July 23, 2020

today’s harvest – eggplants!

My first eggplants of the season!! I am excited to harvest these. Eggplants have trouble growing in my garden because of flea beetles. Last year I had didn’t get any eggplants, though I planted a dozen plants. The leaves had more holes than green, the plants barely grew, and no fruit. I tried again anyway and it’s much better this year. I guess there are fewer flea beetles this year. I know they hatch in waves and like to feed on hot sunny days. I think maybe we had a…

June 27, 2020

lady beetles

I’ve found a bunch of lady beetles around recently. I thought ladybugs (actually a beetle, not a bug) were only the red and black spotted ones. Not true. There are about 5,000 species of these beetles. Many are native to the US and many have been introduced from Europe or Asia, generally to control aphids and other food crop pests.Most lady beetle are voracious eaters of food crop pests. The two I found today are the Fourteen-spotted ladybug (Propylea quatuordecimpunctata) picture on the right , and the Eye-spotted Lady Beetle…

April 14, 2020

mice in my hoop house

I knew I had a mouse in my hoop house. It was leaving half eaten acorns in some of my plants. Then it started nibbling on the pea seeds in a couple big trays full of pea seedlings. I took the peas up to the house to grow and put out three snap traps with peanut butter. The next day I noticed nibbled Swiss chard. No mice in the traps. I brought all the chard up to the house. Then today, I saw they had started nibbling on the kale.…

April 24, 2019

planting peas

I planted my peas today. I started them indoors in big flat boxes and cut off paper bags. I’m a fan of planting indoors, mostly because I can watch them grow. But also I can baby the seedlings, making sure they get the right amount of water and light (under plant lights). For peas, another reason for planting inside – my voracious chipmunks. There are so many chipmunks in my garden and they have, in the past, gone right down the rows and dug up and ate every newly planted…

July 29, 2017

sprouting fall seedlings and evading the chipmunk

My little fall greens seedlings are sprouting. No thanks to the chipmunk that dug up several of the pots. Maybe he didn’t find much, maybe I had planted twice what I needed, as it seems I am getting a lot of sprouts anyway. Lettuce, escarole, arugula, bok choy. They will fill in the spaces left by spent spring vegetables. I moved the seedling tray to a safer location that chipmunks can’t get to.

January 30, 2017

crop rotation

I recently finished making plans for my vegetable gardens and posted the diagrams. A reader noticed I always plant my butternut squash in one place: on the arbor in the middle of my community garden plot. I like it there. It looks nice and does well. But the reader asked: Why don’t you rotate its location? Well my view is crop rotation is more often important for farmers growing big fields of vegetables. Growing in a small space is different. It’s hard to separate plants in a 500 sq ft…

November 17, 2016

Master Gardener class with Roger Swain

I keep writing about this. What a treat the class was!! It was so great to hear Mr Swain talk from 9 am to 3 pm all about vegetables. I have 12 pages of notes. I wish I had a tenth of his knowledge. And a tenth of his ability to entertain a class. Super. Anyway, here is a list of some of the highlights in his presentation: – Local food production: 20% local food production is a good goal for New England. Currently it’s about 5-7%. NE has the…

May 22, 2016

planting cabbages, brocccoli and bok choi

Finally! I’ve gotten the compost down to the garden (actually my husband did that for me – thank you, Steve!), spread and turn it. Then we hooked up the hose to get some water down to the garden. The brassica bed was ready for planting, so yesterday the plants went in! I have so many seedlings waiting to be planted that I’m so happy to be getting some planted. After planting and watering, I covered the bed with row cover to protect the plants from cabbage worms. I planted three…

March 8, 2016

green bean varieties resistant to Mexican bean beetles

I’m putting together a collection of green beans that have some reported resistance to Mexican bean beetles. Getting ahead of this pest in our organic community garden is going to be one of my things to focus on this summer. They are voracious! Some resistant varieties are listed here at the Weekendgardener. Our community gardeners have come across others. Varieties include:Emerite, Logan, Wade, Black Valentine and Chinese yard long beans I’ve ordered some of each of these for our community gardeners to try. Growing in our garden will be a…

October 11, 2015

what caused my garlic to rot? rotation, rotation, rotation

I’ve been thinking about why half of my garlic crop rotted this year. In early spring, my garlic plants yellowed and curled and then died. This started mostly in one area of the bed and then gradually other plants curled and died more slowly. Some just stopped growing looking like a small plant, but when pulled, the bulb was rotten. Once I saw the plants rotting, I worried that I planted where onions had been last year and maybe garlic the prior. This is my list for crops the bed…