes

The chicks were getting crowded in their space and began pecking at one another leaving small, bloody spots.  To give them more room, I took the divider out and gave them free run of the entire top of the chicken house. The only problem is that that cut off access to the nest boxes for the hens.  Clean 5 gallon buckets are serving as temporary nesting boxes for the hens during the next few weeks.  We had been getting 4-5 eggs per day.  It will be interesting to see how the hens adapt to this change.  Generally, environmental changes will temporarily diminish egg production.

Weather Outlook:

-Cooling down, with highs in the mid 80's through the week.  30-40% chance of rain every day, with a 60% chance early next week.

-Watch the amount of rain received and water accordingly.  A popup rain shower, usually doesn't water the garden much.

-Ten day forecast

What's Being Harvested:

-Herbs

-Serrano and jalapeno peppers

-Green, yellow, and purple onions

-Blueberries

Visit to a Local Blueberry Farm

Ripe blueberry cluster

Yesterday, my boys and I went to a local farm to pick blueberries, because our homegrown crop isn't enough for our needs.  We've gone to Blue Heaven Farms in Goshen, AR in previous years and they've been fine to deal with.  However, when I was looking up their phone number, I came across information about Clear Creek Farms.  Clear Creek uses no pesticides on their farm and to me and my family, that's important.  It's out Wedington Road near Savoy with large signs clearly marking the entrance.  Prices were $10 per gallon if they pick the berries or $8 a gallon if you pick.  They were sold out of prepicked berries, but even though we are reaching the end of the season, there were still enough berries on the bushes to make getting a few gallons easy.

I used http://www.pickyourown.org/AR.htm to find the farms.  They have farm listings for every US state and many other countries.  Check and see what cheap, fresh, direct from the farm produce you can find in your area.  

Good clean fun

So we arrived and sunscreened up.  We got a one gallon bucket from the owner and went to work.  Blueberry bushes grow about 6 feet tall and were planted in long rows about 10 feet apart.  Leave the green and red berries on the bush.  What you want to look for are fat, dark blue berries with a frosted over appearance and if they are all in a cluster as shown above, that makes picking them easier and more efficient.  

Patented hands free bucket carrying device

I always loop the handle of the bucket through my belt to free up both hands for picking.  If you don't normally wear a belt, you might want to when you go picking.  When the bucket is full, take it to the owner and he'll put the berries in a bag for you to take home.

A few tips:

- EAT a few berries as you go.  It's expected by farm owners and is part of the experience.  It keeps kids happy and makes it less like work and more of a fun outing.  This is where picking at a pesticide free farm is helpful...

-Call ahead to make sure there are berries and that they are going to be open.

-Bring cash.  Most places don't accept checks or credit cards.

Wild blackberries

We found some bonus wild blackberries growing in one row.  Delicious!

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

Weekly Gardening Outlook: Planting Time! *Republished from 5/11/2011*

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

The Blogger problems seem to have been resolved and I have been able to reconstruct this earlier post.  I am republishing it, though the material is a couple of weeks old.

My youngest boy helping out in the garden

A mistake many people make is putting their warm season annuals (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, etc.) out too early in the season. I have done it myself. The gardening bug hits with that first warm day in the spring and you just want to fill the garden up. For a gardener in the extreme northern United States or Canada, where growing seasons are short it makes sense to get the summer crops in the ground as soon as possible and try to protect them from cooler weather. However, here in northwest Arkansas, we have a fairly long growing season of about 5 and a half months. There is plenty of time for the crops to mature before the first freezes hit in October. These warm season annuals can be permanently stunted by cool soil and overnight temperatures, so I don't plant too much until the first part of May.

Bed overtaken with Bermuda grass

Well here we are in early May and it's time to really get our hands in the earth. In the picture above, you can see the bane of my gardening existence. Bermuda grass. This is by far the worst infestation of any of my beds. When building your own beds, I urge you REMOVE ALL BERMUDA GRASS within several feet of your beds and don't let it ever get a toehold in your garden. I wet the soil and remove as much as I can find by hand every spring. This plus constantly weeding out new shoots gets me through the summer. I refuse to use RoundUp.

Silver maple shading the garden

Light pruning of a silver maple

Silver maple roots invading raised beds

Trees and gardens are a bad combination. The silver maple pictured above shades the back part of my garden and its roots seek out the fertile soil in my raised beds. Each spring I trim back overhanging branches to increase sunlight to the garden area. I can't stress how important adequate sunlight is. Without it your summer annuals will be smaller, produce less, and will be more disease prone.

Garden soil and a worm

Speaking of garden soil, this is what the soil looks like after just three years of organic gardening. Loose, crumbly, black, and full of worms. The formula is plenty of organic matter (compost) + no chemicals + avoiding soil compaction by not walking on it or using power tillers. Simple.

On to the planting.

Multiple basil plants in one pot

Removing a "biodegradable" pot

Basil is a member of the mint family and as such is extremely hardy. I carefully separate the roots of each individual plant in a basil pot and plant them separately. I got three different plants from this one purchase and they are all doing very well.

On "biodegradable" peat pots. I don't like them. I have planted them into the ground per instructions before and at the end of the season, the pots were still there when I pulled the plant up. It's my contention that they restrict the roots of a plant. It may do okay in the pot, but it will do better without it. Also, a peat pot with the rim above the soil line acts as a wick that sucks the moisture out of the soil up the where it can evaporate. I soak the plants thoroughly and let them sit awhile and then remove the pot as shown above. I use the remains of the peat pot as a weed barrier on the soil surface.

Two tomato seedlings; the one on the right is pruned and ready for planting

Planted tomato seedling

Tomato seedlings and a soaker hose

Tomatoes are easy to plant. Dig a hole that's almost as deep as the plant is tall. Pinch off all, but the top leaves. Throw and handful of crushed eggshells in the hole to provide calcium to prevent blossom end rot. Plant the seedling deep with just the uppermost leaves protruding from the ground. Tomato plants will root all along the stem and this gives them a nice big root system. They will need support to keep them up off the ground. See HERE for a previous post about caging, trellising, and staking.

Peppers and a soaker hose

Pepper seedling

Peppers are even easier. Plant them with the garden soil at the same level as the plant was in the pot. Insert a strong 3 foot long stake in the ground near the base of the plant (not shown above). Do it while the plant is small so that you don't damage the plant roots later on.

Tomatoes, peppers, onions, and basil inside the bed; Strawberry plants in the blocks

Two beds planted. Two to go.

Damaged tomato seedling

The next day I found 5 of my tomato seedlings that looked like this. My first thought was cutworms, but they cuts are not low enough or smooth enough and sifting the soil around the seedling did not reveal the worm. Deer and rabbits are excluded by multiple fences and vigilant dogs. I think this was caused by a rat or birds. Something to keep an eye on. Replanting will be needed.

Thyme

Oregano

Cilantro and onions

The cilantro is ready to harvest. If not harvested, it will soon bolt due to the upper 80 degree temperatures we've been experiencing.

Arugula

The arugula bounced right back from the previous harvest and is ready to be picked again.

Strawberries

Freshly picked strawberries

Morning snack for the kids

The strawberries are starting to produce a nice daily harvest. So much more flavorful than the watery store-bought version.

Pillbug damage

Here is an example of pillbug damage that I talked about earlier in THIS post. This was the only affected berry I could find. I just cut off the affected part and ate the rest.

Garlic chives

These were given to me by my Master Gardener mentor. I will let them grow a little more before I eat some. They are very invasive, so they have been planted in the blocks to keep them from taking over the garden.

Mint

Speaking of invasive. My mint plants were started by cutting a few pieces from my in law's plants and then just sticking them in the dirt. From there they have come back year after year. These MUST be planting in some sort of containment.

Green sand plums.

Immature blueberry clusters

The plums are on their way, as are the blueberries.

Nanking cherry bush

The Nanking bush cherries flowered a little, but I cannot detect any growing fruit.

Onion seeds

The onion's seeds are in various stages of maturity. I plan to save some for next year. Honey bees and hover flies continue to be strongly attracted to these flowers.

Hula hoe

The hula hoe (aka stirrup hoe or scuffle hoe) is a must have tool for any garden, whether raised bed or row crop. It allows a gardener to quickly remove weeds with precision, without having to bend down. To use it, drag the blade across the ground just under the surface. It cuts off weeds, but doesn't destroy the root structure of nearby crops. When preparing beds or weeding large areas where less precision is needed, it can be worked back and forth like a mop. In the spring, I take my hula hoe out of the garden shed and it doesn't get put back until winter. I like to always have it handy for a quick weeding session. If I could only have one tool in the garden, this would be it.

Chicken and Egg Report:

Watermelon rind picked clean by chickens

We are getting five eggs a day from our backyard flock of 6 hens. An often overlooked benefit to chickens is the ability to recycle kitchen scraps without composting. They will eat anything short of citrus peels or onion tops.

Weather Outlook:

-Hot with chances of strong storms for Wednesday and Thursday. Cooling back down into the 60s on Friday. Dry the rest of the week. Slowly warming to the upper 70s again by next week.

-Ten day forecast

What's Being Harvested:

-Strawberries
-Garlic scapes
-Herbs

-Arugula