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 tide has turned in the war to protect the pole beans from Japanese beetles.  After two treatments with neem oil in one week, the beetles are nowhere to be seen.  The pole beans lost maybe 25% of their foliage, but these hardy vines are still producing and will recover just fine.  If you're using neem for the first time, be aware that it takes 5-7 days to work. It doesn't kill on contact like some chemical poisons.

        

We've been having an issue with leaf spot on some of our potted blue berry bushes.  We came across an organic anti-fungal product called Serenade and after a short period of time using it, we are pleased.  Since using it, the bushes have been able to put on uninfected new growth.  Serenade treatments combined with manually removing the affected leaves (seen in the bottom of the picture) should limit future fungal disease issues.  It is also effective against early blight in tomatoes, powdery mildew in cucurbits (cucumbers, squash, melons, pumpkins, etc.), and any other fungal disease.  Next year, we will periodically pretreat susceptible garden plants  as a preventative measure.

What is it and how does it work?  It contains a probiotic (Bacillus subtilus) that infects and destroys fungal spores.  No spores, no disease.  Also, by colonizing the plant's surface, it will reduce bacterial disease problems through increased site competition.  As mentioned earlier, it is approved for organic gardens and will not harm beneficial insects, pets, or children.

This is not from our garden and it's not a pumpkin.  We bought this unusual watermelon for a reasonable price ($6.50) from a local grower at the Fayetteville farmer's market.  The grower says it came from their local family farm and that her father developed this variety over the course of 25 years of experimentation.  Very cool.  We couldn't pass it up.  It has a firm, juicy flesh with good flavor.  It's much too large a melon to grow on trellises in our current garden, but we've saved the seeds and will give them a go after we move to a larger, more rural property.

Things to be on the lookout for:

Meet the harlequin bug.  At about 5/8" long and with its bright colors it is hard to miss if it's in your garden.  The key to identifying it is the deep V shape on its back.  It prefers to feed on turnips, broccoli, kale, collards, and radishes, but will attack other crops like tomatoes, eggplants, and potatoes if their numbers get high enough.  The harlequin bug sucks fluids from plants and, if there are enough of them, can kill the plants.  The first line of defense in controlling them is to search the underside of leaves and stems for the black and white eggs seen here and to pick off and destroy any adults found.  They aren't particularly fast, so this is fairly effective.  If the numbers have gotten too high, use a quality insecticidal soap.

Weather outlook:
-Low 90's (Keep your gardens well watered during these dog days of summer)
-Chance of scattered showers early in the week
-Ten day forecast

What's being harvested:
-Green beans (Japanese beetles have slowed production a little, but not much)

-Peppers (Really loaded down with new peppers)

-Watermelons

-Chard and kale

-Onions (Just a few left in the ground)
-Tomatoes (Picking several pounds a day)
-Cucumbers (Getting several a day)
-Squash and zucchini (Squash vine borer has hurt the harvest, one strong vine remaining and several young vines starting to grow)
-Squash blossoms
-Celeriac leaves, basil, mint, and other herbs (all going strong)

Onions

If you use onions in your kitchen, then absolutely grow some in your garden.  Onions require very little attention once the root system starts to develop.  They are also very space efficient and can be interplanted amongst other plants to utilize previously unused space.  Onions grow well with almost any plant, but most companion planting literature advises against growing them with peas or beans.  We've not grown onions with peas or beans to verify this, so take that for what it's worth.  The only other limitation to interplanting is that the onion needs to get a lot of sun, meaning that it is best interplanted with short-statured plants such as strawberries, celeriac, or many herbs.

Onions can be started from seed, but the seeds need to be started very early in the year because they grow very slowly early on.  Most people buy onion sets or starts.  Sets are small, dry bulbs that usually come in a bag.  Starts are small onion plants growing in pots, 6 packs, or bundled as bareroot stock.

Bulbing Onions:

Bulb onions are best grown from starts.  We are growing Walla Walla sweet onions, planted in the blocks surrounding our beds.  In early April, we bought them as starts in 6 packs.  There were 4 to 5 plants per container (25-30 per 6 pack), but with careful separation using a serrated knife, they all survived transplantation and have thrived.  Now, a little over three months later it is time to harvest.

Green Onions:

Green onions are usually started from onion sets, but we were given evergreen bunching onions seeds at a seed swap so we decided to give them a shot.  In February, we started them inside under grow lights.  They grew slowly, being about 6 inches long and 1/8" thick when we transplanted them out into the garden in early April.  They've done quite well.  It has gotten into the hottest part of the summer and they haven't died back yet.  Any time that we want green onion for stir fry or other dishes, there is plenty available.  We will probably grow these again.  

Tips and Tricks:

• For best results, onions should be bought from a knowledgeable local nursery instead of a big box store.  This is important because onions need both a cool period in which to grow foliage and a warm period to grow the bulb.  There are two types, one for northern climates and one for southern climates.  If the wrong type is purchased, the plant will not form good bulbs.  Briefly explained, for the northern half of the US buy "long day" onions and in the southern half buy "short day" onions.  A knowledgeable nursery will only stock sets or starts appropriate to your area.
• Any young onion can be used as a green onion, but those intended for bulb formation will not be fit for this use by early summer.
• Do not leave drying onions where dogs can get to them.  Onions are members of the lily family and are poisonous to dogs.
• Onions come on a wide variety of colors and flavors.  See what's available at your local nursery in early spring.

Putting Up the Harvest:

Pull any bulb onions with tops that have completely turned brown as seen above.

With scissors, trim the top off leaving 3-4 inches.  Leave the roots intact.

Gently wash the dirt off, leaving as much of the clean, papery outer covering as possible.

We like to immediately put them on our running air conditioner unit for 30 minutes before we set them aside.  This steady stream of warm air dries the outside quickly.  Do not leave them on it all day.  Then put them in a dry, airy place out direct sunlight for the rest of the day.  They are ready for storage when the roots are thin and wirelike.  In the evening, bring them inside to avoid dew.  If they need more drying, set them outside again the next day.  Store in a dark, dry, and cool location.  Hanging in mesh onions bags is ideal, but hanging cloth bags or wire baskets will work as well.  They can last 6 months to a year like this.

Quick Watermelon Update

The watermelons are going great and we just wanted to let you in on a tip that we read about and have found to work well.  The ideal way to determine when to harvest watermelon is to record when its bloom flowered and then count the days depending on the variety being grown.  The vines don't produce all of the blooms at one time and few people are going to do this.  A tried and true method when growing watermelon on the ground is to harvest when the underside turns yellow.  Unfortunately this can't be done when the vines are growing on a trellis, because the fruits are hanging in midair!  Many also claim to be able to thump the fruit and know by the pitch when it is ripe, but this isn't 100%.

     Dead tendril indicating time to harvest

For the tone deaf people that don't record every blossom, we have a solution.  Keep an eye on the tendril that comes out of the vine where the melon's stem joins.  When this tendril dies, harvest the melon.  This has worked like a charm for us.  This tendril can die back overnight, so keep an eye on it when the melons are starting to ripen.  

Here's the link to where we got this tip.  It is a phenomenal resource for those wanting to grow melons.

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)

Carrots

If you want a fall crop of carrots, now is the time to get them going.  We aren't raising carrots this year, but one of our customers is.  Their raised bed is 6" deep with very hard, rocky soil below the bed.  Six inches of soil isn't deep enough for most varieties of carrots and they will become deformed if they tried to grow into the hard, rocky native soil.  To get more soil depth in the raised bed, we took a page from Mel Bartholomew's square foot gardening book.  We built a 2' x 2' bed out of an untreated 2'x8" board (see picture).  We then placed this small bed on top of the 6" of soil in the existing bed and filled it with an additional 6" of a compost/peat mixture.  This gives 12" of soil depth for the carrots to grow in.

Tips and Tricks:

• We've had very good success with scattering the seed on the soil surface and then lightly raking the soil surface with our fingers.
• Keep the seeds moist during germination, but don't flood the area lest you wash all the seeds into one area and get poor seed distribution.
• Carrot seeds take 2-3 week to germinate, so don't get concerned when they aren't up as quickly as other seeds.
• After the plants are 2" high, thin the plants until there is 1-2" of space around each plant.
• Carrots really are fairly pest free, but in previous years we have experienced carrot rust fly maggots eating the roots, armyworms eating the foliage, and a box turtle chowing down on the foliage.  With the carrot rust fly maggots, we just harvested everything right then before they could do more damage.  We handpicked the armyworms off with good effect, but if it had become a major problem we would have also treated with Bacillus thuringiensis.  Since going to a doubly raised bed, box turtles haven't been a problem.
• Carrots will taste the sweetest if harvested between the first light frost of the year and the first killing frost of the year (usually early October here).
• One of the joys of home growing carrots is that they come in more than just the typical orange.  Yellow, red, purple, and white are also available.  Have fun with it!

Putting up the harvest:

• Pull them up when the soil is dry and leave them in the sun for a couple of days to cure.  Clean the dirt off and cut the greenery back to an inch.  Make holes in ziptop plastic baggies and store the carrots in them in a dark drawer of the refrigerator.  They will keep up to two months this way.
• A second option is to store them in the ground.  Mulch them heavily with straw before the first hard freeze.  Then as you need them, pull away the straw and harvest through the winter.  This may only work when the carrots are grown in ground.  We haven't tried this with the extra tall raised bed.  It may get cold enough in the winter to freeze the soil in this exposed bed, and if so the carrots will be mush.

"Green" Beans

Green beans, string beans, snap beans, whatever you call them, they are a summer garden staple.  They can be grown in two ways.  Bush beans grow about two feet tall and do not require a trellis.  They produce all of their beans in a short period of time and are then pulled up.  Pole beans (a.k.a. runner beans) are a vine that can grow 10 feet or more in length and requires some sort of trellis.  They produce a steady supply of beans from early July until the first frost of the year, which is October 15th around here.

We have grown both and have really become firm in our preference for pole beans.  Because of the ability to trellis, pole beans take much less garden bed space than bush beans.  They produce a lot more beans over the course of a season.  They are MUCH easier to pick because they are right there at shoulder/head height.  Bush beans require bending over and searching for beans amongst thick foliage.  The arbor made from a folded cattle panel has really worked out well for us.  We planted beans in the beds on both sides and they have grown up and met at the top.  This has provided great access for picking.

We are growing a variety called the purple podded pole bean.  One reason is that the purple beans stand out against the green foliage, making finding them much easier when picking.  We've found that picking green colored beans is an easter egg hunt with grass colored eggs.  The other reason we like growing the purple beans is that they look cool and are a conversation piece when people visit the garden.  They turn green when cooked.  How neat is that?

Plant the seeds in mid-May with a trellis in place.  As they emerge, train them up to the trellis and they will do the rest.  The vines have a rough texture to them and they will aggressively wrap themselves around and around the trellis as they grow towards the sun.

Tips and Tricks:

• Try to harvest the beans before they get noticeable bulges in them.  At this point they are starting to get too mature and won't be quite as tender as they could be.  They are still very edible if this happens and you will note from the pictures that we had some get to this size.
• Snap the beans by hand and remove the "string" from each side of the beans as shown in the picture above.
• Beans are good for your garden soil.  Being in the legume family, they take nitrogen out of the air and fix it into the soil.  This makes more nitrogen available in the soil for future crops.

Putting up the Harvest:

• Freezing - wash, snap, and destring the beans.  Blanch the beans in boiling water for 3 minutes, then immediately immerse in ice water until cooled.  Pat dry and arrange on a cookie sheet so that they are in a single layer*.  Put them in the freezer for an hour and then put them in ziptop bags or vacuum seal them.  Keep them in the freezer until ready to use.
• Canning - Consult a high quality canning manual such as the Ball blue book.
• Dehydrating - Prepare and blanch the beans as if freezing them.  Dry in a dehydrator until hard as a rock.  They will store almost indefinitely this way.

*The beans won't be stuck together in a mass during freezing, allowing you to take as many or as few as you need from the bag.  

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.

    Newly planted spaghetti squash vine emerging


Our spaghetti squash have been slaughtered by the squash vine borer (1 vine left).  Ever the optimists, we have replanted.  We should have just enough time to get a crop in before the first frost of the year.  It's our thought that this planting will be too late in the season for the squash vine borers to invade.  We'll keep you updated.  

Things to be on the lookout for:

    Adult cucumber beetle

If you have cucumbers, melons, or squash, be on the lookout for these small yellow beetles.  They can be spotted as shown above or striped as seen here.  The adults can damage leaves and fruits, while the larvae can damage the plant's roots.  These aren't really a huge problem except in very young plants or if you let the adult population get very high.  The real problem with these beetles is that they transmit a disease called bacterial wilt.  We have had every cucumber vine (8 in total) wiped out at a customer's garden this year due to this disease.  We just replanted.    

     Newly planted cucumbers emerging

So what can be done about it?  Once infected with the bacteria, nothing can be done for the vine.  The best strategy is so reduce the cucumber beetle population.  A regular coating of diatomaceous earth on the young seedlings will keep the beetles at bay.  Once the seedlings get up a little, our old standby neem oil will discourage feeding and reduce the population of cucumber beetles.  It has the added benefit of reducing any problems with mildew.

Weather outlook:
-Mid 80's early in the week; warming to low 90's late in the week
-Chance of rain today and tomorrow
-Ten day forecast

What's being harvested:
-Green beans

-Peppers

-Watermelons

-Chard and kale

-Onions
-Tomatoes
-Cucumbers (MANY cucumbers!)
-Kohlrabi (almost all gone)
-Squash and zucchini
-Squash blossoms
-Celeriac leaves, basil, mint, and other herbs