Mammoth Melting Snow Peas

It's been great weather for peas-- moderate temps and lots of rain, but enough sun to keep fungus at bay. The snow peas are so vigorous I had to wrap them in clothesline to keep them attached to the trellis. But this year the trellis is tied to rebar pounded a foot into the ground, so it should hold under the load.

Enjoying June

I notice that in the last few posts I've been writing of the struggle to grow and harvest crops without sharing too much of my produce with the other residents of my yard. Sometimes the chores and challenges of organic gardening in the country (with so many hungry mammals, birds and insects around) keep me from sitting down for a moment and seeing and enjoying the beauty and bounty of June.  And yet back on December I thought so fondly of June ( see the post 'Remembering June').

So here's a little perspective in photo form:

The garden in March:

The garden in June:

The lush bounty of June is a joy that is worth pausing to appreciate. And this year I have planted and succeeded with more crops than ever before, including the  Jerusalem Artichokes on the left in this photo.
Lat year I planted them outside the fenced garden and the rabbits ate them repeatedly, even when I constructed makeshift fencing.
This year they are safe inside the main kitchen garden, and I'll finally see them bloom this fall, and produce lots of tubers for the winter.

Yes, the birds and chipmunks got some strawberries, but they don't touch the rhubarb, and I've even bartered some for food at my local diner.

Yogurt with rhubarb sauce and strawberries for breakfast:

This morning I harvested lettuce, snow peas, and english peas: 

The long warm days are perfect for walks in the woods that leave Sol contented and relaxed on the drive home:

And June flowers brighten the dining room table:

I resolve to enjoy June while it's here, in the midst of all of life's challenges,  not just when looking at pictures on dark winter nights. I want to enjoy both the present and the past. 

The good bugs are back.... and other things that make me happy

 I haven't posted much in the last two weeks because my husband has been ill, and I just didn't have the focus to write. He's not better, but the initial shock has worn off, and I'm able to notice and write about the good things that are still going on in the garden.
And lots of good things are happening.  Despite my recent fears the vegetables are not being decimated by  hungry insects. Instead, my companion plantings and other strategies to bring in and retain beneficial insects are working.
What other strategies? Not spraying with indiscriminate pesticides that kill everything. Not over fertilizing so that the plants are excessively lush and tasty. Encouraging birds in the garden with shrubby habitats, water, and native berried plants. And finding and moving praying mantis egg cases.
I mentioned the egg cases in an earlier post. There were a half dozen in my bed of grasses last fall, and I clipped the twigs attached to four of them and stuck them into the strawberry bed, where they would be protected from harsh weather when young.
Mantis eggs hatch in late May, so I've been watching for them. And I found the first young mantis a couple of days ago while picking strawberries. We were eye to eye, and he (or she) tilted his tiny triangular head to look at me.  I stared back, and noticed he was clutching a fat green aphid.  My hero! Here's a picture of him (or a sibling) I saw tonight on the red romaine:

Meanwhile, the June crops are coming in.  Tom Thumb lettuce is forming perfect one meal lettuce heads on the deck:

My short and tall peas are full of fattening pods:

On the deck the Brown Turkey Fig (new this year) is finally leafing out:

And all the summer crops from seed are sprouting -- including five kinds of squash, all planted with radishes next to them as a repellant for cucumber beetles. 

And both pole and bush beans, including these Masai filet beans.

Note the living pole-- a privet branch from a recent pruning which rooted and started growing when I used it to hold this fence in place.

Finally, there are lots of strawberries ripening.  Sol doesn't like  strawberries unless they are mixed with yogurt, despite the hopeful look he's giving me in this photo!

The Garden Today

The bugs are back! (but all is not lost)

April was the honeymoon month in my  kitchen garden, when lots of things were growing and nothing ate them but my family. Now it's May, all chance of frost is past, and many bugs are chowing down in my garden.
 OK, yes I have a degree in horticulture and  in 2003 passed the test to be a certified pesticide applicator in the state of Massachusetts, so I should not call them bugs. But disease vectors just doesn't sound right!  Now that I'm organic a lot of the chemicals I learned about are not options for many reasons, so I'm studying pest management all over again. My first defense is close observation - knowing my enemy.
Here's a list of what I found yesterday: unspecified green caterpillars (cabbage moth or winter moth, probably), slugs, snails, potato beetles, scale insects and aphids ( both black and green).
 The lettuce looked great from afar, but up close there were telltale piles of dark droppings, with caterpillars nearby. It's a big, crowded patch, which means that birds aren't able to spot the caterpillars and help me much:

So here's my plan of attack for preserving the lettuce: thinning so the birds can find the caterpillars, and spraying with spinosad, a natural pesticide for  many kinds of larvae. It's non-toxic to most beneficials, and won't hurt the birds if they eat the dead or sick caterpillars.  I could not spray today because there was so much rain on the lettuce that the spinosad would be diluted and ineffective, so tomorrow morning I'll thin, and tomorrow night I'll spray.
There is some slug damage in the  vegetable garden, but most of it is on flowers, such as this poor iris:

Here's a fat and nasty slug on a rudbeckia:

It's been so wet the slugs are thriving. To think I was worried about drought a couple of weeks ago.  I'm not sure what I'll do about the slugs-- probably cut back the plants and get the slugs off, then fertilize and hope they come back. The slugs on the iris are definitely causing a fungal problem too-- that's the vector part; the slime trails are a place for fungus to thrive. Yuck!

I've been pretty successful just hand picking and spraying aphids off the peas. Here's my first pea flowers:




My strategy for dealing with potato beetles works for squash and beans too. The first thing I do is plant small patches all over the garden, rather than all together. One patch of potatoes I inspected yesterday had lots of  potato beetles, which I handpicked, and eggs, which I crushed.

Here's a pic of the eggs on the underside of the leaves:



Other patches of potatoes had no beetles. By spreading out the plants I reduce the chance of a heavy infestation of potato beetles.

Here's a patch of potatoes I've found beetle free, so far. They are planted in the flower bed, next to geraniums and under a cotoneaster:

And so the war begins.  Everyday I walk the garden and look and touch, monitoring the plants as they grow, trying to stay ahead of all the non-humans who find my crops tasty.

Sometimes I worry needlessly, and have to laugh at myself. Here's a picture of my jerusalem artichokes covered with what I feared were whiteflies:

Then I brushed my hand across a leaf and nothing flew up, which is the characteristic whitefly response.  I looked overhead and saw a wild cherry shedding it's tiny white petals all over the garden. 

I laughed, then I kept looking for pests. I believe it's better to be vigilant and wrong than blase and hungry.

Sol studying the garden this morning

Maybe he was planning how to get to the radishes. I've been feeding him one every day but he wants more...

Manic mulching and letting go of seedlings

So here's what's been occupying my free time for the last week:

This ten yard pile of locally produced mulch was paid for by the sale of used books from my garage.

Each day I have spent hours mulching my newly expanded flower and shrub borders.
I listen to books on tape and remember to lift with my legs, then go inside, put on a heat pack and have a drink.
 I'm sore, but the final result is worth the work.  The beds look so neat and tidy!

I also sanded, then sprayed a rusty old garden chair. The color is 'true blue'. I like the way it matches my garden trug.

These thickly mulched new beds mean less time spent weeding and cutting grass later in the summer, and more time for tending my tomatoes and peppers, which are now hardening off outside the garage each day, and going back inside at night.

I did plant a test tomato (Sungold) and  pepper  (Jalapeno) yesterday to see how they do before I risk planting the rest of my babies too early.

And the 'Florence' fennel seed I planted directly into the garden several weeks ago is doing great under the shelter of the arugula patch:

That's all I've got time to write today-- there's still lots of mulch to spread!